Category Archives: Christian extremists

Athens

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Dennis and I were recently in Greece enjoying some late summer sun and visiting places I learnt about exactly 60 years ago in my first term at Grammar School. Most spectacular of these was the Acropolis, the ancient ‘high city’ of Athens with the beautiful Parthenon at its centre. The Parthenon was completed in 776 BC as a temple to the city’s Goddess, Athena. Athena, Goddess of wisdom, was considered a virgin, hence the temple’s name from parthenos, the Greek for virgin.

The white marble temple had gleamed over Athens, and Athena had protected her people (or so they thought) for more than 800 years when the creator of Acts decided to give his hero Paul a little adventure there.

‘Luke’ had evidently read Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, written circa AD 55, in which Paul makes a passing reference (3:1) to stopping off briefly in Athens. 25 years later, Luke, conjures up the story now found in Acts 17:16-34 in which Paul takes on the souvenir trade of Athens. He spots that small statues of Athena and other gods are being sold in the Odos Tripodon (the modern version pictured below), where people would meet to socialise, listen to philosophers and buy statues of their deities. Paul of course gets the better of all of them, pointing out that he knows the Unknown God whose inscription appears on some trinket and immediately makes converts of a number who hear him. Because in every New Testament account that’s what happens.

The entire account is of course invented. Paul’s theology in 1 Thessalonians is not that reflected in Acts; it’s completely different in fact. More than this, Paul really wouldn’t have been listened to by the educated and erudite philosophers who frequented both the Odos Tripodon and the Aeropagus. Much less would they have considered debating an interloper they describe in Acts 17:18 as a ‘babbler’. (See Bart Ehrman’s take on the episode here.) 

The Acts story is an allegory, as so many are in the New Testament. It is designed to show how superior the fledgling Christianity is to the old religions. Jesus whups Athena’s ass and by extension all the Greek pantheon. And unfortunately, ultimately, that’s how it turned out to be: in the long term Christianity all but wiped out the gods of antiquity. One set of imaginary deities defeated by a decidedly inferior, but no less imaginary, new mob. Despite Greek science, philosophy and vastly superior knowledge, Paul’s superstition, hallucinations and visions won out. The Odos Tripodon became known as the Dionysiou Areopagitou, supposedly after Paul’s first convert, and is now also known as Apostolou Pavlou Street, after Paul himself. The Parthenon was converted into a church in the 6th century, when the Christians did away with the ancient statue of Athena. They had their own Virgin Goddess and she was the real deal (or so they thought.)

In the 15th century the temple became a mosque and in the 19th, the British plundered some of its sculptures, the so-called Elgin marbles. These can still be seen today in the British Museum, but really should be returned to the ancient site where they were created and belong.

Still, visit Athens, the Acropolis and the Parthenon – and you really should – and you can feel the old gods prevail. They gave us, through their acolytes, science, mathematics, democracy, drama, theatre, literature, education, art, the Olympic Games and civilisation in general. Did the gods of Christianity and Islam give us anything remotely comparable?

Premonitions

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Have your ever had visions or premonitions? When I say visions I don’t mean an outward manifestation of a supernatural being or ghost. These things don’t exist so you can’t see them out there, hovering about in the real world. You can however ‘see’ them in your head, as the earliest Christians envisioned the risen Jesus. This doesn’t mean they’re actually in your head, just that you perceive them to be. If they’re vivid enough, you can be fooled into thinking they have a physical presence out in reality. But they don’t; they don’t physically manifest. There is nothing supernatural about them. Visions are a phenomenon of the mind only, occurring under certain, often traumatic, conditions.

