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As an ordained Pastor, as well as a follower of "the Jewish Christ", my years of in-depth study has convinced me that I, as well as multitudes of other Christians, have relied upon a document, the New Testament, for our faith and practice which is, unfortunately, less than reliable in hundreds of aspects when viewed "literally" and "historically". Most Christians are not aware of this fact. Such knowledge escapes the uninformed believer, but I assure you, if you will continue your study of the materials presented in this web site by Bet Emet Ministries, you will quickly come to see what the Jewish people have always known and why the Jewish scholars and people have not accepted the Christian Jesus which seems, on the surface, so simple to the New Testament believer. The problems of which I speak concern the unreliability and untrustworthiness of the New Testament for one's faith and practice when taken "literally" and "historically". Since most of the followers of "the Jewish Christ" are New Testament believers, and not Old Testament believers (that is one of the major problems; our unfamiliarity with the Bible Jesus would have used), their knowledge and comprehension of the Old Testament is severely lacking. This makes it all the more easy when reading the New Testament to overlook the hundreds and hundreds of purposeful misquotations from the true Hebrew Scriptures, the many purposeful mistranslations from the Hebrew Scriptures by the writers of the New Testament, and the hundreds of verses quoted out of context by the New Testament writers on purpose. This does not even address yet the multiple copying of ancient mystery religions and their "pagan Christ" in the characterization of the New Testament Jesus.
Most Christians are totally unfamiliar with Comparative Mythology and Comparative Religions. This is a study not for the faint-hearted Christian. Comparative Religion shows that the basic story of Jesus' one year ministry and the motif of a crucified savior already existed in numerous other religions prior to the alleged time of Jesus. We have it on no higher authority than that of Christianity's founding fathers themselves that the Christian religion was very much like other older religions currently extant. Other religions had their savior character, born of a miraculous nature, who performed miracles, cured the ill and sick people, and eventually died an untimely death, often by crucifixion. This should sound very familiar to our "literal" and "historical" story of Jesus preached by Christianity for the last 1,800 years. So close did Christianity resemble these other religions that the Christian fathers resorted to the ludicrous explanation that the Devil himself had created these other near identical religions prior to the alleged time of Jesus to deceive the masses so they would reject the true religion of Christianity as being just a copycat of these already existing religions. Religious scholar Charles François Dupuis (1798), in his The Origin Of All Religious Worship, states the obvious: "There is not the slightest difficulty, without the intervention of the Devil, to perceive, that whenever two religions resemble each other so completely, the oldest must be the mother and the youngest the daughter."
Justin Martyr (A.D. 100-165) was the first and most distinguished apologist for the Christian religion. His first apology, The First Apology Of Justin, argues that Christianity should be accepted as any other religion because it is so similar to other preexisting religions. By arguing thus Justin inadvertently admits:
Notice if you will what Justin Martyr says in Chapter 10: HEATHEN ANALOGIES TO CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE
And the Sibyl and Hystaspes said that there should be a dissolution by God of things corruptible. And the philosophers called Stoics teach that even God Himself shall be resolved into fire, and they say that the world is to be formed anew by this revolution; but we understand that God, the Creator of all things, is superior to the things that are to be changed. If, therefore, on some points we teach the same things as the poets and philosophers whom you honour, and on other points are fuller and more divine in our teaching, and if we alone afford proof of what we assert, why are we unjustly hated more than all others? For while we say that all things have been produced and arranged into a world by God, we shall seem to utter the doctrine of Plato; and while we say that there will be a burning up of all, we shall seem to utter the doctrine of the Stoics: and while we affirm that the souls of the wicked, being endowed with sensation even after death, are punished, and that those of the good being delivered from punishment spend a blessed existence, we shall seem to say the same things as the poets and philosophers; and while we maintain that men ought not to worship the works of their hands, we say the very things which have been said by the comic poet Menander, and other similar writers, for they have declared that the workman is greater than the work.
