Three Simple Questions

You know, with the DaVinci Code movie, there is going to be a lot of discussion on Jesus as man instead of Jesus as Christ. This, of course, is heresy and often based on half-facts and unique interpretations of events in order to fit the end goal.

By the way, Dan Brown, author of the DaVinci Code, is being sued for plagiarism by another author of a book called The Jesus Papers, which states Jesus survived the crucifixion and moved to France with Mary Magdalene and his daughter. I will say this about that... if Jesus' offspring are seeded throughout France, then why does everyone hate the French?

All joking aside, just like when the Dead Sea scrolls came out in the 1950s and other Jesus isn't Christ books were written in the 1970s, there will be a lot of discussion and ignorant credence given to alternative theories as to the divinity of Christ.

When discussing these alternative theories on Christ, they often omit some crucial, basic questions in their discussion.

1) What makes the Apostles so unique in following a "dead" leader?

There were many people claiming to be the Messiah around the time of Christ. There were prophets with followers throughout the region (i.e., John the Baptist). There have been a lot of people since who have claimed to be either a Son of God or Jesus Christ himself (Charles Manson, David Koresh). Yet, when those people have lost their power (Manson) or have died (Koresh), what happens to their followers? They disappear. The followers lose their way. If Koresh was really Jesus, why aren't there Koresh Churches sprouting up all over the country? Why aren't their churches of any of the hundreds of other false Messiahs located throughout the world?

The fact that the Koresh Center for How To Be Jesus Studies doesn't exist, or any of the other false Messiah religions, means that the Apostles were truly unique and completely brilliant men. After all, they are the ONLY people in the history of the world to put into place a world religion based on complete fabrications about the divinity of a mere man.

So, the question needs to be asked and answered as to what makes these 12 Apostles so different from every other follower of every other person claiming to be the Messiah in the history of man?

2) What did the Apostles have to gain by making Jesus a Christ, if he was truly just a prophet?

Humans are not that complex. We are usually driven to acquire either love, power or wealth.

In Rome, there were two accepted religions, the Roman pagan religion and the Jewish religion. That was it. The only reason the Romans put up with the Judaism is because it had been around so long. Any religion different, new and not sanctioned was considered a superstition and people were killed for following it (see Nero's persecution of the Christians).

So, under that landscape, why would 12 men, mostly uneducated, hatch a plan that would falsify the divinity of their dead leader, which thereby mandates creating a new religion, the outcome of which means ostracizing them from their current religion and making them an enemy of the state due to creating an illegal superstition?

Is this where the acquistion of love, power or wealth occurs? I think not.

It's important to remember that the Roman Catholic Church was not an institution then. It was nothing. It didn't have wealth and power and influence. It had 12 men with their families cowering in a room, hiding from sight, for fear of their lives. Besides which, there have been studies by mathematicians and statisticians that have done backward calculations on the growth of Christianity and have determined that St. Paul, for example, had followers of maybe 50 people in each city. His letters to the Corinthians was not to a large following, but a couple of families and followers.

Not in the Apostles' lifetimes, or their immediate followers' lifetimes, or their immediate followers' lifetimes would Christianity be accepted. Not until Constantine converted was Christianity an accepted faith.

So, what did the Apostles, fishermen and tax collectors and faithful Jews, have to gain from lying about Jesus?

3) Why are only the portions of the Gospel that could lead one to interpret that Christ was not divine considered valid and all of the portions that clearly state his divinity ignored and/or dismissed?

Finally, perhaps the biggest hypocrisy in most of the writings of authors undermining the divinity of Jesus is that they will often quote selected passages of the Gospels in order to prove their point.

That's like quoting selected lines from the Constitution of the United States to prove the founding fathers intended the country to be a dictatorship!

If you validate any portion of the Gospels, you validate all of the Gospels. Otherwise the argument that one line from Matthew or John is valid, but another is not, becomes ludicrous in its blatant hypocrisy.

I only hope such interviewers of those who claim Jesus was dead or married or a father or not dead, but not risen or whatever they state... I just hope the interviewers ask these three simple, yet important questions.

Because, right now, no one else seems to be.