Is Jesus Christianity?

[SeekingAllTruth]

I'm thinking much more of people's actions not their theology although ideas do influence actions.

I really like your quote below about faith. Right on.

 

[firedragon]

This post in a continuation of a discussion I was having with @ Pilgrim Soldier on another thread. I moved it because a discussion of this kind did not belong on that thread. Quite honestly, I did not want to start a new thread because I don’t have much time to respond to a lot of posts right now, but there as no way I was going to let this one slide.


Present-day Christianity is not about the Jesus who walked the earth, it is about what was added and written about Jesus after that and it is about the doctrines (tenets) of the Church and it is about what Paul added.

How Paul changed the course of Christianity

If you actually believe that Christianity is about what Jesus actually taught, you have been duped. Jesus taught none of these tenets listed below and they would all be foreign to Him.

The Basic Tenets of Christian Faith By: Michael Bradley

Table of Contents:

1. An Introduction to the “Basic Tenets of Christian Faith”
2. Jesus Christ is the Only Way To Eternal Salvation With God the Father
3. We Are Saved by Grace Through Faith – Not by Works
4. Jesus Christ is the Son of God
5. The Incarnation of Jesus Christ
6. Resurrection of Jesus Christ
7. The Ascension of Jesus Christ
8. The Doctrine of the Trinity
9. The Holy Bible is the Inspired and Infallible Word of God
10. Baptized With the Holy Spirit at Salvation
11. Renewed – Regenerated By Holy Spirit
12. The Doctrine of Hell
13. The Return of Jesus

The Basic Tenets of Christian Faith - Bible Knowledge

You are the one who was indoctrinated and thus believes in a fictional character, the fictional character called Jesus that the gospel authors who never even knew Jesus made up and the Church capitalized upon, in order to make Jesus the only way to God and thereby make Christianity the only true religion from God.

The following excerpt from the book entitled Christ and Baha'u'llah explains how Christianity changed what the Bible recorded and what Jesus taught.

“As Jesus prophesied, the false prophets contrived to change the essential meaning of the Gospel so that it became quite different from that which the Bible recorded or Jesus taught. (Matt. Vii 15-23 and see pp. 11, 12.)

It has long been generally believed that Jesus Christ was a unique incarnation of God such as had never before appeared in religious history and would never appear again. This tenet made the acceptance of any later Prophet impossible to a Christian. Yet there is nothing in Christ’s own statements, as recorded in the Gospel, to support this view, and it was not generally held during His lifetime…...

Another opinion which Christians universally hold about Christ is that His teaching was absolute and final. They believe that if the Truth were partly withheld from them for a time because they could not bear it, it was divulged at Pentecost in its fullness and that now nothing remains to be revealed. But there is nothing in the account of Pentecost to suggest such an interpretation and there is no one who will believe that Jesus would have named the false prophets as characteristic of His age if this warning was to be followed by an immediate release of all Truth to the Church. What the Bible shows is rather a succession of teachers—Abraham, Moses and Christ, each measuring His Revelation to the needs and maturity of His authors: Jesus, for example, changes the divorce law and says, “Moses gave you this because of the hardness of your hearts but from the beginning it was not so.” Many times He says, Ye have heard it said by them of old time . . . but I say unto you . . .”

Another universal opinion among the Christians is that Christ was the Lord of Hosts of the Old Testament. Yet the Jewish Prophets had foretold that when the Lord of Hosts came He would not find the Jews in the Holy Land, all would have been scattered among the nations and would have been living in misery and degradation for centuries; but when Jesus came Palestine was full of Jews and their expulsion did not begin until the year 70 A.D.; it may be said to have continued till the year 1844.

To confirm orthodox Christian opinion it is customary in all churches to read on Christmas morning, as if it referred to Jesus, the passage which Isaiah wrote about the Lord of Hosts (Isaiah ix 6-7).

“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.”

Yet the descriptive titles given do not belong exclusively to Christ, while some of them He specifically repudiated as if to make such a mistaken reference to Himself impossible. He disclaimed being the Mighty God when He called Himself “the Son of God;” John v 18-47 where Jesus repudiates the charge that He claimed equality with God, disclaimed being the Father when He said, “my Father is greater than I;” (John xviii 36) and being the Prince of Peace when He said, “I came not to send peace, but a sword.” He disclaimed bearing the government upon His shoulder or that it would be His judgment and justice forever when He said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” (John xviii 36).

Many of these false interpretations involve repudiation of the Word of God in favor of the word of man. This impious act is so craftily performed, with such an air of humility, that it might escape the notice of the most sincere and devout of worshippers. Probably few churchgoers realize today that the Gospel of Christ as known to the few in the pulpit is wholly different from the Gospel which Christ preached in Galilee as recorded in the Bible.