Notice again from Chapter 21: ANALOGIES TO THE HISTORY OF CHRIST
And when we say also that the Word, who is the first-birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that He, Jesus Christ, our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter. For you know how many sons your esteemed writers ascribed to Jupiter: Mercury, the interpreting word and teacher of all; AEsculapius, who, though he was a great physician, was struck by a thunderbolt, and so ascended to heaven; and Bacchus too, after he had been torn limb from limb; and Hercules, when he had committed himself to the flames to escape his toils; and the sons of Leda, and Dioscuri; and Perseus, son of Danae; and Bellerophon, who, though sprung from mortals, rose to heaven on the horse Pegasus. For what shall I say of Ariadne, and those who, like her, have been declared to be set among the stars? And what of the emperors who die among yourselves, whom you deem worthy of deification, and in whose behalf you produce some one who swears he has seen the burning Caesar rise to heaven from the funeral pyre? And what kind of deeds are recorded of each of these reputed sons of Jupiter, it is needless to tell to those who already know. This only shall be said, that they are written for the advantage and encouragement of youthful scholars; for all reckon it an honourable thing to imitate the gods. But far be such a thought concerning the gods from every well-conditioned soul, as to believe that Jupiter himself, the governor and creator of all things, was both a parricide and the son of a parricide, and that being overcome by the love of base and shameful pleasures, he came in to Ganymede and those many women whom he had violated and that his sons did like actions. But, as we said above, wicked devils perpetrated these things. And we have learned that those only are deified who have lived near to God in holiness and virtue; and we believe that those who live wickedly and do not repent are punished in everlasting fire.
Again direct your attention to Chapter 22: ANALOGIES TO THE SONSHIP OF CHRIST
Moreover, the Son of God called Jesus, even if only a man by ordinary generation, yet, on account of His wisdom, is worthy to be called the Son of God; for all writers call God the Father of men and gods. And if we assert that the Word of God was born of God in a peculiar manner, different from ordinary generation, let this, as said above, be no extraordinary thing to you, who say that Mercury is the angelic word of God. But if any one objects that He was crucified, in this also He is on a par with those reputed sons of Jupiter of yours, who suffered as we have now enumerated. For their sufferings at death are recorded to have been not all alike, but diverse; so that not even by the peculiarity of His sufferings does He seem to be inferior to them; but, on the contrary, as we promised in the preceding part of this discourse, we will now prove Him superior--or rather have already proved Him to be so--for the superior is revealed by His actions. And if we even affirm that He was born of a virgin, accept this in common with what you accept of Ferseus. And in that we say that He made whole the lame, the paralytic, and those born blind, we seem to say what is very similar to the deeds said to have been done by AEsculapius.
Lastly let us look at chapter 66: OF THE EUCHARIST
And this food is called among us Eukaristia [the Eucharist], of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined. For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh. For the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, said, "This do ye in remembrance of Me, this is My body;" and that, after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks, He said, "This is My blood;" and gave it to them alone. Which the wicked devils have imitated in the mysteries of Mithras, commanding the same thing to be done. For, that bread and a cup of water are placed with certain incantations in the mystic rites of one who is being initiated, you either know or can learn. These quotes can be verified if you seek them out in Justin's writings on the Internet or from his printed First Apology.
Answer for yourself: What should we have seen in the above quotes of Justin Martyr, the first Christian Apologist?
We just saw that this Second Century, highly touted Church Father, informs us that Christianity teaches the same things as the poets and philosophers whose works can be yet read today and in so doing the "doctrines of Christ" can be elucidated and found cited as far back as recorded time. Justin cites Plato, Menander, Sibyl, Hystaspes, and the Stoics as just some of the sources for "overlaps" with 2nd century Christianity and its teachings on "the Christ". Note especially that Justin acknowledges that the Christian Jesus is similar to the sons of Jupiter: Mercury; Æsculapius; Bacchus; Hercules; the sons of Leda, and Dioscuri; and Perseus, son of Danae; and Bellerophon. They have in common that they were all produced without sexual union. They all likewise suffered an untimely death and all ascended into heaven. Important to also note is that the Logos, or Word of God, an epithet of Jesus Christ, was also an epithet of Mercury.
