1/1/11

St. Paul the Anti-Christ

(Updated 8/11) Quite contrary to what most Christians have been led to believe, the real Jesus, the Christ of Gospels did not intend to create a church. The Kingdom of God, he said, was "within you" (Luke 17:21). So you don't need intermediaries to show you the way. All you need to do is believe in him. Jesus' apostles were not professional priests or theologians. Their mission was to spread his Gospel, and not by preaching, but by example: "Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven." (Matthew 5:16) Preaching was Jesus' job alone, and he had already done all the preaching that was necessary. As described by those who knew him personally, his ministry was largely a condemnation of the organized religion of his time. When he died on the cross, the curtain to the Holies of Holies, the exclusive domain of the high priest, was rent. (Matthew 27:51)"

But then enter Paul of Tarsus, claiming to have been visited in a vision and ordained by Jesus to speak on his behalf, rebuking the true apostle Peter, praising Jesus on the one hand while on the other confounding his simple message with inscrutable theological rhetoric, cleverly intertwining his personal biases with Jesus’ message, elliptically telling the faithful that they were spiritually unqualified to comprehend the mystery of Jesus, that they would need to depend on holy men like himself to interpret the mystery for them; and in so doing, denouncing intellectual curiosity, fomenting guilt, making people feel sinful so he could save them; and, in effect, resurrecting the priesthood, restoring the Holy of Holies, fabricating a new church and thereby laying the foundation for the collective fanaticism that gave rise the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Salem witch hunts and other crimes against humanity perpetrated in the name of a loving Christ.

In 1 John, the writer, like Peter, an apostle who had known Jesus personally, alludes to a rift that had developed among believers and to the existence of an Anti-Christ that "is now already in the world" distorting the teachings of Christ. And in Revelation (19:20) the same writer (?) depicts him as a false prophet meant to be destroyed and cast into the fires of Hell.

This Anti-Christ John was referring to couldn’t have been other than the self-anointed deity Paul. What better way for the Anti-Christ to insinuate himself than by becoming a writer of the New Testament? What better way to keep the faithful duped and disoriented for two millennia? The Epistles of Paul, the Book of Romans in particular (try reading it through), constitute the manifesto of the of greatest con job perpetrated on Western Civilization.

But then, on second thought, Paul may have been right. At the gut level, the mass of humankind prefers the security of a well-organized group, however despotic, to the risks inherent in personal freedom—-the atavistic herd instinct. Maybe by recasting Christ as a leader rather than a liberator the tentmaker from Tarsus saved Christianity from extinction.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Excellent interpretation.

 
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