By Abuchi Obiora
“And it came to pass, when Jesus has ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes” Mathew 7:28-29.
What is this doctrine of Jesus Christ mentioned by Mathew, one of the synoptic gospelers?
This doctrine of Jesus Christ, all of it, without an exception, appears in the book of Mathew Chapters five, six and seven. They are also repeated in different ways in the other synoptic gospels.
Every other information following from Mathew Chapter Eight till the end of the ministry of Jesus Christ on earth (which information are also recorded in different ways by the other synaptic gospelers) are expatiation and details used in building flesh, as it is, to the doctrine aptly recorded in Mathew Chapters five, six and seven. As it does happen to many Nigerians during this uncertain and turbulent period of the history of the country, the Kaleidoscope was unavoidably absent from the weekly beats to attend to some personal matters of urgent and great importance.
In the immediate past work on Prophet T.B. Joshua which featured in the Kaleidoscope, I had promised that I shall examine the original teachings of Jesus Christ (as recorded by the synoptic gospelers) which should constitute the true doctrine of a religion, Christianity, established by the authority of those teachings. I also promised to explore the synchronicity of those teachings of Jesus Christ with the universal laws of providence as expressed in the laws of physical sciences. When we have done this, we will be able to observe that some of the teachings held sacrosanct by some Christian assemblies do not actually represent the true teachings of Jesus Christ.
Let us start by recalling that having been baptized by his cousin and gospel forerunner, John, Jesus Christ was said to have been led to the wilderness by God where he fasted for forty days and forty nights. He was thereafter tempted by the Devil. He chose his disciples and immediately began to gain recognition as he went about teaching in the synagogues, “healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people” (Mathew 4:23).
A great multitude of people followed him from Galilee, Decapolis, and Jerusalem, Jordan and beyond Jordan.
Leaving the multitude of people behind, he went up to the mountain with his disciples to deliver what has been known to be ‘Sermon on the Mount’ or ‘The Beatitudes’ in Bible literature.
The Beatitude basically taken without repetition are:
- Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God (Mathew 5:3)
- Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted (Mathew 5:4).
- Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth (Mathew 5:5).
- Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. (Mathew 5:6).
- Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy (Mathew 5:7)
- Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God (Mathew 5:8)
- Blessed are the peace makers: for they shall be called the children of God. (Mathew 5:9)
- Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness sake: for theirs is the kingdom of God (Mathew 5: 10).
The simple truth of the eight beatitudes is also aptly taught by Jesus in one short sentence: “whatsoever you sow, you shall reap”. Following after the Beatitudes of Jesus Christ is his teaching referred to as the Golden Rule, viz: “do unto others as you would others do unto you”.
Beatitude numbers (1), (6), (7), and (8) basically talk about righteousness which they referred severally as (1) poor in spirit (6) pure in heart (7) peace makers and (8) righteousness sake. These four sets of people, half of the eight sets of people Jesus Christ chose to talk about, shall attain heaven wait for it, through righteousness!.
In Beatitude number (3), though the “meek” (the humble) shall inherit the earth (being influential, wealthy or affluent), he will not attain heaven, if he does not combine his meekness with righteousness. So, with those who mourn (Beatitudes number 2, who shall be comforted); those who thirst after righteousness (Beatitude number 4, who shall be filled) and the merciful (beatitude number 5, to whom shall be shown mercy).
In essence, only righteousness qualifies one for Heaven. Though many of us may gather in our different Churches, obeying other laws of God and making waves in our different professions and Businesses as well as contributing to the building of large church auditoria, and buying private jets for our General Overseers, we may not make Heaven if we fail to be Righteous. This is to say that though all of us aspire to make Heaven at the last day, only the Righteous will eventually make Heaven and see God however high or low their social class on the earth may be. In order words, at the end of our lives, many of us, however we may have been on earth, who are not righteous, will end up having gotten our rewards on earth and not making Heaven as a result of not adding righteousness to our other credentials on earth.
After due consideration, I have always been comfortable to refer to the eight Beatitudes as the graded benefits of the doctrine of Jesus Christ. It is simple. It is candid. And it is both direct and straight to the point.
In a strict warning after these commandments which constitute the summary of the teachings of Jesus Christ on earth, the great master warned, “whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of Heaven; but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven” (Mathew 5:19).
This warning takes care of both the Christian teacher and his student and indicts or exonerates them as they may choose to do.
