The End Back Then, Part 4: Jesus' Return

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Background
We are tracing through the verses where Jesus described the events leading up to the end of the world. First He warned His disciples of upcoming false Messiahs, wars, and disasters. Then He explained that they would become witnesses to the world. He then went on to describe the ultimate in distress which would occur in the Siege of Jerusalem; horror which would never be equaled again. All of that terror would culminate in the return of Jesus...

This is Part 4 of a five part series entitled "The End Back Then." The series entries are:

• Part 1: Rumors of Wars
• Part 2: Worldwide Witness
• Part 3: Temple Tragedy
• Part 4: Jesus' Return
• Part 5: Be Ready

The End Back Then, Part 4: Jesus' Return

It would be impossible to mistake the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, right? I mean, that would be a major event worldwide... no, universe-wide! One way to mistake it would be to misinterpret metaphors; to change what the text means in order to suit your own beliefs. While some may accuse me of doing just that, I think we should turn to the text and let it define itself. And if that does not match reality, that does not necessarily mean that the interpretation is wrong. There is another possible outcome, as we will see while we examine the signs of Jesus' Second Coming.

In Matthew 24:23-31, Mark 13:21-27, Luke 17:22-24, and Luke 21:25-28 we find verses all describing when Jesus will return. Matthew 24:23, which is nearly a word-for-word copy of Mark 13:21, begins with a reference to timing:

"At that time if anyone says to you, 'Look, here is the Christ!' or, 'There he is!' do not believe it." NIV

"At that time"? When was that? This is conjoined to the preceding text, where it was describing the Siege of Jerusalem, so we should logically conclude that this means at a point in time in relatively close proximity to then.

Matthew 24:24-25 and Mark 13:22-23 go on to warn not to follow miracle-working false Christs who will try to trick the Elect, which is impossible, but they will try anyway. Of course, if tricking the Elect is impossible, then why bother warning them not to follow these miracle workers?

Wait just a minute. Miracle-working false Christs? Who, exactly, is giving them the power to work miracles?

The knee-jerk Christian reflex would be to say that it is Satan who is behind this, but that is just because most Christians either do not know or selectively ignore parts of the Bible. The deceivers likely come from God Himself.

What?!?! Oh yes. First, from where does all power ultimately come? God. But if that is not enough proof, I should remind you that tests of deception, up to and including miracle-working prophets, are part of God's playbook (Deuteronomy 13:1-5). So when you read in 2 Thessalonians 2:9-11 that "God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie," you know what we are talking about here.

Now you may have noticed that I have been silent on Luke's account. There is a reason for that. While Luke does warn of being led to false Christs, he wisely edited out the thought that they would be able to work miracles (Luke 17:23). That is not all the editing he did. Luke apparently was not a fan of the concept of the Elect, because he edited out that reference from his Gospel; both here and everywhere else!

Moving on, we hit one of those really odd patches of verses where Matthew and Luke both have content that Mark does not have. In Matthew 24:27-28, Jesus told His disciples that His return would be visible all over the world like a flash of lightning, and that vultures gather around corpses. I am not really sure what that last part about the vultures is supposed to mean, and I am not particularly satisfied by any of the explanations given in the classic commentaries. However, Luke takes a crack at it for us.

In Luke 17:24, Jesus also explained about His lightning-like visibility on His return. Then, a little later in Luke 17:37, we find a similar vulture-related comment. Luke 17:35-36 does provide some contextual meaning for these vultures, because in those verses Jesus explained that when He returned, certain people would be "taken." So when we get to Luke 17:37, a disciple asked "Where?," as in where will these people be taken? It is then that Jesus replied about vultures gathering around corpses, which still leaves the verse a bit open for interpretation despite Luke's added context, because, for example, we do not know if it is the good people or the bad people who are "taken". The idea of the gathering of the Elect (which we will see a little later) would suggest it is the good ones who are taken, but then, metaphorically, they are the vultures gathering around the corpse, which seems exceedingly odd.

Next we come to the shared sentiment of Matthew 24:29 and Mark 13:24-25:

"Immediately after the distress of those days
  'the sun will be darkened,
    and the moon will not give its light;
  the stars will fall from the sky,
    and the Heavenly bodies will be shaken.'" NIV

Note the time frame again: immediately following those days, referring to the Siege of Jerusalem. Immediately is a relative term, for sure, and within the span of five or so years could be a reasonable interpretation, but two thousand years... not so much.

Besides the timing, what does the rest of that verse mean? Sun darkened? Moon not giving its light? (That, by the way, is another tell of bad Biblical science, given that the moon does not produce light of its own.) Stars falling? Heavens shaking? Sounds like some miraculous metaphysical manipulation! While this could be meant literally, like the Plague of Darkness on the Egyptians, this is most likely to be metaphorical, but what does the metaphor mean?

Classic Bible commenter John Gill suggests that the darkened sun refers to "...the Shekinah, or the divine presence in the temple...", i.e. God leaving the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, and the darkened moon refers to "...the [Jewish] ceremonial law, the moon, the church is said to have under her feet, Revelation 12:1 so called because the observance of new moons was one part of it..." The problem is that Jesus already took care of this. God left the Temple when the curtain was torn (Matthew 27:51, Mark 15:38, Luke 23:45), and Jesus allegedly ended ceremonial law too. So that is a nice try, but let us let Scripture guide the interpretation instead.

In Isaiah 5:30, Isaiah 13:10, Ezekiel 32:7, Joel 2:10, Joel 2:31, Joel 3:15, Amos 8:9, and Micah 3:6 you find similar references to these celestial signs. In fact, let us take a look at Ezekiel 32:7 for example:

"When I (God) snuff you (Egypt) out, I will cover the heavens and darken their stars; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon will not give its light." NIV

Given that this language is applied to Egypt, we can know with some certainty that this is no allusion to God leaving the Temple or the end of Jewish ceremonial law. ;-) However, what you probably picked up on in this verse is God's judgement of condemnation.

Darkening the sun, the moon, and the stars is a metaphor which is connected with God's judgement, and it means that essentially that the subjects of this judgement are without hope. There is no sun to light their path by day. There is no moon to track the months to tell the seasons. There are no stars to guide them. In short: at that point, there is no way that they can escape their judgement.

