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Christianity Explained Information Find Christian Unity in Biblical Explanations of the Doctrines That Count! |
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You have a choice to make: You
can either believe the opinions of theologians, atheists, or agnostics,
or you can determine for yourself what the Bible says by studying it.
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What Is Religion and Where Did It Originate? What Is the Bible, and How Relative Is It to My Life? What Are Messianic Prophecies? Who Was Jesus of Nazareth, Really? Why Are There So Many World Religions? Why Are There So Many Christian Denominations? What Is the Law and How Does It Apply to Me? What's All This About the End of the World and End-time Prophecies? Isn't the Book of Daniel a Closed Book? Revelation: How can anyone understand all that symbolism? Who or What Was Jesus' Mother, Mary? Didn't Darwin Disprove Creation? What's the Truth About Faith and Works? Christian E-mails: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Complete Directory of Articles/Studies
Title Abbreviations for Books of the Bible Genesis
- Ge |
The Gospel of Judas When "lost scripture" comes to light, there's usually a lengthy battle over whether it is "authentic" or true. When this one came out, the first thought that came to my mind was, "So one of Judas' relatives, embarrassed by what he did, wrote a plausible justification for it. Can anyone really take this seriously?" But then I realized that anyone who hasn't studied scripture might, indeed, take it seriously. So I decided to do a little study and see if the Bible has anything helpful to tell us. First of all, let me place this document where it belongs: many books have been written trying to disprove Jesus' claim that he is the Messiah. One of the most interesting I've read is "The Passover Plot", and even though I was not a great student of the Bible at the time, I still found it easier to believe that Jesus was whom he said he was than to believe that he was able to choreograph all of the things that would have to be manipulated in order to fulfill all of the scriptures that were "coincidentally evident" in his life and death. The Gospel of Judas falls into this same category. Why? Because if Jesus asked Judas to betray him, it doesn't mean he wasn't the Messiah. The one Messianic prophecy Jesus could not have manipulated was the fact that he is the only one in history who could be the Messiah based on Daniel's time prophecies, which is another study. The critics of Jesus, however, would say that if he manipulated his life to fulfill scripture, then he is not the Messiah. Personally, I find it difficult to believe that Jesus would suffer all he suffered and die the most disgusting of all deaths for a lie, not to mention that so many followers of Jesus would suffer all they are historically proven to have suffered for a lie. It wasn't like it is today. They did not become rich men who lived a life of luxury from the offerings they receive from the people who watch them on TV like our modern-day evangelists do. Their lives were difficult, they were persecuted, and they all died for their faith, refusing to recant. I definitely find it easier to believe that the gnostics, a group of people who believed that only those who received secret teachings of Christ are saved, came up with this gospel that accused the God of the entire Earth of giving saving information to only a select few of those he created. Does anyone else see Satan's ego working here? The word of God, his commandments, the history of his creative and redemptive power, have been available to all who would seek them throughout history. Only certain Jewish leaders hoarded them as though the Gentiles didn't deserve to be saved while the Jews did. John declares
Jesus said he came to seek and save the lost. Why would he hide anything from those he was seeking to save? On the contrary, Jesus carefully instructed his disciples and told them everything they needed to know, including that he would lay down his life for mankind. (Italicized emphasis added by me)
If he told all his disciples that, why wouldn't he have told them how he was going to accomplish it? Why would he have told only Judas? Wouldn't his plan be more likely to succeed if everyone working with him understood it? But the Bible tells us the kind of man Judas was (italicized emphasis added).
In the above passage, John not only calls Judas a thief, he implies that Jesus told not only all his disciples but anyone who happened to be around that he would die and be buried. But there is no doubt he told his disciples:
Jesus speaks as though all of his disciples know the plan, yet the disciples don't rally around Judas and proclaim him part of any plan or commiserate with him that he must be the one to betray the master. On the contrary, they were horrified!