In spite of Christ’s promise of further revelation of Truth, through the Comforter, through His own return, through the Spirit of Truth, the Christian Church regards His revelation as final, and itself as the sole trustee of true religion. There is no room for the Supreme Redeemer of the Bible to bring in great changes for the establishment of the Kingdom of God. In fact this Kingdom is often described as a world-wide Church.

Having thus closed God’s Covenant with the Bible, sacred history—God-directed—came to an end, and secular history, having no sense of divine destiny nor unity, began.

Jesus’ revelation was purely spiritual. He taught that “My kingdom is not of this world” and that the “Kingdom of heaven is within you.” His great gift to man was the knowledge of eternal life. He told men that they might be physically in perfect health and yet spiritually sick or even dead. But this was a difficult truth to communicate and Jesus had to help men to realize it. He would say that He was a spiritual physician and that men whom He cured of a spiritual disability were cured of blindness, deafness, lameness, leprosy and so on. This was the real meaning of His remark at the end of a discourse, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” For a hearer might hear the physical word of Jesus and yet fail to comprehend the spiritual meaning. Jesus, in other words, was forever trying to heal spiritual infirmities. He thus would be understood by His disciples as a healer of spiritual ailments but by others He might be taken as relieving physical ills only.

Doubtless Jesus could, and often did, heal bodily ills by spiritual means, but this was nothing to do with His real work as a Redeemer. On the other hand these spiritual cures which he effected might be misinterpreted as physical miracles, and so were little stressed by Him. (“See that no man know it.) Matt ix 30.

Christ’s spiritual mission was, at an early date, materialized, specifically in regard to such things as the miracles, curing the blind and deaf, raising the dead. Even His own resurrection was made physical, missing the point entirely. Moreover, none of the complex order, of the ceremonies, rituals and litanies of the Church can be attributed to Christ. All are man-made, by inference or invention.

Well might Christ warn His followers that false prophets would arise and misinterpret His teachings so as to delude even the most earnest and intelligent of His believers: from early times Christians have disputed about Christian truth in councils, in sects, in wars.

To sum up, if Christians say “our acts may be wrong,” they say truly. If they say “however our Gospel is right” they are quite wrong. The false prophets have corrupted the Gospel as successfully as they have the deeds and lives of Christian people.”

George Townshend, Christ and Baha'u'llah, The False Prophets, pp. 25-30

The fundamental of Christianity is the Trinity. The father, the son and the Holy Ghost are cloven but with one essence in this triune Godhead.

If Jesus is Christianity, could someone please give some statement attributed to Jesus (at least) where he tells us that?

 

[Spirit of Light]

I am far from an expert on Jesus and why it is called Christianity today. But did Jesus call his teaching Christianity? Isn't that a word that was invented by followers long after Jesus was gone?

 

[blü 2]

This post in a continuation of a discussion I was having with @ Pilgrim Soldier on another thread. I moved it because a discussion of this kind did not belong on that thread. Quite honestly, I did not want to start a new thread because I don’t have much time to respond to a lot of posts right now, but there as no way I was going to let this one slide.


Present-day Christianity is not about the Jesus who walked the earth, it is about what was added and written about Jesus after that and it is about the doctrines (tenets) of the Church and it is about what Paul added.

How Paul changed the course of Christianity

If you actually believe that Christianity is about what Jesus actually taught, you have been duped. Jesus taught none of these tenets listed below and they would all be foreign to Him.

The Basic Tenets of Christian Faith By: Michael Bradley

Table of Contents:

1. An Introduction to the “Basic Tenets of Christian Faith”
2. Jesus Christ is the Only Way To Eternal Salvation With God the Father
3. We Are Saved by Grace Through Faith – Not by Works
4. Jesus Christ is the Son of God
5. The Incarnation of Jesus Christ
6. Resurrection of Jesus Christ
7. The Ascension of Jesus Christ
8. The Doctrine of the Trinity
9. The Holy Bible is the Inspired and Infallible Word of God
10. Baptized With the Holy Spirit at Salvation
11. Renewed – Regenerated By Holy Spirit
12. The Doctrine of Hell
13. The Return of Jesus

The Basic Tenets of Christian Faith - Bible Knowledge

You are the one who was indoctrinated and thus believes in a fictional character, the fictional character called Jesus that the gospel authors who never even knew Jesus made up and the Church capitalized upon, in order to make Jesus the only way to God and thereby make Christianity the only true religion from God.

The following excerpt from the book entitled Christ and Baha'u'llah explains how Christianity changed what the Bible recorded and what Jesus taught.

