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Archive for September 25, 2009, 8:21 am

And Now For Something Completely Different

John Chapter 14

This chapter stresses two things: love and obedience.  Jesus continually repeats that YHWH and he are inseparable, and indicates that once someone becomes a Christian (disciple of Jesus) they too are inseparable from YHWH and Jesus.  Jesus even promises a Spirit of truth to help his future disciples to follow his commandments.  And he makes one guarantee that has rarely been proven:

John 14:13-14 And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father.  You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.

Odd how this guarantee is that any pray (that glorifies the Father) will be answered!  Yet how often do prayers get a “No” as an answer.  It is pretty clear that Jesus had just promised that there would be no answers of “No”.  Yet today, Christians assume that this is a valid response from YHWH.  But this Tradition of Man is not valid and it is not within the teachings or commandments of Jesus!

And what is this chapter’s major theme?  This is that those who love Jesus will obey everything that Jesus taught (not Paul, not James, not Luther, and definitely not the Pope).  And we only have four surviving documents of these teachings, of which the Synoptic Gospels are almost complete duplicates.  I find it very suspicious that we only have 2 documents, as a result, that describe Jesus’ actual words…were there not at least 11 Apostles and untold number of disciples?  Why do we not hear what they have to say about their personal experience with Jesus?  Has not Jesus’ teachings been tampered with (destroyed) by the canonization of only the Synoptic Gospels and John’s Gospel?  The Book of Acts is the only other book that comes close to directly describing the teachings of Jesus.  Why is 66.6% of the NT written by the “Apostle” Paul?  Why is it that the rest of the NT does not quote Jesus?  Yet to love Jesus is to obey Jesus…which means focusing on what Jesus taught!  Why do today’s Christians not focus on what Jesus taught?  This was his last desire to his disciples that they would love and obey his teachings…should not the modern disciples of Jesus also obey this desire?  Would not Christendom be one unified Church if this was the case?  Wouldn’t the non-believer know that YHWH existed if the Church actually loved (and obeyed) Jesus’ teachings? 

Do notice right away that the words “way”, “truth” and “life” were not capitalized.  This tells us something as well.  What this tells us is that Jesus is not the “Truth” nor the “Way” nor even the “Life”.  The traditions of men have changed the meanings of Jesus’ words from words that mean something spiritual to words that must be taken literally.  These three words (way, truth, and life) only apply to the disciples of Jesus, not to the world in general.  I know that my “Christian” readers will not grasp the difference, but the un-capitalized word is meaningful only to the followers of Jesus, while the Capitalized words are imperatives (related to all humankind and the universe).  Jesus did not use the word as capitals and they are not imperatives, they are specific to his followers and only his followers.

But what should we make of this Spirit of truth?  Other places it is referred to as the Holy Spirit.  Jesus here teaches the meaning of this concept.  This Spirit will:

John 14:26 But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.

This Counselor will only be sent to those who love Jesus, which implies those who obey Jesus.  So this crap about “praying Jesus into your heart” and being saved is only a Tradition of Men.  It does not save your soul!  Only by loving Jesus and obeying his teachings can one be truly a follower of Jesus (a Christian) – Jesus own words.

To the non-believer this begins to make sense out of the chaos that Christianity presents.  It is obvious that only one Church exists (not 45,000).  It is becomes obvious why it is hard to tell the difference between disciples of Jesus and Christians.  It becomes clear that today’s Christian has elected to follow the Traditions of Men instead of the teaching of Jesus (66.6% of the NT being written by Paul).  And, finally, it becomes all too clear why prayers can be answered with “No”, because they are not prays of the faithful!  Christianity is just a religion, being a disciple of Jesus is something completely different.

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