You may have noticed the multiple references above in Joel. Take a quick read through Joel 2 and you will see that this metaphor here in the Gospels was most likely meant as a reference to the Judgement Day.

Continuing on, Matthew 24:30 and Luke 21:27-28 both share the sentiment of what Mark 13:26 concisely expressed:

"At that time men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory." NIV

Again we see that this is to occur at "that time." By Biblical prophesy standards, all of these time references are pretty darn precise, and all point to the time around the Siege of Jerusalem and the time soon thereafter.

Now, what does that phrase "see the Son of Man coming in clouds" mean? Well, our friend John Gill thinks that it is a metaphor; that "...he (Jesus) shall appear, not in person, but in the power of his wrath and vengeance, on the Jewish nation which will be a full sign and proof of his being come." Indeed, there are other verses where God's vengeance came with clouds, such as Isaiah 19:1, Isaiah 30:27, Lamentations 2:1, and the above-quoted Ezekiel 32:7.

So Gill's suggestion on this verse is reasonable and closer to the mark, but he is still way off target. God's vengeance would be displayed, but in the much larger context Judgement day. The verse itself was likely inspired by and intended to allude to Daniel 7:13-14:

"In my (Daniel's) vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed." NIV

Does that sound like anyone we are supposed to know? ;-) Conveniently for us, this prophesy is explicitly explained in Daniel 7:23-27, with another reference to 3.5 years ("a time, times and half a time") like we saw in my earlier post on the Temple destruction which quoted a different prophesy from Daniel. Daniel's prophesy stated that at the end of this three and a half years there would be a swift act of judgement, and then God's eternal kingdom would be established!

Make no mistake. What Jesus allegedly prophesied here is the end of the world, and the timing was explicitly claimed to be shortly after the fall of the Temple. In fact, stepping up to the earlier verse with the celestial signs, there is the curious mention that the stars would fall from the heavens. There is only one Old Testament reference to stars actually falling: Isaiah 34:4. Isaiah 34 is a prophesy of judgement against all nations. This was an explicit reference to Jesus coming back, in person (Revelation 1:7), initiating the final Judgement Day.

Closing out this prophesy, that is why in Matthew 24:31 and Mark 13:27 you see that at that time Jesus would send forth angels to gather the Elect from the four winds (another bad Biblical science reference). The Elect would be saved from experiencing the intense tribulation of that dreadful day. This is but an echo of prior Old Testament prophesies, as we see in Ezekiel 34:12:

"As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I (God) look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness." NIV

The End Back Then, Part 2: Worldwide Witness

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Background
While in Jerusalem, Jesus' disciples marveled at the grandeur of the Temple, but Jesus then told them that it would be completely destroyed. This enticed them to ask Jesus when the Temple would be destroyed, when He would return, and when the end of the world would be. Jesus began His reply by warning them of upcoming false Messiahs, wars, and disasters.

This is Part 2 of a five part series entitled "The End Back Then." The series entries are:

• Part 1: Rumors of Wars
• Part 2: Worldwide Witness
• Part 3: Temple Tragedy
• Part 4: Jesus' Return
• Part 5: Be Ready

The End Back Then, Part 2: Worldwide Witness

Just how big is the world? That is a relatively easy question for us to answer today, but 2000 years ago that was not so easy to know accurately. Frankly speaking, there was far less reason to know or care about how big the world really was 2000 years ago, and that would be especially true if you believed that God had given your people a select plot of land. We will see some of that geographical bias while we work through this study, as we continue on in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21:5-37 (plus Luke 17:22-37) to review the several signs provided by Jesus which harken the end of the world.

Matthew 24:9, Mark 13:9, and Luke 21:12 are in a little bit of disagreement on the precise timing on the next given signs. Mark, the likely original source for Matthew and Luke, simply tells us that the disciples will be handed over to the authorities and will witness to them. Both Matthew and Luke felt the need to clarify exactly when the witnessing to the authorities would happen, but unfortunately they disagree. Did I say unfortunately? I meant hilariously. Matthew says that this handing over will happen "then," as in after of the wars, rumors of wars, and natural disasters. Luke, on the other hand, claims that the handing over will happen "before all this." We will see why Luke chose the early path in a moment.

The Gospel of Mark was likely the source material for this section for both Matthew and Luke, but Matthew significantly reconfiguring Mark's content. For example, if you compare this episode's text in Mark 13:9-13 with the sending out of the Twelve Apostles on their first mission in Matthew 10:17-21, you will see very similar verses in similar order. But when we get to the "contemporaneous" recording of Matthew 24:9-14, the order has changed, and the words regarding family members betraying each other and how the Holy Spirit will speak through the disciples are absent.

What about Luke? While there is some extensive rewording, Luke 21:12-19 has essentially the same content as Mark 13:9-13, with one exception. But before we get to the exception, there is one particularly interesting elaboration in the rewording we find in Luke 21:15

"For I [Jesus/God] will give you words and wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict." NIV

Now that would be a really powerful sign of the presence of God! To have God provide wording which could neither be resisted nor contradicted by your adversaries would be amazing. And with that kind of power, the whole world would quickly be converted to believing in Jesus. Of course, that is not the case. There is a lot of resistance to Christian evangelism, and contradictions to known facts and Scriptures are some of the reasons for the resistance. Through God's power, we could not even get the Scriptures themselves free of contradictions, so what does that tell you?

Now, about that exception in Luke; for perspective, let us take a quick look at Matthew 24:14 and Mark 13:10, giving Mark's Gospel the proper primacy:

Mark 13:10 (NIV)	Matthew 24:14 (NIV)
And the gospel must first be preached to all nations.	And this gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

We see that Mark's words are a little ambiguous. What exactly does he mean that the Gospel "must first" be preached? Does that mean that it will be preached before the wars and tribulations previously prophesied, or does it mean before the end of the world? The answer to that question depends on which other Synoptic Gospel you consult. As we can see here, Matthew clarified what Mark had originally intended. Luke, on the other hand, dropped the explicit reference here to preaching to all nations, but preserved his perceived early timing of event. That is why we found the contradiction noted above, where Luke said that this witnessing would occur "before all of this," as in before the wars and tribulations.