“As Jesus prophesied, the false prophets contrived to change the essential meaning of the Gospel so that it became quite different from that which the Bible recorded or Jesus taught. (Matt. Vii 15-23 and see pp. 11, 12.)

It has long been generally believed that Jesus Christ was a unique incarnation of God such as had never before appeared in religious history and would never appear again. This tenet made the acceptance of any later Prophet impossible to a Christian. Yet there is nothing in Christ’s own statements, as recorded in the Gospel, to support this view, and it was not generally held during His lifetime…...

Another opinion which Christians universally hold about Christ is that His teaching was absolute and final. They believe that if the Truth were partly withheld from them for a time because they could not bear it, it was divulged at Pentecost in its fullness and that now nothing remains to be revealed. But there is nothing in the account of Pentecost to suggest such an interpretation and there is no one who will believe that Jesus would have named the false prophets as characteristic of His age if this warning was to be followed by an immediate release of all Truth to the Church. What the Bible shows is rather a succession of teachers—Abraham, Moses and Christ, each measuring His Revelation to the needs and maturity of His authors: Jesus, for example, changes the divorce law and says, “Moses gave you this because of the hardness of your hearts but from the beginning it was not so.” Many times He says, Ye have heard it said by them of old time . . . but I say unto you . . .”

Another universal opinion among the Christians is that Christ was the Lord of Hosts of the Old Testament. Yet the Jewish Prophets had foretold that when the Lord of Hosts came He would not find the Jews in the Holy Land, all would have been scattered among the nations and would have been living in misery and degradation for centuries; but when Jesus came Palestine was full of Jews and their expulsion did not begin until the year 70 A.D.; it may be said to have continued till the year 1844.

To confirm orthodox Christian opinion it is customary in all churches to read on Christmas morning, as if it referred to Jesus, the passage which Isaiah wrote about the Lord of Hosts (Isaiah ix 6-7).

“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.”

Yet the descriptive titles given do not belong exclusively to Christ, while some of them He specifically repudiated as if to make such a mistaken reference to Himself impossible. He disclaimed being the Mighty God when He called Himself “the Son of God;” John v 18-47 where Jesus repudiates the charge that He claimed equality with God, disclaimed being the Father when He said, “my Father is greater than I;” (John xviii 36) and being the Prince of Peace when He said, “I came not to send peace, but a sword.” He disclaimed bearing the government upon His shoulder or that it would be His judgment and justice forever when He said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” (John xviii 36).

Many of these false interpretations involve repudiation of the Word of God in favor of the word of man. This impious act is so craftily performed, with such an air of humility, that it might escape the notice of the most sincere and devout of worshippers. Probably few churchgoers realize today that the Gospel of Christ as known to the few in the pulpit is wholly different from the Gospel which Christ preached in Galilee as recorded in the Bible.

In spite of Christ’s promise of further revelation of Truth, through the Comforter, through His own return, through the Spirit of Truth, the Christian Church regards His revelation as final, and itself as the sole trustee of true religion. There is no room for the Supreme Redeemer of the Bible to bring in great changes for the establishment of the Kingdom of God. In fact this Kingdom is often described as a world-wide Church.

Having thus closed God’s Covenant with the Bible, sacred history—God-directed—came to an end, and secular history, having no sense of divine destiny nor unity, began.

Jesus’ revelation was purely spiritual. He taught that “My kingdom is not of this world” and that the “Kingdom of heaven is within you.” His great gift to man was the knowledge of eternal life. He told men that they might be physically in perfect health and yet spiritually sick or even dead. But this was a difficult truth to communicate and Jesus had to help men to realize it. He would say that He was a spiritual physician and that men whom He cured of a spiritual disability were cured of blindness, deafness, lameness, leprosy and so on. This was the real meaning of His remark at the end of a discourse, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” For a hearer might hear the physical word of Jesus and yet fail to comprehend the spiritual meaning. Jesus, in other words, was forever trying to heal spiritual infirmities. He thus would be understood by His disciples as a healer of spiritual ailments but by others He might be taken as relieving physical ills only.

Doubtless Jesus could, and often did, heal bodily ills by spiritual means, but this was nothing to do with His real work as a Redeemer. On the other hand these spiritual cures which he effected might be misinterpreted as physical miracles, and so were little stressed by Him. (“See that no man know it.) Matt ix 30.

Christ’s spiritual mission was, at an early date, materialized, specifically in regard to such things as the miracles, curing the blind and deaf, raising the dead. Even His own resurrection was made physical, missing the point entirely. Moreover, none of the complex order, of the ceremonies, rituals and litanies of the Church can be attributed to Christ. All are man-made, by inference or invention.

