THE PREHISTORIC CHRIST

Apostles Deny Jesus Lived During their Lifetime

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CRUCIFIED BY ANGELS IN SPIRIT WORLD?

THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER

THE_SECOND_EPISTLE_OF_PETER_

AT HIS APPOINTED MOMENT CHRIST DIED

JESUS LIVED IN ANCIENT TIMES ACCORDING TO PAUL

BOOK OF REVELATION AND THE PREHISTORIC CHRIST

The earliest writings about Jesus and we have those writings in the New Testament which is considered to be God’s Word by the Church give several clues that Jesus was thought to have lived in prehistoric times. This means the gospels which came after these writings are lying for they put Jesus in the first century CE. This means that the evidence for Jesus having existed is weak or non-existent.

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PAUL IN 2ND CORINTHIANS

Paul, the earliest Christian writer, had serious problems with the Christians in Corinth. In his first Letter to the Corinthians he castigated them for running after new apostles who were claiming visions of Jesus and new revelations that contradicted his and Christians who couldn’t believe that Jesus really rose from the dead and that the dead rise. In his second letter to them at the beginning of the third chapter he wrote that unlike other messengers who need IDs and letters of recommendation, he and the preachers of Jesus didn’t. What recommended them was the conversion of the believers. So they were claiming to have a new message from God without any written credentials. He says the letters aren’t needed. Christians might say he didn’t say they actually had no such letters. But he definitely did say that even if he had them they didn’t matter. What mattered was the success of the message in converting people. But given the trouble in Corinth among believers the fact that he had to forget about the disasters and paint a rosy picture as evidence for God backing his message it shows there were none. He had to make do with pretend evidence. That Jesus didn’t set up his apostles with documentation and that the apostles weren’t using documentation indicates that they had to do without it for their message had nothing to do with a flesh and blood man they worked with but an apparition of some form. Perhaps they worked out from the Old Testament that there was a saviour who died and rose again and then took what their imagination and instincts told them as revelations from God or visions. The imagination can be a vehicle for seeing visions, according to many mystics. Paul then said that they were qualified to preach by God to teach a new covenant which is not one of written letters but the Spirit for written letters bring death but the Spirit of God brings life. The new covenant is not based on words but on the Holy Spirit. Christians say that even the words of the Bible though God’s word bring death if you don’t let the Holy Spirit speak to you through them and accept him into your heart but that doesn’t mean that words don’t come into it. But the way Paul speaks makes it clear that it does mean that no words come into it. After all he said that the Corinthians were his credential and not any written document because of the Holy Spirit in them.

Paul wrote that when he does something he does it and it is not a yes with him and then a no. This led him to express a thought about Jesus. Paul wrote that the Son of God the Christ Jesus that we proclaimed I mean myself and Silvanus and Timothy (2 Corinthians 1) was not yes and no but was always yes. He then wrote that no matter how many promises God made the yes to them all is in Christ which is why we praise God through Christ. Why does he say who he means here? Certainly it was to indicate that the Christs of other preachers might be a caricature and only those three had the right Christ and the right view of him. It is a hint that there were lots of self-styled apostles in those days. No doubt their Christs were all yes to the promises of God as well so why does Paul indicate that they couldn’t have been? The promises refer to the Christ allegedly promised in the Old Testament by prophets to whom God revealed the future. Paul is plainly stating that there were many different versions of Christ being preached but only his version fitted the prophecies. The Christ then is not learned about by delving into history but through prophecy. This can be only true if the story that Jesus lived in Paul’s time is false and he lived aeons before. The other versions indicate that everybody was making up his own Christ in the absence of any history. That is what happens when the subject is unreal or lived long ago.

The Gospel Jesus was not always yes. He refused to help a pagan woman and called her a dog. Then he changed his mind when she told him that dogs deserve scraps off the table.

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CRUCIFIED BY ANGELS IN SPIRIT WORLD?

Paul strongly indicates that Jesus was not known as a man by anybody living in his day.

Paul declared that none of the rulers of the world or the age knew that God’s ways are strange to us and that he brings us to Heaven for if they had they would not have crucified Jesus (1 Corinthians 2:8).

There are two interpretations for what Paul means by rulers. Choose the one you want.

One: Rulers who crucified Jesus are human kings and princes.

The standard Christian view is that these rulers are Pontius Pilate and Caiaphas the high priest of the Jews.

If this view is correct then the gospels are unreliable because they say Pilate was forced to execute Jesus and Caiaphus did not have Jesus crucified and was never said to have wanted that to happen to Jesus. He was the high priest of the Jews and so could not afford to scandalise his religion by advocating a form of execution that was against his religion. In Pilate’s case, you can’t say he would not have killed Jesus had he known who he was for Pilate felt he had no choice.

If Paul meant the political leaders, they did not know Jesus who taught such things. Yet the gospels say that Jesus was well known so that would mean he is denying the gospels.

Suppose Paul wrote that the rulers are the human rulers of the world. That suggests all the rulers of the world which again contradicts the gospels. He did not need to say rulers of the world if he meant a few rulers so he meant rulers of the world.

Some say the context shows human rulers are meant for verse 6 says they will pass away and they are called men. But Paul means passing away by losing their power. You could talk that way if the rulers were still alive but not rulers anymore. If it’s human rulers then Paul is saying that the whole world executed Jesus, which contradicts the gospels. This Jesus seems to have died in the distant past when Paul thinks all the rulers were hell-bent on killing him and succeeded. If there is no hint of the rulers being supernatural beings then they are natural rulers. They are earthmen.

Colossians 2:15 says that Jesus openly aired the dirty linen of the rulers by dying on the cross and triumphing over them on the cross. It means he atoned for sins on the cross. The resurrection is not mentioned. It does not say who nailed him. It just says he triumphed over the rulers.

If this is earthly rulers then this differs from the gospels which say that Jesus did not show up and humiliate and disarm the rulers of the earth by dying. The gospels say it was not Pilate or Rome’s fault that Jesus was killed and says that his death had more to do with the Jewish people than the rulers. If it refers to human rulers then Jesus did not rise from the dead in the first century but some time in the distant past or in another world when he made a fool of the kings and destroyed their kingly powers and overthrew them. He became king by dying on the cross and putting people right with God by this sacrificial death.

What supports the human ruler interpretation is the fact that nothing in the context indicates supernatural rulers. Some say Paul wrote in the context that we must not be deceived by philosophies about elemental spirits. But that was already refuted by his saying that Jesus was the image of the invisible God and the only supernatural being we need so that being dealt with has no link to the rulers mentioned later. Later he writes that the cross cancelled all the penalties we would have to pay for our sins and humiliated the rulers and therefore nobody must judge us in questions of food and drink or new moons or get us to worship angels. This would mean human regulations because earthly rulers try to tell you what to eat and drink and how and what to worship. Some would argue that the rulers were spiritual for getting rid of them frees us from rules about food and angels and feasts. But what Paul could have meant was that it is not getting rid of the rulers that does this but the work of the cross. The cross frees us for it gives us strength to stand up to these people. He makes it clear he means human beings for he says we are not to tell them tell us what to do or judge us for the cross has saved us from their rules: “Let no one sit in judgement on you” (Colossians 2:16).

So Colossians is telling us that Jesus lived in the far distant past.