Premonitions are a little different. They are the spontaneous appearance in your mind of an event that has yet to happen. Like visions, these are not supernatural occurrences, but the product of the mind. I’ve had a few in my time:

  • Back in my fanatical Christian days, I saw the exact circumstances, that led to the conversion of some college friends. This was months before I’d gone to college and I hadn’t even met the friends in question. I wrote about it here.
  • While on a plane in severe difficulties, I saw a clear picture of  landing safely in Miami. I told my young daughter who was with me that we needn’t worry – the plane’s other passengers were in a state of high panic – that our time hadn’t yet come. (I thought I’d written about this previously too but can’t locate it here).
  • Years ago I saw myself talking to a soul mate in a bar on a cruise ship. This was in the days when I didn’t take – and didn’t want to take – holidays of any sort and long before I had any intention of coming out. Holidaying on a ship was never on my horizons, and, as far as I was concerned, never would be. Yet, strangely I knew to trust that the premonition would one day materialise in reality. Dennis and I have now been together 8 years and frequent bars on cruise ships with alarming regularity.

Here’s what I think happens when premonitions like this occur, at least the ones in my head and probably in the heads of others who experience them. The brain has a set of data about any given scenario. It gathers this data from a wide range of sources: our life experience, others’ experiences, stories, our preoccupations and so on. Added to this data is what is usually more than a little wishful thinking, together with subconscious impulses. The brain then creates a likely or even probable scenario for itself which gives us a momentary but realistic glimpse of what could lie in the future. as for their ‘fulfilment’, there’s also a degree of self-fulfilling prophecy involved, plus the convenient forgetting of those glimpses that don’t ever materialise in the real world.

Nonetheless, the premonitions the brain does create can be vivid and realistic. They’re not illogical or inconsistent in the way dreams can be. As a result, they are pretty convincing.

Which is why, despite her age (95) and how ill she was this summer, I wasn’t persuaded my mother was dying.

A couple of years ago, in what I regard as a premonition, I saw the circumstances of my mum’s death. They were not the same as those she endured during the summer. Rather, she falls asleep in a chair, one she’s only just started using, and when I* go in the room later she has gone.

Perhaps I’ll be proved wrong. Maybe there’s too much wishful thinking in this scenario; I want my mum to take her leave gently and peacefully.

We shall see.

I’ve also had a glimpse of my own demise, but that’s a story for another day.

*Or perhaps it’s my sister; I saw this through my own eyes but it’s more likely it’ll be my sister, who lives nearer, that will find my mum. Whichever, that’s not me in the picture above. I could only hope to be as handsome. Thanks AI.

Christianity’s Greatest Failures: 2. Morality

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And straight in at number 2, it’s Christianity’s Failed Morality!

  • Premier Christian News presents what Christianity is all about! Super-hero Jesus! He’s part of the X-Men (you know, the cross and all that)! Maybe The Tragic Trinity. Perhaps just a cheap Superman knockoff.

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What has this to do with Christian morality? Well, nothing, which is the point.

We need, so the Right tells us, to return to Christian morality in the West. It seems to me they know as little about Christian morality as Christian News does. All they seem to have in mind is something to do with family, being nice and kind and going to church.

I’ve really no objection to any of these ideals. If people want to waste their time going to church, that’s their right. But what is the ‘Christian morality’ they want us to ‘return to’? The Christian morality espoused by Jesus?

Not really.

Jesus is often credited, by those who’ve never actually read the gospels, with being an advocate of some sort of Universal Love. He wasn’t, of course; his cultish creators portray him as frequently abrasive, dismissive and exclusionary. His, or rather their, morality is far more radical, far more impractical and, let’s face it, far more antithetical to the family, marriage and society in general. He’s not all that enthusiastic about being nice and kind either.

  • He places adulation of himself above – stratospherically above – ordinary family allegiances. He sees commitment to the cult as far more important than any family ties (Luke 14:26).
  • He regards marriage as a distraction from working towards the Kingdom (Matthew 19:12).
  • He tells his disciples to shake the dust from their feet when people are not receptive to the cult’s message (Matthew 10:14). He seems to think this would show the world what undesirables they were.
  • He would really like to kill his ‘enemies’ (Luke 19:27).

