High Stakes

by Erin McCarthy

  This might seem to be another contradiction since John was Christ’s cousin and boyhood playmate, but Francine gives a very good explanation. She says that Christ had not seen John for more than fifteen years and that John didn’t recognize him as a man because he had last seen him as a boy. I also feel that this is very plausible, but in addition, I feel that the Gospel of John is also saying that even though John knew Jesus as his cousin, he didn’t know he was the actual Messiah that both he and other prophets had foretold was coming. It was only when the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove descended on Jesus that John recognized that Jesus was indeed the chosen one of God. When he says, “I didn’t know him,” it is meant only in the aspect that he didn’t know his cousin was the Messiah and seems somewhat shocked, which would bring out the second “I did not know him” in an almost incredulous manner.

  Before we get into Christ’s time in the wilderness, which is the next incident in his life as portrayed by most of the gospels, I want to relate what happened to John the Baptist. John was somewhat of a rabble-rouser. He spoke what he believed to be the truth and didn’t care much about whom he offended. In my research, I’ve found that John the Baptist was also an Essene like Christ. It was the Jewish sect of Essenes that put forth the concept of baptism. They believed that baptism was to cleanse one of traumas and bad actions from past lives and not of original sin (but we’ll get into that in a little bit). Unlike Christ, John subcribed to the strict and ascetic teachings of the Essenes. Francine says this is because John had spent his whole life in Roman-occupied Israel and, like a lot of Judaic men, resented the Romans. He was a revolutionist in his own thinking. While Jesus had been subjected to more passive and loving teachings, John had not. Following the strict asceticism of the Essenes, he preached to all who would listen and baptized thousands. It was his strict interpretation of Jewish law that eventually got him into trouble with Herod. Before that time, Herod and the hierarchy of the Temple viewed John as a dangerous nuisance because of his preaching against the hypocrisies of both of them.

  John the Baptist would most probably have survived if he hadn’t gone against Herodias, the wife of Herod. He called Herod and Herodias adulterers and Herodias a harlot because Herodias had divorced Herod’s brother and married Herod while he was still alive. John’s accusation angered Herodias and she used Herod’s attraction for his stepdaughter Salome (fathered by Herod’s brother previously) to gain her revenge. We all know the story about Herod becoming drunk and asking Salome to dance for him. She refuses and he begs her to dance and even promises anything up to half his kingdom to her for her dance. She asks her mother what she should demand and her mother says, “The head of John the Baptist.” Salome then asks for his head and Herod, afraid to go back on his word, reluctantly has John executed and his head brought forth on a platter. Francine says when Jesus heard about his cousin John’s death, he immediately sat down and cried in tremendous grief.

  While the Essenes saw baptism as a washing-away of all past life traumas, Christianity made it into a cleansing of the sins of Adam and Eve (original sin). This, I feel, is a really bad interpretation. Most scholars believe that the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis of the Old Testament is symbolic in nature. The story of Adam and Eve reads like mythology and is meant to be symbolic. If read literally it doesn’t make any sense, especially when it comes to the part about the sons of Adam and Eve marrying women and having wives and children. When Cain went to the land of Nod he got married, but where did his wife and the wife of his brother Seth come from? If it is read as a symbolic tale, however, the presence of these other people is only part of the symbolism and can be considered a valid extension of the story. The Tree of Knowledge is a tree whose fruit bears the knowledge of all good and evil. It is the symbol of knowledge, but it is also the symbol of temptation; and God tells both Adam and Eve that they can eat anything but the fruit of that tree.