Now what exactly does it mean to preach the Gospel to all nations, or to the whole world? If it means to preach the Gospel to each and every person in the entire world, that will never happen, so perhaps we should focus on the "all nations" aspect. Some amount of preaching must reach each nation. Has that already happened? Yes, but in the sense of how the Jews understood the world at that time, it happened much sooner than what we, today, would have thought possible, because their world was much smaller.

There are several references in the Old Testament portraying a very small world, and a much flatter world at that. Just search for the phrase "ends of the earth" for example. The phase itself is nonsense taken literally. It is like being in a round room and being told to sit in the corner. There is no "end" to this sphere we live on, unless you consider the earth's crust as its end, in which case all of the land masses count as the ends the earth. This is a vestigial relic in our vernacular which is based on a primitive understanding. We can only understand it today when taken to metaphorically mean "the most remote places" or geo-egocentrically to mean the places far away from us. But the "ends of the earth" of the Bible had a much more literal meaning, a meaning made clear in the following four representative quotes:

Deuteronomy 28:64
Then the LORD will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods—gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your ancestors have known. NIV

Ezra 1:2
“This is what Cyrus king of Persia says: “‘The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah. NIV

Psalm 74:17
It was you who set all the boundaries of the earth; you made both summer and winter. NIV

Isaiah 41:9
I took you from the ends of the earth, from its farthest corners I called you. I said, ‘You are my servant’; I have chosen you and have not rejected you. NIV

It is difficult to scatter people from one end to the other of a sphere. Cyrus the Great allegedly claimed to be given all the kingdoms of the earth by God, but his empire never stretched beyond the Greece in the west or India in the east. God set boundaries for the earth, which is not logical for a sphere. And in the final quote, it is referring to to return of the Jews from exile; the event alluded to in the alleged quote from Cyrus. Obviously, the Jews had not been sent to the farthest corners of the earth relative to Jerusalem.

Just in case you think this problem is limited to the Old Testament; think again. You find references to the "ends of the earth" in Matthew 12:42, Mark 13:27, Luke 11:31, Acts 1:8, Acts 13:47, Romans 10:18, Revelation 7:1, and Revelation 20:8. Revelation actually one-ups the simple "ends of the earth" by referring to the four corners of the earth, as if it was a square or rectangle. But most significant are the words from Jesus Himself, because He, of all people and deities, should know better. Check out these Jesus quotes:

Matthew 12:42
"The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon’s wisdom, and now something greater than Solomon is here." NIV

Acts 1:8
"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." NIV

The first verse is a reference to the Queen of Sheba visiting the Israelite King Solomon. She came from the "ends of the earth," or which was likely Ethiopia or northwestern Yemen. That is not even the "end" of the African continent, let alone the end of the earth.

The second verse is a reference to Pentecost, when the Disciples received the Holy Spirit and so they spoke in tongues. Per Jesus' own words, it was precisely these Disciples who would be the witnesses to the ends of the earth, which is laughable given that they never made it to the Americas, or even Australia. Not only that, it seems that Saul/Paul was the main evangelist for the Gentiles, not these Disciples. Yet Jesus thought that these guys would be the witnesses to cover the world. Fail!

Considering this perspective, we can ultimately see how relatively little effort and time would be required to spread to all the nations of the world, at least as far as the Gospel writers understood it. They thought the goal of spreading the Gospel to the whole world was achievable, and achieved, within their lifetimes.

Seventy-Two Fables

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Background
After James and John ask Jesus if they should ask God to rain fire from the sky on people who did not welcome them, the Gospel of Luke briefly shares some material with the Gospel of Matthew. In that section, Jesus makes it clear that attaining the Kingdom of God takes precedence over all earthly affairs, even paying your last respects to the dead. From there, Luke again ventures into the lonely territory of unique material... well, sort of unique, and sort of a rehash of an earlier episode.

Seventy-Two Fables

Before Jesus was resurrected, He sent some disciples out from Him a few times: Jesus sent the Twelve Disciples/Apostles out on the First Mission. Jesus sent two random disciples out to get a colt for Him to ride into Jerusalem (Matthew 21:1-7 {where they also get a donkey, and Jesus rides both simultaneously!}, Mark 11:1-7, Luke 19:29-35 {NOTE: in John 12:14-15, Jesus found His own colt}). Finally, Jesus sent the disciples (Matthew 26:17-19), or two random disciples (Mark 14:12-16), or Peter and John specifically (Luke 24:7-13), to make preparations for what is known as the Last Supper.

Aside from those instances, Luke uniquely records two other times when Jesus sent out people on a given task, and both of those times were supposedly to make advanced preparations for Jesus to pass through various towns in His planned route to Jerusalem. The first one we examined earlier; when James and John wanted to burn a Samaritan town with fire from Heaven when the residents did not welcome Jesus' messengers. The second is when Jesus sent out seventy-two "others" (Luke 10:1-20).

The strange thing is that Luke's story here is not really much of a unique account. The beginning and ending are unique, but the rest appears to be built from much of the same material that Matthew used for the First Mission. Luke's account of the First Mission is very short compared to Matthew's (Matthew 10+ versus Luke 9:1-6), but Matthew's extra material is not completely lost in Luke. Luke rearranged it, which suggests that at least one of the two authors is wrong, and possibly that Matthew's Gospel was not a direct resource used in making Luke's Gospel. Let us take a closer look. Luke 10:1 begins with:

After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of Him to every town and place where He was about to go. NIV

Notice Jesus is referred to as "the Lord" here, suggesting divinity. Also note that these seventy-two people were "others," implicitly meaning disciples other than the Twelve Disciples/Apostles.