Haley in his Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible (page 358) observes that the Bible says that the rulers did not know Jesus (John 16:3; Acts 3:17; 1 Corinthians 2:8). Matthew said different (21:38).

He resolves the conflict by saying that the rulers who did not know were meant in the first case and the ones who did know in the second. This accuses the God who supposedly wrote the Bible of slander for he did not exclude anybody when he condemned the rulers.

And also, Haley says that the knowledge Jesus meant was the experience of knowing that Jesus saved you. But the verses could mean ordinary knowledge therefore they do mean it. Remember, don’t go for a complex explanation when a simpler one will do.

Two: Rulers are angels

Paul sometimes calls the evil angels that rule the world rulers and dominions and thrones. In Christian and Jewish literature the idea that there were such rulers was shown to be extremely widespread among the people (Revelation 19:17; 7:1; 14:18; Jubilees 2:2; 1 Enoch 60:17). Probability alone then shows that Paul meant supernatural rulers for he would have been clear if he meant earthly rulers. He called them archons which is the word for supernatural angelic rules and demons. Ephesians 1:21 says that God put Christ over all the rulers and them under his feet. Jesus did not do this with the earthly rulers for they could not be under his feet until they submit to him. The Church might say that he did for he is the real boss. But this would be true of him before the resurrection as after for he was still the Son of God.

The rulers could be angels but still be called men. The angel that fought with Jacob was called a man. Jesus claimed to be a supernatural messenger of God though he claimed to be a man too.

1 Peter 3:22 says that when Jesus went into Heaven all the angels and rulers were made to obey him. The rulers are rebel supernatural beings for he had to go to Heaven to make them do what he wanted. He had to force them.

The view that the rulers who executed Jesus are evil or hostile angelic powers that Christ battered into submission by his crucifixion is to be considered proven (GA Wells Replies to Criticism of His Books on Jesus). See also Kittel’s Standard Theological Dictionary of the New Testament.

The angelic rulers put Jesus to death by nailing him to a cross. He did not die in public. If he was killed on earth then it was a crucifixion that no human eye seen because it was supernatural beings that performed the crucifixion. He could have been crucified in the spirit world.

The Christians might say that the rulers used human beings to kill Jesus so the gospels could still be right. But why then did they go to so much trouble to get rid of Jesus? They were not likely to for Paul says they did not know who he was (1 Corinthians 2:8, 9) so if they wanted rid of him they would have done their dirty work themselves. And would Paul talk as if angels crucified Jesus if men did it? If John kills Mary in a car crash you don’t say the devil killed her. There is no reason at all to believe the angels killed Jesus through men. When the epistles which were for teaching the basics didn’t say men were used men were not used. Period.

The Ascension of Isaiah says “The Lord, who will be called Christ, will descend into the world,…the God of that world will stretch out his hand against the Son, and they will lay hands on him and crucify him on a tree, without knowing who he is” (9:4). 11:19 says this God was Satan who turned the Children of Israel against Christ. Jesus then was probably crucified not by men but by angels in Heaven or some other non-earthly realm. The rulers not knowing Jesus implies that Jesus did no miracles and gave no evidence of being sinless and therefore the supreme prophet and contradicts the gospels which say Jesus was known to the evil angels. The Ascension of Isaiah claims that the death of Jesus took place in secret (www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_sd/jconf_hall.html, Jesus Conference). The Ascension dates from the early second century.

(See: www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_sd/jconf_stuckenbruck.html).

Our conclusion is, if the rulers of the world that crucified Jesus were men or if they were angels then Jesus was not crucified the way the gospels say. If it were the rulers of the world then Jesus died thousands of years before Paul. If it were angels then no human being may have known about the crucifixion. This does not make it likely then that Jesus really existed.

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THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER

1 Peter 1 tells the Jews who had been thrown out of Palestine to whom it was addressed, that they had never seen Jesus. Some say the scattered were not real Jews but Christians but there is no need for that interpretation and Peter was an apostle to the Jews. He mentions persecution a lot so they had been persecuted and expelled and scattered for their faith. He said they were saved from idolatry but not all would have been meant and there had been many religiously corrupt Jews in the time of Jesus who did practice forbidden abominations. So the Jews who should have brushed shoulders with Jesus never met him. They knew there was no Jesus in Palestine in their day.

Peter tells us to suffer with patience like Jesus did. Obviously, if you can save yourself you can’t talk of being patient during suffering so the letter denies that Jesus had miracle powers. That eliminates the gospels as authentic history for they say Jesus did have such powers. It denies that Jesus Christ was God.

The epistle says that Roman governors must be obeyed for God uses them to punish and reward people (1 Peter 2:13,14).

It is thought that this denies that one of them, Pilate, killed Jesus. It seems to some that Peter would be taking it for granted that we know to obey them only when they are right. But then why does he tell us to uphold the Roman governors decisions about meting out vengeance on people when most of their punishments were unduly harsh and they had little concern for justice? They represented and maintained a system that cared only about money and convenience and expediency not people. Any justice they administered fairly was not administered out of a sense of duty or fairness but to dodge the penalty of the law to which they were bound themselves on pain of death or prison. I agree with G A Wells that this command proves that the early Church did not believe that Pilate unjustly sent Jesus to the cross.

Christians say that Pilate was forced by the Jews or Roman law or both. They say he was therefore innocent. But this is dubious for Pilate had the power to postpone a decision and could have decreed a discreet execution of a man who was not Jesus in Jesus’ place to save Jesus.

The John gospel has Pilate killing Jesus because he is afraid of the Jews and then informing Jesus that he could release him if he would only clear himself before him so somebody wasn’t able to make up his mind about Pilate. The incoherence suggests that the Pilate episode may never have happened for it should not have been hard to report accurately about it if it had.

1 Peter 3 says that Jesus was put to death in his human body but he was raised in the spirit and he went to preach to the spirits in prison who had sinned when Noah was building the ark and this visit was a success because we are told a few lines later that Jesus has everything subjected to himself. Jesus was not going to go on a wild goose chase anyway. We are not frankly told whether what Jesus preached to them was salvation or judgement. But he made them his subjects which does not necessarily mean that they were willing subjects. No hint is given that he preached salvation to them therefore he did not for Peter would say. This being the case when the passage says they sinned it is most probable that Jesus did not go to convert them but had another reason for the visit. Peter would have told us if Jesus did make them change their ways.

Peter said that Jesus was made alive in the spirit so his resurrection was the resurrection of a ghost not a body. If Jesus had a soul he could not be made alive for he would already be alive so it was not the soul that was meant. There was no need for Jesus to go to them in spirit when he would get a spirit like body as St Paul said he got. He could appear to them without going to them by giving them remote vision. That he had to go personally suggests a struggle with them. And why just the people who were alive when the ark was being constructed? This suggests that he lived in their time and knew them. When Jesus went to judge the dead of the flood and it was a struggle for him it indicates that he lived about that time for had he lived after there would be other people many of whom were worse to face to judge as well.

Some see in this a hint that the spirits may have sinned but been saved by faith alone which the early Christians said was the only way of salvation so Jesus went to tell them after death that he was the one who had saved them and to explain to them that they had to follow him. There was something that saved them or at least made them want Christ which was why they were the only ones graced with a visit. They could only have been saved if Jesus had told them to trust in a blood sacrifice of the Son of God without necessarily telling them that he was the Son of God. Some Christians agree that as long as you believe in this sacrifice that is enough to save you for you know of Jesus even if you don’t know of him by name. You know the essentials and what he does. If the hint is there then why just those spirits? It would still indicate that though Jesus could have gone to them after their and his own death he must have preached the gospel to them in their time on earth for why them only? The answer is that he must have lived among them.

