As we saw in the previous posts, what I had learned so far: Christianity and the Gospel, as commonly understood today, are in fact fake news that has resulted in great harm as we will see below.
In this Gospel a wrong image of Jesus is presented – either as:
1) a baby in a crib in an inn, with three Arab-looking magicians giving gifts. But he was not in an inn, but probably in a house of one of David’s descendants. The animals were kept on the ground floor of the house while the people slept on the upper floor. He was already a toddler when the wise men came to bring gifts. There were probably more than three wise men as they would travel in group for security, but just three types of gifts are mentioned.
Or 2) he is presented as a rather effeminate, very white European man whose delicate hands had never worked with a carpenter’s tools.
He certainly is not presented as the dynamic, masculine, tanned individual who is capable of leading the charge on a huge white war horse, dripping with blood. With this Jesus God was well pleased:
“Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.” Acts 2:36
I must confess I liked the poster in the catechism class of the long haired Jesus, in a dress, carrying a lamb – I know, it is part of the fake news.
Resulting from the fake news, are various styles of opulent churches:
This “fake news Christianity” is nevertheless attributed to God and results in God and Jesus being mocked in the media and the Internet/social media by other religions and most of secular society.
Before the real Yeshua ben David or Yeshua ben Yoseph (Joshua son of David/Joseph) returns to set up God’s kingdom, the enemy will send his imposter, a “dynamic, masculine, tanned individual” who people will believe is capable of making peace in the Middle East, solve the climate and world economic problems. He is known in scripture as the Antichrist – against God’s plan to send the real king that he had anointed for the task.
The other side of the coin
A man dies and goes to heaven (yes, I know fake news has even crept into jokes, we don’t go to heaven, or hell, when we die. Peter is not waiting for us). When Peter shows him around, there was a huge walled-in section with lots of laughing and merriment going on behind the wall. When the man asked about it, Peter answered “we keep the Catholics* in there so that the don’t know they are not the only ones in heaven.”
*Choose your denomination to suit your audience.
Who is right, the Catholics, the Evangelicals, the Protestants, etc.? Will only protestants be allowed in heaven? Surely not the Greek Orthodox or the Progressive Christians! This is such a silly question – being a member of any one of these denominations will not be your guarantee of a “place in heaven”.
Which denomination has the most aspects correct? Also a silly question in my view. None of us have everything right!
I hope my faith journey so far has not made you too angry, ready to bring me before the Inquisition. In the next post I hope to share with you what I have learned about dealing with doctrinal differences, by looking at the essentials.