The Bed of Christianity.

The bed of Christianity is no bed of roses and consists of much bracken and many thorns.

Surely the modern Christian must begin to wonder why there are so many "blasphemous attacks" against Jesus Christ. Why is every phase of his Messiah-ship being challenged?

Why such a fuss over his historicity? What has happened to bring about such skepticism?

The best answer, perhaps, is that the Christians have made their own selective beds, rooted in prescientific mythology of a primitive, superstitious, and ignorant ancient period of time and now they must lie in it.

It is out of the world of myth and terror that the Christian-Judaic religion has evolved. All Christians owe the survival of their faith to, standing on the shoulders of, the most primitive-minded creatures of the past 3000 years: as with the advent of Christianity the illiterate masses who made this religion of the Christ popular. Demented churchmen who heard supposed voices, saw supposed visions, and who exulted in the thought that they would die horrible deaths in defense of their faith… witch burning sadists, and inquisitors…heretic hunters whose motto was "Kill all, God will know his own!…bloodthirsty crusaders…emaciated ascetics who stood in the desert with stones attached to their testicles, and when their man hood dropped off, they crawled away secure in the thought that they would earn the ultimate reward for their holy dedication…theologians like Augustine of Hippo, 354-430. A vigorous advocate of Roman Catholicism. He developed many of his doctrines while attempting to resolve theological conflicts with Donatism and Plagianism, two supposedly heretical Christian movements. The Pelagians were followers of a British Monk who denied the doctrine of "Original Sin." In the course of this long and bitter conflict Augustine developed his doctrines of original sin, divine grace, divine sovereignty, and predestination. Augustine taught that man is crooked and sordid, deceased and ulcerous, an evil creature whose body is loathsome because it is material, the mind is impotent because it is human, pleasure is evil, virtue consists of denial, life is a prison where man is doomed to pain, misery, and calamity… and the authors of the good book that gave to Christians their sanction for every form of cruelty: "They shalt not suffer a witch to live," "And if a man takes a wife and her mother it is wickedness, they shall be burnt with fire." "And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore…shall be burnt by fire."… "And I will kill her children with death…"(" Compel them to enter into religious persecution!" argued their renowned biblicist Augustine; and his writings became one of the great sources of justification for intolerance in the Christian-Judaic system.)

Did the Catholics who developed the new salvation faith (Protestantism is only about five hundred years of age) provide the millions who would come to Jesus over the centuries, with a reasonable religion dedicated to a belief in one good and supreme Creator? The answer is "No!"

What they birthed upon the world, instead, was a supernatural god born of a natural woman-half-man, half-god creature whose existence is supported by the prophetic, the miraculous, the stupendous, and the incomprehensible. The Catholic church gave us a curious salvation cult that commands us to tell Jesus how sinful and contaminated we are as human beings, as millions submissively idolise him, in order to be worthy of and attain salvation. Catholics gave us the Nicene Creed, a mass of contradictions and continually being modified over time. One conclusion can stand. Jesus is all things to all people. He is God and man… He is perfect and imperfect…He is truth and he is hoax…He is the Son of man and the Son of God…He comes with peace and with a sword…He is obsessively formalistic and radically tolerant…He has human failings and a noble character…He curses the fig tree and loves his enemies…He is a brilliant scholar and a simple carpenter… He is a realist and a mystic…He is a rebellious anachist and a despairing visionary…He is pro-Jewish and anti-Jewish…He is pro-law and anti-law…He is apocalyptic and hopeful…He teaches a negative discipline and a positive hope for divine intervention…He is called a rabbi, master, prophet, teacher, Messiah, servant, Son of God, Word, King of kings, and Lord of lords. The Gentile founders of the Catholic faith chose the quickest method and the most effective practices that could be used to attract and control the "simple faithful," while avoiding any and all appeals to intelligent, curious, and imaginative human beings. And in order to make room for faith, they excommunicated reason: " Unless you first believe, you shall not understand." "Prove not only believe." "Believe because it is unbelievable." "Believe that black is white if the church rules it so." "Ask not reason of the church."

Who is this Jesus of Nazareth? We can only speculate since there is not a shred of trustworthy evidence indicating that there ever was a Jesus of the Gospel.

Outside of the New Testament, there is no proof that Jesus was known in either Galilee or Jerusalem. No proof that he was a teacher… No proof that he carried out cures of various illnesses… No proof that he cast out demons, particularly those who were supposedly demon- possessed… No proof that he was involved in a controversy with fellow Jews over question of the law of Moses, and no proof that he was crucified in the governor-ship of Pontius Pilate. There is absolutely nothing contemporary with the Jesus of the Gospel that confirms the truth of his being. No sculptures, no drawings, no marking in stone, nothing written in his own hand, no letters, no commentaries, indeed no authentic documents written by his Jewish and Gentile contemporaries, such as Justis of Tiberius, Philo, Josephus, Seneca, Petronius Arbiter, Pliny the Elder, et al, not one to lend credibility to the historicity of Jesus.

Never the less, countless observers over the centuries, from Celsus to Compte, to Nietzsche to Schweitzer, have persisted in telling the world not what they knew about Jesus, but only what they felt, or believed.

Many Christians would be shocked and surprised to learn that some of the most scholarly scholars of the last two hundred years were convinced that no such person as Jesus ever existed.