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THE CULTING OF CHRISTIANITY

 

The Occult Roots of

The Rapture Cult – Part X

 

 

 

 

 

In our last installment of the Culting of Christianity, we addressed how the two factions opposing the Gospel – the Egyptian centered Gnosticism and the Jewish legalism espoused by the "Christian" Pharisees in Jerusalem – surrounded the anointing of the Apostle Paul in Syria. Although the Christians had presumptively begun to structure administrative functions in Jerusalem, comprised of "the apostles and elders" (Acts 15:6), the LORD Himself had chosen Saul of Tarsus to carry the torch of truth:

 

"…he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel" (Acts 9:15).

 

Meanwhile, as the political and military tensions with Rome escalated in Judaea, the Spiritually chosen of the LORD recalled Christ's words, and abandoned Jerusalem when the insurrection was at hand:

 

"And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies.…then let them which are in Judaea flee…. (Luke 21: 20, 21).

 

We also might note that same Apostle Paul (known as Saul of Tarsus when the LORD confronted him en route to Syria -- the famous Damascus road conversion in Acts 9:3), had instructed the believers to look for New Jerusalem in the heavenlies, pointing the faithful away from an allegiance to earthly Jerusalem. Thus, the Christians chosen by God had a leading from the LORD to flee Judaea altogether at the Roman encirclement, whereas the physical Jews who masqueraded as followers of Jesus (Acts 21:20) retained allegiance to their expired covenant:

 

"For if that first covenant [the Old Testament] had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second. In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away" (Hebrews 8:7, 13).

 

However, even though the Pharisees who supposedly embraced Jesus were destroyed in the siege in 70 AD, the Jewish sponsored attempts towards the Culting of Christianity were to continue. After Jerusalem was leveled, and worried that Christianity might cause Judaism to completely "vanish," an Antichrist scribe sought to build a library of Old Testament books for posterity. Johannan Ben Zakkai founded a school of the Torah in Jabneh in Judaea near the Northern border. As the effort grew, and Jews dispersed in the region through the Roman onslaught in Jerusalem began to cluster around him in Jabneh, Johannan Ben Zakkai became the de facto leader of a reconstituted council patterned after the Sanhedrin.

 

Ben Zakkai not only sought to counter the explosive Christian faith which was rapidly gaining ground all around him, he was also said to oppose the Gnosticsm which had penetrated Judaism long before the arrival of Christ. With certain Occult Gnostic writings dated to the first century AD, and the Hebrew colony at Jabneh established around the same time, the resulting Jewish mystical writings known as the Kabbalah (which also date back to Ben Zakkai's time) provide stark evidence that the Spirit of Antichrist was already firmly entrenched in Judaean religious thought.

 

Further, early forms of Hebrew language pseudepigraphal writings which attacked Christianity originated at about the same time as the Jewish scholarship emanating out of Jabneh. In these writings, Jesus is presented as a sorcerer who was the illicit offspring of an unholy union of Mary and a Roman centurion. The false accusations get even more repulsive from there, but it should be noted that even the Pharisees themselves accused Christ of being a bastard son of an unmarried woman.

 

"We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God" (John 8:41).

 

The Jewish commentaries known as Talmuds were to include even more vicious Antichrist invective, with writings claiming that Jesus was suspended in a vat of urine in Hell, as a result of his alleged blasphemy. The charge of sorcery was actually quite common in those days, as Jewish writers sought to explain how Jesus could perform so many miracles, which were seen by so many people, to the degree that Christ's supernatural power was simply undeniable. Indeed, Mediterranean writers also sought to discredit the miracles of Christ, as evidenced by a 2^nd century critic of the Gospel named Celsus, who also made the claim that Jesus was well versed in Egyptian magic.

 

The New Testament book of the Acts of the Apostles tells us that not only was Jesus Himself accused of being a sorcerer, when the disciples of Christ performed miraculous deeds after the LORD ascended to heaven, the Jews looked for ways to refute them as well:

 

"And Annas the high priest, and Caiaphas…asked By what power, or by what name, have ye done this? But when they had commanded [the disciples] to go aside out of the council, they conferred among themselves. Saying What shall we do to these men? For that indeed a notable miracle hath been done by them is manifest to all them that dwell in Jerusalem; and we cannot deny it" (Acts 4:6, 15, 16).

 

As the Jewish scribes at Jabneh were in disfavor with Rome, and the rabbinical scholars could not control the Greek language documents circulating in Judaea in the wake of the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, evidence suggests that Ben Zakkai (and his successor Rabbi Akiva Ben Joseph) were willing to compromise even their own Hebrew Scriptures, in a desperate effort to discredit how Christ fulfilled the hundreds of prophecies anticipating the Saviour. In this regard, it's useful to remember the fact that the early Christians made the case for Jesus being the Messiah by citing His fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies.

 

Thus, by seeking to subtly manipulate the prophecies themselves, the scribes sought to deflect the impact of Jesus fulfilling these predictions. Perhaps the classic example is Isaiah 7:14, the prophecy of the virgin birth of the Saviour. This particular example also supports the conclusion that the Gnostic influence reached all the way to the Scriptures themselves. 