Here is where the commonality begins. Jesus gives them instructions for their journey, just like the Twelve Disciple's First Mission (FM). In the following table, you can see the duplicate pattern unfold:

Verse Paraphrased Content	Luke's Seventy-Two	Matthew's FM
Big harvest, few workers	Luke 10:2	Matthew 9:37-38 (Verses just before the FM)
Lambs among wolves	Luke 10:3	Matthew 10:16
Do not take supplies with you	Luke 10:4 (also FM Luke 9:3)	Matthew 10:9-10
Stay in a welcoming house	Luke 10:5-9 (also FM Luke 9:4)	Matthew 10:11-13
Condemn unwelcoming houses/towns	Luke 10:10-12 (also FM Luke 9:5)	Matthew 10:14-15
Jesus condemns Korazin and Capernaum	Luke 10:13-15	Matthew 11:21-23 (after the FM, possibly before the Disciples returned)
Vicarious accepting or rejection	Luke 10:16	Matthew 10:40

From there, Luke becomes truly unique for a moment. Luke 10:17 has the seventy-two return, marveling at how they could control demons. In Luke 10:18-20, Jesus replies:

[Jesus] replied, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from Heaven. I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in Heaven." NIV

So Jesus saw Satan fall from Heaven... What? Clearly, if Heaven was some alternate dimension where God dwelt outside of space and time, there would be no falling from it. This comment only makes sense in perspective of the antiquated belief that the realm of Heaven was directly above the Earth, and Satan was kicked out of it.

This episode continues on with Luke sharing more content with Matthew that we discussed earlier regarding how Jesus was happy that God was preventing people from understanding Him. In Matthew, that subject matter directly followed the above-noted condemnation of Korazin and Capernaum.

Circling back to the broader picture, we should question why and how Luke's sending of the seventy-two others could overlap the Disciple's First Mission so much; drawing in material shared by Matthew which is not in Luke's earlier description of the First Mission. It seems as though either Luke had no problems manipulating Matthew's storyline to his will, or that perhaps Luke was drawing from some other source document that had no, or had different, framing text. In any case, the "Truth" has suffered for it.

One more path to consider is numerology. Numerology? (You ask.) Yes. Strange as it seems, numerology may play a role here either if Luke was knowingly writing a myth or if Luke was "enhancing" the spirituality of events that he thought were historical. (Or, perhaps, Luke's source did this myth writing or enhancement before him.)

There are some hints of Luke being a numerology-sensitive author. While there are several examples of these hints to choose from, one of the easiest ones to perceive is how Luke changes the timeline to the Transfiguration from six days, recorded in Matthew 17:1 and Mark 9:2, to eight days in Luke 9:28. Apologists often explain away this apparent contradiction by saying Luke was counting including the start and end days, while Matthew and Mark were just counting the days in between. However, in numerology, the number six is said to represent imperfection, sin, and/or evil, as well as the physical as opposed to the spiritual. If Luke was numerology-sensitive, he would have balked at Jesus being associated with the number six, especially around a holy event like the Transfiguration. That is why eight would have been more appealing to Luke, because eight was the number of days after birth when Jewish boys were circumcised, and it represents new beginnings.

If the numerology angle is correct, then it becomes a gnostic mystery to decode the number seventy-two. Numerology is tricky, because, as an interpreter, you can almost get it to mean whatever you want, especially with large numbers like seventy-two. That is because the meaning may be in the number itself, or in its multiples. So should we focus on 72, or 8 x 9, or 2 x 36, or 6 x 12, or 3 x 4 x 6, etc.? In this case, we may have a clue to that as well, because Jesus sent out the seventy-two people in pairs; 2 x 36.

Now, just like interpretations of the Bible, what the numbers mean in numerology also varies somewhat depending on your resource, but this one I used suggests that two is the number represents division, while thirty-six is a reference to an enemy or opposition. So one take may be that this represents dividing (and conquering) an enemy force or opposition. Indeed this meaning can be reflected in both Jesus' confrontational destination of Jerusalem (ultimately conquering the hollow, mechanistic Judaism of Jesus' day which was opposed to Him) and in the attack of and power over the demonic forces in opposition to God (with the seventy-two's ability to control demons and Jesus' specific mention of overcoming the power of the "enemy").

Of course, when you delve into the world of symbolism like numerology, nothing is really as it seems. But then, the same could be said about trying to think of the Gospels as accurate history...

...And Fire in the Sky

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Background
We are coming to some text contained only in Luke. According to Luke, after the Transfiguration, Jesus exorcised a demon from a boy when Jesus' Disciples could not do so, told His Disciples that the greatest person was the least one among them (Luke 9:46-48), and said that anyone who was not against them was for them (Luke 9:49-50). From there, Luke ventures into unique territory...

...And Fire in the Sky

Sure, Jesus was about forgiveness, turning the other cheek, etc. But that sentiment was not ad infinitum. There was a day coming, a day of Judgement, when forgiveness and the other cheek would no longer be offered. It was a day that God had had picked out since the beginning of time, all according to plan, but arbitrary none the less. Modern Christianity seems a little divided, between not believing that Judgement Day will come anytime soon, and believing that Judgement Day is imminent. In this study, we will take a quick look at a passage which skirts both forgiveness and condemnation.

We begin with Luke 9:51:

As the time approached for Him to be taken up to Heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. NIV

This is a key verse for synchronization of the Gospels. According to the Synoptic Gospels, this is the point where Jesus set His sights on going to Jerusalem for the first, last, and only time since He had recruited the Disciples. According to the Gospel of John, this would be the fifth and final entry into Jerusalem (the preceding four were John 2:13, John 5:1, John 7, and John 10:22-23). But, you know how it is with repeated visits, for Matthew, Mark, and Luke, all of those times probably just blended into one memory. ;-)

Anyway, with Jerusalem as the goal, Jesus sent some people to prepare a Samaritan town along their planned route for His arrival, but the townspeople rejected Jesus coming there when they heard that He had planned to continue to Jerusalem (Luke 9:52-53). The Samaritans, despite essentially sharing the same religion as the Jews, regarded their Temple on Mount Gerizim to be The Temple, as opposed to the one in Jerusalem. So we can understand why there would be some inhospitable hostility at the notion of Jesus going onto Jerusalem.

In Luke 9:54-56, we see how the news of the rejection is taken:

When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, "Lord, do you want us to call fire down from Heaven to destroy them?" But Jesus turned and rebuked them, and they went to another village. NIV

First, we should consider the idea of calling down fire from Heaven. This is not a new concept. God had rained down burning sulfur from Heaven on Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:24). Later, at Elijah's request, God had rained down fire from Heaven to kill over a hundred men (2 Kings 1:9-18).

