WHAT ARE WE TO DO WITH THIS "JESUS CHRIST"?
MY THOUGHTS ON JESUS AFTER 20 YEARS OF STUDY
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WHAT ARE WE TO DO WITH THIS "JESUS CHRIST"?
MY THOUGHTS ON JESUS AFTER 20 YEARS OF STUDY #1
Greetings and welcome to Bet Emet Ministries. My name is Craig Lyons and I am at present a "resigned" Pastor of the Christian faith. There are many reasons for this resignation from the Christian Ministry in my life following Seminary and eight years of a very successful ministry and it is to these issues we must turn since you asked either to be added to the teaching ministry of Bet Emet Ministries or are a reader of one of many of our ministry's websites. So often when surfing the Internet people find one of our Websites and get confused when beginning in the "middle" so to speak in the study of the "Jesus Story". Bet Emet's Websites are intended to be a "Spiritual Pilgrimage" in ones study of "the Christ"; moving from the assumed Historical Jesus Christ to the Mystical Jesus Christ and finally to the Mythical Jesus Christ.
Answer for yourself: What can I expect to learn if I study through and read through this Website on Astrotheology as well as study other Websites created by Bet Emet Ministries?
You, the reader, will come to see that there are 3 different "Jesus" that we encounter down through these last 2000 years of recorded history. Only two of them are true; one is false. That is why I decided to create a "summary" of Bet Emet's views on "the Christ" from beginning to end. It will take several articles to do this but I felt this is necessary with our multiple Websites that now exist on the Web and in so doing I plan on prefacing each Website in time with these articles to let the reader know just where he is "jumping in" with his studies of "the Christ" as explained on the Website which he is reading and studying presently.
Needless to say it is not easy to teach the revelation of "the Christ" in only one Website as it has come down to us over these last thousands of years of history beginning with Egypt over 13,000 years ago until the present time in which we live. So we did not even try to do this in just one Website for that was impossible but we did try over these years to lay out the successive progression and evolution of the understanding of ideas concerning "the Christ" down through history. This "Christ" goes by different names in different cultures but few see this until they advance greatly in their studies. It took me a while to see this as well.
The study of "the Christ" reveals that this "Spiritual Concept" began with an Egyptian "Karast" and ended with a Christian "Jesus Christ". The problem for the student is how to interpret this "Jesus Christ" and the "Jesus Story" that we have inherited today and in so doing determine if it has maintained its integrity down through these successive millennia as understood by the Ancients who first gave us these Spiritual Concepts in the first place.
Needless to say it has not.
Being a Pastor and seeing this for myself stirred my heart that I feel motivated to inform others of this deception and this not only led to my resignation from my Pastorate but would further lead to the birth of Bet Emet Ministries where this information could be made available to the concerned students and seekers of truth about the true origins of the Christian Faith. Let me prepare you for what is coming in these 3 summary articles. First of all we must get acquainted with a summary statement of the very core of all 13 of our Websites and their message. Therefore it is necessary for the seeker of truth to understand up front that "the study of the origins of the Christian Faith and the "Jesus Story" is not always easy and untroublesome especially in light of what you often uncover when your studies get rather deep into this area". No truer words have ever been spoken.
I believe with all my heart that since you desire to learn about the Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith and all that entails and or asked to receive our teaching articles and materials then you need to understand completely what you will be shown in the studies that are forthcoming. Bet Emet will PROVE to you beyond any doubt over our websites that as Gentile Christians today we have inherited unknowingly a false faith and a replacement religion that has little in common with the true faith of the earliest "Christians" who followed "the Christ". You will come to see the gigantic difference between Ancient understanding of "the Christ", the "Joshua-Jesus" and the "Jesus Christ" as depicted in our current New Testament in today's Christian Bible. That will become tragically clear as you begin your serious personal study of our sites as you progress from an assumed Historical Jesus Christ to the Mystical Jesus Christ and finally to the Mythical Jesus Christ.
The Rabbis teach that "Study is the highest for of worship of God".
I guess the above statement from first century Judaism says it all; namely because there is much to learn, uncover, unlearn, repent of, and accept anew in light of newly acquired factual knowledge from our studies. This hopefully will benefit each seeker of truth to live before God in the light of what he has learned from this newly acquired knowledge that we at Bet Emet share with the reader. This will all become clearer as you read our articles and study our Websites. As I tell everyone due to the challenging nature of what we teach: "Don't believe anything we teach...but let it provoke your own study to find the same things we did over the years of our serious study into the roots of our Christian faith."