So Jesus lived at the time of Noah according to this chapter. He died before the flood. He might not have been known as Jesus when alive but he is called Jesus now for he saves people at the right hand of the Lord God. Perhaps the Christians decided to call him Jesus when this mystery man started appearing in the latter-days.

Professor Ellegard is right to say that a man pretending to be Peter calling himself a witness to the suffering of Christ in 1 Peter (5:1) does not mean he claimed to have seen the suffering for never did tradition or the gospels say that Peter saw Jesus crucified (page 145, Jesus, One Hundred Years Before Christ). Peter used the word martus which means one who would testify to that suffering. All Christians claim they can do that for they sense the Holy Spirit telling them that Jesus suffered for them. He observes that witness means the kind of witness that may not necessarily be an eyewitness. 1 Peter 1:11 says the prophets who lived before the suffering of Christ witnessed it by the power of the Holy Spirit before they happened. He tells his hearers to be able to witness that Jesus saved them by his blood (1 Peter 1:18,19). This letter never speaks of Jesus as a historical person.

Who was the man that Peter may have believed to been his Jesus? Enoch. Enoch was praised in Genesis for habitually walking with God and it is said that he disappeared for God took him which could refer to an ascension or a resurrection. We must remember that in theology the Church says that even those faithful who are alive at the second coming of Christ will be resurrected but WITHOUT DEATH! They are raised from mortal bodies to immortal bodies without dying.

Enoch must have been a sinless figure when his holiness had to get a mention. Enoch was the father of Methuselah who was the father of Lamech who was the father of Noah. Given that men could live to over nine hundred years in those days, Enoch could have preached to the generation that perished in the flood.

It is not the similarities to the Jesus story alone that are evidence for the identification of Jesus and Enoch. Peter never mentioned Enoch by name in our version of his letter. It may be that the words in the original, en ho kai phulake, which have led some to believe that Enoch was mentioned in the text but was left out by mistake because of the three first words which sounded like his name are really just a hint that Jesus was Enoch. This would mean that Peter declared that Enoch the Messiah went to preach to the spirits in Prison in Peter’s words.

Some crafty Bibles translate the verses to say that Jesus was made alive by the Spirit by whom he went to teach them. See for instance, the New International Version. Even the fundamentalists do not like this Bible for its biased Modernist translating.

The First Epistle of Peter states that Jesus lived long ago and that Peter never met him until he started appearing centuries after his death.

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THE SECOND EPISTLE OF PETER

Second Peter states that the apostles did not give out cleverly devised myths when they revealed to the world the power and the coming of the Lord Jesus but were eyewitnesses to a visionary event, the transfiguration, that revealed the majesty of Jesus (1:16). In other words, a vision verified the power and coming of Jesus. It doesn't hint that it means the second coming of Christ. It just says coming. The vision he recounts said nothing or indicated nothing about a second coming. Second Peter is plainly saying that Jesus' power and coming had to be revealed to the apostles in a vision. He was not heard of before. This supports the idea that there was no Jesus known of until some people claimed to be having visions of this being who claimed to have been crucified and died and rose again. This Jesus could have been crucified centuries before.

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AT HIS APPOINTED MOMENT CHRIST DIED

Paul wrote in Romans 5 that our confidence that we are going to be saved forever is not deceptive for the Holy Spirit poured love for God into our hearts. He said then that we were still helpless when at his appointed time, Christ died for sinners. Then he declared that what proves God’s love for us is that Christ died when we were still sinners. He said then that we can count on being saved by Jesus not just because we have been reconciled but because we are filled with joyful trust in God.

Paul knew that many groups claimed that their gods made them more loving by coming to dwell in their hearts and that to infer as he did that we know the cross of Jesus saved us because we are more loving and trusting of God is to use a very bad proof. This is a clear admission of empty-handedness when it came to providing evidence for the cross. Paul declared frequently that people believing in their own goodness and virtue was dangerous and deceptive so there is no way he would have invoked such subjective evidence only he knew there was no evidence for the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus except visions reported by the apostles and himself.

Paul wrote that it is much easier to die for the just than or the wicked but still Christ died for us when we were bad.

God could hate sinners and still send his Son to die on the cross for them so that they might become lovable and that would make dying for evil people easier. Paul disagreed. Paul did see this point for he taught that God hated Esau and abandoned people to sin so when God hated Esau he would hate all sinners and yet he saved them. So why did he say that Jesus dying for sinners proved that God loved sinners before they stopped being sinners? The answer is that Paul thought that since Christians experienced salvation from sin that the saviour must have died on the cross for them in their place to get them off the hook and inject them with God’s life-transforming power. He did not argue that the cross happened therefore sin was forgiven but that sin was forgiven therefore the cross happened. Paul had to tell a little white lie to invent an argument for the reality of the crucifixion. To recap, the white lie was that Jesus died to save Christians because Christians experienced salvation which means that somebody must have died to atone for their sins. The lie was told to provide evidence that the crucifixion happened for there was no material or historic evidence for it and for no other reason. The only other reason could have been was to show that Jesus saved which rested on a subjective feeling of self-righteousness which was against Paul’s own hypercritical theology and so was not the reason.

I must add that Paul saying that Jesus dying when we were sinners refers to sinners in general. There would have been sinners having his letter read to them who had been born after Jesus died assuming Jesus died in the thirties AD. It gives no hint if Jesus died in Paul’s day or not. When Paul wrote that when we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son that we were still enemies of God up to then that could still be referring to a saviour who was thought to have lived at the beginning of the human race or long ago when there were lots of people on earth. This we refers to all people who sinned and were saved by the death of Jesus. It means that nobody accepted his grace until after the cross.

Paul declared in 1 Corinthians 15 that the Christians had hope for their loved ones who passed away which would make no sense unless it meant a lot of people had died. Paul taught that there were no saved people before the death of Jesus. There was nobody accepting of salvation for all were enemies of God until Jesus brought faith. Not many would have died if Jesus really died in the thirties AD which was too recent. He goes out of his way to comfort his readers implying a lot of deaths had taken place. He says if Jesus hasn’t died and risen we are extremely badly off meaning our loved ones are lost in big numbers. He is thinking of ancestors and all.

All that would mean that Christ had saved the world long long ago because Paul couldn’t write that way if he believed that it was only a few years since Jesus supposedly died. There wouldn’t have been enough deaths.

So the comfort Paul gave can only work if Jesus did NOT die in the recent past.

If Jesus did die in the recent past it would follow that most of their dead would have been dead before 30 AD or the time of the crucifixion according to the standard chronology and so his words would be no comfort to them.

The Jews had many saints who Paul acknowledged as such and as saved who lived before the gospels version of Jesus reportedly lived. It follows then that Jesus died at some time there was no saints or possibility of them which would mean centuries before Paul’s birth.