Ironically if you read closely it is amazing that Justin Martyr explains that Christianity's unique and innumerable parallels to the ancient Wisdom Religions of the world is to believed to be the fruit of "wicked devils".
Answer for yourself: Could it be that Christianity "is" the same ancient Spiritual Wisdom, the same ancient Mysteries, the same Divine Spiritual Wisdom cherished by the ancients that has been badly "radically reinterpreted" through "literalism" and "historicization" by Rome that today it has lost its true meaning?
Let us look at another Church Father; the great Augustine.
That which is known as the Christian religion existed among the ancients, and never did not exist; from the beginning of the human race until the time when Christ came in the flesh, at which time the true religion, which already existed began to be called Christianity. (Retractt. I, xiii, cited by Dr. Alvin Boyd Kuhn in his Shadow of The Third Century, Elizabeth N.J.: Academy Press, 1949, p.3)
Now, let us examine the great Church historian Eusebius, who in his Church History, tells us that Justin, in his Dialogue with Trypho, says "there exists not a people, civilized or semi-civilized, who have not offered up prayers in the name of a crucified Savior to the Father and Creator of all things" (Hist. Eccl. lib i. ch. iv).
Now let us examine what the great early Church Father Tertullian who himself was an "ex-Pagan" and later the Bishop of Carthage. Notice his startling comment as he ironically admits the true origins of the Christ story and of all other such god-men by stating in refutation of his critics, "You say we worship the sun; so do you" (Wheless, Forgery in Christianity, p. 147).
Other scholars will tell you the same story as did these earliest of Roman Christian Church Fathers.
"Although surprising to us now, to writers of the first few centuries C.E. these similarities between the new Christian religion and the ancient Mysteries were extremely obvious. Pagan critics of Christianity, such as the satirist Celsus, complained that this recent religion was nothing more than a pale reflection of their own ancient teachings. Early 'Church Fathers,' such as Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Irenaeus, were understandably disturbed and resorted to the desperate claim that these similarities were the result of diabolical mimicry. Using one of the most absurd arguments ever advanced, they accused the Devil of "plagiarism by anticipation," of deviously copying the true story of Jesus before it had actually happened in an attempt to mislead the gullible!" (Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy, The Jesus Mysteries: Was the "Original Jesus" a Pagan God?, pg. 5 (1999).
Now let us examine 3 quotes from Charles François Dupuis, The Origin of All Religious Worship, (1798) chapter IX, starting on page 214, titled, "An Explanation of the Fable, in which the Sun is worshipped under the name of Christ").
If you take a second to reflect upon this earliest of testimony of these Church Fathers regarding the "Jesus Story" in their day then you should see and understand enough to know that this remodeling of Jesus in the likeness of the ancient sungods and goddesses is most unlikely if this Jesus was a true "literal" and "historical" Jewish Rabbi!!!
This characterization of the Jewish Messiah as the personification of the Sun simply is not something that one finds characteristic of first century Biblical Judaism and their views upon their hoped for coming Messiah. What we fail to understand when reading "the personification of the Sun" is the deep Metaphysical and Mystical understandings that the ancients guarded and cherished about God, cosmos, man, nature, and incarnation. This is a study for a much later website. What we find upon more study is that the Rome needed to counter the popularity and influence of Biblical Judaism in the "non-Jewish" world. In so doing the devised a plan to take the ancient Mysteries and their personified Sungods and Goddesses along with the Jewish Messiah and synthesize them into one corporate being and representation which would have universal appeal to all "non-Jewish" humanity who were very familiar with the religious concept of a coming savior for the Souls of mankind. Rome, by "racially reinterpreting" the cherished ancient mysteries present their new "replacement religion" to the world as the "literal" and "historical" Jewish Messiah. Rome was very clever in their religious synthesis. Beginning by building off the authority and reputation of Judaism Rome created their version of the Jewish Messiah and backed it all up by purposefully misquoting and misinterpreting the Hebrew Scriptures and presenting this forgery to the non-Hebrew speaking world as God's Book, the Bible. Not only did Rome theologically corrupt and forge the Hebrew Scriptures but the same approach was applied to Marcion's New Testament (the first New Testament, the Gnostic New Testament). This first New Testament by Marcion was the Gnostic New Testament teaching only of the "indwelling and incarnating Christ" in every child of God which has been loved, adored, and cherished in the nation's ancient Mysteries since the beginning of time.