We offer a recommended reading list to each concerned student to help direct him in his studies. We also have available all of our Ministry's Websites on one CD to make it easier for one to do these studies. Email us for details.
Over these last 18 years I guess you could say I have studied well near a thousand books or so and have two rooms in my home converted to libraries. Such is the level of my study and desire to arrive at the truth behind the "Jesus Story" and the religious synthesis and "puzzle" portrayed in the New Testament. I have been fortunate enough to have traced down books written in the 1700's in my pursuit of these Ancient truths about the Christian Faith and "the Christ". I wanted to know the truth behind my Christian Faith before I die having been enlightened in Seminary that there were many "problems" under the surface of his "Sunday and Christianity's Orthodoxy". Understand that most readers will be like me having grown up in Christianity since childhood. That being the case we fall prey to the same fallacy; namely, blindly accepting and assuming that our faith, the Christian Faith and the Christian Bible is the only way to God let alone to Heaven. With such conditioning Sunday to Sunday we end up innocently reinforcing prior sermons and teachings concerning the New Testament's depiction of Jesus as a "literal-historical" person never realizing what really lays behind such a depiction. We never have an inkling to study this out for ourselves because for one thing it never dawns upon us that we could be wrong for after all we all have inherited what we assumed to be an "infallible, inspired, inerrant" New Testament. We just assume we have the truth today because our Spiritual Authorities have repeatedly told us that we "are right" while all others are "wrong" and in need of Christian salvation. Until a few years ago few if any Christians every studied the origins of their birth faith to the degree necessary to spot the problems inherent with the "Jesus Story". The Internet today is changing that as well as casual trips to a Barnes and Noble Book Store in your area where you look through the religious sections.
It was during my 3 years in Seminary from 1985-1988, in obtaining my Masters of Divinity degree, that I came first face to face with the irregularities and contradictions within the "Jesus Story". I was shocked to hear what my Pastor never taught me or possibly never knew. Knowing that "God is not the author of confusion" then I had to know who was responsible for this "Swiss cheese" theology. That is what I call it for it fits the problem well. This was the beginning of my life-time quest for truth about God and His "Christ". This hunger for truth would shape the rest of my life and studies and does so up to this very day. Let me say that in my increasing depth of study over time in my pilgrimage of investigation into the "Jesus Story", I, as an Ordained Pastor of a mega-church in Dallas, Texas, experienced the full gamut of emotions possible: tears, heartbreak, grief, anguish, anger, indignation, confusion, sadness, depression, etc. It was only with great courage and continued study on my part through this dark past of Christianity and its distortion of Ancient History and Ancient Religious Antiquity did I eventually come to the joy of my salvation which only came when I discovered the beauty and truth of Biblical Judaism and it strong historical links with the first Monotheistic nation in this world; namely, Ancient Egypt.
Having graduated Seminary and realizing that I was given nothing to further my understanding of a "Jewish Jesus" while there I set out to discover and restore the Jewish Roots of my Christian Faith. That was my first step. I reasoned that since Seminary had not taught me a "Jewish Jesus" then I would find him on my own. I never dreamed the shock that would be coming my way by such intense study into these areas over the next 5 years. I began a serious study of Biblical Judaism that lasted about 4-5 years and in so doing found that such study presented me with multiple roads for later study that led elsewhere and these were, due to time restraints, allotted to a future day for their consideration and investigation as time restraints in a full-time Ministry would permit. As the years passed I finally found the necessary time to travel these roads of enlightenment and in was in these other vistas of study that my eyes were really opened like never before to the deceptions inherent in the "Jesus Story" which I had inherited since childhood.
My almost 20 years of study and discovery has motivated me to develop numerous websites containing the fruit of my research and study that I, as an Ordained Pastor, felt the normative Christian believer should want to know if given the chance. I remember that during my Pastorate I often asked my students: "Do you want to know the truth before you die?" An affirmative answer on my part led me to develop with God's help over these last few years a series of "thematic" studies that found expression in various Websites on the Internet.