Generally, the exhortations of Jesus Christ in a sequential order to weave up the story of his ministry on earth in a manner meant for easy understanding can be seen in:
- Mathew 7:28-29
- Mathew 5:3-48
- Mathew 6:1-34
- Mathew 7:1-27
- Mathew 4:1-2
- Mathew 4:3-11
- Mathew 4:12-23
- Mathew 4:24-25
- Mathew 5:1-2
- Mathew 8:1-3
The harvest of Miracles and the subsequent explanation of the doctrine he has taught followed up as recorded in all the synaptic gospels before his death on the Cross, rising from the dead, ascension to Heaven on the fortieth day, and the promise of resurrection and ascension to Heaven of the saints bought by the blood of the lamb (Jesus Christ) on the last day. These last four tenets comprise the core belief system of true Christianity.
It is interesting to note that none of the teachings of Jesus Christ as enumerated in his doctrine opposes any providential law of nature, expressed in the laws of physical sciences. For example, recognizing the physical laws of both gravity and velocity, Jesus Christ refused to yield to the ploy and deception of Satan the Devil when the later asked him to trust him down from a dangerous height assuring him that being the Son of God, he would be protected by the Angels and saved from hurting himself.
Taken from another perspective, Jesus Christ taught three things:
- Righteousness or Holiness
- Love of God
- Love for fellow human beings
While Righteousness leads one to Heaven, love for God keeps one consistently on the path of righteousness as love for fellow human beings keeps one in amicable relationship with God, fellow human beings and the environment of man.
As though it is difficult to imbibe, this simple teaching has been wrongly handed down to people in different ways by mercantile Christian teachers who profit by building huge business empires from the gospel of Jesus Christ. For example, some Christian teachers spend up to ninety minutes dissecting the Bible to inform their members who hold them in great awe of their intellectual mastery of the Holy Book, yet not encouraging their members to spare a few minutes to recite ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ which apart from being the greatest teaching of Jesus Christ, is the only one prayer legacy that should unite the Body of Christ, being also a perfect prayer format for every situation.
Making Christianity look like a difficult religion, the organized Church has built some unnecessary rituals around the Christian religion since the first century A.D, relegating the fact that Christianity is a way of life needed by every sensible person to successfully traverse the earth. What Jesus Christ saw and taught more than two thousand years ago, is still as valid as when it was first taught.
The only thing needed in the correct practice of time Christianity is righteousness of the person which righteousness opens up a veritable portal for the manifestation of the Grace of God that establishes what most people call the righteousness of God as differentiated by Prophet Isaiah in the Bible book with that name. It is surprising that some Christians have practiced the religion for upwards of forty or more years without actually imbibing and internalizing righteousness, yet it takes many of them who are professionals for example, surgeons, who open up the human anatomy, solve the problems of their patients and stitch them up, less than ten years to perfect their arts. This is a gross anomaly and may be traced to either unwholesome teachings or imperfect methods of teaching. The anomaly symbolizes failure on the path of Christian teachers who for different reasons of personal aggrandizement, prefer a long Israelite-type of teaching that guarantee the continuous inflow of their wealth through vicious cycles and rigmarole of teaching, un-teaching, and re-teaching their members what has been captured in the Lord’s Prayer.
One of the things I found out is that a good Christian, that is, one who practices the true doctrine of Jesus Christ must be and is always overshadowed with love. He experiences love within and love without. A woman of God prayed “grant me to be beautiful within and all I have of outward things to be at peace with those within”
In essence, no good Christian who practices the doctrine handed down by Jesus Christ which is also expressed in sundry laws of Providence, remains perpetually in distress, whether spiritual, emotional, financial, physical or otherwise. A good Christian experiences the dynamism of love within which commands love without, the former being necessary for inward peace and indwelling of the Holy Spirit, while the later is responsible for the manifestation of grace that may translate to material, financial and other comforts.
It is abnormal for a practicing Christian to be continuously in distress. Protracted distress is a function of absence of love within, the only thing that calls forth its reciprocal equivalent which is love without. Per adventure a good Christian practices the true doctrine of Jesus Christ, remaining in the dual expressions of love yet still find himself distressed, he must know that he is in the wrong environment and surrounded by people who are emotionally insensitive and wicked. The first thing he must do at this point is to change his environment and people in that environment. That environment could be one’s Church and the people in the environment could be members of the Church.
