No overwhelming historical proof: Why I doubt Jesus

[URAVIP2ME]

'However where sin increased grace increased all the more so'; so we enter new times and much has changed over 2000 years, but we know God's plans are forever.
A new spiritual worldview is now possible, but it takes alot of research if you are choosen to understand you will.

Yes, sin has increased - 2 Timothy 3:1-3; 2 Timothy 3:4-5; 2 Timothy 3:13
God's mercy and grace has also increased - Matthew 24:13-14 - so that people earthwide can repent so as Not to perish - 2 Peter 3:9
For the wicked will be destroyed forever - Psalms 92:7; Hebrews 6:4-6; Matthew 12:32

 

[URAVIP2ME]

If a judge judges in a way that seems to contradict specified moral law, I would think as loyalists to that law, we should at least speak up about the issue or else admit that we care only about authority and not about morality.
Good! Then everyone knows what the law is and can ask God why some people seemingly are immune to it.

No, Not everyone knows the Golden Rule, nor knows Jesus' New commandment to have self-sacrificing love for others - John 13:34-35
People choose to be immune - James 1:13-15

 

[Etritonakin]

The God of the Bible set up a kingdom (government) that will never be destroyed.
God's coming kingdom (thy kingdom come) will Not be passed on to other people ( No change of office )
God's kingdom will crush and put an end to all other kingdoms, and it alone will stand forever.
- see Daniel 2:44-45

When we pick up the newspaper or listen to the news we have a summary of the 'bad news' of men's kingdoms or governments.
When we pick up the Scriptures we read about the 'good news' of God's kingdom government - Matthew 24:14
God's kingdom will be the solution to mankind's woes - Isaiah 9:7; Isaiah 11:6-8; Isaiah 11:9; Isaiah 35

How do you believe God's kingdom will put an end to all other kingdoms?

 

[loverofhumanity]

Weren't all the resurrections that Jesus performed ' real resurrections' real physical resurrections ?_______
To me, Jesus was giving us a preview, or coming attraction, of what he will do during his 1,000-year governmental rulership over Earth.
First, No one who lived before Jesus was called to heaven including King David - John 3:13; Acts of the Apostles 2:34
So, they can have a happy-and-healthy physical resurrection during Jesus' millennium-long day of governing over Earth.

What is unique for our day is that the humble ' sheep ' living at the soon coming 'time of separation' - Matthew 25:31-33,37 - can remain alive on Earth, and continue to live on Earth, right into the start of Jesus' millennial reign over Earth when even enemy death will be brought to nothing .
- 1 Corinthians 15:24-26; Isaiah 25:8

With Christ, the real miracle was that he changed hearts. When people only concentrate on the outward things they forget the inner message and we end up fighting over doctrines and we have witnessed over the centuries all Faiths forget their original message to concentrate on their 'superiority' over all the others, that they are number one and the best while the world lacks virtuous people to lead it to peace.

The world is tired of religion which is only a competition for number one and want a religion which transforms hearts and creates a loving world. We need love not just more preaching. That is why the world is rejecting religion in droves because it has no place in society if it cannot create virtuous people.

 

[CG Didymus]

It will take many generations, much patience and education to raise the moral standards of people.

However, if the Baha'i Community were adversely affected by someone with wrong intent we must protect ourselves. For instance, if a Baha'i has homosexual tendencies and struggles to overcome them then nothing likely would be said. But if that same person were to begin having homosexual parties getting other Baha'is involved that would be when the Baha'i administration would step in as homosexuality is forbidden by our Faith but on a personal level it is fully understood that many Baha'is struggle with it however the line is drawn when they try to involve the wider Baha'i Community or Community.

The same with gambling and drinking. Baha'is may struggle personally and that is understood compassionately but having alcohol parties or sex parties or things like drug parties would be dealt with firmly.

So homosexuals can become Baha'is but they are not to promote it and are encouraged to try to overcome it as it is against Baha'i law.

I was first introduced to the Baha'i Faith by some gay Baha'is and they were the nicest people you could hope to meet. They did have parties but I don't think they involved other Baha'is but I still think that eventually they would have been asked to reconsider the example they were setting for others and maybe lose their good Baha'i status but I have no idea as that was 40 years ago.

In situations where Baha'is will go public against the Baha'i administration on basic Baha'i laws they are asked to reconsider because being a Baha'i entails commitment to Baha'i laws. If one goes online with the intent to defame the Baha'i Community because it won't accept homosexuality then I fully agree that person maybe shouldn't be a Baha'i but has no right to bully us to forego our right of freedom of religion. Such tactics usually result in one losing their 'Baha'i in good standing' status but really, people who feel this strongly should never join the Faith in the first place because we cannot cater for things like drinking, gambling or gay parties etc.