My study was a progressive one to say the least, for after all it takes time for a seed to grow and yours will be as well. These websites chronicle for the student the progressive revelation that I received in my studies that led me from an assumed "Historical Jesus" to the "Mystical Christ" and finally to the "Mythical Christ". You might say that there are 3 different understandings of "Jesus Christs", or the Egyptian "Karast", down through recorded History and if you undertake such a personal study you will find that only 2 of them are real and the other the product of a gross deception and a masterful and purposeful misinterpretation of the prior two. More on that as we progress in this article.
Like most of those who read my articles I assume that like me you grew up as a Christian or else you would not be interested in Jesus Christ. I grew up as a Christian and that being so was taught to "believe in Jesus." I grew up taught to "believe the New Testament" from start to finish. I entered Seminary with such a background and as a "believer in Jesus". At that time in my life, devoid of any serious scholarly study into the "Jesus Story" or the Bible, I did not have a doubt in the world that my birth faith was not the ultimate truth in the world about the Creator and the Jewish Messiah. Through all the early years of my study following Seminary where I would be challenged to my very core by what I was uncovering in my search for a "Jewish Jesus" and seeing the hidden fruits of my studies I desperately wanted to continue to "believe in Jesus" and find some authentic evidence that would allow me to continue to believe in the "Historical Jesus" as depicted in the New Testament. But all I had was this one book from Rome, the New Testament, and my intense studies into Manuscript Evidences and Canonization of the New Testament was revealing to me that this book, the New Testament, is highly unreliable as a truthful depiction of not only the Jewish Messiah but "the Christ" as well. Purposeful manipulations, purposeful misquotations of the Hebrew Scriptures, purposeful mistranslations of the Hebrew Scriptures, using the Hebrew Scriptures out of context, and outright Scriptural invention of assumed prophecies in the New Testament was revealing to me that my New Testament was a forgery and a fraud. It was not accurate to the prior Hebrew in hundreds of places and few know of this unless they do comparative studies between the Hebrew, Greek, and English texts. Surely, I thought, that somewhere there is something that exists outside of this one forged book that will be the proof I so desperately sought that would finally reveal to me that Jesus of Nazareth is a real person behind the pages of my New Testament. As my studies accelerated because of what I was uncovering I was face to face with the facts of archeology, manuscript evidences, and modern scholarship from numerous scholars today that showed me the existence of hundreds of purposeful forgeries of religious texts in the New Testament concerning the "Jesus Story" but yet I clung to the hope that my Jesus is real and the soon coming Messiah of Israel. I reasoned: "So what; the book was forged by Rome". But I clung to the hope that my Jesus was real despite a Roman forgery of the Jewish Scriptures. But that was the early years when my studies were confined to Biblical Judaism and comparison of the texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls with the Greek Septuagint (LXX) and later English Old and New Testament translations. I can remember during these times and during these studies into the LXX, the Greek translation of the earlier Hebrew Scriptures which were translated in Alexandria, Africa, my first introductions into African Hermeticism and Gnosticism along with African Mythology. Just beginning to scratch the surface of these "theological rabbits" during that time I remember how scared I was at what I was reading and beginning to find and much of it literally took my breath away when I first began to look into Comparative Religions and Solar Mythology. It was in this time of my studies when beginning to study Comparative Religions with the Solar and Lunar Mythology of Egypt and later nations which taught the same things where I first saw the origins of the "Jesus Story" existing as far back as 13,000 B.C.E. I was mortified and after a short while put "these studies" on the shelf not wishing to go into these subject matters at the depth necessary at that time for fear of what I knew I would find. Still clinging to my Jesus you might say I was afraid to look into this. These studies would have to wait for another day. But that day came sooner than I ever expected. God has a way of leading you through the valley of the shadow of death; even when it involves simple study of the New Testament and the fear of the unknown.