Well might Christ warn His followers that false prophets would arise and misinterpret His teachings so as to delude even the most earnest and intelligent of His believers: from early times Christians have disputed about Christian truth in councils, in sects, in wars.

To sum up, if Christians say “our acts may be wrong,” they say truly. If they say “however our Gospel is right” they are quite wrong. The false prophets have corrupted the Gospel as successfully as they have the deeds and lives of Christian people.”

George Townshend, Christ and Baha'u'llah, The False Prophets, pp. 25-30

I'm with @Rival on this one ─ a person is not an ideology, and in the case of the sects and neighbors (eg the Mormons, the Rastas) of Christianity, not several thousand ideologies.

Nor is a single Christian position / understanding / ideology to be found in the NT, only whatever version you obtain (or those who taught you obtained) by preferring this bit to that bit or the other bit, all the way through. Just for a start, I've mentioned the five versions of Jesus before.

 

[Marcion]

This post in a continuation of a discussion I was having with @ Pilgrim Soldier on another thread. I moved it because a discussion of this kind did not belong on that thread. Quite honestly, I did not want to start a new thread because I don’t have much time to respond to a lot of posts right now, but there as no way I was going to let this one slide.


Present-day Christianity is not about the Jesus who walked the earth, it is about what was added and written about Jesus after that and it is about the doctrines (tenets) of the Church and it is about what Paul added.

How Paul changed the course of Christianity

If you actually believe that Christianity is about what Jesus actually taught, you have been duped. Jesus taught none of these tenets listed below and they would all be foreign to Him.

The Basic Tenets of Christian Faith By: Michael Bradley

Table of Contents:

1. An Introduction to the “Basic Tenets of Christian Faith”
2. Jesus Christ is the Only Way To Eternal Salvation With God the Father
3. We Are Saved by Grace Through Faith – Not by Works
4. Jesus Christ is the Son of God
5. The Incarnation of Jesus Christ
6. Resurrection of Jesus Christ
7. The Ascension of Jesus Christ
8. The Doctrine of the Trinity
9. The Holy Bible is the Inspired and Infallible Word of God
10. Baptized With the Holy Spirit at Salvation
11. Renewed – Regenerated By Holy Spirit
12. The Doctrine of Hell
13. The Return of Jesus

The Basic Tenets of Christian Faith - Bible Knowledge

You are the one who was indoctrinated and thus believes in a fictional character, the fictional character called Jesus that the gospel authors who never even knew Jesus made up and the Church capitalized upon, in order to make Jesus the only way to God and thereby make Christianity the only true religion from God.

The following excerpt from the book entitled Christ and Baha'u'llah explains how Christianity changed what the Bible recorded and what Jesus taught.

“As Jesus prophesied, the false prophets contrived to change the essential meaning of the Gospel so that it became quite different from that which the Bible recorded or Jesus taught. (Matt. Vii 15-23 and see pp. 11, 12.)

It has long been generally believed that Jesus Christ was a unique incarnation of God such as had never before appeared in religious history and would never appear again. This tenet made the acceptance of any later Prophet impossible to a Christian. Yet there is nothing in Christ’s own statements, as recorded in the Gospel, to support this view, and it was not generally held during His lifetime…...

Another opinion which Christians universally hold about Christ is that His teaching was absolute and final. They believe that if the Truth were partly withheld from them for a time because they could not bear it, it was divulged at Pentecost in its fullness and that now nothing remains to be revealed. But there is nothing in the account of Pentecost to suggest such an interpretation and there is no one who will believe that Jesus would have named the false prophets as characteristic of His age if this warning was to be followed by an immediate release of all Truth to the Church. What the Bible shows is rather a succession of teachers—Abraham, Moses and Christ, each measuring His Revelation to the needs and maturity of His authors: Jesus, for example, changes the divorce law and says, “Moses gave you this because of the hardness of your hearts but from the beginning it was not so.” Many times He says, Ye have heard it said by them of old time . . . but I say unto you . . .”

Another universal opinion among the Christians is that Christ was the Lord of Hosts of the Old Testament. Yet the Jewish Prophets had foretold that when the Lord of Hosts came He would not find the Jews in the Holy Land, all would have been scattered among the nations and would have been living in misery and degradation for centuries; but when Jesus came Palestine was full of Jews and their expulsion did not begin until the year 70 A.D.; it may be said to have continued till the year 1844.

To confirm orthodox Christian opinion it is customary in all churches to read on Christmas morning, as if it referred to Jesus, the passage which Isaiah wrote about the Lord of Hosts (Isaiah ix 6-7).

“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.”