In his latest book, Loving Thy Stranger, which I’ve just started reading, Bart D. Ehrman makes the case that what is startling and novel about Jesus’ morality is its expansion beyond family and community. He is the first, according to Ehrman, to promote a morality that encompasses the stranger and the alien. While of course Ehrman is attempting to show how right on and relevant he is in addressing a hot contemporary issue – immigration – he credits Jesus with too much.

The ancient world prior to the advent of Christianity had rules about the generous treatment of strangers, even if it didn’t always apply them.

You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself (Leviticus 19:34).

There are numerous other verses just like this in the Old Testament, while the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis is about the maltreatment of strangers and the divine wrath that followed. There are also many verses about taking care of the poor. The theme is not unique to Jesus, nor indeed the scriptures. What is, is the extremes to which Jesus took the morality of the Jewish scriptures.

  • So it’s not enough just to help the poor: you must sell all you have and give the proceeds to them (Matthew 19:21). Jesus would sneer, I’m sure, at soup kitchens and charity drives.
  • It’s not enough, then, to give to charity or volunteer: you should regularly visit the sick and the imprisoned, clothe those without clothes (how you’ll manage this when you’ve sold everything is not explained), and welcome every stranger and outcast into your home. Not the state, not the church but you: you must do this to ensure your eternal life (Matthew 34-40).
  • It’s not enough to be kind; you must give to anyone who begs and lend to everyone who wants to borrow from you (Matthew 5:42).
  • It’s not enough to give to all who ask of you: you must go well beyond what they demand, to the point of giving them the shirt off your back (Matthew 5:40).
  • It’s not enough to be nice: you should put others before yourself and become a slave to all (Mark 9.35).
  • It’s not enough to tolerate being put upon: you should ask for more of the same abuse (Matthew 5: 38-42).
  • It’s not enough to welcome more maltreatment: you must love those dishing it out. Not just forgive them, not just pray for them (though that too) but love them (Matthew 5: 43-45).
  • It’s not enough to honour your parents and take care of your children: your allegiances is not to them but rather to unrelated people who happen to believe the same as you (Matthew 12: 46-50).
  • It’s not enough to be sexually responsible: if you can’t stop having lustful thoughts or playing with yourself you must gouge out your eye and cut off your right hand. Hyperbole perhaps (or perhaps not), but nonetheless Jesus demands you take drastic measures (Matthew 5: 27-30).
  • It’s not enough to marry, stay faithful and only have sex in the missionary position: Jesus prefers you don’t marry at all (Matthew 19: 10-12). Nobody’s going to want you anyway when you’ve poked out your eye and amputated your own hand.
  • It’s not enough to live by this morality: you must show the world that you do (Matthew 5: 14-16). Producing silly memes and making a nuisance of yourself on street corners (and calling that love) doesn’t cut it.
  • It’s not enough to be nice: you must be as perfect as God himself (Matthew 5: 48)

There’s more, of course, of this same extreme, unreasonable morality espoused by Jesus. He and his creators had what they felt were good reasons for promoting it, as we’ll see next time. My point here is that it’s so radical, so extreme as to be impractical and unworkable, which is why no-one has ever managed to live by it. Not even those people Don will tell us about, yet again, who build hospitals in Africa. Jesus’ moral demands go far, far beyond this, which is why Christians are compelled to explain them away, along with their own failure to comply with them. (Cue: ‘they’re hyperbole and/or metaphor’ and ‘we Christians are a work in progress.’)

But it’s not so much that believers fail; it’s that the morality they’re supposed to live by is impossible. It is that which fails, and always has.

Return To Sedra

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Here they are, the new Wunderkinds of the Christian circuit: Martin and Millicent Sedra (and a while lot of other Sedras too though I don’t know where they fit in the Great Scheme of Things. The Sedras are the new Wizards of Aus, running a megachurch in Sydney. According to their own press they’re having an impact for Christ around the globe (a pub down the East end.)