Emotional sensitivity, which Jesus Christ called ‘Compassion’, is the litmus test of any true congregation of the Body of Jesus Christ. The single deduction made from the above statement is that any Church where there is a gulley of difference in lifestyle between the clergy as in the jet-buying General Overseers and their tithe-paying congregants or laity, does not practice the true doctrine of Jesus Christ, though it may be preaching it.
It is a valid law of God instituted as one of the Ordinances of God impersonally and unconditionally powered by Providence that ignorance of the consequences of an offence does not shield one from the consequences of the offence, or preclude a natural reversal. A crawling child who unknowingly dips his fingers in a raging flame must burn his fingers. But knowledge of the consequence of an offence establishes the link between the offender and the offence wherefore the offender bears the full brunt of the emotional, physical and possibly, material consequences of his offence, unlike in the child who may not have understood why he has burnt his fingers.
Lack of knowledge of consequences to an offence hence, detachment or absence of the emotional link between the offender and the offence only mitigates the several consequences of the offence, but not obliterate them.
In these two cases, there is always a price to pay for any offence, though the price may be much reduced and mitigated the price could be in the second case because lack of the emotional link to the offence obstructs the full appreciation of the consequences by the sensory organs, hence the body.
When this natural law is applied to the Christian doctrine of forgiveness of sins, one discovers that forgiveness of sin does not translate to a negation of the natural laws “that he that lives by the sword dies by the sword”. Remember that this is one of the teachings of Jesus Christ.
It is spurious, deceptive and illusionary to teach that an ester while murderer goes away completely scot free of all consequences to his murder offence when declared ‘born again’. No, he has not gone scot free from what he has done. What has just happened is that his change of heart has earned him a mental detachment to his former offence, and with that conviction starts a process of self-righteousness which serves only his purpose but not the purpose to change the natural order of divine justice. To believe otherwise is an anomaly and unnatural, putting the laws of Providence both to ridicule and walking on its head.
Even King David, referred to by God as ‘a man after my heart’ did not go scot free from the murder of Citizen Uriah, husband to Bathsheba who later became King David’s wife and from whom also Jesus Christ descended. The sword tarried a long while in King David’s house as a result of his murder of Citizen Uriah. This deception has caused a lot of Christians so many things, in some cases, their lives! It is much easier for a Christian to fall than a person on the roll call of the Devil’s gallows. Such Christian pretenders, swimming in sins who command no protection power by the fiery fire of the Holy Spirit usually become scapegoats in circumstances they had thought they will scale through.
My knowledge and experiences in the operation of natural laws show that there exists no dubious opportunity to secure the protection of the Holy Spirit without Holiness or righteousness, no matter how highly placed in the Church organizational hierarchy one may be. Righteousness is the key to every spiritual defense.
By completely emasculating the nascent Christian practice of the Jewish culture from whence the religion of Christianity emanated, many Christian teachers have robbed the religion some of its pristine powers. No wonder that some of these teachers in Christian Pentecostalism patronize unwholesome sources in search of spiritual powers. One Jewish culture whose exit from Christian Pentecostalism has contributed to the weakening of the religion is the Jewish kabala. To some extent, Jewish Kabala is still kept alive in some orthodox Christian Churches including the Roman Catholic Church. The setting of the Roman Catholic Church Altar and the use of the menorah (seven candle stick burners) are examples of the importance of Jewish kabala in Christian practice.
All the miracles performed by Moses and all the Old Testament Prophets were exhibitions of the Jewish kabala. Deployment of the Jewish kabala law of heptad and ‘circumbulation’ ensured the fall of the wall of Jericho. That event is not as simple a story as it is presently taught by many Christian teachers. In all his years of ministration, Jesus Christ who was also versed in that knowledge having been taught by eminent wise men before his 30th birthday never condemned Jewish practices and culture. For example, he used it to good advantage when he escaped arrest several times by literally becoming invisible to his traducers, until he willingly submitted himself for arrest and prosecution.
The truth is that as a Christian, if you understand natural laws properly and synchronize them with righteousness, love and charity which are the underlining principles for the Christian belief system, there is actually no strings you will not be able to pull to demolish all obstacles on your way. It is sad that some Christians believe that the laws of Jesus Christ are ways different from the laws of nature. In this wise, some of them stupidly attach unlimited value to ‘grace’ believing that one who confesses Jesus Christ, attracts ‘grace’ even if such ‘grace’ undermines the natural process of divine justice and is subsumed in unrighteousness.