Paul holds that there is no salvation if Jesus has not been raised and we can despair about our dead. He clearly suggests that nobody else will do as saviour and we should not wait for the real saviour if Jesus was the false one for that is no help. It can’t be of any help for there was to be no salvation until the saviour died and rose. Time is the key thought now. Now if Jesus is that absolutely essential it follows that since Paul was writing this epistle in about 56 AD which was about 26 years at the most after the alleged crucifixion according to the standard chronology, that most of the dead the Corinthians had to think of would have died before Jesus and so his salvation would be of no comfort to them. And Paul was trying to comfort them which shows that the dead were those who had died since Jesus. It is clear then that Paul talks as if Jesus died long before the first century and rose on the third day and only started appearing in the mid-thirties of the first century.

Paul said that the proof that God loves us is that Christ died for us when we were still sinners.

Paul agrees with mainstream Christianity that Jesus and God know one another and what one another is planning. Incidentally, if God giving his Son to die for sinners proved his love for nobody wants to die for evil men but would prefer to die for good men as Paul said, then it follows that God was not sure if the death would be any good or not! If he was sure then it is like dying for good people for you are trying to make good people of the bad so the illustration fails for you wouldn’t be doing it unless you knew it was going to be worth it for yourself. That would put both Jesus and the God who put him up to it in a bad light. Also how could a God or a Son of God who finds it a hard sacrifice to die for the evil people to convert them and an easier one to die for the good who don’t need it be good? So that is the kind of God that Paul got from listening to the resurrected Jesus who supposedly appeared to him and the apostles! It does nothing to help Jesus’ credibility or rather the credibility of their visions.

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JESUS LIVED IN ANCIENT TIMES ACCORDING TO PAUL

In 1 Thessalonians 2:15,16 states that the Jews killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets, hinder his message and have received the wrath of God. It is not known what this punishment is. The best suggestion is that it means Roman oppression. But the wrath of God must have taken place after the Jews killed Jesus. So it would follow that the epistle is declaring that Jesus died before the Roman occupation of Palestine which oppressed the Jews. This occupation was in place several decades before the time Jesus supposedly lived.

In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul tried to prove the resurrection of Jesus to Christian heretics who denied it.

He started by saying about the apparition appearances. But he did not use them as evidence but to prepare for the discussion. He didn’t go into any detail. He can’t use them as evidence for if people were denying that Paul was right that Jesus rose then Paul saying things like, “He appeared to me”, isn’t going to help for that is what they are disputing.

Then he started saying things like that if Jesus is dead the witnesses are liars and we are still in our sins and the dead are lost and believers are to be pitied above all people.

But that is like arguing, “If Jesus is dead that is terrible therefore Jesus is alive.” It shows he was desperate. There was no evidence for the resurrection or Jesus apart from visions of a resurrected Jesus. This points to a Jesus who lived in obscurity before his death or who lived centuries before or both. When a man uses bad evidence it shows there was no good evidence. He was unable to say that Jesus was a good man and a miracle-worker therefore he rose. This shows that the later gospel portrait of Jesus was untrue. If you drop the good works and miracles of Jesus from the gospel there is nothing left.

If Jesus is dead, that doesn’t mean somebody else couldn’t have saved us. And Jesus could have saved us without rising again. A resurrection with everybody else in the future would do.

Paul thinks that people cannot be saved unless the resurrection of Jesus has already taken place. It must precede. If Jesus hasn’t risen yet it will not do. Paul spoke of people being saved in Old Testament times centuries before. Therefore his Jesus was thought to have lived centuries ago and not in the first century AD.

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GALATIANS 3

Galatians 3 seems to say that Jesus came sometime after the Law of Moses was given and that the Law came to an end in Jesus’ death.

Paul declared that Jesus was crucified before the eyes of the Galatians (3:1) though they never saw the actual crucifixion. He believed in visions and supernatural experiences so it is simplest to take this as meaning he induced visions of the cross in the Christians. This makes it less likely that Jesus lived recently for he was anxious to create evidence for him. There are other ways to have visions apart from sight. Sometimes you feel your spirit is having a vision though you don’t see anything visual but you see it other ways and sometimes it is clearer than visual. You would express it as a vision for it is impossible to put into words. Liberal Christians have realised there is a problem in determining what kind of visions exactly these resurrection appearances were.

The Galatians were going back to the belief that they had to keep the Law to deserve eternal salvation and Paul informed them that they couldn’t receive the Spirit by doing that but by hearing with faith. He told them that miracles were being done by them through faith not the Law. Instead of proving that Jesus did away with the Law, he asked them to follow what he arrogantly thought their subjective feelings should be saying to them. He ignored the fact that their new religious stance was a product of their feelings too. He could not control them with a saying from Jesus for Jesus never lived recently, but long ago, to be of any use. When a man uses a bad argument instead of a good one and is as experienced a missionary as Paul it says a lot. It says to us that Jesus did not live near his time.

Paul informs us that Abraham was saved because God preached the gospel of faith to him before the apostles came. He stated that the Old Testament teaches salvation by faith and that the Law brings a curse and that Jesus’ goal by dying was to bring salvation to the Gentiles. He then says we were bound under the burden of the Law until Jesus would come to teach us better about faith. The trouble is that even the Jesus of the gospels does not teach the Pauline gospel or stress faith like Paul does so Paul is referring to Jesus coming to him in visions as a teacher of this faith and not a physical coming. Paul may say that we were in bondage until the faith came but he stated that faith was possible even before then meaning that rather than it being a matter of the faith having come it was a matter of the faith being promoted better. That silences those who say the reference to the faith having come refers to Jesus coming to make faith effective for salvation by his death. Since Paul sees faith as having drawn power from the cross to save even before the cross happened nothing in the entire epistle to the Galatians tells us when Jesus is supposed to have lived.

When he says the Law was our custodian until Jesus came he does not mean just his own generation by our but all the generations that were under the Law in the past as well. They are all in the same boat so he can talk in terms of being one of them. Paul believed the Law always existed and was not started with Moses but only revealed to him. He said that the Gentiles had the Law too but in a different way from the Jews. It was in their conscience. Paul could still say the law is the custodian until Jesus if Jesus lived one thousand years before. The law was the custodian until Jesus came in apparitions to convert people and give them the saving gospel.

Paul stated that the promise God made to give the land of Israel to the offspring of Abraham referred to Jesus only. Then he argues that if this gift is by the Law it is no longer a promise. “If the inheritance of the land depends on the Law, then it no longer depends on a promise but God in his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise” (Galatians 3:18).

It seems that Paul then here is putting Jesus in the time after Abraham. But it doesn’t mean Jesus necessarily lived on earth.

He thinks that the promise to give the land would not be fulfilled if it depended on the Law for people would break the Law and lose the entitlement to the land. So the promise is unconditional.

But that is not what the Law says. It says the land will be taken from the people if they disobey enough. Though Paul explicitly denies that the Law of God is against the promises of God, it is clear from all this that it is.

Galatians denies that Jesus lived in the first century and that anybody knew him when he was alive.

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JESUS THE FIRSTBORN

Scholars sometimes argue that:

The texts that tell us Jesus was the firstborn just mean that he was the most important person to be born and not necessarily the first (Hebrews 12:23). He was the most important to rise from the dead (Colossians 1:18 and Revelation 1:5). He was the first in importance so he was the firstborn in that sense but not literally.