The Gospel of Judas places Judas on a plane above the rest of the disciples, as one with inside knowledge and a special privilege of carrying out some secret rite known only to him and Jesus. Yet, even after Jesus' resurrection, after having been taught by him for 40 days and after he was taken up into heaven, Judas' betrayal was considered a sin by his contemporaries as they sought a replacement for him.
By his own actions, Judas demonstrated his condemnation of himself. All of the disciples abandoned Christ during his arrest, and during the "trial", Peter even denied his association with Christ three times. Peter was filled with the agony of shame and with remorse, yet only Judas committed suicide. If he had believed that Jesus wanted him to do what he did, this outspoken disciple would have justified himself by saying so, not killed himself. And if he had done what he was ordered to do by God, this betrayal would not have been considered a transgression. He would have been vindicated by Jesus during the 40 days he spent with various disciples following his resurrection. On another front, When Jesus said that the greatest love one can show for another is to give up his life for the other person, he was referring to himself, not to Judas. Once again, Satan's lying deceptions can be seen in any attempt to say that Judas, in his suicide, "gave up his life" for Christ after betraying him. The fact is that suicide was, and still is by most people, considered an unpardonable sin—you cannot repent once you're dead. If Judas did not commit suicide, but simply burst open after falling in a field purchased with the betrayal money, why would God have killed him like that if he had been following orders? In all of scripture, God has only "miraculously" killed those who refused to obey him or who worshipped other Gods—never one who was obedient to him. Jesus told his disciples that their lives would be hard, unbearable in fact; however, he never told them to escape their miseries by committing suicide. To the contrary, he told them to take up their crosses and follow him—to live out the life and death that God would allow to come to them, in faith believing that the reward of eternal life in heaven was worth whatever horrors life on earth would dump on them. Of all that I have discussed, most revealing is the "curse" of Christ upon his betrayer:
Doesn't sound like a blessing to me! Yet if Christ had directed Judas to do this horrible deed, as the Gospel of Judas alleges, wouldn't he have given Judas some great honor for being so loyal to him . . . for being the one disciple strong enough to carry out such an order?
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| De 30:19 | "I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; |
| De 30:20 | "that you may love the Lord your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days; and that you may dwell in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them." |
Many will say that this was directed toward only the Jews, but in another study it is shown that Jesus includes all humanity in his promises because we are all descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob when we accept their God and his Messiah as our own.
According to Peter himself,
| 2 Pe 3:9 | The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. |
Yet some will not be saved.
| Mt 7:21 | "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven." |
This means that some will place their wills on the side of the Father's, to do his will, but others will not. God is waiting for as many as possible to see the destructive
power of sin's emphasis on self and to choose the constructive power of
God's love for others.
How people are deceived
There are two problems that people have with scripture:
1. They don't read it.
2. When they read it, they don't "listen".
If you believe Jesus was the Messiah, you must demonstrate your love for him by adhering to everything he taught.
| Joh 14:15 | "If you love Me, keep My commandments. |
| Joh 14:24 | "He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine but the Father's who sent Me. |
| Mt 10:37 | "He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. |
| Mt 10:38 | "And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. |
If you don't believe Jesus is the Messiah, study the subject in scripture (click here to start). With the time prophecies concerning the appearing of the Messiah having passed at the time of Jesus' life, either the prophets were wrong, or Jesus is whom he says he is! There are no other choices. That would explain why Jewish leaders pronounced a curse on anyone who studies the book of Daniel.
Being decieved by the lies of Satan is not possible if we allow the Holy Spirit to infill us and we study scripture daily to make sure that the spirit that is within us is indeed the Holy Spirit and that what we're being taught or shown by others is, in fact, the truth. If the Gospel of Judas lined up with the rest of scripture, it would never have been "lost". It would have been preserved along with the rest of New Testament scripture.
Bottom Line
If what we feel or what we are being told or shown denies the supreme authority of the one who created and redeemed us, it obviously does not come from the one who created and redeemed us!
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Written in the HeartThe Truth About Mary Magdalene
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