34 year old Pastor Martin is from Egypt where he was persecuted for his Christian faith and was forced into growing a beard and wearing expensive designer shades to conceal his identity. Millicent, his wife of almost 8 years, is much younger as you can see in the links but her age is kept secret to avoid any scandal criticism of her being too young to know what she is talking about. Or something. Her videos reveal her to be a young woman who has succeeded in exalting herself to a position of authority and influence while lacking any real experience of life and, indeed, wisdom.

Naturally both Millicent and her husband spout the usual stuff and nonsense about Jesus but also feel qualified to speak about the issues of the day: mental health (demonic); homosexuality (sin); pronouns (‘hell’s language’); women in power (‘Jezebel Spirit’); sex (for hetero-marriage only); Islam (fake. They’re really big on Islam.) Naturally and contrarily given their stance on women in power, Marty and Millie dispute the Bible’s position that a woman should neither hold authority over a man nor preach. After all, taking 1 Timothy 2:12 literally (as they claim they do the rest of the Bible) would prevent Millicent from doing her thing for the Lord and would surely cut off a lucrative revenue stream. The couple announced recently that Millie is pregnant with the couple’s first child. The news was greeted by some acolytes as a tumultuous and spiritually significant event.

The Sedras speak to millions, in stadia and across the Internet and have a massive influence over gullible people’s lives and beliefs. Yet what they are offering is dangerous clap-trap. Their followers worship them as great prophets and God’s agents in what are surely the end times. Jesus is returning soon! Hallelujah!

What is more likely to manifest soon is some controversy or other that even now is lying in wait. How many of the Sedras’ worshippers will then say they knew they were deceivers all along?

Jesus, Jesus and more Jesus

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You find me in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Not, fortunately, in the water but on the world’s only ocean liner, the Queen Mary 2. Dennis and I have been in U.S., both in New York and Washington DC, on a diplomatic mission to the White House. Well, a tourist visit anyway. As I dislike flying (a slight understatement) we are sailing home on the ship. It is a much more dignified and pleasurable way to travel.

Our visit left me wondering how you guys over the pond that I currently find myself on, cope. Not with your president (though heaven knows that too) but with the proliferation of evangelical Christians.

While visiting the Washington Monument in DC we had a small book pressed on us by a young boy whose father(?) stood a little way off. The cover suggested it was about America’s 250th. Inside it was the fourth gospel and the letter to the Romans. It ended up in the trash alongside dozens of others.

On the Metro we were treated to songs about Jesus by a small group of musicians who knew a captive audience when they saw one.

Outside the Capitol we were accosted by a young man on an electric scooter who asked as he glided by, ‘Hey guys, do you know God loves you?’ (He didn’t hear our reply. Perhaps just as well.)

I mean, how do you put up with this?

Worse though was my Facebook feed. I know I’ve grumbled about this before, back home in England, when every other post is about Jesus. But in the U.S. it was worse. I would say 9 of every 10 items items were about him. (Fortunately there are fewer now that we’ve put a few nautical miles between us and the Land of the Free.) You can see a small sample of the hundreds of inanities I received up top.

I did venture to put comments on some of them (Dennis says I was just winding up the witless. Someone’s got to). Responses varied, telling me that,

as I didn’t know Jesus I had no right to comment;

I would one day soon be on my knees at His feet (I did tell them this was more than unlikely given the state of my knees);

the Bible doesn’t suggest women shouldn’t be preachers and Jesus doesn’t say Christians shouldn’t pray ostentatiously in public (both, of course, are the case);

homosexuality is a grievous sin (I assured them it was a lot of fun too). Christians shouldn’t attend same-sex weddings (this one was particularly sad as one Christian couple who commented said they wouldn’t be attending their daughter’s wedding to another woman. As result their daughter now wouldn’t take their calls. I advised them to go ahead and attend and that it’d be okay. Loving Christians™ then swarmed in and told me how evil I was for encouraging the couple to endorse sin.) 