The evidence for this affirmation that firstborn means having the unique privileges of the firstborn at times and not always being born first can be read in Concise Guide to Today’s Religions, Josh McDowell and Don Stewart, pages 68-74. But it gives no real proof that the non-literal meaning was in the Bible at all. Hebrews 1:2 seems to be an exception for there God says he will make Christ his heir which matches Psalm 89:27 where God says he will make somebody his firstborn. But you could talk that way of a first son who has not been treated as firstborn with its privileges yet. The Church of the Firstborn is the title for the Church given in the Letter to the Hebrews (12:23). That could be because it was the Church of the firstborn Christ who shares his benefits with the Church and treats them as firstborns though they are not. The book assumes that the firstborn of the poor (Isaiah 14:30) means the poorest of the poor and the firstborn of death does not mean the first killer disease but the worst in Job 18:13. But there is no need for this assumption at all – take the references literally. Israel was called the Lord’s firstborn for it was the first race chosen by God. It was the first race to be born into God’s covenant family. The Christian Church is the firstborn of God as regards being born into the covenant of redemption. Yet this book argues that firstborn does not mean born first but the benefits of being a firstborn on this basis. It’s wrong.

In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says that Jesus is the first fruit of the resurrection. He meant that Christ was the first to rise to a glorious and blissful life with God. This is reconciled with earlier Biblical resurrection reports by saying that the people who rose before did not rise the same way – they were more or less resuscitated (page 268, The Truth of Christianity). So we are told that resurrection and resuscitation though similar were not the same in Paul’s thought. Or were they? We have no proof in Paul that he made this distinction. When you see that he was writing to defend the resurrection against those “Christians” who said it never happened and to people who had only the basics of the gospel you see that he would have made it clear what he meant by firstborn from the dead if his meaning wasn’t straightforward. He did not so he did not see the resurrections reported in the Old Testament as a problem for Jesus rose from the dead before they happened making him the first to be resurrected.

This refutes the raising of the daughter of Jairus and Lazarus and the widow’s son and the saints at the time of the crucifixion from the dead which Jesus was responsible for according to the Bible. Paul did believe that Jesus’ resurrection had different results from the resurrection of the others but you don’t write Jesus was the first to rise from the dead just because Jesus’ was different. A resurrection is a resurrection whatever the mode. A resurrection is a resurrection whether the body is restored wholly or whether it is turned into a spiritual body.

Paul may be saying that Jesus as man was made first and could have lived in Heaven while Adam was the first man to be made on earth. If Jesus was the firstborn he had to have been made first. Even if Jesus is God his humanity perhaps his body or soul or both could have been the first creation of God. Jehovah’s Witnesses argue that Jesus was the first-created person so he was not God but that is not a valid argument.

Read the way Paul writes about the logical order of things in 1 Corinthians 15. “Just like every human being dies in Adam so everyone will be made to live in Christ; but all this must happen in the proper order with Christ as the first fruit and then after the coming of Christ those who belong to him. After that the end will come and that is when he will hand over the kingdom to God the Father.” Paul is not arguing here that since Christ got this new life first and nobody else has that this is the proper order. Rather, he is saying what the logical order is. But he is lying here. His order would mean Christ has to rise from the dead before he can give life to others. This is wrong for God can see the future meaning he could apply the salvation won by Christ to people before Christ was born. Paul however knew that God had a clear vision of the future. Paul indicated elsewhere that there were prophets saved by foreseeing Christ. Why would he lie? Because he wants to be able to say that Jesus must have lived so we can look forward to salvation if we follow him. To paraphrase Paul he is saying, “Because it is the logical order Jesus must have got everlasting life first and then his people will be saved and he will hand the kingdom he makes of them over to his father.” He is not saying Jesus lived because he saw him in visions but using a separate argument for Jesus’ existence altogether. He is saying there is no evidence that Jesus lived but visions and theological arguments.

Romans 8:29 tells us that God chose his saved children to be like his son so that his son would be the firstborn among many brethren. The Church says he means that God chose the brethren to be like Jesus so that Jesus would be the best of them. That is accusing God of showing off. And why would it matter? Jesus would not need to be shown as the best of his brethren by God creating inferior copies of him. A more sensible interpretation is that God chose them to be like his son in such a way that his son would be the first ever of his holy children. For his brethren to be like Jesus, Jesus has to be around before his brethren so that they can become like him by observing and practicing his example. Paul believed that some Old Testament figures were saved by seeing a bit of the gospel so his Jesus lived in Old Testament times. Moreover, there was no need to have a written record of this Jesus’ life for he communicated with his people through his Holy Spirit about the right way to live.

Colossians 1:18 says that Jesus was the beginning of all things and the firstborn from the dead for the purpose of supremacy in all things. Now if we take firstborn to mean not first made but first in importance this verse makes no sense. You don’t say, “I made this the most important so that it would be the most important.” Then it says, Jesus was the most important from the dead for the purpose of supremacy. You don’t say the king is a king for being king. So what it said was that Jesus was the first to come back from the dead which puts him in another time and place altogether and not the time and place that we have been led to believe. Jesus was made at the start of creation so that he would be supreme in every sense including being the first thing to be made. The first thing is always special.

Revelation 1:5 does not link the title firstborn from the dead which it applies to Christ to importance when the next title it gives him, that of ruler, takes care of designating Jesus as important which adds weight to the literal interpretation of firstborn. If it did link it would say in case firstborn would be taken in the literal sense and it had to be clear for it claimed to be written for a time of persecution in which the truth would get the worst battering it would ever get.

Acts 26:23 has Paul saying that Jesus was the first to rise from the dead and was the first so that he could give light to the Jews and the Gentiles. The Church says this means, “Jesus was the most important to rise from the dead or the first in importance so that he could give light to the Jews and the Gentiles”. But this obviously makes no sense for Christ could have done this through his Church without being the most important and what has being important to do with giving light? And it would make no sense to say that Christ was the first to rise from the dead as a sign for them for he himself said that the word of God was enough of a sign when he told the story of Dives and Lazarus and also the times he raised others from the dead would also be signs. In fact the other resurrections would be more convincing than his own because he knew he would end up on a cross and could have been prepared or had a look-alike to take his place after death who scared away the guards by posing as Jesus and then robbed the tomb and masqueraded as Jesus but there is no reason to think that the others would have been prepared to work out a deception. What Paul meant was that Jesus was simply the first person to rise from the dead and that he did it so that he could guide his Church. We know from this verse that it was not claimed that by saying Christ was the first to rise that it was only meant that he was the first to rise in a changed magic body thus allowing belief in previous revivals of the dead that were not of this nature. Why? Because had he risen without being transformed he could still have done the same job which was guiding the Church to enlighten everybody on earth. This tells us how to interpret the phrase, firstborn from the dead, it means simply the first to rise from the dead. If what Paul said was not made up by the author of the book of Acts it might be a hint that Paul may have equated Jesus with Enoch from Genesis who might have risen from the dead. Genesis says that Enoch walked with God which may mean he died and then it says he was not for God took him perhaps referring to an ascension which would require a resurrection otherwise there would be nothing to take up into Heaven. Perhaps Jesus was the widow’s son who was raised from the dead by Elijah – the first certain record of a return from the dead. The author of the Book of Acts never thought about what he was putting into his book on this subject. We can be grateful for his slip.

