Truth
Jesus or Christians, Who is Right? 1
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Monday, October 04, 1999
Monday, 12 September 2005
Theology
1. Jesus tried to convince his hearers that he was particularly close to God:
No man knoweth the Son but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.Mt 11:27
Jesus promised everlasting life to those who believe he was the Son:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.Jn 3:16
This alone is a contradiction because God could not have loved all the world if some unbelievers were not to be saved. According to John, an unreliable witness, Jesus even claimed to be God:
I and my Father are one.Jn 10:30
By this claim, he accepts liability for the unethical acts of Yehouah and, even if Jesus is not claiming to be God, he always spoke of his father as perfect. Yet, according to Luke 4:16, Jesus could read and was familiar with the scriptures, and must have known of the tyranny of God described in the scriptures. It cannot be a sign of perfection in man or divinity to call a cruel despot perfect.
2. Jesus claimed to be the messiah expected by the Jews:
And the high priest answered and said unto him, I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said.Mt 26:63-64
Again the high priest asked him, and said unto him, Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? And Jesus said, I am.Mk 15:61-62
Then said they all, Art thou then the Son of God? And he said unto them, Ye say that I am.Lk 22:70
The woman saith unto him, I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come he will tell us all things. Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am he.Jn 4:25-26
The Jews considered the messiah only to be a man, not a god but we are addressing Christian beliefs and Christians consider Jesus’s claim to be the Christ or the messiah to be a claim to divinity. If he claimed divinity falsely or by self-deception, he made a serious mistake. The Jews did not accept his claim, and many Christians today deny that he was the Jewish messiah. Either he was truly the predicted messiah or he made an inexcusable error, because that was his claim.
3. Jesus insisted that salvation depended upon belief that he was the Christ and that unbelievers suffered eternally:
If ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.Jn 8:24
Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels… And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.Mt 25:31-46
Whosoever shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.Mk 3:29
Except ye repent ye shall perish.Lk 13:3
If thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched.Mk 9:43
How can ye escape the damnation of hell?Mt 23:33
He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned.Mk 16:16
Besides claiming to be the personal key to salvation for those who believe it, Jesus scared people into belief by threats of eternal torment. Jesus took up the Persian theological idea of a fiery hell for sinners:
Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.Mt 25:41
Jesus mentions the tortures of hell again in Luke 16:23, lest there should be any mistake. The author of Revelation relishes the sufferings of the tormented. Yet though Jesus was a god and the son of God he never once did what would have convinced everyone that hell was real. He never gave any of the multitudes who followed him a single vision of the fiery place. It could easily have come down through history from multiple impeccable sources that hell was seen by thousands. It didn’t because it wasn’t.
Torture in hell fire sounds so awful it is hardly surprising that the simple are persuaded to become Christians. But if they think that they will thereby automatically avoid the hot tongs and charred flesh, they had better look again—it can’t be that easy. The way to life the kindly creator offers is “narrow”, and to be found by “few”, that “many” of his own creations, which he pronounced to be “good”, “are called but few chosen” (Mt 22:13; Lk 13:23). It must be quite hard if we can expect hell fire simply for telling someone they are a fool.
But what better way is there to get superstitious people eating out of your hand than to threaten them with such a place if they do not do as you wish? In midsummer 1999, the Jesuits declare that there are no fiery furnaces or demons in hell. Eternal fire is a metaphor for the agony of eternal separation from God. Anglican now accept what there progressives have long said—”a good God could not allow anyone to suffer torment”.
It is too polite to say that Jesus made a mistake when he taught a physical hell and condemned people to spend eternity in torment for the doubtful sin of disbelief. Either there was no mistake and Jesus was a demagogue or he has been misrepresented. The best we can believe about Jesus is that he was not responsible for many of the statements attributed to him in the gospels. They were written by priests of the early church intent on controlling the gullible.
4. Jesus taught the doctrine of the “Atonement” but admitted himself that his atoning blood was largely wasted:
For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.Mt 26:28
Many are called but few are chosen.Mt 22:14
Earlier in the same gospel, this is confirmed when he said:
Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.Mt 7:14
It was echoed in Luke:
Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able.Lk 13:24
5. Jesus not only claimed the power to remit sins but also gave his disciples the power:
Whosoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosoever sins ye retain, they are retained.Jn 20:23
How can sins be remitted? If Vlad the Impaler impaled a thousand people and kept ten thousand in dank, damp dungeons until they died, then asked for his sins to be remitted, would they be? If they were, how would it help those who suffered and the course of justice? Not everyone could have their sins remitted, though. The disciples were free to retain some peoples sins. Perhaps Vlad would have his sins retained. Do Christians realize that their sins might not be remitted when they confess them and ask forgiveness? Something somewhere is not right.