  Then there is the symbolism of the snake telling Eve it’s all right to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. The use of the snake was in rebuttal to all the fertility gods in the various pagan religions that surrounded Israel. When Solomon built the first Temple for Israel, its main columns were fashioned to represent snakes and fertility, as there was a lot of influence of other religions in ancient Israel. The snake thus represents symbolically these other religions tempting the people of Israel, who are represented symbolically by Adam and Eve—their supposed parents. Eve eats the fruit and also persuades Adam to eat the fruit. Women (represented by Eve) are forever branded as temptresses to men (represented by Adam)—even to this day. I’ve always said Adam got what he deserved—what kind of wimp was Adam that he went along with it? Adam and Eve then put on clothes to hide their nakedness. God looks for Adam, finds him, and Adam says he had hidden because he was naked. Then God asks, “Who told you that you were naked?”

  This particular area of Genesis also brings up another inconsistency in the Bible, for it portrays God as not knowing everything when we all know he does. We find him asking, “Where are you, Adam?” as well as the question about his nakedness. God would know where Adam was and He would also know who tempted Eve, who tempted Adam, etc. Whenever you have the hand of man doing the writing, you will always find error and inconsistency.

  The whole story of Adam and Eve is the symbolic story of humankind leaving paradise (the Other Side) and coming down to incarnate on the negative plane of Earth. Evil does not exist on the Other Side (or paradise), so Adam and Eve were banished to the Earth “to till the fields for their food” and “to bear their children in pain.” This is pure symbolism at its finest and does teach that the Earth plane is negative and full of temptation and evil. Think of this, how do you learn unless you go to a negative plane where evil and temptation exist to test the mettle of your soul? You can’t learn about evil in a perfect environment, but as evil is part of knowledge you must learn about it so that you know what good is. To learn about evil does not make you evil, it just gives you the knowledge to avoid becoming evil.

  Thus, the concept of “original sin” was born in the symbolism of Adam and Eve eating the fruit of the tree that God told them not to eat. We can thereby deduce that if the story about original sin is symbolic, then so is the concept. “Original Sin” is just symbolic of the fact that although God is perfect, His/Her creations are not and are always in the state of being tempted on this plane we call Earth.

  We then have three of the gospels—Matthew, Mark and Luke—relating how Christ was taken into the wilderness. John is silent on this incident. According to the gospels that relate it, Jesus was “taken” by the Holy Spirit to the wilderness after the heavens opened and a voice said, “You are my beloved son; with you I am pleased.” They go on to relate how Christ fasted for forty days and nights and how the “adversary” (edited in as Satan) tempted Jesus by promising him riches and fame. Mark is very short on this, while both Matthew and Luke go into dialogues between Jesus and the adversary.

  Francine disagrees with their account because she says he went to the desert after about a year in public life. He went alone as he wanted to contemplate and be free to hear God’s voice. He knew what lay ahead and wanted to steel himself against it. Francine says that no devil as such came and tempted him, but he did do battle with his own conscience. He knew with his charisma he could have been an august ruler by socializing with the Sanhedrin and politicians and giving in to the mores of that day. He would have had wealth and the power to go with it. This was a time of quiet meditation and retrospection in which he communicated with his Father in heaven in preparation for what he had to do. While Matthew and Luke relate conversations with the adversary, Francine says that these conversations were made up to reflect the ever-increasing belief of the early Church in an entity called the devil. Francine says it may make for a good story, but simply isn’t true; and after thirty (not forty) days in which he only at times fasted and at other times ate some food and had drink, he came out to rejoin his family.

  Ma
ry Magdalene, according to Francine, was always by his side and some teachings in Gnostic beliefs put forth that she was the direct report of the Mother God at that time, known as Sophia, just as Christ was a direct report of God the Father. They were here as replications of the true Mother and Father God. We all have within us the DNA of the divine Creators; but Mary and Jesus were examples of life as it should be lived, how marriage should be upheld and how love of humankind should be primary.

  The Knights Templar, later on, seemed to believe this and tried to protect this knowledge and were murdered for it; although many escaped with knowledge of the information and what Christ’s heritage was.

  Christ then sets on his path to pick men who will follow him and become disciples. For the sake of continuity and understanding, I will always try to follow the timeline that the majority of gospels put forth. Where there is a discrepancy, I will point it out if it is of a significant nature. We will find that most of these discrepancies will have the Gospel of John right in the middle of them, but other books clash, too, as we have already noticed with the gospels of Matthew and Luke. I personally like the Gospel of John, but as you will continue to see, his gospel is much different than the others in many respects.

