Historians have had no trouble establishing that, as recorded in the Christian New Testament, an historical character named Jesus existed. If anything, the problem has been narrowing down the field to a single character. The two censuses taken of the Roman province of Judea during the reign of Augustus Caesar both show that the name was nearly as popular among first century Jews as was the name Judas.

Both were names of popular heroes of the Jewish people, whose social structure in the first century of the common era was that of a theocracy. Under the figurehead of an hereditary sovereign, the social leadership was structured into a religious hierarchy of priestly orders. Among these were the Sanhedrin, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. There was no equivalent to the feudal position of a Lord. The occupying Romans did not have a feudal government either. Theirs was a military dictatorship under the Ceasars, who were all sons of one or another of the many Roman gods or goddesses.

No mention of any such title as "Lord," or its equivalent, is found in any scriptures before the translation of the New Testament into English. Nonetheless, it is common for modern day believers in the godhood of the historical Jesus to proclaim that "Jesus is Lord." So, what is a Lord?

Within the peerage of the British social structure, a Lord is a son of a duke or marquis or the eldest son of an earl. It is also an honorary title given to certain political officials. In all cases, a Lord is a subject of the Crown; this is quite a demotion from being a god, or even a son of a god!

The question that Christians who wish to express the supreme sovereignty of Jesus must ask themselves is this; is Jesus a Lord, subject to the Crown of England, or is he a god, like everyone else?

Scriptures likewise admonish devotees to "praise the Lord," in much the same way that Dr. Spock's Baby Book admonishes parents to praise their children. Fortunately, most first time parents exhibit more common sense than do many self-styled scripture scholars. While the mommies and daddies who read Spock tell their children that they are good and have done well, many Christians merely mouth the phrase "praise the lord" as if repeating the admonition is somehow obeying it. It is not.

Saying "praise the lord" a dozen times a day isn't praising the Lord, or anything else, any more than a parent an saying "praise the child" is the actual praising of their child!

"Hallelujah" is, in itself, not a word but a description of the wailing sound made by women in anger, fear or mourning. Can you say, "Onomatopoeia?"

This sound is still made today by the women of Arabia and other middle eastern countries. It is not acceptable for men to make the sound. By itself, or used as a word in English, it has no true meaning. Many people use it in the belief that it has a special hidden or secret meaning. It does. It means to make the noise described above. When the scriptures extol their readers to "sing hallelujah" or to "say hallelujah" they do not mean to repeat the description of the sound or to say the word "hallelujah," but to make the wailing sound it describes, if appropriate to their gender.

Anyone who isn't certain how to make an hallelujah need watch only one episode of Xena, Warrior Princess to hear it done properly; it is the cry Xena makes when she attacks in battle.

Being tossed into a lake of fire for not following Christ's example might seem quite extreme, but what was He saying and to whom was He speaking? In the cultural anthopology of the Holy Land in the first century (c.e.), the "lake of fire" was the equivalent of the city dump; a place where trash fires burned night and day. Anyone & everyone who heard the poor old guy use the phrase had a clear and stinky image of exactly what he meant: that those whom followed his example would 'have eternal life' through the fond memories of friends and fam, while those whom did not would be thrown out with the trash!

 

Throughout history, there have only been two attempts at instituting a monotheistic form of organized religion. The first failed miserably when the Egyptian Pharaoh Amen Hotep outlawed all gods other than Ra, whom he was an incarnation of, because the priest caste had acquired more power than the Pharaoh himself. Riots among the populace reversed the edict in short order!

The Pharaoh's name is repeated daily in homage to his invention of the concept of monotheism; Amen!

The second, more successful attempt at forming a monotheistic religion came less than nine hundred years later, when the nomadic tribal leader we know today as "Father Abraham" made the worship of any gods other than the invisible I AM a tribal taboo among nomadic Semites.

In time, this religion became Judaism. Today it has branched into such varied cults and sects as Christianity, Islam and Satanism, all monotheistic faiths whose adherents lay claim to the same invisible I AM as the Hebrews for whom the solitary, invisible, male humanoid deity was invented.

The very concept of there only being one god in a world of such wondrous diversity as ours is an aberration, a conceptual anomaly found in only these two instances throughout the annals of human history.

In the third century of the common era, the Roman Emporer Constantine recognized the effectiveness of a monotheistic faith in controlling the actions and thought patterns of large masses and enforced the spread of Christianity at the point of a sword.

The political use of monotheism to replace the nearly universal belief, which Jesus himself taught, that each of us may achieve enlightenment and godhood continues today, with nearly a third of our planet's human population remaining firmly under the oppressive thumb of monotheistic theocracies such as Pakistan, Iran, Kuwait, Israel, Iraq and more than a dozen other totalitarian regimes.

Say, "Amen!"

Throughout the Gospels, poor old Jesus constantly admonishes His followers and believers to follow His example, to do as He has done and to do "even greater things." Nowhere and at no time does He demand to be worshipped or held in higher esteem than anyone else. No enlightened Master has ever made such a ridiculous demand and Jesus was, by all accounts, an enlightened Master at the very least.

The ruse of worshipping poor old Jesus rather than emulating Him comes to us through the diabolical courtesy of a man who swore an oath to erradicate Jesus' teachings, one Saul of Tarsus. Saul wrote more than sixty percent of the New Testament, while the words of the Messiah Himself comprise less than ten percent of the modern Christian New Testsament.

A powerful conversion experience is described in the Acts of the Apostles in which Saul of Tarsus is "blinded by the light" and allegedly decides to perpetrate the teachings of Christ rather than follow through on his earlier oath to do away with them. Nonetheless, every subsequent epistle written by Saul, now known as "Paul," is starkly contradictory to the Pantheistic teachings of Jesus Himself.

Poor old Jesus has had His teachings perverted and corrupted almost beyond recognition by a sworn enemy and, perhaps even worse, is worshipped today as being the "only son of God" rather than the "firstborn of many brethren," as He described Himself.

We can each be just as Jesus was. We can all do the things He did. He said so.

We do not need to worship Him. We are not supposed to look up to Him as anything more than a model for our own lives. He said this, too.

The "second coming" of the Messiah is not a return to this world of the man named Jesus, but the arrival of each of us at the state of conciousness that Jesus Himself had arrived at; the knowledge that we are, each and every one of us, a god.

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Heap Burning Coals Upon Their Heads.

 

 

The story goes that poor old Jesus once said, "You have heard 'an eye for an eye' but I tell you to love your enemies; and that by doing so, you will heap burning coals upon their heads."

Well, what the $#@&?

I thought the poor old guy was supposed to have promoted peace and love and all that other hippie sh!t; yet I have seen fully grown adults giggle gleefully at the idea of literally dumping a Weber™-full of glowing briquettes on the cranium of some hapless infidel - uh, I mean, "victim."

Peoples of the first century had no such misconceptions regarding the now cryptic - and one might go so far as to say 'deliberately obfuscated' - meaning of the Rabbi's riddle.

Nomads + desert = campfire is elemental to survival; burning coals were transported by herdsmen from one campsite to the next in braziers ballanced atop turbans and the responsibility was tremendous - an entire tribe's survival could depend on a heat source in the thin air on cloudless and frigid high desert nights.

So much for the longstanding fundamentalist fantasy of "Loving one's enemies to death."

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FIN

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Copyright © 1999, 2009 by

Benjamin Robert "Bob God" Taylor

P.O.B.2986
Chino Valley,
AZ.86323
 

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