Yet the descriptive titles given do not belong exclusively to Christ, while some of them He specifically repudiated as if to make such a mistaken reference to Himself impossible. He disclaimed being the Mighty God when He called Himself “the Son of God;” John v 18-47 where Jesus repudiates the charge that He claimed equality with God, disclaimed being the Father when He said, “my Father is greater than I;” (John xviii 36) and being the Prince of Peace when He said, “I came not to send peace, but a sword.” He disclaimed bearing the government upon His shoulder or that it would be His judgment and justice forever when He said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” (John xviii 36).

Many of these false interpretations involve repudiation of the Word of God in favor of the word of man. This impious act is so craftily performed, with such an air of humility, that it might escape the notice of the most sincere and devout of worshippers. Probably few churchgoers realize today that the Gospel of Christ as known to the few in the pulpit is wholly different from the Gospel which Christ preached in Galilee as recorded in the Bible.

In spite of Christ’s promise of further revelation of Truth, through the Comforter, through His own return, through the Spirit of Truth, the Christian Church regards His revelation as final, and itself as the sole trustee of true religion. There is no room for the Supreme Redeemer of the Bible to bring in great changes for the establishment of the Kingdom of God. In fact this Kingdom is often described as a world-wide Church.

Having thus closed God’s Covenant with the Bible, sacred history—God-directed—came to an end, and secular history, having no sense of divine destiny nor unity, began.

Jesus’ revelation was purely spiritual. He taught that “My kingdom is not of this world” and that the “Kingdom of heaven is within you.” His great gift to man was the knowledge of eternal life. He told men that they might be physically in perfect health and yet spiritually sick or even dead. But this was a difficult truth to communicate and Jesus had to help men to realize it. He would say that He was a spiritual physician and that men whom He cured of a spiritual disability were cured of blindness, deafness, lameness, leprosy and so on. This was the real meaning of His remark at the end of a discourse, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” For a hearer might hear the physical word of Jesus and yet fail to comprehend the spiritual meaning. Jesus, in other words, was forever trying to heal spiritual infirmities. He thus would be understood by His disciples as a healer of spiritual ailments but by others He might be taken as relieving physical ills only.

Doubtless Jesus could, and often did, heal bodily ills by spiritual means, but this was nothing to do with His real work as a Redeemer. On the other hand these spiritual cures which he effected might be misinterpreted as physical miracles, and so were little stressed by Him. (“See that no man know it.) Matt ix 30.

Christ’s spiritual mission was, at an early date, materialized, specifically in regard to such things as the miracles, curing the blind and deaf, raising the dead. Even His own resurrection was made physical, missing the point entirely. Moreover, none of the complex order, of the ceremonies, rituals and litanies of the Church can be attributed to Christ. All are man-made, by inference or invention.

Well might Christ warn His followers that false prophets would arise and misinterpret His teachings so as to delude even the most earnest and intelligent of His believers: from early times Christians have disputed about Christian truth in councils, in sects, in wars.

To sum up, if Christians say “our acts may be wrong,” they say truly. If they say “however our Gospel is right” they are quite wrong. The false prophets have corrupted the Gospel as successfully as they have the deeds and lives of Christian people.”

George Townshend, Christ and Baha'u'llah, The False Prophets, pp. 25-30

It's not so hard to sum up all the things Jesus was not, it is much harder to find out what the ideology of Jesus himself was. Jesuism

I don't believe Jesus was a Jewish prophet as the Muslims and Bahai's believe, nor was he a Hellenistic 'Son of God' or a Jewish-Christian Messiah.
His original teachings and also his behaviour seem to be thoroughly tantric.
Hence Jesus must have been a kind of tantric master (guru) whose mission failed because his teachings are not respected nor continued properly in the Christian gospels nor in the letters of the New Testament.

 

[Colt]

While the institutional church did unintentionally replace the Kingdom of Heaven ideal embodied in the original Gospel, Jesus has continued to foster the church as the best exponent of his life’s work on earth. His teachings were in danger of being lost all together.

Eventually the original gospel will subdue the world and there will be one voice and one flock.

Followers of other gurus by necessity have to undermine and discredit the Son of God who came down to earth, lived a God revealing life, laid down his mortal flesh on his own accord, returned on his own for all to see and returned to heaven to his seat of authority.

For disciples of Jesus he is the author and finisher of our faith. It is simply a fact that the Son is the way to the Father weather one currently understands that or not.

 

[Colt]

I am far from an expert on Jesus and why it is called Christianity today. But did Jesus call his teaching Christianity? Isn't that a word that was invented by followers long after Jesus was gone?