So the time came for me to seriously embark upon these studies into Comparative Religions and Egyptian Solar and Lunar Mythology having put them down for about a year in which I turned to a much safer study of the "Jesus Story". But God would tug at my heart over and over to continue to go deeper into the study of the "Jesus Story". After about the first 4-5 years of study when everything was non-threatening when looking only at a "Jesus Jesus" and the Jewish faith and the Jewish ideas of the Messiah I felt safe and I could at that time reason that the texts were forged because the Gentiles wished to change the Jewish concepts of the Messiah.But all the while I felt the strong attraction to begin a serious study of African and Egyptian Religion as well as Gnosticism and it is there that I began to see the "Mystical Christ Within" of which the authentic Paul and his 7 epistles talks about. I decided that I would tackle Gnosticism first. It was in these beginning stages of my deeper study of "Gnosticism" that I began to find the reason for all the forgeries of the New Testament texts that I had found before and even the replacement of the "First Gnostic New Testament" with the "Second New Testament" of Rome which "literalized" this "Gnostic Christ within". These forgeries of New Testament texts were not only necessary to provide a Replacement Religion against Biblical Judaism but were also necessary to destroy the "Gnostic Christ Within" which I discovered was the belief of the earliest Christians which modern scholarship will today attest NEVER believed in a "Christ with flesh". In such studies dealing with the comparison of the Hebrew Tanakh with later quotes in the New Testament along with Gnostic Christianity I discovered the most unbelievable deception known to man; namely, the outright and blatant forgery of the New Testament along with the earlier purposeful mistranslation of the Hebrew Scriptures, the purposeful mistranslation and misquotation of the Hebrew Scriptures when quoted in the New Testament along with the outright purposeful invention of others in order to present a "fleshly Christ" instead of the "Mystical Christ within". This was done mind you to undermine and destroy the Gnostic opponents of Roman "literal" Christianity which was beginning to emerge after the first century. Rome, having not the "gnosis" to properly understand the "Gnostic Christ" nor the Egyptian "Karast" created a replacement religion that reinterpreted and destroyed the Ancient understandings of "the Christ". In so doing Rome destroys over the first 5 centuries of the emerging Gentile Church the Ancient understanding of God which has existed on this planet for over 30,000 years. One only has to study Egyptian Religion as far back as it goes to see that in the beginning Ancient mankind knew that God lives in them and the Invisible, Uncreated Energy and Intelligent Architect of the Universe, God, came through emanations to dwell within physical matter (mankind). These Ancients described this as "the descent of the Soul, the passion of the Christ (masculine), and the passion of the Sophia (feminine). Through my studies I learned how the Ancient Egyptians were the origin for the vast majority of religious doctrines and dogmas that exist in Christianity today while sad at the same time to see that so many of them has been "reinterpreted" and given different and erroneous meanings by Rome much later. I saw with my own eyes how Egypt believed that every child of God possessed within themselves this "Egyptian Karast" which is called "the Christ" today. But instead of everyone possessing this "Christ Within" Rome made it appear in their destruction of this Ancient knowledge and Biblical Judaism as well that this Christ existed in the "flesh" to the exclusion of others and was historically confined to one person alone; that being the "Jesus Christ" of Roman invention whom is called today "Jesus of Nazareth". The irony of it all would hit home when I discovered archeologists maintain that Nazareth was not even a city yet in the first century but was built much later. I saw quite clearly I had inherited and believed "a lie" from Rome but I was not alone for 2.5 billion others in the world are right there with me because of our "forged Christian texts".
Understand I grew up believing in Jesus and throughout all these years of study I desired to hang on to my "Jesus" as long as I could but the hard cold facts of the studies I was doing continued daily and monthly to expose my beliefs in a "Historical Jesus" as unfounded since the more I studied the less I saw of a "Historical Jesus Christ" and the more I saw that the original faith of the First Century Gnostic believers in "the Christ" was one that believed not in a "Historical Jesus Christ" but the "Gnostic Christ Within". The puzzle was coming together the more I studied and such study over time separated apart the Gnostic New Testament from later forgery of Rome's Second "literalized" New Testament and this separation of the First Gnostic New Testament from the Second Roman New Testament can be done today by the reader if he so wishes. But sadly for me the picture coming together from gathering the puzzle pieces strewn down through history presented for me the ultimate challenge to my faith. The picture unfolding for me daily, from book book, was not one that supported at all the existence of a flesh and blood Jesus of Nazareth; rather it revealed just the opposite. Forgery of the texts of the New Testament by Rome following the first century was the vehicle that gave life to this "historical" and "fleshly Christ".