 

"Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel" (Isaiah 7:14).

 

In the Septuagint, the Greek language version of the Old Testament which was translated in 280 BC, and widely in use in the days of Jesus, we find the Greek word for virgin is utilized in Isaiah 7:14. However, the Hebrew language utilizes two different words, one which is consistently rendered virgin (bethoolaw), but in other verses, another Hebrew word, almah (which means an unmarried woman) occurs.

 

The Hebrew language manuscripts used to translate the Septuagint in 280 BC are now long lost to us, but they would certainly have been in the possession of Johannan Ben Zakkai in 90 to 130 AD, when the school at Jabneh sought to counter Christianity. Once again, these manuscripts were used in Alexandria Egypt. The Hebrew language versions of Old Testament texts which were obtained by Ben Zakkai, were copied and distributed from Jabneh, and they became the foundational scrolls later known as the Masoretic text, with the name derived from the 10^th century AD Jewish sect known as the Masoretes.

 

When the King James English scholars working on the Scriptures in the early 1600's came to Isaiah's 7^th chapter, they distrusted the Masoretic text traced back to Ben Zakkai, and turned to the Greek Septuagint, which used the word for virgin, because the Hebrew text (the Masoretic from the 10^th century AD) they possessed no longer carried the word for virgin! Since the ancient Hebrew was originally used to produce the Greek (which did use the word for virgin), this suggested the Jewish scribes at Jabneh, after the fall of Jerusalem, were even willing to tamper with their own Scriptures as a way of deflecting the obvious connection between Christ's virgin birth, and the prophecy in Isaiah.

 

To reiterate that crucial point, for many centuries, the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament, was wholeheartedly embraced by the Jews. Further, there was no motive for tampering with the various texts (such as Isaiah's reference to a virgin birth) because Jesus had not yet been born. However, Johannan Ben Zakkai was highly motivated to change the text, to neutralize the claim that Jesus' birth from a virgin had been predicted by the prophet Isaiah. 

 

Furthermore, the New Testament book of Matthew, when asserting that Jesus was indeed born of a virgin and fulfilled Isaiah's epic prophecy, quoted this very verse, word for word, from the Greek Septuagint instead of the Hebrew!

 

Committed to rejecting Jesus as the Saviour because the corrupt religious establishment had already murdered Him, not only did the Jewish scribes promote the idea that Jesus was a pretender and a magician, they were linked to the lie that the Saviour had acquired his supposed sorcery from Egyptian magic – something that was relatively common among the Sethian Gnostics at that very time. Furthermore, citations from the Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, are repeatedly found in the Gnostic documents – especially the Sethian writings found at Nag Hammadi – so the Occult writings were clearly available to the Jewish scribes.

 

The Jewish Occult body of documents known as the Kabbalah have been traced to the very same period as the scribal work at Jabneh. For instance, a crucial writing known as the Zohar, which puts forth all sorts of Hebrew black magic, is traced back to Judaea, the very same locale as Jabneh, at the very same time as Johannan Ben Zakkai!

 

Furthermore, it is the pre and post Christian era Nag Hammadi Gnostic documents themselves which propose salvation based upon a chosen race, supposedly descended from Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve. Contrast this with the foundational Christian doctrine that the chosen people are now those who are Spiritually born again in Christ, as opposed to a racial primacy based on a physical lineage, as seen in the Old Testament.

 

"They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God…" (Romans 9:8).

 

Drawn from perhaps the most pointed book of the New Testament, the previous citation from the book of Romans carefully elaborates on how the Gentiles are now included in the Old Testament promises which were previously reserved for ethnic Israel. Couple this with an intense Jewish antagonism towards the Romans, the kingdom and culture which saw significant numbers embracing the Gospel (even as their military power completely destroyed Jerusalem), and you have the makings of the perfect theological storm.

 

Finally, after decades of effort at opposing Christianity at the Jewish center in Jabneh, the Jewish leader who succeeded Johannan Ben Zakkai, the well known Rabbi Akiva Ben Joseph pronounced a Jewish militant named Bar Kochba to be the Messiah! Akiva said that Bar Kochba would fight the Romans, throw off their political shackles, and restore the tribes of Israel to their supposedly rightful pre-eminence – a racially designated preference found in the Old Testament which echoes the racial supremacy articulated in the Sethian Gnostic Gospels!

 

Obviously, every physical Israelite is descended from Adam's son Seth, and since the Gnostic doctrinal works available to him undercut Christianity, it's inconceivable that Johannan Ben Zakkai would not have consulted them. Further, the Gnostic lore spoke of a great confrontation against evil, and the writings promised victory to a chosen group referred to as "her," even as the Occult text promises a forthcoming Saviour figure who would arrive to save the race which had gone astray.

 

"The great invisible Spirit…passed through the three parousias which I mentioned before: the flood, and the conflagration, and the judgement of the archons and the powers and the authorities, to save her [i.e. the race] who went astray" (The Gospel Of The Egyptians, Nag Hammadi Studies, page 142, emphasis mine).

 

-- James Lloyd

 

To Be Continued

 

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