Its called Christianity because followers believe Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of God who came to earth and achieved final and unquestioned sovereignty of his own creation. Muslims know the Father of Jesus while they may not understand or believe in the identity of the Fathers Creator Son who dwelt anonymously among us up until his public ministry wherein he was still quite diplomatic and guarded concerning his true identity.

 

[stvdv]

It is my opinion that when Jesus returns he will take one look at what is current day Christianity and exclaim, "WTF?!"

IMO:

If Jesus will say something it won't be that.

People entertain the habit to drag others down with them in the mud, even Jesus, but a real Master won't 'fall' for that

As He is omniscient, He won't be surprised seeing all this. Why would He return anyway? He gave plenty of pointers to the Christians, so no need to return until it's practised, unless...

Like in University, no exams until you Master what has been given to you. The Professor is not going to do our job, unless...

 

[stvdv]

Followers of other gurus by necessity have to undermine and discredit the Son of God

False. That is just your opinion/mindset, which can be easily proven wrong.

 

[PruePhillip]

It is my opinion that when Jesus returns he will take one look at what is current day Christianity and exclaim, "WTF?!"

Do you think he's a foul mouthed guy, do you?

 

[Colt]

1 John 4:3 And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.

2 John 1:7 For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.

 

[firedragon]

I am far from an expert on Jesus and why it is called Christianity today. But did Jesus call his teaching Christianity? Isn't that a word that was invented by followers long after Jesus was gone?

It was first used in Antioch by the others to refer to followers of Christ as more like a third party reference and I am hesitating to call it a derogatory term.

Thus, the first to call them Christians, according to the Bible, were not followers of Christ themselves.

So anyway the gentleman who is referred to in the OP who is making that claim seems to not know his own bible.

 

[firedragon]

Followers of other gurus by necessity have to undermine and discredit the Son of God

What is the research you have done to back this statement up?

 

[Colt]

What is the research you have done to back this statement up?

Its been my experience. Its being done on this thread. Did you read the OP by the Baha'u'llah follower???

 

[firedragon]

Its been my experience. Its being done on this thread. Did you read the OP by the Baha'u'llah follower???

So that's an anecdotal fallacy.

 

[Clara Tea]

This post in a continuation of a discussion I was having with @ Pilgrim Soldier on another thread. I moved it because a discussion of this kind did not belong on that thread. Quite honestly, I did not want to start a new thread because I don’t have much time to respond to a lot of posts right now, but there as no way I was going to let this one slide.


Present-day Christianity is not about the Jesus who walked the earth, it is about what was added and written about Jesus after that and it is about the doctrines (tenets) of the Church and it is about what Paul added.

How Paul changed the course of Christianity

If you actually believe that Christianity is about what Jesus actually taught, you have been duped. Jesus taught none of these tenets listed below and they would all be foreign to Him.

The Basic Tenets of Christian Faith By: Michael Bradley

Table of Contents:

1. An Introduction to the “Basic Tenets of Christian Faith”
2. Jesus Christ is the Only Way To Eternal Salvation With God the Father
3. We Are Saved by Grace Through Faith – Not by Works
4. Jesus Christ is the Son of God
5. The Incarnation of Jesus Christ
6. Resurrection of Jesus Christ
7. The Ascension of Jesus Christ
8. The Doctrine of the Trinity
9. The Holy Bible is the Inspired and Infallible Word of God
10. Baptized With the Holy Spirit at Salvation
11. Renewed – Regenerated By Holy Spirit
12. The Doctrine of Hell
13. The Return of Jesus

The Basic Tenets of Christian Faith - Bible Knowledge

You are the one who was indoctrinated and thus believes in a fictional character, the fictional character called Jesus that the gospel authors who never even knew Jesus made up and the Church capitalized upon, in order to make Jesus the only way to God and thereby make Christianity the only true religion from God.

The following excerpt from the book entitled Christ and Baha'u'llah explains how Christianity changed what the Bible recorded and what Jesus taught.

“As Jesus prophesied, the false prophets contrived to change the essential meaning of the Gospel so that it became quite different from that which the Bible recorded or Jesus taught. (Matt. Vii 15-23 and see pp. 11, 12.)

It has long been generally believed that Jesus Christ was a unique incarnation of God such as had never before appeared in religious history and would never appear again. This tenet made the acceptance of any later Prophet impossible to a Christian. Yet there is nothing in Christ’s own statements, as recorded in the Gospel, to support this view, and it was not generally held during His lifetime…...