6. Jesus made a distinction between himself and the Comforter or Paraclete:
It is expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart I will send him unto you… And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever.Jn 14:16
Christians must believe the Comforter is the spiritual Jesus himself because it could only come when the physical Jesus had departed. It cannot be the Holy Ghost as some say because the Holy Ghost was separate from Jesus and entered and departed while Jesus was alive. But if the Comforter is Jesus, why does he call it “another Comforter”? And if it is not the Holy Ghost, why have twenty centuries gone by with no sign of this comforter arriving to abide with people forever. Many horrible atrocities have occurred in those twenty centuries, often committed by Christians, so why were people denied a Comforter for so long. Jesus must have got it wrong.
7. Jesus believed in angels and devils, often referring to these imaginary supernatural beings as if they existed:
Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?Mt 26:53
So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth.Mt 13:49
Jesus believed in demoniacal possession, casting out devils on several occasions, and devils in were among the first to recognize Christ’s divinity:
What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God?Mt 8:29
Let us alone, thou Jesus of Nazareth; art thou come to destroy us? I know thee, who thou art, the Holy One of God.Lk 4:34
And unclean spirits when they saw him, fell down before him, and cried, saying, Thou art the Son of God.Mk 3:11
8. Jesus frequently referred to heaven as a place above the earth:
And then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory.Mk 13:26
And ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.Mk 14:62
Verily, verily, I say unto you, hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of man.Jn 1:51
No one has ever seen any sign of heaven in the clouds or in the sky, though today we have aeroplanes, telescopes and rocket vehicles. Christians today will therefore say this is poetry and that heaven is elsewhere, a transcendental place, in another dimension or simultaneously everywhere, or whatever you are happy to believe. Let us accept they are right, but then God or the son of God was wrong.
9. When Jesus was transfigured, and talked with the ghosts or otherwise resurrected figures of Moses and Elias he commanded his disciples:
Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of man be risen again from the dead.Mt 17:9
Jesus spoke with two dead and probably mythical people, and then, according to the creeds, himself rose from the dead, descended into hell and ascended bodily into heaven. Either conditions on earth were different in the first century from those of the end of the second millennium, or Jesus was mistaken in his conception of God, heaven, hell, angels, devils and himself.
Laws of Nature
10. Jesus often offered as true, stories in which the laws of Nature are gratuitously ignored:
For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.Mt 12:40
Evidently Jesus, who is at least the son of God, according to the Christians, took the scriptural story of Jonah and the whale to be true history. Science denies that anyone could be three days inside a fish and live to tell the tale. But his prophecy was wrong. He was not three nights and three days in the tomb but only two nights and one day, from Friday night to Sunday morning. Jesus’s prophecy is not wrong by modern scientific standards but simply by comparing two parts of the same Holy Book. Do his modern day followers who are better educated than most people were when Jesus lived ever think about these mistakes and contradictions?
11. Jesus also accepted as historically true, the tale of Noah’s ark:
They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.Lk 17:27
But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark.Mt 24:37-38
In ancient times there were severe floods in many places, as archaeologists have shown, but there was never any world wide flood and there is simply not enough water around to flood the earth to the top of mount Ararat. Even if there were, many more mountain tops would not have been submersed and the scriptural story must have been wrong. Jesus was not an all-knowing God or an aspect of one, unless this God is a liar. The truth is that Ararat was the highest mountain that the Old Testament authors knew.
12. Jesus was quite wrong in thinking that the end of the world was imminent. He refers to its urgency in the following quotations:
Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.Mt 4:17
Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come.Mt 10:23
There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.Mt 16:28
And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come … Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.Mk 9:1
The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand.Mk 1:15
So ye in like manner, when ye shall see these things come to pass, know that it is nigh, even at the doors. Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done.Mt 24:74-34; Mk 13:29-30; Lk 21:32
The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.Jn 5:28-29
Jesus was certain that the day of judgement was coming soon when he lived in the first century. Two millennia later we are still waiting. This error has got to be the most stupendous of all, yet in the whole of those two thousand years people have continued to believe that Jesus was a god. His own firmest belief in an imminent end of the world was indisputably wrong. Jesus was so concerned about the future life because he thought that life as he knew it was about to end. It did not! He was simply wrong. Why do people think he was perfect? Why do they still think he is coming “soon”?