So this is a Biblically consistent idea, but not a reality consistent one. It comes from a time when Heaven was thought to be the realm above the celestial ceiling that we gazed upon in the night and day. But really we are just a little blue marble, moving in the vastness of our solar system, which is poised in our gargantuan galaxy, which is situated in an incomprehensibly large universe. That makes the concept of anything raining down from a Heaven above laughable, other than meteorites, comets, and our own space junk.

As you can see, Jesus rebuked James and John for suggesting immediate divine punishment, but what exactly was that rebuke? It is not likely to have been a revelation that "Heaven" was not above them, given the Biblical view. Some people might think that this was an example of Jesus' mercy, or that Jesus' was rebuking their spirit of condemnation and retaliation. I do not think so.

Instead, Jesus' rebuke is more likely to be due to the fact that the Disciples were not following Jesus' own orders. Back when He had sent the Disciples out on their First Mission, He told them exactly what to do when a town rejected them: shake the dust off their feet as a testimony against that town (Luke 9:4-5). What was that testimony for? Luke 10:8-12 would later make clear what Matthew had stated earlier: that testimony was the ultimate condemnation for that entire town, which would be enacted at Judgement Day; resulting in a fate much worse than fire raining from Heaven. So Jesus' rebuke was probably not against the spirit of their desires, but rather a reminder that they should let God handle vengeance, and that He would do just that very soon.

The Origin of Paralysis

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Background
This is another Gospel story with different precursors. Matthew: Jesus calms the storm and casts demons into swine. Mark: Jesus prays alone, and then travels throughout Galilee, preaching and exorcising, and finally cures a leper. Luke: Jesus gathers fishers of men and then cures a leper. John: No comment. Despite different origins, the Gospels all come together for this next anecdote. All but John, that is.

The Origin of Paralysis

Every so often, a piece of ancient text will reveal a detail which ties it to the epoch in which it was written. Some details are blatant, like mentioning the nation of Persia. Others are a little more subtle, requiring special attention to draw out from the text, but the extra effort can be rewarding in more clearly revealing the beliefs and customs of the time. For example, take the story of Jesus healing a paralytic man.

Matthew 9:1-8, Mark 2:1-12, and Luke 5:17-26 all record the story about how four men delivered their paralyzed friend on a mat to Jesus. Jesus tells the paralyzed man that his sins are forgiven. Some teachers of the Law, and possibly some Pharisees too, either began to talk amongst themselves or think to themselves that Jesus was blaspheming. Jesus detects their thoughts, and asks them which is easier to say: “'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Get up and walk.'” Jesus then heals the paralyzed man to show them all that Jesus can forgive sins, and then tells the man to get up and leave. Everybody is impressed by the miracle.

That is great, but there are several issues and revelations which need closer scrutiny here.

When did this happen? Matthew 9:1 records that this event happened right after Jesus crossed the Sea of Galilee, which was right after He sent demons into swine. The demons-into-swine trick was also recorded in Mark 5:1-20. Yet Mark 2:1 records that the healing of the paralyzed man happened a “few days” after Jesus healed a leper in Mark 1:40-45 (which is also recorded in Matthew 8:2-4). There is no way to reconcile this timeline.

Next, this is one of the passages in the Gospels in which Jesus confirms a few things here:

Jesus retained at least some supernatural powers of God, and God can read minds. That is nothing new, but debate often plays out in Christian circles about exactly how much Godly power, if any, did Jesus give up when becoming a man. (Bonus Question: How did the Gospel authors know what Jesus knew about the Law teachers' thoughts?)

Jesus can forgive sins. Let me repeat: Jesus can forgive sins; as in Jesus can forgive sins without being crucified. That is, Jesus can heal the rift between man and God without a sacrifice. That is, the crucifixion was not essential or mandatory to re-unite sinful man with Holy God.

As mind-blowing as the revelation above is to Christian doctrine, there is another one which catches my attention even more. When Jesus observed the four men bring in their paralyzed friend, He “saw their faith,” but Jesus did not forgive the sins of all of these men. Instead, Jesus only forgave the sins of the paralyzed man, despite being impressed with the faith of all of these men (Matthew 9:2, Mark 2:5, Luke 5:20). Why would that be? The answer is Biblical...

Back in those times, people who were afflicted with disease were thought to be punished by God for their sins. As was covered in a previous study, if you were sick, you were guilty. This fact is also revealed right in this episode in a subtle manner. First, as noted, Jesus only forgave the paralytic man. Second, when Jesus asked if it was easier to say that sins are forgiven or that to tell the paralyzed man to get up and walk (Matthew 9:5, Mark 2:9, Luke 5:23), He was not really asking which sentence is easier to speak. No, instead Jesus was asking which of these acts is easier to actually do, with Jesus' implicit answer being that they are equally difficult because the punishment for sin (paralysis) would require God's forgiveness to be healed.

This was the custom of belief at the time, the custom defining how people knew that God interacted with them. If they were sick, God was punishing them. If they were wealthy and healthy, God was happy with them. This same belief, and one of its associated issues, is echoed elsewhere in the Gospels, in John 9:1-2:

As [Jesus] went along, He saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked Him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" NIV

Remember the next time you are sick, or you get paralyzed, or you get cancer, that, from a Biblical perspective, it is either because God is punishing you for your sins or because (in the example from John 9:1-38) the healing of your ailment will bring glory to God. So if you happen to die with your disease, I guess you will die knowing that God was punishing you. Oh, and God is Love. ;-)

Instead, I recommend aligning your beliefs with reality, and recognize that the “Truth” of the Bible is not really all that true. God's word is not eternal. Rather, it is outdated.

God According to Deuteronomy

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Background
Deuteronomy. It is the final book of the Pentateuch/Torah/Law, and the final chance for Moses to teach the new generation of Israelites the ways of God before they enter the Promised Land. It is time now to reflect on what we have learned about God's ways in this book.