We are a religion seeking to promote a pure, holy and chaste way of life so if people don't like our lifestyle they shouldn't be trying to bully us to accept their demands but go their own way and let us go our way.

The Universal House of Justice, if you read their letters are most patient and tolerant but we can't change our laws to accommodate everyone so sometimes the best thing is for them to go their way and us our way.

One of the aspects of not having "overwhelming" proof of a religion is that there is no overwhelming proof that the rules and laws of a religion are from God and not from man. The Baha'i Faith claim that all religions were revealed by the one and only God and that they are progressive isn't consistent when it comes to sexual sins as far as I can tell. Like I mentioned in an earlier post, God told the Hebrews to stone adulterers. Jesus didn't uphold this law, but said that all who lust in their hearts have already committed adultery. So I would imagine that makes everyone guilty at one time or another, but he never said anything about stoning people.

So, apparently, God changed his law? If he did, then why in Islam did God introduce his punishment again? I've read that it's 100 lashes and sometimes even stoning. So that is not progressive. That is people making a religion fit their culture. The only thing progressive about any religion is that it took a few things from the previous belief systems and made some improvements. But did these changes come from God or from people? Maybe, the Baha'i Faith is a religion that has put together beliefs and laws that can be acceptable to a majority of the people in the world, but a progression? Maybe a synthesis, but I still think it's closer to being a liberalization of Islam, because of the types of laws it has, because of the 19 day fast, because of the obligatory prayers, and because of the pilgrimage... way too similar to Islam.

 

[loverofhumanity]

In a way you're right about a religion fitting its culture because where there is no government, police, courts, prisons etc some laws had to be very harsh to create respect for the rule of law such as was not prevalent among the savage tribes of the Arabian Peninsula in the time of Muhammad who used to bury their first born alive in the desert sand if it were a female.

To reign in and bring under control savage barbarians harsh laws were needed. At that time you had serial rapists, serial killers and mass murderers plundering and roaming the lands freely doing as they pleased. Any effort to educate and discipline had to contain serious repercussions and consequences for departure from civilised behaviour.

Now, with the industrial revolution and the scientific and technological revolutions we are in a different space where each land has courts, police, governments and prisons so we are in no need of stoning laws etc so God has sent Baha'u'llah with laws appropriate for our level of maturity and to love all humanity.

So God progressively changes and adapts laws according to the needs of the age and the level of maturity of the people at the time. At one time stoning was required, now the most important thing is the knowledge of the oneness of all humanity and for each of us to unconditionally accept all humanity as our family.

We can never end wars as long as one of us consider ourselves superior to the others. Only by accepting that we are all equal can we end war.

 

[CG Didymus]

In a way you're right about a religion fitting its culture because where there is no government, police, courts, prisons etc some laws had to be very harsh to create respect for the rule of law such as was not prevalent among the savage tribes of the Arabian Peninsula in the time of Muhammad who used to bury their first born alive in the desert sand if it were a female.

To reign in and bring under control savage barbarians harsh laws were needed. At that time you had serial rapists, serial killers and mass murderers plundering and roaming the lands freely doing as they pleased. Any effort to educate and discipline had to contain serious repercussions and consequences for departure from civilised behaviour.

Now, with the industrial revolution and the scientific and technological revolutions we are in a different space where each land has courts, police, governments and prisons so we are in no need of stoning laws etc so God has sent Baha'u'llah with laws appropriate for our level of maturity and to love all humanity.

So God progressively changes and adapts laws according to the needs of the age and the level of maturity of the people at the time. At one time stoning was required, now the most important thing is the knowledge of the oneness of all humanity and for each of us to unconditionally accept all humanity as our family.

We can never end wars as long as one of us consider ourselves superior to the others. Only by accepting that we are all equal can we end war.

The so-called Judea-Christian morality that was imposed on the U.S. was based on a 2000+ year old book. To be progressive sometimes, maybe even usually, means to liberalize laws and get away from religious-based laws that claim that they "God's" law. To keep morals in-line with God's supposed standard still would require harsh punishment.

But even with the harshest punishment, people are still going to break every law trying to keep them from "fooling around." And, we all know that even religious leaders can't keep from giving in to temptation once in a while, or maybe even most of the time, but they keep it secret. So what's worse, people lying and doing it in secret, people so sexually repressed they become total basket cases, or people that rebel and do it in spite of any law? And part of the reason those people rebel is not only because they want the physical pleasure, but they see the hypocrisy in those that try and enforce or preach a "Godly" moral standard.

 

[URAVIP2ME]

How do you believe God's kingdom will put an end to all other kingdoms?