  As John does not mention Christ’s time in the wilderness, John has Christ gathering disciples immediately (Chapter 1) while Luke, Mark and Matthew have him getting his disciples after his time in the desert. There is some discrepancy in the gospels about whom Jesus gathered first as his disciple. John says Andrew and another who remained unidentified. Luke, Mark and Matthew have Jesus calling on both Simon (Peter) and Andrew, who were brothers and fishermen, and then James and John (also brothers and fishermen). Some of the gospels go on to tell about Jesus picking up other disciples, and not always in the same order, but I really think this is of little consequence. I’m only trying to make you realize the scope of the inconsistencies that are throughout the New Testament.

  Jesus initially picked twelve disciples. They included Simon (Peter); Andrew the brother of Simon (Peter); James the son of Zebedee; John the brother of James of Zebedee; Levi (Matthew); Philip; Bartholomew; Thomas; James the son of Alpheus; Simon who was called Zelotes (and also known as Simon the Zealot or Simon the Canaanite); Jude (also known as Judas, son of James and Labbaeus); and Judas Iscariot. With two Simons and two Jameses and two Judases among his disciples, they often can get confused. Jesus wanted men he could teach and, in following him, obey orders. He knew what he was going to teach them had to be shared with the world by men who would spread out and give the knowledge to the many peoples in different lands.

  He had people from all walks of life as his disciples, from Matthew the tax collector to the fishermen Peter, Andrew, James and John. He picked from the rich and the poor so he could get a wide swatch from every facet of life. This was clever, because it shows much thought went into whom he picked and why. It really was very astute, and let’s even use the word prophetic, to realize his public life would be short, so he had to have men who would follow, listen and spread the word long after he had ceased to be around. He could have picked scholars, but they might have already been indoctrinated. It was better to get a so-called blank slate than to fight men who had their philosophies of life already strongly in place.

  Some went ahead from village to village to proclaim the coming of this prophet who would give them truth and perhaps even heal them. He started out with just a few people following him, which quickly became twenty or thirty whom he would talk and be close to. This escalated to the point where in Luke 10–11 we have him sending out seventy-two disciples to various towns and cities. All of these communities in Israel were close, so word traveled fast. Francine says some came out to see him out of curiosity, others to jeer and some because they wanted to learn or be healed.

  You must remember it was even worse than today. Yes, we have skeptics…but we have freedom of speech. Where he had full reign in India or other countries that were tolerant of other religions and philosophies, in Israel he had Roman rule and their gods as well as the Sanhedrin and the fearful and vengeful God of the Jews to deal with. Jesus now found himself in a stage of his life in which he was in conflict with both. Yes, he preached about one God, but his God is not wrathful. Jesus brought forth a loving and caring God who doesn’t play favorites, for He reaches out even to sinners and loves everyone. This was blasphemy to the Sanhedrin, but the Romans didn’t pay much attention to the man known as Jesus, because they were so powerful and he was not a revolutionist like his cousin John the Baptist. John had been far more judgmental and had constantly railed against Roman occupation. Jesus, on the other hand, used words of kindness to persuade people.

  Jesus employed all the knowledge that he had gained in his travels. Being a Gnostic, he was never afraid to incorporate any part of any truth or any religion that had true knowledge; he would just couch his words to fit into Jewish thought and tradition, and extensively used parables to get his points across. Being an Essene, he was influenced by not only their philosophy, but their documentation. He urged those of his followers who could write, like Thomas, Matthew and James, to set down everything they saw or heard. Jesus was not concerned about preserving his legacy so much as he was about leaving writings that his disciples could refer to when they became apostles and spread his teachings. Essenes preserved their heritage through their writings and made sure they were secure by secreting them away if it became necessary.