God According to Deuteronomy

Piecing together some information from earlier books, we figure out early in Deuteronomy that God believes that when you reach the age of 20 years old, you are fully accountable for your actions. As far as any arbitrary number goes, that seems like a reasonable age.

God believes that the Israelites have not lacked anything in their 40 years since the Exodus began. But God is obviously out of touch with reality, because the Israelites complained about not having good food and, even more importantly, about not having water, on multiple occasions. God even sometimes punished them for making these requests for basic and essential needs.

God is really, really proud of the the laws and commandments (collectively know at the Law) which He gave to the Israelites. He does not want you to add to or subtract from them. They are good for eternity. God thinks that they are so good that any other nation which studies these laws will be extremely impressed at how smart they are. Are you wearing blended fabrics? Dummy!

Did I mention that God was impressed with the Law? Well, God wants you to teach your children the Law everyday, and speak and write the Law all over the place. Be sure to teach your kids how to treat their slave girls! It is through following the Law that you can be righteous, and you do not even have to be perfect at it to be righteous. (Sorry Christianity.)

God says that He will drive out the Promised Land's present inhabitants, but then confusingly reminds the Israelites to completely wipe out those same inhabitants, killing everything that breaths.

Who is God? Think of God as a Father: you know, the kind of father who constantly tests you to see if you will obey him, humbles you with starvation and thirst, and threatens to kill you if you show an admiration of any other father.

God reminds the Israelites that it is just sheer luck that they are chosen by God; luck that their forefathers had impressed God. Otherwise, God would have already killed them.

Getting to God's impressive, holy Law, God commands having absolutely zero tolerance for other religions within the Promised Land. Censor pagan knowledge. Destroy all pagan symbols and altars. Kill individual pagan worshipers. And if an entire town is pagan? Kill everything that breaths in the town, and burn the entire town as an offering to God. Are you impressed?

God's Law continues, instructing to cancel debts every seven years, but only for fellow Israelites. You should maintain debt records for foreigners. You should also generously loan (not give) to the poor, so that you will be financially blessed by God.

God's Law also has commands for kings to follow with no negative connotations associated with kingship, even though it becomes clear later on that God did not want the Israelites to have a king.

God tells us that He will provide multiple prophets, not just one, and that the Israelites need to test each prophet to make sure that they come from God based on the fulfillment of prophesies during the prophet's lifetime. If what they prophesy does not come true, kill them.

What about the morals and family values of God's Law? God says that women as part of the plunder of war, allowing you to have sex with them and marry them if you want. God approves of polygamy, but your firstborn son must get the inheritance typically allotted to the firstborn regardless of how much you love (or hate) the woman who gave birth to this son. Oh, and you should stone rebellious children to death.

God's Law also says that if there is no blood from a broken hymen during a newlywed's first intercourse, then the woman should be stoned to death because she obviously was not a virgin. Of course, this proves God has a poor understanding of female anatomy, because natural variations in body structure can make it so that no blood is produced during the first intercourse. God also says that a raped woman must be married to the rapist in certain cases. Yes, indeed, God has wonderfully high moral standards. So wise.

God has restrictions of who is allowed to enter His congregation, and who is not. God does not want anyone with damaged testicles, anyone from a lineage from someone born out of wedlock, or anyone of Ammonite or Moabite ancestry.

God believes divorce is OK, but you had better not remarry your divorced wife after she has married someone else. That would be disgusting to God, even though a man having multiple wives is not disgusting to God in the least.

God's Law says that no man should be put to death for the sins of his children, and no son should be put to death for the sins of his father. Yet God has an established pattern of ignoring this rule of morality.

God obligates a brother to marry his brother's widow (regardless of this brother's marital status) if there was no male heir, or else face a shame which would forever endure with his progeny. God also wants you to chop off the hand of any woman who fights dirty to try to save her husband. Plus, God wants the Israelites to hold a permanent grudge against the Amalekites, never forgiving them for what their previous generation had done.

Now if the Israelites obeyed God's righteous Law, God would bless them with peaceful, financial prosperity. If not, God would curse them in so many horrendous ways that they would be tortured into submission.

When the Israelites were again willing to follow only God's will, God promised that He would circumcise their hearts and the hearts of their descendants so that they would love God and obey His Law once again. Of course, this is in dramatic contrast to how Christianity spins the prophesy.

Closing out Deuteronomy with a song, God says that He has perfect works and perfect justice, and that He never does anything wrong. This brands God a liar, because He made man (imperfect), His justice is wanting (as seen above), and He routinely goes against His own moral code (again as seen above). The song ends with God making atonement (without Jesus) for both His people (the Israelites) AND His land (Zion), which is a bit different than the Christian perspective of salvation and redemption.

What We Have Learned
God thinks 20 years old is the age of full accountability.

God thinks that you can be dying of thirst, and still not lack anything.

God thinks that the Law He provided is perfect as is for all eternity, and it should never be amended or redacted. It is a showcase of God's wisdom, providing proof of His divinity to any pagan willing to study it. Children should be taught it, and the culture should be immersed in it, purging all other ideas. God is the kind of father who will have either your complete obedience to His Law or your death. When people drift away, their return to God will always be coupled to their return to His Law. HUGE red flag that Christianity is false...

God wants the present Promised Land inhabitants absolutely and completely wiped out, as well as death for all Amalekites. Short on forgiveness, God never wants anyone from a bastard's lineage or of Ammonite or Moabite ancestry in His congregation.

Just because you are chosen by God, does not mean you are any better than anyone else, which essentially means that decision is arbitrary.

God's wise laws include ideological intolerance, racism, nationalism, and sexism, as well as a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of human anatomy. In God's Law, death sentences are a usual form of punishment.

Even in cases where God provides good moral guidance, God Himself does not feel obligated to do what is right and obey His own given morals.

God will reward obedience in this life, not some life beyond death. And for disobedience, if you are not killed, you may wish for death when God gets done with applying curses.

Finally, God has a highly inflated ego and delusions of righteous grandeur.

In short: God is a hypocritical, intolerant, racist, nationalist, sexist, capricious, and delusional megalomaniac with little regard for human life, a poor understanding of anatomy, and an even poorer understanding of what it means to be a role good model for fatherhood.