This "radical reinterpretation" of the ancient Mysteries and its "Christ/Sophia" was named Jesus, the equivalent of "Yeshua" which means "Jehovah is salvation". The only thing left for Rome to do was to mix the ancient Sacred Mysteries and their "Christs" with the concept of the "historical" Messiah of Judaism; but there was one rather large problem that only those who read Hebrew knew. The Hebrew Scriptures were not fulfilled by any Messiah, past or present in their day, and the Temple was destroyed and Israel scattered the world over. Only by the purposeful mistranslation and purposeful misquotation of the Hebrew Scriptures and pure Scriptural invention out of "theological air" was Rome able to "radically reinterpret" Judaism's belief and hope for a human Messiah in the lineage of King David (in reality Tuthmose III, the Hebrew Pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty of Egypt). This corruption of the Jewish Messiah, when grafted upon a "literalization" and "historicization" of the ancient Mystery Religions and their "Christs" produced the "literal" and "historical Jesus" of Rome's "Second" New Testament. In reality the New Testament we have today is Marcion's New Testament which was pure Spiritual allegory and Spiritual Myth teaching the Highest Divine Truths of the ancient Spiritual Wisdom Religions dealing with the incarnation of God as Divine Mind/Krst/Christ into "matter"; ie., humanity. You see the "Jesus Story" is to be your story, my story, every person's story because it is, when interpreted correctly with the "keys" necessary from the ancient Spiritual Wisdom, the story of the Descent of the Soul and its Christ into human form; Christ being the savior of the Soul, our True Being, by being the Bishop of our Souls while in material incarnation. Truly, Plato said it right: "Man is a god in an animal body"; even Justin knew this! Today as Christians we wait for a visit from "above" by the Christ when all the time the only visit we ever get is from "within" but this will never occur until man quits looking to the stars and awaiting the coming of one so long overdue according to Christian Scriptures when interpreted "literally" and "historically". Something else is intended here other than a "literal" and "historical" understanding. Only when we study to the point to see the ludicrousness of attempting to interpret a book like our Bible today by a method of interpretation and hermeneutic never used by those who wrote these Sacred Scriptures in the first place, can we ever hope of redeeming our Bibles from nonsense and restoring them to the highest Spiritual knowledge and revelation ever given mankind. It is the great ancient Spiritual Mysteries that knew this; only with the aid of archeology in the last 200 years have the "rocks been crying out" the truth about "the Christ"! Have you heard them and the scholars who are dispelling religious darkness and fear with the glorious light of God's truth?
The agenda of such literary deceptions by the New Testament writers and those who put the New Testament canon together and promulgated a select and highly erroneous method for their interpretation ("literal" and "historical") let alone altered the Sacred Scriptures of both the Hebrews and Gnostics over hundreds and hundreds of years, escapes the masses who are unfamiliar with the history of the Gentile Christian Church along with their unfamiliarity with the only Bible a Jew in the Jerusalem Church ever knew; the Jewish Scriptures which are unfortunately called the "Old" as they are in the Christian Old Testament today.
As Christians and sincere individuals who, seeking to know and do the will of the Almighty, come to such knowledge concerning the tampering of the New Testament and the anti-Semitic agenda of its writers, you are quickly confronted with the most significant question you'll every have to answer in this life: "Is the New Testament really the Word of God"? The answer to that can be a resounding "Yes" but at the same time it can be a resounding "No"; it all depends on how your approach and interpret it. That is why we will in this website investigate many Christian dogmas under the light of critical study to be ceratin our understanding of them is build upon firm ground and not sinking sand. I as well as you, most likely since childhood, have been assured by our spiritual leaders that the answer is "Yes" to the above question, but as I said it all depends upon the interpretation of them.