I didn’t comment on the numerous posts I was unfortunate enough to receive about Creation, which happened exactly as recorded in Genesis; Noah building his ark and collecting animals to survive a worldwide flood and ‘Evilution’ being Satanic. I was informed too that the resurrection, the Bible as the infallible Word of God and Jesus coming back soon are not ‘up for debate’. I mean what would be the point? Sometimes though the level of ignorance was so staggering and I took it upon myself to mention it maybe once or twice. Can I get an Amen, brothers and sisters?

Amidst all this, I encountered a couple of new stars in the Christian fundament: Martin and Millicent Sedra, and I’ll share my thoughts on this pair next time.

Virgin Oil

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Dennis and I happened to find ourselves in the German city of Bremen recently where we visited the cathedral of St Peter. Apart from having a chapel in the keller of the church that looked suspiciously like an ancient Mithraic temple, the cathedral seemed particularly fond of the story of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, with sculptures of them on its walls.

The early church was obsessed with Jesus coming real soon to kick start the final judgement and inaugurate God’s Kingdom on Earth. Evangelists like Paul had told them so. The guarantee runs through all of his letters and presumably the rival preachers he mentions promised it too. The problem was that after a few decades of Jesus being a no show, some early converts had grown restless. How do we know this? Because later New Testament writers spend a great deal of time addressing the problem of Jesus’ failure to appear. The author of 2 Peter (3:8) comes up with the wholly unconvincing argument that with God a thousand years is like a day and he is giving more people the chance to repent. But this just doesn’t work as I explain here. In any case, 2 Peter is, like Jesus himself, late (most scholars place it in the early 2nd century).

The same issue concerns the writers who come between Paul and the forger of 2 Peter. The gospel writers were keenly aware of the frustration some in the early cult were feeling over Jesus’ late arrival. We know this was the case because the synoptic gospels are littered with parables and stories about why, forty years after cultists had begun looking to the skies for his appearance, Jesus still hadn’t arrived (see for example, Matthew 16.27-28; 24.27, 30-31, 34; Luke 21:27-28, 33-34 etc). Neither will you find any support in the New Testament for Jesus’ arrival being a ‘return’ or ‘second coming’. 

This is where the Wise and Foolish virgins come in. The parable is put into Jesus’ mouth in Matthew 25: 1-13. It’s a very peculiar tale, based on the idea that ‘the groom’ is about to marry ten young girls:

‘At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five were wise. The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. The wise ones, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps.

The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep. At midnight the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’ Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out. “No,” they replied, “there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.”

But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut. Later the others also came. “Lord, Lord,” they said, “open the door for us!” But he replied, “Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.” Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.

Is gospel Jesus really endorsing marriage to multiple wives? He seems to be and certainly Mormon sects have taken him at his word. Whether he is or not, the point of the parable is to admonish those who are not prepared for the arrival of ‘the groom’ who has been ‘delayed’. Those who keep watching, however, are praised for their diligence and faithfulness. The groom is clearly intended to be Jesus; the foolish virgins those who have given up expecting him and the wise virgins those who still anticipate his arrival, symbolised by their keeping their lamps lit.

When the groom does finally show up in the story, he takes the wise girls into his wedding banquet (I think we know what that means) and locks out the foolish ones. When they bang on the door to be let in, he claims he’s never known them and shuts then out forever.

What a lesson for those who had begun to doubt that Jesus was going to come soon! What a promise to those who faithfully watched for him! The reward would soon be theirs.

Except of course it wasn’t. As we know, Jesus did not arrive when Paul, the early cultists and then the gospel writers believed he would. Mark, Matthew and Luke, while acknowledging that Jesus was ‘delayed’ nevertheless anticipated his arrival soon: ‘just a little while longer,’ they keep saying. ‘Keep watching’.