Another opinion which Christians universally hold about Christ is that His teaching was absolute and final. They believe that if the Truth were partly withheld from them for a time because they could not bear it, it was divulged at Pentecost in its fullness and that now nothing remains to be revealed. But there is nothing in the account of Pentecost to suggest such an interpretation and there is no one who will believe that Jesus would have named the false prophets as characteristic of His age if this warning was to be followed by an immediate release of all Truth to the Church. What the Bible shows is rather a succession of teachers—Abraham, Moses and Christ, each measuring His Revelation to the needs and maturity of His authors: Jesus, for example, changes the divorce law and says, “Moses gave you this because of the hardness of your hearts but from the beginning it was not so.” Many times He says, Ye have heard it said by them of old time . . . but I say unto you . . .”

Another universal opinion among the Christians is that Christ was the Lord of Hosts of the Old Testament. Yet the Jewish Prophets had foretold that when the Lord of Hosts came He would not find the Jews in the Holy Land, all would have been scattered among the nations and would have been living in misery and degradation for centuries; but when Jesus came Palestine was full of Jews and their expulsion did not begin until the year 70 A.D.; it may be said to have continued till the year 1844.

To confirm orthodox Christian opinion it is customary in all churches to read on Christmas morning, as if it referred to Jesus, the passage which Isaiah wrote about the Lord of Hosts (Isaiah ix 6-7).

“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.”

Yet the descriptive titles given do not belong exclusively to Christ, while some of them He specifically repudiated as if to make such a mistaken reference to Himself impossible. He disclaimed being the Mighty God when He called Himself “the Son of God;” John v 18-47 where Jesus repudiates the charge that He claimed equality with God, disclaimed being the Father when He said, “my Father is greater than I;” (John xviii 36) and being the Prince of Peace when He said, “I came not to send peace, but a sword.” He disclaimed bearing the government upon His shoulder or that it would be His judgment and justice forever when He said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” (John xviii 36).

Many of these false interpretations involve repudiation of the Word of God in favor of the word of man. This impious act is so craftily performed, with such an air of humility, that it might escape the notice of the most sincere and devout of worshippers. Probably few churchgoers realize today that the Gospel of Christ as known to the few in the pulpit is wholly different from the Gospel which Christ preached in Galilee as recorded in the Bible.

In spite of Christ’s promise of further revelation of Truth, through the Comforter, through His own return, through the Spirit of Truth, the Christian Church regards His revelation as final, and itself as the sole trustee of true religion. There is no room for the Supreme Redeemer of the Bible to bring in great changes for the establishment of the Kingdom of God. In fact this Kingdom is often described as a world-wide Church.

Having thus closed God’s Covenant with the Bible, sacred history—God-directed—came to an end, and secular history, having no sense of divine destiny nor unity, began.

Jesus’ revelation was purely spiritual. He taught that “My kingdom is not of this world” and that the “Kingdom of heaven is within you.” His great gift to man was the knowledge of eternal life. He told men that they might be physically in perfect health and yet spiritually sick or even dead. But this was a difficult truth to communicate and Jesus had to help men to realize it. He would say that He was a spiritual physician and that men whom He cured of a spiritual disability were cured of blindness, deafness, lameness, leprosy and so on. This was the real meaning of His remark at the end of a discourse, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” For a hearer might hear the physical word of Jesus and yet fail to comprehend the spiritual meaning. Jesus, in other words, was forever trying to heal spiritual infirmities. He thus would be understood by His disciples as a healer of spiritual ailments but by others He might be taken as relieving physical ills only.

Doubtless Jesus could, and often did, heal bodily ills by spiritual means, but this was nothing to do with His real work as a Redeemer. On the other hand these spiritual cures which he effected might be misinterpreted as physical miracles, and so were little stressed by Him. (“See that no man know it.) Matt ix 30.

Christ’s spiritual mission was, at an early date, materialized, specifically in regard to such things as the miracles, curing the blind and deaf, raising the dead. Even His own resurrection was made physical, missing the point entirely. Moreover, none of the complex order, of the ceremonies, rituals and litanies of the Church can be attributed to Christ. All are man-made, by inference or invention.

Well might Christ warn His followers that false prophets would arise and misinterpret His teachings so as to delude even the most earnest and intelligent of His believers: from early times Christians have disputed about Christian truth in councils, in sects, in wars.

To sum up, if Christians say “our acts may be wrong,” they say truly. If they say “however our Gospel is right” they are quite wrong. The false prophets have corrupted the Gospel as successfully as they have the deeds and lives of Christian people.”

George Townshend, Christ and Baha'u'llah, The False Prophets, pp. 25-30

As Spock would say: "Fascinating."

 

[1213]

...You are the one who was indoctrinated and thus believes in a fictional character, the fictional character called Jesus that the gospel authors who never even knew Jesus...

