Honest to Jesus

0:00This episode is entitled, Honest to Jesus. Hello, I'm J. Forrest, welcome to the spiritual deism podcast. Sevo years after retiring, this president of the United States spent his evenings with scissors and glue cutting from the four gospels, those verses that spoke to moral truth, discarding miracles and mystery to preserve the teachings of compassion, justice and reason. To him, faiths power lay not in wonder, but in wisdom, the voice of a teacher guiding humanity toward virtue. When his careful work was done, he bound it into a new volume, entitled it, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, a private testament to his enlightenment ideals.

1:08This editor of this great work was Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, and the writer of the Declaration of Independence. Higher criticism has come a long way since Jefferson, but it turns out Jefferson was not far off. The Jesus seminar rigorously pursued the historical Jesus through scholarly analysis of the gospel text. They deemed only 18% of the Sains authentic, portraying Jesus as a wisdom teacher and social critic, rather than a divine miracle worker. Bardem and has done much to popularize what is widely accepted in consensus scholarship. Scholarship now agrees that the gospel of Mark was written first, and that the gospels of Matthew and Luke copied Mark. Scholarship agrees that the gospels were written by anonymous authors, and only decades later were attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Scholarship agrees that the gospel of John is the least historical, meaning most of the material was invented some 60 years after the death of Jesus.

2:17Scholarship agrees that the material in the gospels is not eyewitness accounts, but secondhand stories circulated or invented. Scholars also find the history of early Christianity is recorded by Eusevius to be largely false and biased. Christianity did not start out as one unified moment that only later had to fight off heresies trying to corrupt the one true faith. That story is a lie. The truth is that the church split into the Jerusalem church under the leadership of Jesus' brother, James, and the church at Antioch, under the leadership of Greek-speaking Jews, influenced by the Apostle Paul. The 12 Apostles never taught Paul. They never ordained him to be an Apostle. Paul never met Jesus, never heard him teach. Paul appointed himself to be an Apostle, received his gospel through a special revelation, give it only to him, and only quotes Jesus once.

3:23Paul served a false Christ and taught a false gospel that was in his own words, quote, my gospel, Galatians 1. He ended up hijacking the movement, writing most of the New Testament, and influenced the writings of Mark, Luke, and especially John. Only the gospel of Matthew and the epistle of James escaped most of the heresy of Paul, although Orthodox editors did corrupt some readings in Matthew later on. It was a gospel of Luke and the book of Acts that is responsible for the great cover-up. Luke invented the reconciliation of Peter and Paul, for Paul was his hero. James, the brother of Jesus, was Luke's enemy, and so he purposely downplayed the family of Jesus. If you're interested in this, James Taber in his book, The Jesus Dynasty, gives a fuller picture.

4:26It's important to realize that modern Christianity follows Paul, not Jesus. The original followers of Jesus are called the Evianites. Jesus wasn't a Christian and never started Christianity and never would have. Jesus was the Jew who lived as a Jew and sought to reform Judaism. In fact, Jesus isn't his real name. Yeshua is his real name. Jesus appointed his brother James to take over leadership of the movement after his death. Afterwards, the Gentile group grew and ended up turning on the original Jewish believers. They even classified them as heretics. The fact is the Evianites were the descendants of the church at Jerusalem headed by James, the brother of Jesus. Once you discover this, you'll never look at the New Testament the same. It was from this deep study that I created the Evianite Bible, which is my attempt to recover the original teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

5:29And what I discovered was that Thomas Jefferson was actually right. The ethical teachings of Jesus were the most important part of Jesus' message for us today. In order to be honest to Jesus, I must tell you what he really taught. Jesus never claimed to be God and even denied it in Matthew chapter 19. The Evianites did not believe in the virgin birth, the incarnation, or the deity of Jesus, or in the Trinity. When asked how to be saved, Jesus said, and I quote, if you want to enter into divine life, keep the commandments, Matthew 19. The Apostle Paul said the law was abolished by Jesus' death, but Jesus said he did not come to abolish the law, Matthew chapter 5. The Apostle Paul and the Protestant Reformation both declare that you're justified by faith alone, but Jesus' brother James said,

6:29quote, you see then, that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone, the pistol of James chapter 2. What was most surprising was that Jesus said, quote, I have come to bring an end to animal sacrifices, and unless you cease from offering them, the displeasure of God will not depart from you. That's the Evianite Gospel that was deleted from the original. In fact, the reason Jesus cleansed the temple was to stop the animal sacrifices. After we drove out the sheep, the oxen, and the doves, Jesus told them to stop making the house of God, and I quote, a cave for those who shed innocent blood, Matthew 21, the Evianite Bible, which leads you down a rabbit hole where you learn the Prophet Jeremiah chapter 7 says that God,

7:31quote, didn't command them to offer sacrifices to him in the first place. And the Prophet, Hosea, in chapter 6 says God does not want animal sacrifices. Other prophets like Isaiah and Amos say the same things. I have a chapter in the Evianite Bible on it. All this leads us to an important conclusion about Jesus' own death. Paul taught that God required a human sacrifice in order to forgive our sins. The idea was borrowed from the idle worshippers of pagan nations, and it was not from God. Now if God never required sacrifices, animal, or human, then Jesus didn't die for our sins in some kind of a toning sacrifice. According to Jesus, God said, I don't want animal sacrifices. I want you to show compassion to people, Matthew chapter 9.

8:34Jesus' mission was to bring the people of Israel back to loving God and loving others, turning the temple into a house of prayer and stopping the slaughter of the innocent animals. That means that Jesus was martyred because he interfered with the priest money-making industry of animal sacrifices. I conclude, as a deist I believe in this Jesus, the historical Jesus who preached love for God, fellow people, and the animals. I don't believe in the Christ of faith, invented by Paul and used by the church and the state to suppress free speech, close freedom of choice, and authorize crimes against humanity in the name of God. Let me leave you with an apparism. To the masses religion is true, to the wise religion is false, to the rulers religion is useful.

9:44Thank you for listening. You can find me online at jforest.org.