Virginity, Rape, and Bitter Justice

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Background
We are approximately two-thirds of the way through Deuteronomy, in the middle of a section where Moses is listing God's laws for the Israelites. From Deuteronomy 21, we learn how you can marry captive women, practice polygamy with unloved wives, and stone your disobedient children. What will the next chapter hold for us?

Virginity, Rape, and Bitter Justice
Have you ever heard a song which starts of really well, but after the first chorus all of the stanzas are just horrible? You feel cheated, like the artist wrecked what could have been an otherwise wonderful song. Sure, you can go on singing the chorus and humming the tune, but any notion of artistic genius dissolved. This is not one for the iTunes. In a less lyrical sense, that is exactly what happens with Deuteronomy 22.

Deuteronomy 22:1-8 starts off the chapter pretty strong. Take care of your brother's lost or fallen livestock. Take the eggs, but not the mother bird. Deuteronomy 22:8 is even a precursor to OSHA, requiring fall protection for your roof! Besides the somewhat random prohibition on cross-dressing in Deuteronomy 22:5, these laws seem to demonstrate great compassion and understanding for humans and animals. This could be evidence of a loving, omniscient God.

Then things become a little odd in Deuteronomy 22:9-12. Here, as in our study of Leviticus, we see that God prohibits planting multiple seed types in the same piece of land and wearing blended fabrics. Also, do not yoke different animals together, and make sure to put tassels on your cloak. (The tassels are to remind you not to follow your heart, but to obey God's Law instead.) Do these laws represent divine wisdom? It is hard to tell. Let us move on.

In Deuteronomy 22:13-21, the train wreck occurs. In this section, a man may make a claim that his new wife was not a virgin, claiming that there was no proof of her virginity. What exactly would that proof be? A bloody sheet from the first night that the man and his wife had sex. If his wife's parents can provide this bloody sheet to the court, then the man gets a hefty fine, and must stay married to his wife and cannot ever divorce her. (The wife, after having her good named dragged through the mud by her husband, gets no choice in the matter.) If no proof of her virginity can be presented, the man's wife is to be stoned to death.

The trouble is that not all virgins will bleed during their first sexual intercourse. When the blood does come, it comes from rupturing the hymen. However, like any other body part, the hymen forms uniquely in each woman, resulting in a variety of shapes and elasticity. A smaller and/or more elastic hymen will be less prone to rupture during intercourse.

An omniscient God would know this fact, but an uneducated man would not. As a result of this ignorance, women have been killed for a suspected premarital loss of chastity. And as a result, to this day some women choose to undergo a surgery known as hymenorrhaphy to ensure that there will be blood during their first intercourse.

Next is a somewhat good, but starkly severe law saying that both the man and the woman engaging in an adulterous relationship must be killed (Deuteronomy 22:22).

Then, we get to rape in Deuteronomy 22:23-29, and God's wisdom becomes challenged again.

For rape of a virgin who is promised to be married, the punishment depends on where the rape happened. If it was in a town, and nobody heard the woman scream for help, then both the man and the woman are to be stoned (Deuteronomy 22:23-24). So the lesson to all of those would-be rapists is to make sure that you gag your victim first, because then it is unlikely she would later report the rape, as it would mean not only her shame but also her own death.

For rape in the countryside of a virgin who is promised to be married, only the man would be killed because there was nobody around to hear the woman scream for help (Deuteronomy 22:25-27). However, per God's Law in Deuteronomy 17:6, in such circumstances this man could not be put to death for his crime unless he provided witness against himself, because capitol crimes require at least two witnesses to enact justice. So another lesson for all of those would-be rapists is that countryside virgins are fair game.

What about rape of a virgin who is not yet promised to be married? Well, in that case, the rapist must marry the woman, never divorce her, and pay her father some silver (Deuteronomy 22:28-29). The woman gets no choice in the matter. She must marry her rapist. That is truly bitter justice.

God rounds out the chapter a little more softly, giving an implicit nod of acceptance to polygamy by saying that a man cannot marry his father's wife (Deuteronomy 22:30). That wife may or may not be the man's own mother.

For those who believe, it is time to stop simply singing the chorus and humming the tune which someone else has piped out for you. Read the Bible and pay attention to its words. When you understand its text, as we have seen above, its divine veracity simply does not hold up. It is not worth $0.99 to download it, unless you just really dig the riffs of fantasy.

Vampires in the Bible

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Background
We are roughly two-thirds into the book of Leviticus, which mostly consists of additional laws and regulations for the Israelites. These are dictated by God to Moses for him to instruct the nation.

Immediately preceding this study and in the previous chapter, we took a closer look at the role of the scapegoat involved in the Day of Atonement.

Vampires in the Bible
Reading the Bible has provided fascinating insight into the origin of many concepts and expressions we commonly use in our vernacular, such as being there “with bells on,” kosher food, and “scapegoats” as previously discussed. However, sometimes the influence serves as an inspiration for more abstracted concepts, such as vampires.

Several verses of the Bible forbid the Israelites from eating blood; Leviticus 3:17, Leviticus 7:26-27, Leviticus 19:26, Deuteronomy 12:16, Deuteronomy 12:23-25, and Deuteronomy 15:23. Leviticus 17 is one of the best chapters for providing an explanation for this aversion to eating blood.

Consider Leviticus 17:10-11:

Any Israelite or any alien living among them who eats any blood—I [, God,] will set My face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from his people. For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one's life. NIV

and Leviticus 17:14

because the life of every creature is its blood. That is why [God has] said to the Israelites, "You must not eat the blood of any creature, because the life of every creature is its blood; anyone who eats it must be cut off." NIV

Back in those ancient times, to some extent it probably did seem like life was in blood in a very literal sense. For example, if they came upon the body of a man in a puddle of blood from inflicted combat wounds, this would have seemed like evidence that his life had literally leaked out of his body.

Yet what makes this strange, and what likely inspired the accounts of vampires, is the prohibition of eating the blood because of the life in the blood. What may have started off as being a custom to give reverence to blood provided only a short journey to the concept that eating (or more appropriately drinking) blood could elongate life, or possibly even permit everlasting life. The vampiric concept followed naturally from these prohibitions.