Answer for yourself: Does it stand to reason that if the ancients wrote these same Sacred Scriptures never intending a "literal" or "historical" understanding of them be held by the readers and hearers, then how accurate is our understanding of them if we approach them "literally" and "historically"? Perhaps you have even had some emotional experiences which seem to validate your leaders' assurances while in church. I did. Don't mistake the love of God for His children as an approval for one's ignorance for the Sacred Texts he reads and his disobedience from such an erroneous understanding. As you know, though, true faith is based neither upon trust in men (Ps, 146:3), nor even upon occurrences of the supernatural (Deut. 13); nor can we trust our emotions as a barometer for truth.
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."---Galileo Galilei
Without your personal knowledge about such purposeful Hebraic Scriptural misquotations, mistranslations, and verses taken and used out of context as contained in the New Testament, let alone the "radical reinterpretation" of the ancient Divine Wisdom and ancient Mysteries in the recharacterization of "the Christ within", you cannot make a fair and intelligent evaluation to such a premise put forth in this website; you can only make an emotional one. You might be sincere, but at the same time sincerely wrong and never know it until you die. Bet Emet Ministries makes available to you in this site valuable data, research, and information about such matters; offered in an attempt to help you find the truth about these issues in hopes such knowledge will allow you to make necessary changes in your beliefs and Spiritual walk; thus assuring a life more pleasing to God. We ask that you complete these studies in a spirit of earnestness and prayer, asking God to reveal to you His truth in the quietness of your own heart. As you do so, remember that you are a member of a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (Ex.19:6), described in the Scriptures as the "apple of God's eye" (Zech.2:8) and participants in an "everlasting covenant" (Gen. 17:7). As such, rest assured that God will indeed heed your request as you sincerely seek to discover His Divine Truth; a Truth that was suppressed for over 1,800 years but now in our day again seeing the light of day for all those who have "ears to hear" and "eyes to see".
Occasionally we at Bet Emet are not understood when being critical of much of what the New Testament says and how it is taught today. We are not trying to say "Gentile Christianity" is wrong, but rather trying to get to the truth concerning Jesus and "the faith once given the saints" after centuries of repression of such truths along with alterations in supposedly "infallible" documents we inherited as the "New Testament". The result of our study and research dictates that we be truthful to what we have found in our research because God is watching. God desires we have faith in the truth and not in error. We understand such misunderstandings by some of our readers because most of our readers have not had the opportunity to read and study to the level we have over the last 20 years where we discovered much that forced us to bow our knee to new and higher Divine Truth and repent and make changes in our "religious belief system" in order that our lives be more pleasing to God. Simply we found, based upon our studies, that much of the New Testament, especially in "key" doctrinal positions, was a replacement of the actual beliefs that were held by the vast majority of Rabbis like the Jesus of the New Testament in the first century.
There is no way you can be a follower of Jesus and contradict what he both believed and practiced as his faith; no matter what the later "Romanized Paul" and the New Testament which again Rome provided to us has to say. The sad fact is alarming: there is no way you can practice contemporary Christianity and be a true follower of Jesus. A cursory reading of the New Testament does not always provide such an understanding, for most read it as if it is "inspired, infallible, and inerrant", and because of their unfamiliarity with the Old Testament, never spot such textual problems contained within it as I have delineated above. Most never question anything about the New Testament. Such I found is not wise, and you will be amazed once you see it for yourself. Nothing could be farther from the truth than the "infallibility and inerrancy" of the New Testament, and this fact will become evident upon initial serious study of the New Testament. Understand such a false trust and belief in the New Testament by most Christians today is not based upon the reader’s personal and individual study of the New Testament, but rather upon the hearsay he has picked up by listening to others express such trust in the New Testament through preaching Sunday after Sunday. This amounts to basically "brainwashing" because what you so often hear is "not the truth". There should be less preaching and more teaching; then this problem would no longer exist to the degree that it does today. The sad fact of the matter is that those who say such things have never done their homework to the depth necessary to see the problems inherent in accepting the New Testament as authoritative for faith and practice. What they miss is that in many ways the New Testament is a repudiation of what a righteous Jew like our example in Jesus would have both believed and lived. The New Testament was never meant to be a replacement book for the Jewish Scriptures, the Tanakh and Torah, but sadly has become that today for the vast majority of non-Jewish believers in God as Christians. This is our sad legacy from the anti-Semitic Gentile Church of the earliest centuries of the Jesus Movement within Biblical Judaism.