Paul stated that Jesus was the first good man that God made in Romans 8:29. Paul stated that God turns everything into a benefit for those who love him and that these are the ones he chose long ago to be images of his son so that this son would be the first of many brothers. Many translations use the words oldest or eldest instead of the first. The New Jerusalem Bible says eldest. How does the Church interpret this? It says the verse means that Jesus was chosen to be the prime or the best son of God among many sons of God who accept God as their father. But Paul could have meant that God made Jesus and Jesus was accepted as his son by God and God made other people after that so that Jesus would be the first of many sons and have the honour of getting there first as well. Why bring in that they were chosen long ago? There is no need to unless Paul’s meaning is that because God wanted Jesus to be the first good man he had to choose other people to be saints but after him so that he would be the first. The mention of brothers means that Jesus was a man for he could not be our brother otherwise. Paul is clear: Jesus was the first good man. Paul’s Jesus did not live in the first century for he believed that the Old Testament saints were just as holy as the Christian ones in his Church.

The Bible says that Jesus was the firstborn in time not just in rank. It contradicts the gospels which deny this.

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1 TIMOTHY

After commanding Christians to live virtuously the First Letter to Timothy continues “fight the good fight of the faith; lay hold of the eternal life to which you were summoned and [for which] you confessed the good confession [of faith] before many witnesses. In the presence of God, Who preserves alive all living things, and of Christ Jesus, Who in His testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I [solemnly] charge you, To keep all his precepts” (1 Timothy 6:12-14). Christians say this speaks of the trial of Jesus before Pilate and verifies his existence as a man. Those who attack the existence of Jesus counter that this proves nothing for 1 Timothy was a forgery. Forged or not, the epistle tells us what top Christians believed in the first century about Jesus and it certainly contains evidence that Jesus never lived.

The context as you can see is about verbally fighting for the faith and Jesus is cited as a model to follow in this. The verses differ from the gospels for in the gospels Jesus never testified to the importance of living the faith and about eternal life in front of Pilate and he certainly never verbally fought for the faith at that time.

We read in Matthew that Pilate’s wife told him that she had a dream about Jesus being a holy man of God and for Pilate not to harm Jesus. Was this the testimony meant? It could have been and it could have been that Matthew only assumed the dream related to the trial of Jesus when in fact it was just something on its own. To a Christian for whom Jesus was the Son of God this dream would have been considered to be a revelation to her from Jesus. This dream is more a testimony about the things 1 Timothy said Jesus testified to than anything Jesus reportedly said. She was unlikely to have told her husband not to harm Jesus if the Jews were forcing him like the gospels slanderously allege. Matthew is hoping to falsely make out that the dream was about a real living historical Jesus. So did she have a vision of a possibly non-historical Jesus or a messenger of his like many others about that time? Or did she just hear the voice of Jesus in her dream? Was it through the wife of Pilate that Jesus testified to Pilate? Perhaps Timothy One reflects a legend that Jesus spoke to Pilate through Pilate’s wife?

Perhaps Pilate was there when the 500+ had a vision that 1 Timothy made out was a vision of Jesus? Whether or not they would have agreed with the letter’s interpretation is a mystery. The risen Jesus in Pauline theology was the one that did all the testifying which makes this so much more probable. Pilate could have been involved in the mystery cults which sought to induce visions and sometimes unknown gods were reported in these visions. The Emperor claiming the protection of the gods for the Empire would have wanted all his employees to have such experiences and to be in touch with the gods. The Christians could have argued that the god Pilate saw was really Jesus.

A prophet through whom Jesus was speaking could have went to Pilate and testified and that could be what the letter means. The letter said the Church was the body of Christ and so the true Christian was so close to Christ that the Christian was considered to be a part of the body of Christ like a hand or foot. Christ was the head and nobody else could be for the head is superior to hands and feet. So Christ could have testified before Pilate without there being a historical Jesus being present.

Why does the letter have it that Christ Jesus bore witness before Pilate and that we must keep his precepts until the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in the same breath? This strange sentence structure suggests tampering. The absence of a relation between Jesus’ meeting with Pilate and us keeping Jesus’ commands further corroborates this assertion.

It could be that Jesus was totally unknown until after the resurrection meaning that the Christians assumed that he was tried by Pilate. But what use is that to the historian?

Perhaps some Jesus went to Pilate and there was a rumour that he testified to him and this Jesus was mistaken by Christians through gossip and biased thinking to have been an appearance of their own Jesus.

1 Timothy 3:16 says that Jesus was manifested in the flesh and vindicated or proven right in the spirit and seen by angels and proclaimed through the world. The reference to being seen by angels is very odd. Why stress that he was seen by angels? Why not people and/or angels? Why would the Son of God need to be seen by angels to be vindicated for they would know from God that he needed no vindication when God supported him? So it seems that God hid who Jesus was and never even told the angels who did not realise until he was vindicated by rising spiritually from the dead. This Jesus could have lived the life of the gospel Jesus as the gospels report. The angels would have known this Jesus unless this Jesus lived BEFORE the angels could look after the earth and see all that was happening. Then we are told Jesus is proclaimed through the world meaning he has become known in the world to men and is proclaimed. This Jesus then did not testify to his deity before dying and in front of Pilate but after. We must remember too that if Jesus was the popular figure that is presented in the gospels to us that there had to have been people masquerading as Jesus just like we have some who claim to be the living Elvis just for the sake of popping out of the woodwork and telling somebody they are Elvis and disappear again. Maybe Pilate met one of these types of people. But 1 Timothy certainly infers that Pilate saw the risen Jesus for the earthly Jesus was an obscure person but the impostor may explain the beginning of the rumour. And Pilate may have had a vision of an unknown god during a mystery ceremony like many of his pagan counterparts did and that may be what is being referred to. The Christians may have decided that the god was Jesus. Whatever happened Pilate did not see the living Jesus but a vision of the risen Jesus. That is what the epistle is saying.

1 Timothy 2 has Paul saying he is a witness to the fact that Jesus the mediator died as a ransom for sinners. What he says is this, “God wants all to be saved and know the truth for there is one God and one Mediator between God and man who is Jesus Christ who gave himself as a ransom for sinners by sacrificing himself. Jesus is the evidence for all this and was sent at the appointed time and I have been named a messenger to tell of it and I am telling the truth and not lying for I teach the faith and the truth to pagans.”

Dissecting this tells us that because God wants all to be saved there must be one God and one Mediator who saves. This indicates that Jesus must have done his work to save aeons before. He did not live in the first century.

Next, Jesus is the evidence that all this has happened as well and that there is one God and one Mediator. This illustrates that the previous interpretation is correct. It would be strange to say that the Mediator was evidence for the Mediator. But if Jesus was the Mediator and appeared as a resurrected being long after his life on earth or wherever it would make sense. Paul stresses that he is not lying and swears that he is being truthful that the Messiah came back with this message of one God and one saviour for he teaches the pagans. So Paul has to swear because he can provide no evidence but his own word for his claims. This indicates that the evidence of the apostles who supposedly saw Jesus is being bypassed and dismissed or even rejected. You only swear for serious reasons. Paul being teacher to the pagans hardly means his swearing should be taken seriously. There are loads of false teachers about. This desperation speaks of there being nothing solid to back up what Paul was saying. There was no miracle working Jesus who was buried in a tomb in the thirties AD and showed up again alive in three days. There was no Jesus as depicted in the gospels.