To me, there is a ' final signal', so to speak, mentioned at 1 Thessalonians 5:2-3.
When ' they ' (powers that be) will be saying 'Peace and Security' it will be a precursor to the coming great tribulation of Revelation 7:14
The 'powers that be' will surprisingly turn on the world's corrupted religious systems - Matthew 7:21-23
That ' house cleaning ', so to speak, will begin with those who profess Christianity - 1 Peter 4:17
Today, the United Nations see a hauntingly dangerous religious climate brewing in the world.
With backing the U. N. can be strengthened to become God's long 'Arm of the Law' to carry out His wishes against corrupted religions.
Jesus, as Prince of Peace, will then usher in global Peace on Earth among men of goodwill - Isaiah 11:3-4; Revelation 19:14-16
Thus, under Christ all nations will be united and blessed with the benefit of healing - Revelation 22:2

 

[URAVIP2ME]

With Christ, the real miracle was that he changed hearts. When people only concentrate on the outward things they forget the inner message and we end up fighting over doctrines and we have witnessed over the centuries all Faiths forget their original message to concentrate on their 'superiority' over all the others, that they are number one and the best while the world lacks virtuous people to lead it to peace.
The world is tired of religion which is only a competition for number one and want a religion which transforms hearts and creates a loving world. We need love not just more preaching. That is why the world is rejecting religion in droves because it has no place in society if it cannot create virtuous people.

In Scripture, Jesus agrees we need love. Not selfish distorted love, but self-sacrificing love as Jesus had - John 13:34-35
Jesus rejected the religion of his day as it was Not creating virtuous people - Matthew 15:9. Also please see Matthew chapter 23 because Jesus pronounced many ' woes ', and his reasons for those ' woes', against the corrupted religious leaders of his day.
Jesus taught that before the time of Revelation 22:2 begins, the 'real' miracle, so to speak, would be changed hearts - John 13:34-35
Changed hearts through hearing and learning about God's kingdom government - Luke 4:43; Acts of the Apostles 8:30-31
How can a person change without first hearing - Romans 10:14-15

The world being tired of competitive religion (except here I see a lot of materialistic celebrating of the Saturnalia X-mas) could make it easier for people to back the United Nations in order to strengthen it to go up against the world's competitive religious practices and doctrines.

 

[godnotgod]

I don't think we have any evidence whatsoever of a historical Jesus. Quite on the contrary.

The birth is all but stated outright as a fictional event, complete with stars on the sky that somehow mark specific places over land, mythical parenting and prophecies.

He vanishes from sight entirely for more than twenty years and yet the narrative simply knows somehow that it is the same person.

And then he begins to work literal miracles and supposedly ressurrects and is ascended to the heavens after his death.

Really?

No, I never saw any reason to think of Jesus as having even a core of a historical person. I'm puzzled as to why anyone would.

'Jesus', as we have generally come to know him, seems to be a concoction of one very clever St. Paul. Having said that, I really do think there was a real man, but did not resemble the modern image of who 'Jesus' was. This man was Yeshua. I say that there was a real man involved because there exist numerous sayings that can only have come from someone with a certain amount of spiritual knowledge, and many of those statements are Eastern in flavor and content*. The ordinary man could not have spoken these things. So the scenario, as I see it, is that one very real spiritual teacher named Yeshua was versed in Eastern thought, and whose practices were those centered on the breath as the life-force. He was a Nazarene, a cult of the Essenes, which is a Jewish mystical cult, and whose original teachings did not include a virgin birth, blood sacrifice, nor a bodily resurrection. These doctrines were overwritten onto those of Yeshua, as a clever device by Paul and Rome for mass conversion and ultimately political control. One only had to submit to 'Jesus' as one's lord and saviour, and one was instantly saved. One did not need to actually KNOW anything, or practice difficult and esoteric inner breath control which did not have wide mass appeal. Regarding those some 18 missing years, the East has more information about his whereabouts than his own Christian apologists. The Buddhist monks at the monastery in Hemis in the Himalayas refer to Yeshua as 'our beloved St. Issa', and even claim to possess a scroll of his teachings while he spent time there during his travels into India, China, and Tibet. Persia claims to have experienced him as
'Yuz Asaph', and both names roughly translate as 'savior', as I understand it. So what St. Paul actually did, was to synthesize 3 elements to brilliantly launch what is today called 'modern Christianity'. These 3 elements are, one, Jewish history as backdrop, to lend credibility to the myth; two, the principle of The Logos descending from a heavenly realm to man as teacher, taken from the Gnostics; and three, the principle of the dying and resurrected god-man, taken from the mystery religions such as Mithraism and in which Paul was steeped as a child in his native Tarsus.