How do you know they didn’t know? Why should I believe you?

...It has long been generally believed that Jesus Christ was a unique incarnation of God...

That is interesting, because Bible don’t teach God has incarnations. Bible tells God lives in Jesus and also in disciples of Jesus, but it is not the same.

Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? The words that I tell you, I speak not from myself; but the Father who lives in me does his works.
John 14:10

Don't you know that you are a temple of God, and that God's Spirit lives in you?
1 Corinthians 3:16

Christian meant originally a disciple of Jesus. And a disciple of Jesus is a person who remains in the words of Jesus. It is really sad that many call themselves “Christian”, but don’t seem to be loyal to him.

Jesus therefore said to those Jews who had believed him, "If you remain in my word, then you are truly my disciples. You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free."
John 8:31-32

…in Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians.
Acts 11:26

 

[Colt]

So that's an anecdotal fallacy.

Its an inconvenient fact for you. People who don't like the message of Jesus have to discredit it.

Islam is a perfect and very large example of people who follow another teacher but cant quite bring themselves to deny ALL of Jesus, so they pick what parts they will keep and get rid of the parts that would cause them to become all-in.

 

[firedragon]

Its an inconvenient fact for you.

Thats ad hominem.

I can expect a lot more fallacies I can see. Lets hear it. Its interesting.

Islam is a perfect and very large example of people who follow another teacher but cant quite bring themselves to deny ALL of Jesus, so they pick what parts they will keep and get rid of the parts that would cause them to become all-in.

Did you just bring up Islam because you believe I am Muslim? Is not that a Tu Quoque fallacy?

I think you have done three things so far.

1. Accuse all "GURU'S" of having a sinister motive, nothing else. So All so called "Guru's" as you referred, then addressed Bahai's, now Muslims, seems like you addressed everyone who ever question anything you believe are all crooks with a sinister intent. Nothing less, nothing more. So that's a no true scotsman fallacy.

2. Then you assumed that me asking you for the research you did to make that kind of wide, general dismissal, you obviously assumed that I have a sinister plan as well. That was of course part of your general idea about everyone who questions you. Thats generally called bigotry when you generalise far and wide.

3. Now you have brought in Islam into the picture which is irrelevant to the question you raised about Jesus. Thats a Tu Quoque looking for hypocrisy in the other rather than addressing the subject matter.

At least I am getting a reminder of some logical fallacies.

Please keep going.

 

[wellwisher]

Christianity merged with Rome in the 4th century AD, to become the official religion of Rome under Emperor Constantine. The composite that would form would become the Roman Catholic Church. This Church and culture, became a blend of Roman and Christian ways, with Rome the over dog.

Christianity; under dog, became the official religion of Rome; over dog, and not the other way around. There was a secular influence added to Christianity and vice versa to meets the needs of the evolving empire. For example, Christmas was a Pagan holiday, that was made Christian. This helped to unite the empire. This benefited the new team via a secular compromise.

The New Christianity became more and more of a balance between secularism and faith, that was different from the original Christianity. The original Christianity was more based on not being conformed to this world. However, the early Christians were told by Jesus to "Render onto God what was God's and render onto Caesar what was Caesar's. This union was anticipated and blessed by Jesus, and led to paradoxes and the need to develop ways to overlap what could be seen as opposites. This was good brain exercise and led to many dark ages esoteric writings; integral or 3-D thinking.

Jesus also said he will leave behind a comforter, the Spirit of Truth or Holy Spirit. He needed to leave his flock for this to happen. This living spirit meant the new Christianity was not designed to be stuck in time, in its glory days, that is common to many religions. It would evolve via the Holy Spirit; Saints, creative people, artists, thinkers, alchemists, revolutionaries, etc.

The Old Testament is a finished story that cannot be changed by the faithful. The New Testament promised a future work in progress that would evolve by faith in the spirit of truth. Christianity was designed to be a living religion and not one stuck in time at a glory days point. It was not to become like the older person, who fixates in the glory days of youth, but instead looks at the dawn of tomorrow while honoring the past.

Stuck in time is often a pitfall when comparing the past and present when it comes to Christianity. When in reality, the current state is the latest incarnation, of a living religion ,and not one cast in stone.

Religions cast in stone become more defensive with change, while the living religions flow with time and change. This spirit if change and truth is why Christian nations led the world into the modern age. They could change with time and still meet the needs of the flock in the new age created.

What is often called Judeo-Christian is more like Christian-Judeo since the Christians were designed to change with time. The Christians ran the lands in which the Jews lived over the past centuries. The Jews found a new balance in this flux. Maybe the third or Modern Testament needs to be compiled, based on the changes in the living church that Jesus built.