The famous speech that Nelson Mandela never gave

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Nelson-Madela

OUR deepest fear is not that we were inadequate. It is the realisation that we were powerful beyond measure. It was our light, not our darkness, that frightened us most.

We ask ourselves, `Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking, so that people won’t feel insecure around you.

We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

This passage is commonly mis-attributed to Nelson Mandela’s 1994 Inaugural address, .tt actually comes from the book ‘A Return To Love’ (1992) by Marianne Williamson

26 thoughts on “The famous speech that Nelson Mandela never gave”

  2. “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.”

    I think this is profound. Young children are often made low by people around them, by society and in education. I find when a child is told how great they are, that they are loved beyond all measure, that God made them in His image, that He loves them you can see them grow right in front of you. This leads to greater character and in tribulation we grow further rather than shrink back into the darkness.

    I have seen teachers who while disciplining a child tell them how much they love them and are glad they are alive and at the school. They encourage and grow together.

    The humanist atheist doctrine of today brings purposelessness and darkness to a world that is already tough. It brings no hope, no love and no peace. We see an agenda to self identity through a genderless nihilistic world view and this brings greater darkness and despair.

    “We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in all of us.”

    I believe this is so true and that we all have the spark of God. But its when Christ infiltrates our lives that the flame grows and glows brightly. This sparks others up and fans their lives into something glorious.

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    • I am confident in who I am because I know God Lives within me.

      The true me, my holy self, is beyond any limits of the mortal world. As God lives inside me, so does His brilliance and infinite power. As I dwell in that knowledge, recognizing and appreciating His divine spirit that resides in all of us, I receive the charisma of a self-confident person.

      Confident in God, I am confident as a person; seeing myself as God’s follower, I come across as a leader in the world. I live within an invisible light, a sense of humble certitude, and a greatness that comes from beyond myself.

      Excerpted from A YEAR IN MIRACLES

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  3. There is a difference in church teachings.

    Concerning the original sin committed by Adam and Eve, the Orthodox church believes that, while everyone bears the consequences of the first sin, the foremost of which is death, only Adam and Eve are guilty of that sin.

    Roman Catholicism teaches that everyone bears not only the consequence, but also the guilt, of that sin.

    Adam and Eve don’t mean much to me, anyway. The story is an allegory.

    We are made in the image of God, even though it may be a distorted image. His Wisdom, Love and Power can be seen in our logic, emotion, and self-will.

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    • logic? are you sure?
      the day Adam and Eve sinned the process of dying began. It had something to do with genetic damage. If the Entropy story is correct and there is no reason to believe it isn’t every single generation since their’s has been more damaged than the previous. A recent report, says that there is very very little evidence for cancer existing only 3000 years ago. the implications are profound. It is very very illogical I believe to not take anything in the bible for anything other than literal truth. Even when we know somethings are written as being in allegory or poetically it is best to take them as literal. It is simply safer that way.

      For too long I’ve tried to simply make the case that Jesus is who He said He is and meant exactly everything He said. Pithy doesn’t always work but maybe sometimes it does. Jesus Himself said when someone says, God is within don’t believe them. It is a special event of the Holy Spirit or it isn’t. You can rely and listen to the Holy Spirit or you cannot. It can be both ways. That might be human logic but isn’t logical.

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    • Talking about different Christian beliefs –

      THE GLORY OF KINGS

      IN PRAISING GOD THE FATHER, THE SUSTAINER OF THE UNIVERSE, AND HIS SON JESUS CHRIST, THROUGH WHOM EVERYTHING CAME INTO BEING, AND WITHOUT WHOM NOTHING CAME INTO BEING, AND THE HOLY TRIUNE SPIRIT, THE PARACLETE, WHO GOETH FORTH FROM THE FATHER, AND DERIVETH FROM THE SON, WE BELIEVE IN AND ADORE THE TRINITY, ONE GOD, THE FATHER, AND THE SON, AND THE HOLY SPIRIT.
      1. Concerning the Glory of Kings