  The reason they did this was because they were considered to be a radical sect of zealots by the Sanhedrin and Pharisees and were consequently regularly oppressed. The religious groups of the Sanhedrin and Pharisees were very powerful and influential and, tragically, as it is today in many religions, ruled their people by fear. If you were only going to help people by the pure love of God, the shining example of healing and beauty, you wouldn’t be able to give people enough fear and guilt and consequently you couldn’t milk them for money. Religion thus becomes big business. We see this today, sadly, with the evangelists and even with the Vatican. I’m not condemning or judging, I’m just saying this is historical truth. Look at Martin Luther, who got tired of the Church selling indulgences and split off and caused the Reformation. He felt people shouldn’t pay to get into heaven.

  Christ always felt throughout his life that his teachings were most important and that they must be preserved, if at all possible. His whole focus was on changing the way the Jewish people felt and believed in God. The one thing that most people completely forget is that Christ was a Jew, he was not a Christian.

  He was teaching a people who had strict laws and traditions dating back to the time of Moses and beyond. Jesus always had to walk a tightrope with his teachings, because many were considered blasphemous by the conservative elements of Judaism. He had to be careful with his words and ideas, which is why he has been misinterpreted so many times over the years. We read in the Gospel of Luke about Jesus, after his time in the wilderness, going to Nazareth, his hometown, and preaching in the synagogue there, only to have his own townspeople carry him in anger to the highest hill to throw him off a cliff because they didn’t like what he said (Luke 4:28–29). Can you imagine how he would have reacted? Here he was with people he had grown up with and they wanted to throw him off a cliff because of what he said. He was frightened, but he also learned a very important lesson: he had to be careful with his words.

  While we are on the subject of Christ’s teachings, I want to interject something here that is of a more controversial, yet personal, nature. I have always called myself a Gnostic Christian because I believe in obtaining as much knowledge as possible about God, and I have always believed that Jesus Christ was a direct report and messenger from God and love his teachings. But here is the kicker: I don’t necessarily ascribe to all of the teachings as put forth in the Bible, and I don’t feel he is the savior for all of mankind and that he died for our sins. Now, some of you might ask, “How can you call yourself a Christian, then?” I call myself Christia
n because I do believe in Christ’s teachings and I do believe in his divinity as a special entity from God. I don’t believe in the concept of a savior for mankind, simply because humankind is too diverse in their beliefs, but I do believe that God sends us divine messengers to help us who are as diverse as we are. In other words, I consider Buddha and Muhammad to be divine messengers for certain parts of the world, just as Christ was for Judaism and ultimately Christianity.

  Some of you may say, “How can you say he was a messenger for Judaism? They don’t believe he was their Messiah.” Just because they don’t believe Jesus was their Savior doesn’t mean he didn’t influence them with his teachings. Judaism as well as Islam both recognize Christ as a great prophet and teacher. As I said earlier, Jesus was a Jew and focused his teachings within the parameters of the Judaic faith, but many of his teachings also apply to all of us universally. The attributes of a Divine Messenger have always included teachings that are of a universal nature; teachings that can transcend culture and customs and traditions, that are just universal truths that can apply to anyone at any time. Christ was that kind of a teacher.

  I have always believed in an all-loving and merciful God who forgives all of his creations in their transgressions. I have expounded on God in many of my books and don’t believe God has the petty qualities of anger or vengeance, and I certainly don’t believe he punishes anyone. God is perfect in his love and forgiveness. Jesus tried to point out the loving qualities of God in various ways, but the Bible says he retained the belief that God would punish the wicked and stands in judgment. Francine has told me that Jesus did not believe in those two concepts and that he never said God would punish anybody or that there would ever be a day of judgment. She insists those portions of the Bible that say he said these things were inserted and edited in by the early Christians who wrote the Bible. I believe what Francine says. I certainly differ with the concepts of a Judgment Day and God punishing anybody, and it would be pure hypocrisy if I said I didn’t.