Jesus The Christ

Who is or was Jesus? A question for the ages. Virtually all scholars accept that Jesus existed and attempts to deny his historicity have been consistently rejected by the scholarly consensus as a fringe theory. Even before Moses made a fiery serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, the prophets of old foretold the coming of a Messiah, the Chosen One, the Christ. And it shall come to pass, that everyone that was bitten, when he or she looked upon it lived (Num. 21:8-9). Hints of the Lord’s coming, and his mission was scattered here and there throughout the Old Testament. Similitudes of the coming of the Chose One, a Son of God.

Then at the appointed time. An angel visited a young girl said unto her, “Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favor with God… And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest.”

Then said Mary unto the angel, “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?”

And the angel answered and said unto her, “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore, also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called a Son of God.” Mary agreed to be a surrogate host.

A Son of God, the mediator between man and God, the redeemer of this world and perhaps of all creation. Jesus stands at God’s right hand. He is required to be separate from God, our Father in Heaven. As our children are separate from their parents. Jesus is our advocate before the Father. One cannot be both judge and advocate. A child may speak for their parents with permission. They may buy land and build a house in their parents’ name with permission. So it is with Jesus. “Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do…” Everything Jesus did in this world he had permission from his Father, for he could do nothing of himself.

There is but one God, the Father, of whom and by were all things created, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus, the Christ, by whom are all things (were made), and we by him. “When they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, and every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew.” Across the Bible there are hints of a preexistence or premortal life. “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee,” the Lord told Jeremiah.

On the night before Jesus’s birth, a prophet far away knelt praying for help to overcome evil in the land, while praying the Lord told him: “Lift up your head and be of good cheer; on the morrow come I into the world, to show unto the world that I will fulfil all that which I have caused to be spoken by the mouth of my holy prophets…” From here, we all know the story – Best guess, born in early April, star in the sky, heavenly messengers herald the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. He was circumcised, Simeon and Anna prophesy of His mission, is visited by kings. At twelve years of age, he goes about his “Father’s business” …Carpentry.

Not being one to let religious, social, or cultural bias limit my understanding of God and His Great Plan. The Prophet Muhammad saw Jesus and his mother as a sign to all men We breathed into her of Our spirit, and We made her and her son a sign for all peoples, and to appoint him as a Sign unto men and a Mercy from Us': It is a matter (so) decreed. This “Mercy” from God was decreed or ordained by God. This “Mercy” was Jesus’s sacrifice for all of creation, something that went over Islam’s head. Note, I make a distinction between Islam today and what the Prophet Muhammad actually taught. Sometimes I wonder if Muhammad did not have a better handle on who Jesus was than what most Christians call pastors and prophets today. The story of Jesus making a bird when he was a child comes mostly from the Qur’an.

The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew, chapters 5 through 7), one of the most “Woke” statements ever made. 5:43 …Ye have heard that it hath been said, thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you… It took almost no time at all for those who claimed to follow Jesus to go from, “How may I be of service?” to, “Get the fuck out of my face unless you got money, or power, or both.”

As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. Death was defeated on the cross. If Jesus was real, then Adam was real as well. In fact, Jesus’s sacrifice would be meaningless if there was no real sin to atone for. Believe it all or believe none of it; there is no middle ground. Only having faith partway is not a real thing, not for a God who deals in absolutes; yes vs. no, left vs. right, light vs. dark, truth vs. lies, good vs. evil, a battleground with no middle ground.

Jesus was a political refugee with a message of love and hope that threatened both, the comforts the religious and political leaders enjoyed, and the power they had over the people. That Jesus operated with complete autonomy for 3 years under Roman rule without the Romans not once noticing Jesus’s growing following is an impossibility. The Romans knew who Jesus was. You don’t gather 5,000 plus people without the Romans noticing someone who could assembled small armies to hear him speak almost overnight. One Roman Centurion’s faith in Jesus put all of Israel to shame. Jesus marveled at the Centurion, and turned him about, and said unto the people that followed him, I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel… The Romans knew exactly who Jesus was but did not care what Jesus did as long as Jesus kept telling the Jews to love their enemies and keep paying their taxes. That message did not land well with a lot of people back then, nor does it fit well in today’s society either.

Jesus brought a message of unconditional love. With his sacrifice, Jesus freed all of mankind. Adam fell that men might be, and men are, that they might have joy. The Messiah came in the fulness of time, that he may redeem the children of men from the Fall. And, because that they are redeemed from the Fall, they have become free forever, knowing good from evil; to act for themselves and not to be acted upon, save it be by the punishment of the law on the great and dreadful Last Day when we must all stand before God in the flesh be judged according to the commandments which God has given.

Saved by the grace of God. Jesus’s sacrifice has a number of components to it. Through his sacrifice Mercy entered the world. Through our faith in Jesus the Christ can we lay claim to God’s mercy. Salvation only comes through true faith in Jesus and his sacrifice for our sins, but that is the price of admission into Heaven. Here is where all those treasures in Heaven come in handy; for there are many mansions in Heaven and some of them are gold-plated cardboard boxes. For by our works shall we be judged. Better to be homeless in Heaven than an inhabitant in the Lake of Fire where Death and Hell were cast.

We don’t really know what Jesus looked like unless you except the Shroud of Turin as the actual burial shroud used to wrap the body of Jesus of Nazareth after his crucifixion. We assume he looked Middle Eastern, but if all Mary was a surrogate host, he could have been any color. As Jesus did not standout in a crowd, it is safe to assume he looked like everyone else in Judea at the time. While some question the reality of Jesus’s existence, the Bible (and the Qur’an) stands as proof. No other figure in history has impacted the world in the way Jesus did. Two thousand years later we are still forced to walk by faith; part and parcel of the God given right of Freedom of Choice. It should be noted that having a holy relic does not mean you are a true church of the Son of God.

Was Jesus real, isn’t the question. The question should be, is forcing another’s beliefs on others in an effort to control them for Jesus (God/Allah) just an excuse to mistreat our fellow human beings? The old gods of ancient literature rarely made it into recorded history except as exploited myths to enrich the priest class that existed to explain the many anonymities in the world around them. The gods’ influence shrank as our knowledge of the world increased. It was a slow revolution of the poor breaking away from the old gods in the direction of greater knowledge about how the world and the universe around us worked, where you only needed one god to explain the mysteries in the universe. Christianity solved the problem that allowed the priest class to continue to exist and leach off the people they controlled.

Thousands of years of wars and nothing has changed but our ability to kill our fellow man. Religion is about control, greed is about money and things, both seek power over our lives, and both are entangled with each other as a means to an end. None of which God or Jesus would approve of such a twisting of the Gospel.

Ninety-nine percent of religions in America, and probably the world, is a scam of some kind. Almost none of them pay taxes (LDS church pays some income tax) and several of them have their leaders making millions (tax free) off their followers. For the most part religion is a feel-good thing, damn few really believe it. What little good they do is not enough without serious help from governments around the world.

The Gospel that Jesus delivered to the world was universal. It does not belong to any one nation or any one race, creed, or color. The Gospel is the only real one size fits all product in the world today that actually works for everybody. In learning to love our fellow man without exception; we can change the world for the better. True love does not come with caveats. Like faith, it is all or nothing. You cannot shortchange God or the universe.