But it wasn’t to be. The foolish virgins, it turns out, weren’t as foolish as we’ve been led to believe.

Pray With More Urgency

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‘Try Praying’ it says on the back of the buses in the UK. Let’s pray for peace says the new Archbishop of Canterbury, the Right Reverend Sarah Mullalley:

…let us pray and call with renewed urgency for an end to the violence and destruction in the Middle East and the Gulf… May all people of the region receive the peace, justice and freedom they long for.

It’d be nice, wouldn’t it, if the world was at peace. I’m just not sure how praying ‘with renewed urgency’ as Ms Doolally puts it will make much difference. Or praying at all. She might as well beseech her flock to keep happy thoughts uppermost in their minds. The peace she yearns for is not, obviously, for Ukraine and other of the world’s conflict hot-spots. Only a week before the Archbishop beseeched The Lord for an end to (selective) violence and destruction, Muslim terrorists had again massacred Christians in Nigeria. Perhaps the Rev Malarkey didn’t pray urgently or with sufficient renewal because God evidently ignored her pleas. He makes no attempt to rescue even his own people; either that or he’s incapable of doing anything about megalomaniacs and murderous zealots. You’d have thought if he was opposed to us slaughtering each other he’d have put a stop to it already, what with all the urgent prayers down the centuries.

Meanwhile, over on the Dark Side, Pope Leo XIV has been assuring his devotees that God does indeed ‘reject violence’. This surely can’t be the God of the Old Testament who loves a good set-to, can it? Nor the God of the New who supposedly sent his son to be violently executed by the Romans. Nor the God of Revelation who plans to send that same gentle Son to slaughter most of humankind. God’s propensity for ‘violence and destruction’ is renowned and Leonardo has let that Oscar go to his head if he thinks otherwise. After all, any number of his predecessors have rolled up their finest-silk sleeves for a good old holy war, with God on their side of course.

Still, if those posters and the Rev Mullalley think prayer is our best hope, maybe I should try it. That bus isn’t going to get here on its own.

We Will Judge Angels

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The guy in this video has had his mind bent by Paul’s crazy assertion in 1 Corinthians 6:3 that Believers will judge the angels at the Final Judgement.

This is pretty mind bending, I think you’ll agree, not to mention totally insane. The video incidentally turned up in my Facebook feed; I didn’t go looking for it. I’m not that masochistic. My Facebook is back to being inundated with posts and videos from evangelicals. That algorithm certainly needs attention. Just because I write about Jesus doesn’t mean I want to receive wacky posts about him from Christians.

Anyway, Mr Mind-Bent (I can’t track down his name) got me thinking what this judging will be like. For a start, and despite the video’s claim, Paul doesn’t specify that the judgement will be part of the Final Judgement. This is what he actually says:

…do you not know that the Lord’s people will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life! (1 Corinthians 6:2-3)

My God, the Lord’s people will not only judge angels: they’ll judge the world too. We’re really in trouble if God is going to hand the job over to some of the most unstable people in existence. They are also, as the video claims, going to be unleashed on the angels. You might wonder, as I did, what the angels might need to be judged about. The Masked Singer maybe, or which of them farted in the elevator? It could be the Lord’s people will be required to sit in judgement on the Bad Angels: Satan and his minions who rebelled against God back at the beginning of time. Paul doesn’t specify, though elsewhere in the infallible, never-contradictory scriptures, the devil has already been judged (John 16:11) and his fate sealed (Revelation 20:10).

Why in any case would beings who can never sin merit judgement? Sin doesn’t exist in heaven. The presence of God makes it impossible, which doesn’t account for how Satan and his mob managed it. I’m sure there’s a Bible verse somewhere that gets round it some way or other.

Of course none of this judging of the world and angels is ever going to happen. Angels, God, Heaven: none of them exist. Our man in the video has had his mind bent for nothing. While he admits he doesn’t fully understand Paul’s claim, nevertheless he believes it. He has faith in it, he preaches it (‘preach it brother, preach it!’) and wants other people to believe it. He’d be better thinking it through then he’d realise – maybe just maybe – that the Bible is full of crap.

