Jesus Before Christianity

Click the icon for the one-page, front and back, printable version of this small group lesson as  "Celebrate Woman!" Week 19

The Jesus MeetUp      Jesus Before Christianity          Week #18

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Jesus made the Christian religion, right?

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Good question! Let us look and see historically what really happened.

Jesus chose the perfect time to come to our world for His mission.

122:0.2a After a study of the special report on the status of segregated worlds prepared by the Melchizedeks, in counsel with Gabriel, Michael [Jesus] finally chose Urantia [Earth] as the planet whereon to enact his final bestowal.

122:0.2b Subsequent to this decision Gabriel made a personal visit to Urantia, and, as a result of his study of human groups and his survey of the spiritual, intellectual, racial, and geographic features of the world and its peoples, he decided that the Hebrews possessed those relative advantages which warranted their selection as the bestowal race. Upon Michael's approval of this decision, Gabriel appointed and dispatched to Urantia the Family Commission of Twelve — selected from among the higher orders of universe personalities — which was entrusted with the task of making an investigation of Jewish family life. When this commission ended its labors, Gabriel was present on Urantia and received the report nominating three prospective unions as being, in the opinion of the commission, equally favorable as bestowal families for Michael's projected incarnation.

122:0.3 From the three couples nominated, Gabriel made the personal choice of Joseph and Mary, subsequently making his personal appearance to Mary, at which time he imparted to her the glad tidings that she had been selected to become the earth mother of the bestowal child.

Did Jesus want to be Jewish?

Jesus knew all 613 Jewish laws the Rabbis taught His people. He did not follow all of them.

Jesus knew all of the Jewish tenets of belief but He did not believe in some of those statements. In Jesus’ Final Discourse to the Rabbis, Pharisees and Sanhedrin He spoke 10 “woes” to them revealing His disappointments. His life in our world showed us what is true about our Paradise Father, and what is not true. Jesus chose our world to do His final spiritual work before He became our MASTER Creator Son. This is a BIG DEAL for us and our entire universe. Gabriel chose Joseph and Mary, as Hebrews because the Jewish religion provided certain qualities that would assist Jesus in revealing His Paradise Father to His children in the highest and best way.

What did Jesus think of these rules and regulations attached to Judaism?

121:7.3 The scribes, the Pharisees, and the priesthood held the Jews in a terrible bondage of ritualism and legalism, a bondage far more real than that of the Roman political rule. The Jews of Jesus' time were not only held in subjugation to the law but were equally bound by the slavish demands of the traditions, which involved and invaded every domain of personal and social life. These minute regulations of conduct pursued and dominated every loyal Jew, and it is not strange that they promptly rejected one of their number [Jesus] who presumed to ignore their sacred traditions, and who dared to flout their long-honored regulations of social conduct. They could hardly regard with favor the teachings of one [Jesus] who did not hesitate to clash with dogmas which they regarded as having been ordained by Father Abraham himself. Moses had given them their law and they would not compromise.

from this kind of invasion...

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and control of everyone’s personal lives. He brought to us personal and spiritual freedom from our Paradise Father on high. This is GOOD NEWS, indeed!

Jesus approved of the backdrop of the Roman, Jewish and Greek

influences at this, His time in history.

Jesus, our Michael, is a far-seeing Creator Son and as such He was able to see down our timeline and knew that eventually His True Religion with His true teachings would not only come out of Christianity, but would overtake and overcome this lesser world religion over time. It is thrilling to know that we are in that time now and we are a part of bringing Jesus’ True Religion to the fore for all peoples in our world today.

195:2.9 A succession of Greek-cultural and Roman-political victories had consolidated the Mediterranean lands into one empire, with one language and one culture, and had made the Western world ready for one God. Judaism provided this God, but Judaism was not acceptable as a religion to these Romanized Greeks. Philo helped some to mitigate their objections, but Christianity revealed to them an even better concept of one God, and they embraced it readily.

Christianity did not exist during Jesus’ lifetime but was soon to follow after

His death and resurrection.

195:0.3 Upon such a stage of human society the teachings of Jesus, embraced in the Christian message, were suddenly thrust. A new order of living was thus presented to the hungry hearts of these Western peoples. This situation meant immediate conflict between the older religious practices and the new Christianized version of Jesus' message to the world. Such a conflict must result in either decided victory for the new or for the old or in some degree of compromise. History shows that the struggle ended in compromise. Christianity presumed to embrace too much for any one people to assimilate in one or two generations. It was not a simple spiritual appeal, such as Jesus had presented to the souls of men; it early struck a decided attitude on religious rituals, education, magic, medicine, art, literature, law, government, morals, sex regulation, polygamy, and, in limited degree, even slavery. Christianity came not merely as a new religion — something all the Roman Empire and all the Orient were waiting for — but as a new order of human society. And as such a pretension it quickly precipitated the social-moral clash of the ages. The ideals of Jesus, as they were reinterpreted by Greek philosophy and socialized in Christianity [invented by Paul], now boldly challenged the traditions of the human race embodied in the ethics, morality, and religions of Western civilization.

In Jesus’ life there was no Bible as we know it today.