      The interpretation and explanation of the Three Hundred and Eighteen Orthodox [Fathers] concerning splendour, and greatness, and dignity, and how God gave them to the children of ADAM, and especially concerning the greatness and splendour of ZION, the Tabernacle (tâbôt) of the Law of God, of which He Himself is the Maker and Fashioner, in the fortress of His holiness before all created things, [both] angels and men. For the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit with good fellowship and right good will and cordial agreement together made the Heavenly ZION to be the place of habitation of their Glory. And then the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit said, “Let Us make man in Our similitude and likeness,”1 and with ready agreement and good will They were all of this opinion. And the Son said, “I will put on the body of ADAM,” and the Holy Spirit said, “I will dwell in the heart[s] of the Prophets and the Righteous,” and this common agreement and covenant was [fulfilled] in ZION, the City of their Glory. p. 2 And DAVID said, “Remember Thine agreement which Thou didst make of old for salvation, the rod of Thine inheritance, in Mount ZION wherein Thou dost dwell.”1

      And He made ADAM in His own image and likeness, so that He might remove SATAN because of his pride, together with his host, and might establish ADAM—His own plant—together with the righteous, His children, for His praises. For the plan of God was decided upon and decreed in that He said, “I will become man, and I will be in everything which I have created, I will abide in flesh.” And in the days that came after, by His good pleasure there was born in the flesh of the Second ZION the second ADAM, Who was our Saviour CHRIST. This is our glory and our faith, our hope and our life, the Second ZION.2

      http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/kn/kn001.htm

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      • From the same source- Scripture as held by descendants and subjects of the Queen of Sheba

        42. Concerning the Ten Commandments

        “And hear ye, ISRAEL, that which God commandeth you to keep; He saith, ‘I am the Lord thy God Who hath brought thee out of the land of EGYPT and out of the house of bondage. There shall be no other gods besides Me, and thou shalt not make any god that is graven, and no god that is like what is in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water which is under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down to them, and thou shalt not serve them, for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God. [I am He] Who visiteth the sin of the father on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Me, and I perform mercy to a thousand (or, ten thousand) generations of those who love Me and keep My commandments.

        “Thou shalt not swear a false oath in the Name of p. 59 the Lord thy God, for the Lord will not hold innocent the man who sweareth a false oath in His Name.

        “And observe the day of the Sabbath to sanctify it, even as the Lord thy God commanded. Six days thou shalt do thy work, and on the seventh day, the Sabbath of the Lord thy God, thou shalt do no work at all, neither thyself, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy nor thine ass, nor any beast, nor the stranger that abideth with thee. For in six days God made the heavens and the earth, and the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day, and because of this God blessed the seventh day and declared it free [from work].

        “Honour thy father and thy mother so that may be good to thee the many days that thou shalt find in the land which the Lord thy God hath given thee.

        “Thou shalt not go with the wife of [another] man.

        “Thou shalt not slay a life.

        “Thou shalt not commit fornication. Thou shalt not steal.

        “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

        “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his house, nor his land, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his cattle, nor his ass, nor any of the beasts that thy neighbour hath acquired.”

        This is the word which God hath spoken, His Law and His Ordinance. And those who sin He rebuketh, so that they may not be confirmed in error, and may restrain themselves from the pollution wherewith God is not pleased. And this is the thing with which God is not pleased, and it is right that men should abstain from it.

        “No man shall uncover the shame of one with whom he hath kinship; for I am the Lord your God. The shame of thy father and mother thou shalt not uncover, for it is thy mother. Thou shalt not uncover the shame p. 60 of thy father’s wife, for it is the shame of thy mother. Thou shalt not uncover the shame of thy sister who was begotten by thy father or thy mother. Whether she was born unto him from outside or whether she is a kinswoman of thine thou shalt not uncover her shame. Thou shalt not uncover the shame either of thy son’s daughter, or the shame of the daughter of thy daughter, for it is thine own shame. Thou shalt not uncover the shame of the daughter of thy father’s wife, for she is thy sister, the daughter of thy mother, and thou shalt not uncover her shame. Thou shalt not uncover the shame of thy father’s sister, for she is of thy father’s house. Thou shalt not uncover the shame of thy mother’s sister, for she is of thy mother’s house. Thou shalt not uncover the shame of the wife of thy father’s brother, for she is thy kin[swoman]. Thou shalt not uncover the shame of thy son’s wife, for she is thy son’s wife. Thou shalt not uncover the shame of thy daughter and the wife of thy brother’s son, for it is thine own shame. Thou shalt not uncover the shame of thy brother’s wife, for it is thy brother’s shame as long as thy brother liveth. Thou shalt not uncover the shame of a woman and that of her daughter, nor that of the daughter of her son, nor that of the daughter of her daughter. Thou shalt not cause their shame to be uncovered; it is thy house and it is sin.