Jesus the Great Revolutionary

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According to Matthew and Luke’s gospels, Jesus was a revolutionary. He wanted to see the world turned around, the very meaning of the word revolution. He preached that the world as it was would be destroyed and remade, this time with the social order reversed. Those who had been first in the old order – the rich, the powerful, the cruel – would be made to be the last, while those who were formerly last – the poor, the downtrodden, the lowly, the compassionate – would find themselves in first place. They’d be best in show, the new top dogs and, in ways that really mattered, rich. Meanwhile, those who had really committed themselves to him, his closest followers, would become the rulers with him of the renewed revolutionised order that he envisaged: his Kingdom of God.

How would all this happen? Jesus’ Father in Heaven would soon be sending the Son of Man to set the revolution in motion. This powerful being, who perhaps Jesus envisaged as being none other than himself, would ensure all the unimaginable but necessary changes would be achieved. There would be some violence of course, because you can’t have a revolution without at least a little violence:

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. (The Prince of Peace himself in Matthew 10:34)

Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. (Matthew 3:10)

Once the old is done away with and the new order established, there would be something of a socialist utopia on Earth. Everyone would share what they had; each would have his or her needs met by everyone else. Even those who came late to the party would enjoy all the rewards the new Kingdom had to offer (Matthew 20:1-16). There’d have to be some slaughter too of course: the one who advocated loving one’s enemies looked forward to exacting bloody revenge on his:

“But as for these enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them—bring them here and slaughter them in my presence.” (Luke 19:27. See also Revelation)

Except of course, none of this happened. The Son of Man did not emerge from the clouds when Jesus expected him to. He himself did not become the Son of Man, ready to kick-start the great social revolution. Instead, the rich, the powerful and the cruel put an end to Jesus’ revolutionary ideas; they were gaining too much traction among the poor and downtrodden and needed to be quashed. An uprising couldn’t be ruled out, specially as Jesus recognised the need for force:

From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has been coming violently and the violent take it by force. (Matthew 11.12)

He predicted too that blood would be spilt, going so far as to recommended his followers arm themselves:

He said to them… ‘the one who has no sword must sell his cloak and buy one. For I tell you, this scripture must be fulfilled in me, “And he was counted among the lawless”; and indeed what is written about me is being fulfilled.’ They said, ‘Lord, look, here are two swords.’ He replied, ‘It is enough.’ (Luke 22:36-38)

According to the gospels, the Jewish religious leaders persuaded the Roman authorities to do away with this dangerous revolutionary and insurrectionist. Once they were made aware of him, the Romans were more than happy to oblige. They mocked Jesus’ aspirations as King of the Jews and crucified him alongside other ‘rebels’ (Matthew 27:38).

His followers however were not yet ready to let go of him or his revolutionary ideas. Perhaps they saw the possibility of their ruling the world slipping from them. They continued to preach that he would appear again, possibly as the Son of Man, to bring about the revolution he had foreseen.

This is, as I say, Matthew and Luke’s version of events. The writers of the fourth gospel would jettison the failed New-World-Order narrative, building their own Superman-Jesus and dispensing entirely with the great social revolution. In their story, the Kingdom of God is ‘not of this world’ (John 18:36) but only in people’s heads.

The four gospels are, of course, make-believe; allegories of the hoped for Messiah. The Kingdom of God, the revolutionary leader, the reversal of the social order are what some of the earliest cultists wished for, looked for, hoped for. It is their aspirations that are reflected and embodied in the earliest gospels. Like the hopes and dreams of every cultist before and since, they came to nothing.