Jesus did refer to some of the best of Hebrew teachings when He spoke. However, Jesus did eventually allow people to view Him as the Hebrew messiah when qualified by the fact that He was the Son of God and son of man. But He never taught Hebrew Nationalism. He was not “political”. His mission was spiritual entirely. He despised the sacrificial system.

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Jesus disapproved of the hierarchical/ecclesiastical profit-motive system of the Jews.

He never mentioned a certain book as the infallible “word of God” as we hear of today. And as true followers of Jesus we should promote HIS teachings and not go back to promoting the old and false teachings of a book that He never sanctioned since it demeans His Father’s good name by doctrines like Hell and Atonement. Jesus also knew that His mother was not a virgin when He was born nor did He ever teach that His resurrection should be any part of His True Religion. Jesus always said that faith alone is required for a personal relationship with one’s indwelling Paradise Father. He never instructed that faith must be accompanied by certain works, as His brother James falsely claimed.

Jesus never met Paul on the Damascus Road, just as our beloved archangel Gabriel

did not meet Mohammad in the cave to give him his book.

The story regarding Mohammad and the way he received the infamous Koran says that our beloved archangel, and first born of our local universe met Mohammad in a cave and gave him this book’s information. Let us look at this seriously.

Do we think that our brilliant and LOVING Gabriel would EVER want the people of our world to hurt women, torture people or even kill them because they do not believe as another believes? Does this sound like Gabriel to you? No, not to us either. So, this is surely coming from a father of lies. We believe that the personality/entity who met Mohammad that day in the cave was probably the same poser who met Paul on the Damascus Road.

This same person influenced Paul to invent Christianity with its myriad of false doctrines relating to our LOVING Paradise Father who would NEVER create a place called Hell/Hades to torture erring children forever, kill His own beloved Son so that His blood could spill down a Roman cross in order for your "sins" to be forgiven, or expect certain deeds to be done so that one’s faith may be "proven". Ponder this! What other lies have we been told in this area called “religion”?

196:2.1b You may preach a religion about Jesus, but, perforce, you must live the religion of Jesus. In the enthusiasm of Pentecost, Peter unintentionally inaugurated a new religion, the religion of the risen and glorified Christ. [Never what Jesus taught] The Apostle Paul later on transformed this new gospel into Christianity, a religion embodying his own theologic views and portraying his own personal experience with the Jesus of the Damascus road. The gospel of the kingdom is founded on the personal religious experience of the Jesus of Galilee; Christianity is founded almost exclusively on the personal religious experience of the Apostle Paul. Almost the whole of the New Testament is devoted, not to the portrayal of the significant and inspiring religious life of Jesus, but to a discussion of Paul's religious experience and to a portrayal of his personal religious convictions.

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READ THAT AGAIN!

SEE HOW THEY DIFFERENTIATE OUR JESUS OF GALILEE

FROM PAUL’S VISITOR ON THE DAMASCUS ROAD.

ONE IS LEGIT AND THE OTHER IS NOT!

196:2.1a Some day a reformation in the Christian church may strike deep enough to get back to the unadulterated religious teachings of Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith...The New Testament is a superb Christian document, but it is only meagerly Jesusonian.

Abner, one of John the Baptist’s original group who became a stalwart follower of Jesus said this of what Paul did to Jesus’ true teachings:

166:5.5 Thus was Abner compelled to live a life of isolation. He was head of a church which was without standing at Jerusalem. He had dared to defy James the Lord's brother, who was subsequently supported by Peter. Such conduct effectively separated him from all his former associates. Then he dared to withstand Paul. Although he was wholly sympathetic with Paul in his mission to the gentiles, and though he supported him in his contentions with the church at Jerusalem, he bitterly opposed the version of Jesus' teachings which Paul elected to preach. In his last years Abner denounced Paul as the "clever corrupter of the life teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of the living God."

Christianity does not define Jesus and Jesus does not define Christianity. Jesus’ True Religion emerges OUT of the cocoon of Christianity.

170:5.21 Mistake not! there is in the teachings of Jesus an eternal nature which will not permit them forever to remain unfruitful in the hearts of thinking men. The kingdom as Jesus conceived it has to a large extent failed on earth; for the time being, an outward church has taken its place; but you should comprehend that this church is only the larval stage of the thwarted spiritual kingdom, which will carry it through this material age and over into a more spiritual dispensation where the Master's teachings may enjoy a fuller opportunity for development. Thus does the so-called Christian church become the cocoon in which the kingdom of Jesus' concept now slumbers. The kingdom of the divine brotherhood is still alive and will eventually and certainly come forth from this long submergence, just as surely as the butterfly eventually emerges as the beautiful unfolding of its less attractive creature of metamorphic development.

Some questions to discuss:

• 1. Are you surprised that Jesus and Christianity are two separate things? Why?
• 2. Why do you think Paul corrupted the true teachings of Jesus?
• 3. Can you see yourself promoting Jesus’ True Religion? If so, how?​​

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Now is a good time to say as a loving group The Lord’s Prayer all together. Please turn these sheets back in.  Write down any questions you may have and give them to your leader. Feel free to write down a prayer request and give it to your leader.

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Next week we will celebrate Mother’s Day! Celebration of Women  Week #19

When men search for God, they are searching for everything. When they find God, they have found everything. The search for God is the unstinted bestowal of love attended by amazing discoveries of new and greater love to be bestowed.