13. Jesus willy nilly broke the laws of Nature. He could calm storms at a command, could walk on water, could raise people from death, could feed crowds with hardly any food. These are the sort of things that believers expect their god to do, but they are things that have never been seen by any reliable witness today. Yet the gospels tell us in Matthew that Jesus performed miracles gratuitously to impress the disciples of John the Baptist:
Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see: the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.Mt 11:4-5
Jesus in Mark and John assured his disciples that they too would be able to perform miracles:
And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover.Mk 16:17-18
He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do.Jn 14:12
The disciples at Pentecost received the Holy Spirit and began to do even more remarkable miracles than did Jesus. Yet the passage of the Holy Spirit from generation to generation must dilute it down because there is no sign nowadays that any of the disciples of Jesus who have received the Holy Spirit can do any such amazing tricks. Even Roman Catholic popes are not noted for casting out devils. The earliest accusation against Jesus by critics of Christianity in its earliest days, was that he was a sorcerer. The accusation was probably made on the basis of these tales told about him rather than any proof that he ever performed a miracle. Jesus was an Essene and they were indebted to the Persian religion. They might have been called Magians after the Magi and from which also came the word magician.
14. The remarks of Jesus in John on the subject of death were not accurate insofar as science has been able to prove.
If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.Jn 8:51
Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.Jn 11:26
Jesus must have meant natural death, if his own resurrection was supposed to have proved it, but because there is not a person on earth that believes that the dead can come back to life, Jesus was utterly mistaken even for Christians. Christians now pretend that the life he meant was a transcendental one—that believers in him would live forever in heaven. He still seems to be wrong though, or rather strangely imprecise for a god, because he promised eternal life to unbelievers too, but it was an everlasting life of torture in hell.
15. Jesus, when Lazarus was reported ill, said:
This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.Jn 11:4
So he let Lazarus, one of the believers whom he loved, die so that he could gratuitously raise him from the dead to glorify God, adding:
Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead. And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe.Jn 11:15
The confusion between earthly death and loss of eternal life was shown in the remark of Jesus to Martha:
I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.
Once again Christians take it that Jesus means everlasting life in the balmy place but the demonstration raised Lazarus from the dead back into life in this world—he resurrected him, as he said. He did not give him eternal life. When Martha reminded Jesus that Lazarus had been dead four days, Jesus replied:
Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?
The point is that the Persians believed that the soul did not depart the physical body of the dead until three days had lapsed, during which they were tormented in hell for their earthly sins. This is why resurrected gods always lie in the tomb for three days, then they are resurrected just before their spirit departs for judgement. The raising of Lazarus was special because he had been dead for four days and his spirit had notionally departed. That is why Martha had to believe strongly, and why, to the first believers, it was an astonishing miracle when miracles apparently were commonplace.
Then many of the Jews which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on him.
If Lazarus was raised from the dead into eternal life he must still be around and should be the ultimate proof that Jesus was the son of god and the Saviour. Where is he? Perhaps he has gone into retirement because he now understands what an awful prospect eternal life is. He will still be alive when the universe dies of heat death. At that time, of course, the fires of hell will be doused and the sinner and the saved will end up the same—cold.
16. Jesus suggests a promise of protection that God has never fulfilled.
Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.Mt 10:29-31
It does not need to be said that Christians enjoy no more Godly protection than Moslems, Buddhists or atheists. Though it sounds greatly comforting, it is evidently not so and it is the greatest puzzle to understand why intelligent Christians nevertheless accept it.
17. While it is surely true that prayer has beneficial psychological effects on people, it can offer no material benefits like a wish on a magic lamp. Jesus did not only promise spiritual benefits from prayer, but also that the physical world would respond to pious appeals to God:
Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven.Mt 18:19
If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done. And all things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.Mt 21:21-22
What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.Mk 11:24
If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove: and nothing shall be impossible unto you.Mt 17:20
Again we are faced with silly promises which simply are not true. The faith that moved mountains exists nowhere except in poetry. Christians have immense faith. They believe Jesus is a god even though the gospels are full of evidence that Jesus was unable to come up with the goods. Perhaps even the best Christians do not have enough faith to move a mountain—there is no story that Jesus did. But it must be fairly easy to make a die fall the right way up, or a little roulette ball fall into the right slot, or bring up the winning lottery numbers. No Christian has ever shown that they have the faith to accomplish these things. If they did, other Christians would accuse them of selling their soul to the devil.