"Paul, not Jesus, was the founder of Christianity as a new religion which developed away from both normal Judaism and the Nazarene variety of Judaism. In this new religion, the Torah was abrogated as having had only temporary validity. The central myth of the new religion was that of an atoning death of a divine being. Belief in this sacrifice, and a mystical sharing of the death of the deity, formed the only path to salvation. Paul derived this religion from Hellenistic sources, chiefly by a fusion of concepts taken from Gnosticism and concepts taken from the mystery religions, particularly from that of Attis. The combination of these elements with features derived from Judaism, particularly the incorporation of the Jewish scriptures, reinterpreted to provide a background of sacred history for the new myth, was unique; and Paul alone was the creator of this amalgam. Jesus himself had no idea of it, and would have been amazed and shocked at the role assigned to him by Paul as a suffering deity. Nor did Paul have any predecessors among the Nazarenes though later mythography tried to assign this role to Stephen, and modern scholars have discovered equally mythical predecessors for Paul in a group called the 'Hellenists'. Paul, as the personal begetter of the Christian myth, has never been given sufficient credit for his originality. The reverence paid through the centuries to the great Saint Paul has quite obscured the more colourful features of his personality. Like many evangelical leaders, he was a compound of sincerity and charlatanry. Evangelical leaders of his kind were common at this time in the Greco-Roman world (e.g. Simon Magus, Apollonius of Tyana). "

http://jdstone.org/cr/files/theproblemofpaul.html
*****

"Yeshua had a host of supernatural events surrounding his birth and death. The question is, where did these events suddenly come from?

We find them in Mithras. The missionaries promoting Yeshua as the messiah for humankind simply wrote them into the narrations about Yeshua**. A list of characteristics of Mithras follows. Remember that these were centuries old before Yeshua was even born. You'll see what was borrowed to make Yeshua more appealing to the pagan Mithraites:"

1. Mithras was born of a virgin who was given the title of "Mother of God"
2. Mithras was born on December 25. Before Constantine (a follower of Mithras) changed the date, the birth date Yeshua's followers observed was January 6. However, Yeshua's birth, based on the descriptions, would actually have been in the spring.
3. Mithras was born in a cave (stable), and his birth was attended by shepherds bearing gifts.
4. Mithras was considered a great traveling teacher and master.
5. Mithras had 12 companions or disciples.
6. Mithras performed miracles.
7. Mithras' followers were baptized.
8. Mithras suffered to bring salvation to a sin-cursed humankind.
9. Mithras was buried in a tomb and rose after three days. (Yeshua rose after a day and a half, but the gospel accounts used the three days to fit with Mithras' story, in spite of the obvious disparity in the timeline.)
10. Mithras' resurrection was celebrated every year.
11. Mithras ascended into heaven after finishing his deeds.
12. Mithras' followers were promised immortality.
13. Mithras was called “the good shepherd” and identified with both the lamb and the lion.
14. Mithras was called the “way, the truth and the light,” " logos,” "word," “redeemer,” “savior” and “messiah.”
15. On the Judgment Day, Mithras would use the keys of heaven to unlock the gates of Paradise to receive the faithful. All the unbaptized living and dead would perish.
16. Mithra's sacred day was Sunday, called the “Lord’s day” because Mithraism was a sun religion. Yeshua's sacred day was changed from the Jewish Sabbath, Saturday, to match Mithras' day.
17. Mithras had his principal festival on the day that was later to become Easter for Christians.
18. Mithras' religion had a Eucharist or “Lord’s Supper,” at which Mithras said, “He who shall not eat of my body nor drink of my blood so that he may be one with me and I with him, shall not be saved.”
19. On a final day of judgment, the dead would resurrect and in a final conflict, the existing order would be destroyed and light would triumph over darkness.

Since all of these characteristics of Mithras predated Yeshua by fourteen hundred years, Mithraism could not have copied the Yeshua story; it had to be the reverse. These details about Yeshua were not in the earliest sources. They appeared later.

http://30ce.com/mithras.htm

*For example, Yeshua's words from the cross: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do". Yeshua is asking his Father to forgive his transgressors, not for their sin, but for their ignorance, and it is ignorance that is the problem in Buddhism, not sin. Additionally, we have the 'Parable of the Lilies of the Field', sometimes referred to as 'The Wisdom of Insecurity' by mystics, a very Eastern teaching.

**The Church did much the same thing in Mexico, by 'adopting' Tonantzin, the Aztec Goddess of Fertility, and transforming her into Our Lady of Guadalupe Hidalgo, as a device to convert several million indigenous Indios into Christiantiy. The Indios simply followed where their goddess dwelt.

 

[sunray]

Has anyone seen the Utube video 'Power of positive belief and healing... Awesome!
Well this speaker starts out in talking about things we studied in the Emin back in the 80s. As above so below etc... He also mentions that the Bible was edited in 328? by Constantine:
I've also read that the Bible we know today was written or edited for women and children. It is also considered a comic book by some, what's missing, although there are still some references lesf in the Bible, are the higher notions, which make it a Cosmic book. Ref I once knew a man who was taken to the third heaven! So there are levels. Another of the thingsbrought up in the Emin.