I looked heavily into modern scholarship and what they have to say about the "Historical Jesus". Looking at the facts concerning the forgery of outside evidence for the existence of a "Historical Jesus" was depressing to say the least. Just like the ossuary of James, now been declared a fraud and the deceiver behind bars, I could find not one single existing unforged evidence attesting to the existence of a "Historical Jesus" outside of this already declared fraud of a book given us by Rome. An unbiased study of History and archeology and analysis of the surviving documents showed me that there is not a shred of legitimate historical evidence anywhere that the "Jesus Story" originated as the biography of a man named Jesus of Nazareth and in fact revealed evidence to the contrary. I consistently found that outside of this one forged book, the Roman Bible and the New Testament, there exists not one piece of unforged or unadulterated evidence for the historical existence of this man from Galilee.
By now I was ready to tackle Egypt and the Egyptian Solar and Lunar Mythology that was associated with the earliest "Jesus Story" ever found on this planet. I had overcome my fear of losing my Jesus and now nothing could hold me back at getting to the bottom of this "theological puzzle". I was off to find the truth behind the "Mystical Christ" and the "Mythical Christ" and determine once and for all the links, if any, to my inherited "Historical Jesus".
In time my studies would progress into other areas where my prior fear of discovering something that would make me lose my "faith in Jesus" no longer existed because it finally dawned on me that the truth mattered more than my faith; especially if my "faith" was in error. I would find over the next few years that a through study of Comparative Religions revealed to me that the basic plot of the "Jesus Story", from beginning to end, including the motif of a crucified savior, already existed in many other religions over 13 thousand years prior to the alleged time of Jesus of Nazareth. It all begins with Egypt. As I continued to submit to dedicated studies into Astronomy and Solar Mythology I found that beyond any doubt the "Jesus Story" is nothing more than an allegory for what is the oldest and most important "religious" understanding of God that Ancient mankind every wrote down.
Answer for yourself: And what was that?
It is the story of the the annual passage of Sun through not only the seasons of the year along with the Equinoxes and Solstices but the path of the Sun through the celestial sphere and the 12 Houses of the Zodiac during the year. What was even more unbelievable would be my discovery that this personification of the Sun in its trip through the sky throughout the year was the very foundation for all later events found in the many stories of these various "solar" gods and godmen. When this path of the Sun was "personified" and given a life of its own as if "human" it was a small step to characterize this path of the Sun in "anthropomorphic" language which was expressed through various allegories as seen in the lives of the many "solar representatives" as we find in Comparative Religion. These "solar representatives" are the "godmen" we find in recorded history like Osiris, Horus, Dionysus, Mithra, Attis, and even Jesus. These "personifications of the path of the Sun through the Zodiac were allegorized" and in so doing became the many "events" we find in the various stories of these "godmen". Amazingly the events and sayings (called the Logia) in the lives of these "godmen" like Horus, Dionysus, Mithra, and even Jesus follow in EXACT ORDER the very path of the Sun "personified" as it moves through the Sky and Heavens from House to House in the Zodiac in its one year cycle. You can take the life of Jesus as depicted in the New Testament and trace it through the New Testament and it lines up perfectly with this "personified path of the Sun" through the 12 Houses of the Zodiac which explains why the Synoptic Gospels have only a "one year" ministry for Jesus when the Gospel of John has it as 3 years. The lives, events, and sayings (Logia) of these "godmen" like Jesus follow in exact sequence the the path of the Sun (personified) as it moves through the 4 seasons of the year (Equinoxes and Solstices) and its relationship to associated Constellations along its route through the Sky yearly. The "Jesus Story" is no exception in this regard for I discovered to my utter amazement that this "Jesus Story", itself a "personification of the Sun in its path through the Zodiac, follows in exact chronological procession from Matthew chapter 1 through then end of the book this very same "personification" of the Sun in its path through the 12 Houses of the Zodiac. You have to see this to believe it but if and when you do there is no doubt that the New Testament depiction of Jesus is not one of a "historical person" but rather an allegory of the path of the Sun through the Zodiac. The proof is in the evidence and I will share that with the reader as we progress in our studies. It is to this we now turn in our studies as I will show the reader how this was done in the New Testament.
It is to these matters we now turn.
Let us continue our study in the second article in this series
- Bet Emet Ministries
- Craig M. Lyons Ms.D., D.D., M.Div.
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- Garland, Texas 75040
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