Recently, I posted (on another blog) about how John 7 writes about Jesus going to the Sukkot Festival (the God-Commanded Fall Fair), at which point the festival goers asked, “How did this man get such learning without having been taught?” (John 7:15) I reported how Jesus responded to them by saying, “My teaching is not my own. It comes from the one who sent me.” (John 7:16) Jesus then went on to say he was sent by God.
It is a good little piece of Scriptural interpretation that came to me from the same source, which I believe is well worth reading. Do a search on John 7 and see what comes up. As for this writing, I want to add something I did not include in the other.
Last year I began to write a lengthy book that I hope will be completed and published this year. Who knows? Maybe or maybe not. There is so much evil in the world, I wonder if it will ever be read by anyone other than me (and my wife, its editor). Still, in that writing, I was led to discover a apocryphal book entitled The Infancy Gospel of Thomas. It is available free online and I recommend everyone read it. That is why I write now.
In The Infancy Gospel we see Jesus the boy, between the ages of five and eleven. He did some amazing things, including killing some people for being unworthy of living, while also bringing some dead people back to life. The neighbors of Joseph and Mary (the Jews) hated Joseph’s family because of Jesus, forcing them to keep Jesus from them and their children. That meant Joseph became the neighbor of some Greeks who had moved into the Nazareth area, kind of like returning Israelites that were not of the tribes of Judah.
Us American Christians, especially the ones who make a lot of jack (moolah, casharoonie, denero, bread, etc.), have the luxury of sending our children to parochial schools (often Catholic, even when practicing pagans) … just because we can. Us Americans are so lazy and uneducated in ‘spiritual matters’ that we leave the teaching of religious stuff to relative strangers; but then, what is the difference between private and public education anyway, as far as handing our children’s minds over to strangers? Outside of homeschooling (the blind leading the blind), parents leave all the educating to others, while adults go out and sell their souls a little bit at a time, hoping their children are too busy or too stupid to notice that sell out. Neither is the case, unfortunately.
As to The Infancy Gospel, Joseph had the same approach to Judaic education (the only schools of thought the Israelites grew to know) as had his father and his father’s father, et al. He sent Jesus to the equivalent to an elementary school for Jews, so Jesus could be taught the ways of Moses. Jesus made the teacher drop down dead, because he tried to use a stick to make Jesus learn the Hebrew alphabet.
After that it was Joseph bringing in tutors, each more afraid Jesus would kill them too. Both quit.
Do you know why they quit?
Guess.
I’ll tell you. They quit because they had nothing to teach Jesus. When the teachers pointed a stick to an aleph on a chalkboard and expected Jesus to say “a,” Jesus asked the teacher, “What does aleph mean?” When neither teacher could understand his question, Jesus asked them, “How can you teach about the letters when you do not know about the letters?" Jesus then went into teaching them more than they could fathom … so they quit.
They both said, “He should be teaching me. There is nothing I can teach him that he does not already know.”
That leads us back to the John 7 words the Jews said about him and what Jesus said in return.
Jesus did not teach (call it preaching) the people he encountered in his ministry (officially three years, but it lasted his entire lifetime). His body walked around. His lips moved, but Jesus was not the one speaking. Jesus did not sit at home of Friday evening, pouring over notes, papers, and books written by Saint Bonhoeffer, in order to come up with some flimsy-ass idea about what Scripture meant, so he could draft a meaningless sermon to orate inside a synagogue the next morning.
Jesus was a sermon of truth, 24/7, 365.25 days a year. There was never a time that Jesus would be stumped by a question, comment or threat. There was no stretching the truth to reach some twelve minute mark that Jesus fretted over. Jesus could be profound in one or two sentences. Jesus could politely beat you down on your knees with the words coming from his mouth, transforming you into a poor whimpering excuse of a sinner, if you ever tried to challenge him or trick him. [See how far he had progressed, from making sinners fall down dead!]