Paul said the testimony to this was had at the proper time and to proclaim this saving death was why he was made an apostle and a preacher. The epistle talks as if this was hidden until the proper time meaning it was not known at the time that Jesus died that it was to save sinners. This conflicts with the gospels which have Jesus saying he would die for that before he was crucified. The main point in bringing up Jesus’ death was that Jesus gave up his life. Christians protest, “The main point was that he gave up his life as a ransom for all”. But the purpose is the main point then why is Paul so unclear about how Jesus saved us or if Jesus was right to do that. Perhaps he gave up his life as a ransom but that ransom couldn’t work. The letter is indicating that Jesus’ life was not known until some people started getting revelations about him. The meeting of Jesus and Pilate had no evidential support – it was just something the Christians assumed thinking the Holy Spirit was telling them about it. It is possible to say, “And there is one saviour the man Jesus who died for all as a ransom”, while intending the “who died for all as a ransom” just as an identification for who Jesus was and nothing else the main point being that Jesus alone is the saviour.

1 Timothy Chapter 1 verses 12 to 17 are fascinating. Verse 12 says that Paul thanks Jesus who counted him as faithful enough to put him into the ministry as an apostle – implying Jesus was sure he was the right person which could only happen after a long test. But in Acts 9 Paul has a miraculous conversion and ministers a few days after. 1 Timothy then contradicts Acts so it would reject the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts as being reliable. It eliminates a lot of evidence for Jesus then.

The next thing is that we are told that Paul did all he could to injure and discredit the faith meaning he used theology and reason as well as persecution. He knew the faith well and yet he is presented as saying (verse 13) that Jesus was merciful to him because until he became a believer he was acting in ignorance. There is only one way to make the two declarations agree. Paul had a lot of Christianities and interpretations of Jesus to deal with and Jesus appeared to him and gave him the right one. This would indicate that there was no historical Jesus but only a visionary one who manifested after his resurrection. How? Because if there had been a Jesus like the gospel one it would have been easy to work out the truth about him and the facts but there was nothing but confusion and so much that Paul could be excused for his ignorance despite the fact that he knew the faith well.

The next thing he says (verse 15) is that there is a saying they can rely on and which nobody should doubt namely that Jesus came into the world to save sinners. He says it is a saying and not that it is a fact. Get the drift: its only a doctrine he doesn’t speak of it as something that can be supported in the way the gospels try to support it. He says then he is the greatest of sinners and has been saved. Now he does not say Jesus came into the world as a man to save sinners but only that he came. The context is about Jesus saving Paul in a conversion experience. So Jesus came into the world as a vision or a supernatural being. That is all this is saying. Had it meant anything else Paul would have been clearer. This is a clear denial that Jesus was known as a natural man. Why? Because you would say Jesus was born as a man into the world to save sinners quicker than you would say that he appeared as risen to save sinners if both were true especially when Jesus saved us by his death on the cross. Then “Paul” rounds off the argument in verse 16 by saying that he is the greatest evidence of the inexhaustible patience of Jesus for he is the worst sinner which inspires people after Paul to be able to trust Jesus alone for salvation! Nobody would dare use such an immodest and boastful argument unless they and their audience understood that there wasn’t any other evidence. Paul was not the worst sinner, and the epistle says earlier that he didn’t mean to do wrong! This contradiction shows again that the author was desperate for evidence that Jesus really was the saviour and couldn’t use the life of Christ, the crucifixion or the resurrection to prove it by themselves because they were not verifiable.

All this adds weight to the stuff about Jesus and Pilate chatting being an insertion and such an insertion being made would show that people were trying to fake evidence that Jesus lived because he didn’t.

There is good reason to believe that this letter along with the Second Letter to Timothy was a forgery. The earliest lists did not include these letters and there was no evidence that they existed until Irenaeus in 190 AD. Eusebius excluded them from his list of New Testament books and what he says must bear some weight for Christians because he wrote about a time that is clouded in mystery and confusion for us. We are nearly totally dependent on him for the history of the Church until his time so we have to depend on him no matter how unreliable he was if we want to believe in the authenticity of these letters for only he would have had a chance to know. It is possible that the letters include some items that are genuinely Pauline. Computer tests show that the vocabulary and style do not match that of Paul’s true letters (page 160, The Jesus Mysteries). The reference to Pilate then could have come out of the gospels. The Church states that the letters embody Paul’s teaching and so they must be taken as true scripture even if he didn’t personally write them for a disciple wrote them for him after he was dead. But the blasted letters claim to be from Paul personally to a Timothy! And how do we know the disciple was right to work out what Paul would have written when we don’t even know who he was? The lies that are told are sickening.

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TITUS

The epistle of Paul to Titus shows that if Paul wrote it then he did not believe that Jesus lived in living memory. In Titus chapter 2:11-14 the first thing that is said is that God’s grace has been shown and made salvation possible for all humanity and taught us that we must give up everything that leads away from God. The second is that we are waiting the appearing of the glory of Jesus Christ who sacrificed himself to purify us.

The clue is that we learn that God’s salvation calls on us to give up everything that leads us away from God. God has been saying that since the human race began. The passage says Jesus saved us by sacrificing himself for us. Therefore if we put all the thoughts together we see that Jesus saved us and taught us the lesson of this salvation aeons before. He did not live and die in the first century.

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BOOK OF REVELATION AND THE PREHISTORIC CHRIST

The Book of Revelation claims that Jesus was crucified in a city it chooses to call Sodom and Egypt (1:8). These names underline the fact that the city is being said to be one that oppresses God’s people (like Egypt did in the book of Exodus) and tries to corrupt them (like Sodom did in the Book of Genesis). Why hide the identity of the city under symbolic names? This city can only be Rome because the book would not have been and was not afraid to insult any other city. To insult Rome was very serious. It was the one city the writer couldn’t dare to insult. It would endanger anybody found with a copy of the book. So it was Rome for it had to be condemned in disguise.

Jesus must have died before the first century for the author would not have meant that he died in Rome recently for that would have been shot down straight away. Revelation was not kept secret for it kept its own secrets in its bizarre symbolism. It spoke to the people for it said that it to be published fast for the end was nigh.

Read Revelation 1:7 “Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him; and all the tribes of the earth shall gaze upon Him and beat their breasts and mourn and lament over Him”. The context says that Jesus has made his Church a kingdom and made its members kings and priests to God. It calls Jesus the ruler of the kings of the earth. Since Jesus has the power to rule the kings and the kings defy him he is not a real king because a real king uses his power. He could make them bend the knee or cast them down from their thrones if they do not listen to him. That is what being a king is about. The Book of Revelation says that Jesus is coming back now. There is no doubt that the book thinks that Jesus is on his way and is travelling on the clouds when it calls him king and when it calls the Christians kings. He is coming to be king and this coming is so close that he might as well be described as king now and his followers as kings. This denies the gospel Jesus who claimed to be king. It denies he existed.

Now read the verse again. Why are we told that even those who pierced Jesus will see him coming on the clouds? Even means surprisingly. Now what would be surprising about that?

It could only be surprising if they are going to be raised from the dead especially to see him. That means that Jesus did not live in the first century at all for Revelation would have been written when his killers were alive if he did.