Many of today’s Christians would not, in any case, have cared for the Kingdom of God that Matthew and Luke’s Jesus is made to promote; far too much socialism and the wrong sort of people in charge. Jesus’ new Kings of the World would, in any case, have made a mess of things in much the same way as all those who took control in the revolutions the world did actually experience. Power, as Lord Acton put it, corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Better for Jesus that he became a personal saviour, confined to the minds of those who think he really existed, a mere revolutionary in the head.

There May Be Trouble Ahead…

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Prophets, from left to right: Elijah, Julie Stephens,
Cindy Jacobs and er... Ed Miliband

Prophets don’t exist. A bunch of people intoxicated by religious fervour who think God has given them a special message that they must deliver to whoever will listen, are not prophets; they are a collection of extremists intoxicated with religious fervour.

We know this because no God exists. He can’t, as a result, drop messages, special or otherwise, into the heads of fanatics.

That’s it, really. No more to be said.

But so-called prophets exert quite an influence on our modern world. According to Abraham (I know, he’s a mythical figure but bear with me), God selected an ancient Jewish tribe to be his favourite buddies, so long as they did whatever he demanded of them, including hacking off their foreskins and that of their sons. What sort of prophet – what sort of God – comes up with this kind of lunatic fetishism?

Later the creators of a new prophet, whom they called Moses, came up with a story in which their hero encountered God in a bush (the symbolism is lost on us today.) This time he wanted his special buddies to invade their neighbour’s territory, slaughter them and take their land for themselves. This his favourite, de-foreskinned tribe did (modern genetic analysis of the peoples in the region suggests this isn’t what happened.)

After these fictional madmen came some potentially real fanatics who thought God had assigned them to lambast their fellow Jews for their shortcomings. These prophets promised the rubes rewards if they behaved as the prophets thought they should. These guys also came up with the idea that God would send a warrior Messiah to help his special little tribe take over the world. This is what happens when fanatics are allowed to get a hold of things.

A couple of centuries later, another self-proclaimed prophet turned up (or is invented) who seemed to think he’s the most special-est of all the prophets so far. This guy, called Yeshua (meaning ‘salvation’, so obviously not in any way symbolic) prophesied that the Messiah would be arriving real soon to sort the world out. He’d then hand it over to the Jewish people to manage. This guy’s script writers weren’t sure if Yeshua was talking about himself or some other supernatural character called the Son of Man. It doesn’t matter really. Nothing he prophesied happened when he confidently predicted it would: there was no Messiah who flies down from heaven, no final judgment, no great reset for the Earth. He was an absolute failure as a prophet; evidence, if more is needed, that those who claim to speak for God don’t know what they’re talking about. Don’t worry, though, this guy was recast as a resurrected Godman, just like the ones in pagan myths.

A few other prophets appeared around about the same time. In fact, the extremist who changed his name to Paul seemed to think that just about anyone could become one so long as they ‘edified’ the brethren. It was a few years though before the next really big so-called prophet came along.

In the 8th century, a guy called Muhammad said he was told by an angel who represented a different version of God that, amongst other things, Islam would spread worldwide and there would be an increase in senseless murders. These rather nebulous and self-fulfilling predictions are even now coming to pass. Muhammad’s future followers are indeed spreading Islam across the globe while senseless murders continue being committed, a good many of them by Muslims themselves.

While Muslims have made it clear that Muhammad is the final prophet, history has blessed us since with a few more. Joseph Smith in the 1880s was commanded by a different God (or maybe by the same one who’s changed his mind again) to start a new church and to obliterate anyone who stood in his way. He was successful in this enterprise, despite managing to get himself killed in the process.

You’d think, wouldn’t you, that given their abysmal success rate and the number of people who have suffered or perished as a result of their endeavours that we’d have had enough of prophets. While churches cannot agree on whether ‘genuine’ prophecy still exists, the prophets keep coming. Fanatics the world over, every bit as barmy as their predecessors, appoint themselves some deity’s spokesperson, and the ‘prophetic’ pronouncements begin: meaningless theobabble spattered across the Internet.