Another point that is worth mentioning here is that Jesus Christ neither condemned, nor denied the Jews of the luxuries and comforts they enjoyed to soothe their tedious years marred with sundry taxations and levies under the imperial rule of Rome. What he did was to preach against sinful acts of different shades as much as he condemned excesses and gluttony, in which acts the oppressed Jews found succor in their hand times under the authority of the Roman Empire.
There are controversies on the application of some Bible injunctions. Two of such injunctions are actually so controversial that nobody discusses them without getting knocked from here and there. These two are the controversies trailing the drinking of alcohol and tithing.
One of the comforts and luxuries the Jews enjoyed was consumption of alcoholic drinks. Alcoholic drink made from vine was in vogue; it was a Jewish trademark indulgence after every meal to partake of alcoholic wine, the same way ‘vine rouge’ (red wine) is trademark after-meal consumption by the French. This is a very sensitive matter to discuss, yet, to opine that the wine Jesus Christ, prompted by his mother, made out of water during a very important occasion as a wedding ceremony was a non-alcoholic wine, is to say the least, an obvious cultural inexactitude as of the time that incidence took place. More than that, it is a white lie meant to suit people who lack the basic discipline of moderation, many of whom abide in present Churches. A research on the works of secular historians of the time of Jesus Christ would confirm this.
As a matter of fact, the Jews under Roman imperialism were, very often, drunk with wine, enriching the popular tradition of Bacchius, the god of wine, and the worship of Dionysius, another god at that time, one of whose spectacles was merriment, gluttony, and drunkenness.
A thorough search in the Bible confirms that there is no explicit instruction either by Jesus Christ, the disciples and the apostles including Paul, condemning drinking alcoholic beverages. What all of these sources condemn is drunkenness in alcoholic beverages. In this specific condemnation, both the Old and New Testament portions of the Bible further highlight the after-effects of drunkenness in alcoholic beverages (to discourage it), and they include such very sinful acts as incestuous affairs, and other unwholesome acts of the body under the influence of excessive alcohol. Of course, it will be too elementary to advise people whose health may not be compatible with alcoholic beverages to desist from taking them because several portions of the Bible especially the book of Proverbs advises Christians to exhibit wisdom and not foolishness.
Another important teaching of Jesus Christ which indirectly refers to the excessive taking of alcoholic beverages is where he advises us to do away with anything that may impede our attainment of righteous living.
It surprises me that while some Bible preachers pretend not to be aware of the presence of certain portions of the Bible and diminish them, they went ahead to pick up other portions as Malachi Chapter three, Verse ten which amplify a source of enrichment of the clergy. Malachi Chapter three, Verse ten talks about tithing, which is the second most controversial issue in Christianity. Ordinarily the practice of tithing is supposed to have been overtaken by the new teachings and dispensation of the New Testament books as evidenced in the communal method of funding the Body of Christ on earth. Remember that disobedience to this most important voluntary and communal practice of the propagation of the work of Christ brought about the demise of Ananias and his wife, Sephira when they reneged on their promise to participate in the voluntary communal funding.
Furthermore, during his three missionary journeys to spread the gospel, Paul of Tarsus, evidently the next most important personality in Christianity after Jesus Christ, was solely founded by non-mandatory and voluntary contributions of the early Christians and nowhere in the Bible was it recorded that he tasked the early Church to pay tithes to him or instituted a compulsory levy on the members.
By all indications, the doctrine of the Church of Christ on earth has been tampered with by mercantilist Church leaders and efforts must be made by knowledgeable people to restore the Glory and Powers of the original Church.
Nota Bili:
On a personal note, I stepped into the modest old age of sixty two on Sunday, 18th July, the same day Madiba Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, the south African freedom fighter and nationalist, born 18th July, 1918, (whose country witnessed violent demonstrations as a result of misapplication of power, and insensitivity of their government to the feelings of South Africans on matters pertaining to the heroes of apartheid South Africa, the protection of whose legacies should have guided the decisions of their government on all national issues) was posthumously celebrated.
Finally the kaleidoscope wishes our Muslim brothers happy Eid el Kabir celebrations of the year 2021.
ABUCHI OBIORA
FOR:
Global Upfront Newspapers
REMARK:
Read Similar Posts by ABUCHI OBIORA as archives in:
The Kaleidoscope