Whose Truth Is It?

For nearly 2,000 years the Western World has been taught some basic truths.

The man we call Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God. He was born of a virgin whose name was Mary; she was impregnated by God Himself. God sent His only begotten Son to Earth to bring a New Covenant to mankind and to pay our sin debt in full. Therefore, only by repenting of our sins and making Jesus our personal Savior and Lord can we enter Heaven but only if we are baptised.

All those who do not accept Jesus as their personal Savior and Lord are automatically condemned to the eternal fires of Hell, there to writhe in agony for all eternity. God is seen as an angry, vengeful God who is capable of great love and mercy but only for those who accept his only begotten Son as Savior. Some Christians believe that God has pre-elected just 144,000 souls to enter Heaven and no matter what we do, no matter that we accept Jesus as our Savior and Lord, we will not enter Heaven unless we are one of the elect. Of course we are not to know who is elected and who missed the cut!

That is, I believe, a faithful and accurate summary of current Christian dogma with many variations and additions depending on denomination. Some believe you must be dunked to be Baptised while others maintain that a sprinkle of Holy Water will do the trick. Some believe in eating the body and drinking the blood of Christ once a month while others think this is barbaric paganism.

My question for the reader is: Does this sound like the teaching of Jesus? Is this His message in the Sermon on The Mount? Is this the words of the Prince of Peace? Can you find these doctrines in the words of Jesus, even assuming we know what those words of Jesus were?

Where do these ideas come from? What is their origin? The answer is clear and it is simple. Paul with a strong assist by John literally invented Christianity out of whole cloth. Not one of the Disciples, the men who walked and lived with Jesus in his 28 month ministry, wrote one word of the Gospels of the New Testament. No one who witnessed Jesus in life ever reported or wrote down a word He said to our certain knowlege.

Here is what we do know. Jesus was an Essene Jew, a Rabbi. He did not set out to found a new religion or to establish Christianity. In fact, he wouldn't have known what "Christianity" meant. He never once used the word Christ (Kristos in Greek) and never considered himself a "Christ". Kristos means the "annointed one" and has the same meaning as the Hebrew Messiah.

Paul first coined the phrase Jesus Christ and first called the followers of Jesus Christines, now called Christians. Jesus came to reform Judaism and to free it from the stiff, ridgid legalism of the Pharisees (priests of the Temple) that had drained all the spirit and love from Judaism. He was the first Reform Jew; he was never a Christian. His goal was to move Judaism from a tribal religion to one that could be embraced by non-jews and Jews alike.

His name wasn't even Jesus! He was Yeshua Ben David or Joshua of the House of David. He never claimed to be born of a virgin, in fact he had a sister and three brothers; one of whom, James, became the leader of the followers of Jesus after the Master's death. I am sure Jesus' father, Joseph, would be quite surprised to learn that his wife was a virgin!

Who really invented the religion we call "Christianity"? Paul wrote 56% of the New Testament, including much of the basis of the new Christianity - the idea of the Virgin Birth, the name Christ, and the idea that Jesus was the Son of God. Not once did Jesus ever call himself the Son of God; he referred to himself as the Son of Man by which he meant the servant of man.

Paul was a Roman citizen, a gentile, who knew nothing of Judaism and cared less. His epiphany in which he encounters the long dead Jesus on the road to Damascus is by his word alone, totally uncorroberated by anyone. James, the brother of Jesus, publicly and loudly called Paul a usurper and a fraud.

James at this time was the head of the followers of Jesus, a group which was called The Jerusalem Assembly. Paul and James could not stay in the same room with each other there was so much animosity. In fact, James ordered Paul to leave Jerusalem because of the dissention and discord he sowed.

James had no interest in including the "unclean" gentiles, he wanted to teach the simple way of life that his brother Jesus had taught. His view was that if a gentile wanted to follow the Way of Jesus and was willing to undergo ritual purification and circumcision, then so be it. Paul dreamed of building a new world religion, with Jesus as the figurehead, that would appeal to the multi-cultural and vast Roman world. He was, after all, a Roman.

Paul took the idea of the Virgin Birth from the Roman God Mithras, the God of the Roman Legionaries. The Romans believed that Mithras had been born of a virgin and fathered by Jupiter, the head of the Roman Pantheon of Gods. Sound familiar? The Romans understood this pagan concept very well while the Jews considered it the worst kind of blasphamy. Paul invented the idea of the Son of God, literally half God, half man.

He also invented the idea of the sin debt; in fact he borrowed this from the Jewish Torah which prophesied that the Messiah (Christ) would come and free Israel and wipe away every good Jew's sins. The idea of Jesus as our personal Savior and Lord comes from the Emperor Constantine and his Council of Nicea in 321CE which literally put together the book we know as the Bible.

So you see, today's Christianity was invented by Paul with John contributing the apocalypse and the elect 144,000 that our Baptist friends love so much. This religion was tailor made for the poor, the oppressed slaves and lower classes of the Roman Empire. It was perfect for uniting an Empire where dozens of languages were spoken and more than 60 religions practiced.

Under pagan Rome, all religions were tolerated as long as they did not preach sedition against the Empire, but once Christianity became the state religion, which it did in 312 CE, no tolerance for any religion but Christianity was allowed and no form of Christianity was permitted other than that approved by the Emperor and his chief priest, the Ponifex Maximus (now called the Pope). A principle example of this intolerance is the suppression of the Gnostics from which Science of Mind draws many of its concepts. This was a rapidly growing alternative form of Christianity in the Second and Third Centuries. They were brutally suppressed by what we call the Catholic Church today and most were killed.

Paul and John stripped most of the love, the unconditional acceptance of all men, the forgiveness, the common sense and simplicity of the teachings of Jesus. Paul transferred the power from the individual to the Church and to its priests and thus it has been ever since.

In the process, the message of love, joy, abundance, empowerment, of triumph over the world of facts, hatred, might and darkness has been almost totally lost. Jeus, that sweet and magnificent Soul, has been reduced to a little tin demi-god who would not recognize a word of that which is taught in His name today.

Science of Mind and New Thought has been teaching the original message of Jesus for many years. The Truth has never died, the Templars knew it, the Essenes knew it before them, the Old Testament Jews knew it. You can rediscover it now. Change your thinking, your beliefs and change your life.

God loves you so much, and so do I. Namaste'