The verse stresses that everybody alive on earth will see Jesus. That is the straightforward interpretation and therefore the correct one. Christians twist it to make people think it means that all the people who ever lived will rise from the dead to see Jesus. But that interpretation is too fancy and therefore the wrong one. Why is it so important to the author that he says that all people will see Jesus? The answer is because Jesus left no evidence for his existence therefore people need to see him.

Revelation 12 has a heavenly woman with a crown of twelve stars and who stands on the moon and is clothed with the sun and who gives birth to a baby boy who has a rod to rule the nations. A dragon is ready to eat her baby and he fires down a third of the stars of Heaven to the earth. The child was born safely and snatched up to God and his throne so the child becomes a ruler which indicates that the child was taken away from possible harm at birth and kept in Heaven and then given the throne when ready – when he had become a man. The woman after the pain she had in labour flees to the desert after the child gets the throne. She has recovered by then so the child could be an adult and it could be a long time after the birth. She was looked after in the desert for 1260 days. This was before Satan was thrown out of Heaven by Michael and his army and before he was on earth to deceive Adam and Eve into sin.

A possible interpretation of this is as follows. Jesus was born in Heaven of an angelic mother who gave birth to him before Satan was thrown out of Heaven prior to the creation of Adam and Eve. She prefigures Israel and its twelve tribes because she has twelve stars. There is no reason to believe that she is Israel. Israel did not flee into the desert after giving birth to the Messiah and it did not have twelve tribes at the time it gave birth to Jesus unless Jesus was born in Egypt before the Exodus and that is what is being said but that would mean over a thousand years before Revelation was written. The view that the woman was Israel and gave birth to Jesus and then fled into the desert as the persecuted Church is not sensible. There is no reason to think that. Nothing hints that the woman becomes a new Israel. Israel rejected the faith so how could the same woman represent Israel and the Church?

Satan the dragon waited in front of the pregnant woman to eat her baby but she got away from him and had her child in safety. Later Satan the dragon was said to have been defeated in Heaven and thrown out by the blood of the Lamb so the sacrifice of the cross took place before Adam and Eve were made. So the baby had grown up and been sacrificed by the time this happened. Satan the dragon then goes after the woman when he is on earth and realises he has been defeated. The dragon is described as wreaking havoc on earth and causing sin so it takes him a long time to realise he is defeated. By the time he realises this, the children of the woman, the spiritual brethren of her son Jesus, are on the earth and he goes after them when the woman escapes. The early Church always believed the woman was Mary and the baby was Jesus. It is undeniable that if this is right the chapter says that Jesus was born in Heaven and was crucified before living memory. It is possible that the woman represents not just the mother of Jesus but all women. All women are poetically symbolised as the Woman – after all the woman was described as a sign. Maybe the dragon wanted to destroy women to destroy life on earth. Maybe that is how the woman could be the mother of those who followed Jesus. The chapter may be about a sign in Heaven but that does not mean the chapter is all symbolism and that we can never understand it. The chapter makes perfect sense and there is no better interpretation than this one.

About Jesus, Revelation 13:8 reads, “And all the inhabitants of the earth will fall down in adoration and pay him homage, everyone whose name has not been recorded in the Book of Life of the Lamb that was slain [in sacrifice] from the foundation of the world” (Amplified Bible). Some translators pervert the message to make the from the foundation bit mean what is written in the Book. But if the writer had meant that he would have put the from the foundation elsewhere (Fred Pearce, Jesus – God the Son or Son of God? Page 29). We expect this for he knew that for many people considering the claims of Christianity that his book would be the only record of Christian teaching that they would have.

Christians argue that the passage teaches that since God is outside time, it is true to say that Jesus was crucified before the world was made and even that he is being crucified now meaning that it is happening in eternity but not time is concerned. But if the author had this in mind he would have written, “from before the foundation of the world”, meaning eternity as well as time assuming time began when the raw materials of the world did. But he wrote from the beginning. He is thinking about time only. His Jesus died before the world was completely made. But there was enough of it orderly for him to have been crucified, probably by demons, where Rome is now.

But the Book of Revelation calls Jesus the Lion of Judah and the Son of David it seems. But the first occurrence calls him the root or source of David (See Amplified Bible 5:5). The lion reference is inspired by Genesis 49:9 which calls Judah the lion’s cub. Since Jesus was the lion and Judah was the cub it follows that Jesus was older than the cub his son. And Jesus later calls himself the Root and offspring of David (22:16) meaning that he was the adopted offspring of David for he could not have been David’s ancestor and offspring unless he was adopted or reincarnated. There is no evidence that Jesus was believed to be an angel or God that lived as a spirit before he was born on earth in the first century in this book. Reading the Revelation in this light is not on. So he existed as man from before Israel was formed. Jesus could have become the Messiah after David’s time and is to come again to be a proper king.

Revelation should be listened to when it reflects an ancient tradition that Jesus did not live in the first century but centuries before.

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Conclusion

Paul definitely taught as did the early Church of which he was the main founder not Christ for even the New Testament says that the Church was founded after Christ that if Jesus lived on earth it was a long time before anybody living then was born.

Saturday, 08 December 2007

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Jesus Lived in India by Holger Kersten, Element, Dorset, 1994

Jesus, Qumran and the Vatican, Otto Betz and Rainer Riesner, SCM Press Ltd, London, 1994

Jesus the Evidence, Ian Wilson, Pan, London, 1985

Jesus the Magician, Morton Smith, Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1978

Jesus under Fire, Edited by Michael F Wilkins and JP Moreland, Zondervan Publishing House, Michigan, 1995

Lectures and Replies, Thomas Carr, Archbishop of Melbourne, Melbourne, 1907

Let’s Weigh the Evidence, Barry Burton, Chick Publications, Chino, CA, 1983

Miracles in Dispute, Ernst and Marie-Luise Keller, SCM Press Ltd, London, 1969

Nag Hammadi Library, Ed James M Robinson HarperCollins New York 1990

On the True Doctrine, Celsus, Translated by R Joseph Hoffmann, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1987

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Runaway World, Michael Green, IVP, London, 1974

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St Peter and Rome, JBS, Irish Church Missions, Dublin, undated

Saint Saul, Donald Harman Akenson, Oxford University Press, New York, 2000

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The Bible Unearthed, Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, Touchstone Books, New York, 2002.

The Call to Heresy, Robert Van Weyer, Lamp Books, London, 1989

The Case For Christ, Lee Strobel, HarperCollins and Zondervan, Michigan, 1998

The Case for Jesus the Messiah, John Ankerberg Harvest House, Eugene, Oregon, 1989

The Early Church, Henry Chadwick, Pelican, Middlesex, 1967

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The First Christian, Karen Armstrong, Pan, London, 1983

The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels, Penguin, London, 1990

The Gnostic Paul, Elaine Pagels, Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1975

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The House of the Messiah, Ahmed Osman, Grafton, London, 1993

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The Pagan Christ, Tom Harpur, Thomas Allen Publishers, Toronto, 2004

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Theodore Parker’s Discourses, Theodore Parker, Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer, London, 1876

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Those Incredible Christians, Hugh Schonfield, Hutchinson, London, 1968

Who Was Jesus? A Conspiracy in Jerusalem, by Kamal Salabi, I.B. Taurus and Co Ltd., London, 1992

Who Was Jesus? NT Wright, SPCK, London, 1993

Why I Believe Jesus Lived, C G Colly Caldwell, Guardian of Truth, Kentucky

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