Jesus never held a school for disciples either. He never trained his followers to “sit at home of Friday evening, pouring over notes, papers, and books written by Saint Bonhoeffer, in order to come up with some flimsy-ass idea about what Scripture meant, so he could draft a meaningless sermon to orate inside a synagogue the next morning.” If that had happened, we’d all be Jews now and there would have never been anything known as “Christianity.”
“So,” you might ask, “how did Christianity ever become the world’s greatest religion?”
Well, I’ll tell you. It happened because once Jesus died, resurrected, and ascended he then immediately came back in the bodies of twelve (plus, counting the women and other followers who prayed constantly to God for guidance) Apostles. An Apostle is a Saint, which means a human being whose soul has joined with the soul of God’s Christ Spirit (aka the Holy Spirit), so one is a duplication (call it resurrection) of Jesus. One Jesus became twelve Jesuses, which became over three thousand Jesuses after just one sermon!
None of those Saints burned the midnight oil scratching their heads, saying to themselves, “What the hell does this Scripture mean? Where did someone else explain it so that it fits my political, social, and selfish agenda?”
Just like Jesus explained to the Jews at the Sukkot Festival, “My teaching is not my own. It comes from the one who sent me,” every Apostle and/or Saint explained their abilities the same way. Why? Because they all were (are and forever will be) Jesus Christ reborn!!!
None of them ever went to a seminary in order to be ordained to preach. Seminary ordination is like going to school to learn how to be a hotel manager and then (degree in hand) one goes to work at the front desk of a Ramada Inn [or whatever hotel denomination you prefer to work for]. Handing out wafers and wine is no different than placing a dish of mints [individually wrapped] on the check-in counter and stocking the mini-bar in each room [you will be billed for any consumption of spirits].
God the Father ordains His priests and God the Father is the source of all understanding of the Holy Bible and its Apocrypha. God the Father is the understanding of everything. God the Father is the source of all truth that comes from the mouths of His Saints. That is why a priest MUST BE THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS or one is just a hired hand [or worst … a false shepherd]. Only a reproduction of Jesus, as the Christ, can keep Christianity alive.
I just felt the need to say this. I hope it means something to someone.
Note: In case anyone was wondering, “What is a ‘false shepherd’?” It is anyone who does not tell the truth about the meaning of Scripture [unless you actually are a sheep, but sheep can’t read]. Jesus always said, “Verily” or “Truly” or “I’m telling you the truth of the Father.” When a priest stands up in front of an audience and pretends to preach about Scripture readings for that day and then does not explain the Scripture(s) so the people in the pews feel their hearts burn with desire to know more, then that priest is not telling the truth. Still, that does not necessarily make them false shepherds, in the truest sense.
Now, my young son (when he was about six and old enough to write) wrote a book. It was several cut up pieces of paper, stapled in the center and folded to look like pages (he did all the work); and he wrote a story (in pencil) that was writing on each of the pages, ending with “the end.” He made the whole story up because he wanted to write a book. He did what he intended to do and he did that very well. While the words were fun to read, they were merely the imagination of a young mind – a child. Still, it was pure and innocent. It wasn’t a lie, so it wasn’t false. It was just childish.
Many priests, like my young son, think that they are doing something good, when their hearts are innocent and void of willful deceit. They are trying to do something they only have an naive idea about what that something means to really do. Called “priests” they are not true priests of Yahweh, so they are in over their heads (like my son, had he really tried to be an author-publisher) and they are incapable of speaking the truth of the Father. That makes them “hired hands” of church organizations. They are grown-up children working for a paycheck and benefits, pretending to be holy. They are just ‘playing church’.
Those who know what the truth is and purposefully mislead and misdirect others, so they will not find God and Christ, they are the liars and the wolves in sheep’s clothing. Those who defile the church organizations by willfully forcing evil to be accepted as “what Jesus would do” are liars and cheats. They seek to destroy the churches and condemn all the flocks.