        “And thou shalt not take to wife a maiden and her sister so as to make them jealous each of the other, and thou shalt not uncover their shame, nor the shame of the one or the other as long as the first sister is alive. Thou shalt not go to a menstruous woman, until she is purified, to uncover her shame whilst she is still unclean. And thou shalt not go to the wife of thy neighbour to lie with her, and thou shalt not let thy seed enter her.

        “And thou shalt not vow thy children to MOLOCH to defile the Name of the Holy One, the Name of the Lord.

        “And thou shalt not lie with a man as with a woman, for it is pollution.

        “And thou shalt not go to a beast and thou shalt not lie with it so as to make thy seed go out upon it, that thou mayest not be polluted thereby. And a woman shall not go to a beast to lie with it, for it is pollution. And ye shall not pollute yourselves with any of these things, for with them the nations whom I have driven out before you have polluted themselves, and with them ye shall not pollute your bodies.

        “And sanctify ye your souls and your bodies to God, for He is the Holy One, and He loveth those who sanctify their souls and their bodies to Him. For He is holy, and to be feared, and He is high, and merciful, and compassionate. And to Him praise is meet for ever and ever. Amen.”

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    • We are also guilty of the original sin too.
      Why? Because we also have committed the same sin!
      When people say Adam and Eve “knew” good and evil, it is better to translate it as they “decided” what was good and evil. In effect to become like God.

      We humans have done this since and continue to do so.
      We are guilty of the same sin.

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      • We are not guilty of what our father Adam pbuh has done.

        (Ezekiel 18:20) – “The person who sins will die. The son will not bear the punishment for the father’s iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son’s iniquity; the righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself.”

        This concept is deeply rooted in all sane people.

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      • Hi Dom,

        With all due respect, I think you miss the point….Ezekiel 18:20.

        “It does seem just to punish only the one who actually does anything wrong, doesn’t it? We Christians, somewhere deep down, want to agree with this sentiment wholeheartedly. But there is a problem – “The soul who sins shall die”. The problem is that I’ve sinned, you’ve sinned, we’ve all sinned. We’ve all done wrong things and according to the bible we all deserve to die (check out Romans 3:23). Setting the question of original sin aside, we will be punished for our own sin first!

        Christians believe that what happened when Adam sinned was not just Adam “doing the wrong thing”, and we get punished for it. That’s not it. Rather, something fundamentally changed about Adam’s nature. He didn’t just sin, he became a sinner. From then on, Adam sinned because he was a sinner – “by nature a child of wrath” (Eph 2:3). Since we are his children, we share in his nature. That is what it means to be human in a post-fall world. You sin because you are a sinner. That doesn’t get you off the hook – sin is still wrong. As that Ezekiel verse said: “The soul who sins shall die.”

        Christianity Net.com

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  4. “Adam and Eve don’t mean much to me, anyway. The story is an allegory.

    There are a lot of Christians, including me, who would disagree with you, Strewth.

    Is the Adam and Eve story to be understood literally?

    Let us assume for a moment that the Adam and Eve story is not to be understood literally. What would be the result? Would Christianity remain essentially the same with a non-literal understanding of the story of Adam and Eve? No. In fact, it would have serious implications for virtually every tenet and doctrine of the Christian faith. If Adam was not a real man, then sin did not enter the world through one man as Romans 5:12 states. How, then, did sin enter world? Further, if the New Testament is wrong about how sin entered the world, what else is it wrong about? If Romans 5:12 is wrong, how do we know that the entirety of Romans 5:8—15 is not wrong? If the story of Adam and Eve is not to be taken literally—if they did not really exist—then there was no one to rebel, there was no fall into sin. Satan, the great deceiver, would like nothing better than for people to believe that the Bible should not be taken literally and that the story of the fall of man is a myth. Why? Because once we start denying parts of the Bible, we lose our trust in the Bible. Why should we believe anything God’s Word says if we cannot trust everything that it says?

    Jesus taught that God created one man and one woman (Mark 10:6) and mentions Abel, a son of Adam and Eve in Luke 11:51. Was Jesus wrong in His beliefs? Or did Jesus know there were no literal Adam and Eve and He was simply accommodating His teaching to the beliefs of the people (i.e., lying)? If Jesus is wrong in His beliefs, He is not God. If Jesus is intentionally deceiving people, He is sinning and therefore cannot be the Savior (1 Peter 1:19).