A Christian's religious belief system, when tested and exposed to contradictory facts from Biblical languages, Biblical history, Biblical culture, the Biblical texts, the study of comparative religions, as well as Gnosticism, Egyptian Religion, the ancient Divine Wisdom, Astronomy and Astrology, and Archeology, must in the Spirit of Truth and Repentance, be flexible enough to change.
Doctrine, when found in the New Testament, to be true must conform to the Word of God; the true Hebrew Scriptures and not the Christian version of them once corrupted.
"To the law and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them." (Isaiah 8:20)
Thus if we find religious dogmas and doctrines in the New Testament which contradict the Hebrew Scriptures then according to Isaiah such doctrines are to be understood as fables and lies. To fail to acknowledge such contradictions when shown them means that you stand in opposition to the Prophets and that you contradict not only Isaiah the Prophet who is quoted above, but Moses, as well as the "Jewish Christ" exampled for us in the person of Jesus.
Answer for yourself: Can we trust the early anti-Semitic Gentile Catholics to have been led into all truth by the Holy Spirit (just look at their doctrines and you know God did not give them such lies), and should we trust these same people and their collection of writings called the New Testament Canon when their writings, in many places, contradict Moses and Jesus? Well, we will have to see once we begin to look seriously as the faults within it.
We at Bet Emet Ministries cannot, and we offer no man apologies for what we teach. Just understand that when you read the New Testament, with all its additions, purposeful misquotes and mistranslations of the Hebrew Scriptures, changes, additions, deletions and various doctrinal creationism over the early centuries of the Gentile Church, that the doctrines behind the men who did this are yet expressed in Roman Catholicism and many as well in Protestantism today!!! My friends, I hope to stimulate your interest and study as a "thinking believer" in hopes that you begin to give serious attention to studying the document you have trusted your whole life as "infallible, inerrant, and inspired"; the New Testament. We must realize that one’s behavior and conduct before God or one’s fellow man is determined by what he believes. If we have a forged document, and we do, then our conduct, behavior, and beliefs are often wrong and much of what we do is considered "sin" by God and we never know it. That can change however and Bet Emet Ministries hopes to help you in this regard if you so desire.
Answer for yourself: What will you do when you discover that much of what you have been taught from the New Testament, which has influenced your conduct and behavior, is in error and opposed by Moses and the teachings of the "Jewish Christ"; and in reality has even led you into sin because of your ignorance of the Old Testament and what it teaches?
Answer for yourself: What of other errors in the New Testament which can be shown to be false teachings created by the non-Jewish Gentile Church which have caused you to depart from what the "Jewish Christ" would have you do; thus having a conduct, belief, or attitude contrary to what God originally desired you have? What will you do after having allowed yourself to be shown that many cherished doctrines of the Christian faith are in reality sin when compared with the Jewish Scriptures and the faith practiced by a Jew like Jesus? "I hope you said repent".
I hope you would and this web page is dedicated to the defense of God and enlightenment of His people.
The New Testament writers are guilty of mishandling and abuse of the Jewish Scripture in order to create a new religion which opposes the faith of Jesus. Let me give you the mechanics involved in textual manipulation whereby we end up with something different in meaning that the original author intended and what the earliest church both believed and practiced.
Besides the quest for truth and an obedient life before God, there are numerous verses contained within the New Testament, which in and of themselves are not anti-Semitic but are used to substantiate certain beliefs held by the early Gentile Church which have anti-Jewish implications. Carried out to the end-result these verses influence one’s beliefs and conduct. We beg of you: Don't throw away the opportunity God has placed before you to study His Word in such a way whereby you can see the discrepancies for yourself. What you do then is up to you, but you need to see them in order to make an intelligent decision. Remember God has instructed us to "Be holy, for He is holy." Let that be the impetus for your quest for God and His Truth. It has been mine. Shalom.
Are you ready for the most important study of your life?