    That is why this is such a serious issue. To deny the literalness of Adam and Eve is to place oneself in opposition to Jesus and the apostle Paul. If one has the audacity to claim he is right and Jesus and Paul are wrong, then Jesus is a sinner, not God and not the Savior; the apostle Paul is a false prophet; and the Bible is not inspired, inerrant, or trustworthy.

    The Bible clearly presents Adam and Eve as literal people who existed in a literal Garden of Eden. They literally rebelled against God, they literally believed Satan’s lie, and they were literally cast out of the Garden (Genesis 3:24). They had literal children, all of whom inherited the sin nature, and that nature was passed down to succeeding generations to this very day. Fortunately, God promised a literal Savior to redeem us from that sin nature (Genesis 3:15). That Savior is Jesus Christ, called the “last Adam” (1 Corinthians 15:45), who died on a literal cross and literally rose again. Those who believe in Christ will have literal salvation and spend eternity in a literal heaven.

    Christians who deny the story of Adam and Eve essentially deny their own faith. Rejecting the literal interpretation of the Bible’s historical narratives is a slippery slope. If Adam and Eve did not exist, then were Cain and Abel not real? Did Seth exist, and did he father a godly line that led all the way to Abraham and eventually to Jesus Himself? Where in Luke’s genealogy (Luke 3:23–38) do the names stop referring to literal people and start referring to mythical characters? To dismiss Adam and Eve as non-literal is to deny the accuracy of Luke’s gospel, cast aspersions on Moses’ record, and remove the foundation of the rest of the Bible.

    Jesus God’s Word claims to be true (Psalm 119:160). Jesus Christ declared God’s Word to be truth (John 17:17). All of God’s Word is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16-17). These declarations include the biblical account of Adam and Eve.

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    • When I call it an allegory, Mon, I’m not denying its truth, just the form it takes. There are too many similar stories to just dismiss it. Take this one, for instance –

      According to this account of creation, during a certain stage in the process, God sent the “truth” to confirm the habitability of the newly formed planets. The earth being one of these was visited but deemed too wet for conventional life.

      After a successful period of time, a number of agents were sent to accomplish the task of helping earth develop its crust. Under their leader the land became fertile and plant life began to flourish. From handfuls of earth he began to mould figurines.
      Meanwhile, as this was happening on Earth, God gathered the gasses from the far reaches of space and sparked an explosion that shaped into a fireball. He subsequently sent it to Earth, where it dried much of the land and simultaneously began to bake the motionless figurines.

      It was at this point that God released the “breath of life” to blow across the land, and the figurines slowly came into “being” as the first people of Earth

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    • Animals don’t go to heaven. Also don’t go to hell. They cease to exist and the ones that go to hell which they could cease to exist as well.

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      • I’m told heaven has lovely green lawns and beautiful flowers. Flora but no fauna?

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      • Granted their physical bodies don’t go to heaven, as neither do ours, but our essence or soul can. What is the difference in the essence of one of God’s creation who is loving, intelligent, willing to risk death for the sake of others, attributes beyond what nature endowed? Not it’s physical body or brain, obviously. It never had the chance to know scripture, any more than a two year old human has?

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      • The Qur’an does say that those who enter paradise can have whatever they want, so perhaps you could just bring your pet.

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      • and yet….
        1 Corinthians 15:44 says
        “If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.”

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  6. For Stu, maybe you may relate to the content and actually join in with the conversation.

    As you so have proven you like to attack the traits of a person (like myself) as a means to invalidate some argument, sometimes there is no argument as per the previous response. as you have shown not joining in any conversation as similar to the proverb, one does evil enough when one does nothing good.

    But your lack of conversation and over use of trolling and being unkind, more often than not, is a reaction to self-anger or perceived inadequacy. It may possibly be feelings of being unlovable, undesirable, and antisocial, and to need a way to cope with these feelings by giving one an alter ego that deserved to be disliked for reasons not understood on a blog.

    I generally find that people being rude or obsessive towards you are really being mean to themselves. They have likely convinced themselves that they are unworthy of love, and that is the biggest tragedy of all. One only sees the other (Stu) struggling with their own problems, and needs a way to cope with them.

    Is it time for self-reflection. Why do you attack people? What are you trying to protect yourself from?

    Ahh, but to read some conversation, or will you run away again from yourself.

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