Even the writers of the New Testament seemed to pick up on this concept. Consider that during the Last Supper, Matthew 26:27-29, Mark 14:23-25, and Luke 22:20 record Jesus as symbolically giving His Apostles His blood to drink. John 6:53-56 explicitly says that eating Jesus' flesh and drinking His blood is essential for salvation into everlasting life.

Yet at the same time, the New Testament continues to prohibit the consumption of blood. In Acts 15:20, Acts 15:29, and Acts 21:25 we see that while the Gentiles would not be encouraged to keep kosher diets and other restrictions under Jewish Law, they would be told to abstain from consuming blood. It has the same importance as avoiding food sacrificed to idols and avoiding sexual immorality.

With the exception of Jesus' blood, consuming blood to live eternally would have stood starkly against God's Plan, and so God would naturally be against such a shortcut. This is why Holy Water, crosses and crucifixes, and God's light (the sun) would be expected to have a condemning effect on vampires. The vampire story principles practically grow themselves in the fertile ground of the Bible's soil. Add in a brutal yet effective monarch with a penchant for bloody and gory psychological warfare like Vlad III the Impaler. Blend well with a little creative writing. Presto! The vampiric concept born in the Bible is established as a full fledged vampire legend in Bram Stoker's Dracula.

If You Are Sick, You Are Guilty

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Background
In this part of the book of Leviticus, God is instructing Moses to instruct the Israelites on the finer points cleanliness. Having established how baby girls are twice as dirty as baby boys, God moves on to cover skin diseases and mildew. God lumps skin disease and mildew together as though they are related. The recommended treatment of those people and things with skin disease and mildew begins in Leviticus 13 and continues on to Leviticus 14, our entry point in this study, covering the purification of people with skin disease and houses with mildew.

If You Are Sick, You Are Guilty
Imagine a time long ago on a continent far away. You become ill, so you go see the local shaman, or medicine man, to cleanse you of the evil spirits causing the illness. The shaman puts on his sacred costume which is adorned with all kinds of feathers and animal bones. He gathers two birds and then kills one of them over a pot of clean water. Taking the live bird, some scarlet yarn, and a sprig of hyssop, he dips them into the bloody water and sprinkles you seven times with it to begin the cleansing process.

This cleansing ritual may have seemed like some primitive pagan ceremony to you, but it comes right from the Bible as a command of God. Well, everything is there except for the feathered costume. God had different designs for what priests should wear.

In Leviticus 14:1-32 is an instruction manual for the purification process which is to occur after you are healed from a skin disease. Leviticus 14:1-7 covers the bit about killing the bird and sprinkling the bloody water. After that, the person shaves off all of their hair and then bathes, waits outside camp for seven days, and then shaves off all of their hair and bathes again to become clean (Leviticus 14:8-9).

Then things get really weird.

Leviticus 14:10-20 (and the corollary for poor people in Leviticus 14:21-32) states that after a man heals from his skin disease and goes through this shaman-istic cleaning ritual, he must then make not one, not three, but five offerings to God! Two male lambs, one female lamb, fine flour mixed with oil, and a “log” of oil must be offered to God.

One male lamb is used as a guilt offering sacrifice, and some of its blood gets put on the man's right earlobe, right thumb, and right big toe. Oil from the log is sprinkled “before the Lord” seven times and then applied to the same locations as well as the man's head (Leviticus 14:10-18). This sounds more like some sort of magical incantation than the words of the true God.

After that, the female lamb is sacrificed as a sin offering and the other male lamb and the flour are sacrificed as a burnt offering (Leviticus 14:19-20).

The point of these steps is to make atonement for the man, as is repeated three times in the three verses of Leviticus 14:18-20. In other words, it is assumed that God afflicted the man with his skin disease due to the sins which he had committed. The natural conclusion: If you are sick, you are guilty of sins and therefore God is punishing you. This was a logical mindset in a time when the causes of disease were still mostly mysteries and superstitions ruled supreme, but now it stands off as yet another textual artifact which suggests that this tale is man-made.

Not convinced that skin disease was bestowed by God? I invite you to examine the surrounding contextual evidence.

Before this chapter, Leviticus 13 describes how to treat a man who has a skin disease, as well as how to treat mildewed items, as if they were related. That theme of disease-and-mildew relation continues in Leviticus 14, where you will find instructions for handling houses with mildew immediately after the purification and atonement of the man with skin disease in Leviticus 14:33-53.

In verse Leviticus 14:34, we find:

“When you enter the land of Canaan, which I am giving you as your possession, and I put a spreading mildew in a house in that land, ...” NIV

The “I” in this verse is God. Take a moment to think about this: God is putting mildew in people's houses. (I've got to find a way to keep God out of my shower!)

The whole account of household mildew in Leviticus 14:33-53 is a bit long, but one section stands out. There is a purification ceremony for the house in Leviticus 14:49-53 which matches the one performed for the man with the skin disease in Leviticus 14:1-7.

The last verse of that section, Leviticus 14:53, reveals the truth. The reason for the copied ceremony for the house is to make atonement for the house! It is not that the house sinned, but rather that the owner of the house has sinned. And so, just like with the skin disease, God applies mildew as a punishment for sin.

Oh well. I guess I will always have mildew in my shower. :-)

The False Temptation of Jesus Christ

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Background
What was God thinking? Some things in the Bible make you really wonder. This study covers one such enigma.

Immediately prior to where we will begin this study, Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, and the Holy Spirit descended on Him in the shape of a dove.

During this study we will encounter the first mention of Satan/the Devil in the New Testament (NT). It is important to keep in mind that, corresponding with the canonical Old Testament (OT), the majority of Jewish scholars would have considered Satan (“ha-Satan” in Hebrew, which means “the accuser”) as an agent of God who was permitted to do no more than what was God's will for him to do. The role of Satan was to test men to determine whether or not they would obey or trust in God.

And as far as the source of evil goes, references in Deuteronomy, Job, Ecclesiastes, and Isaiah all seem to suggest that God is the source of both good and evil. That is what the majority of Jews would have believed at the time when Jesus supposedly entered the scene.

The False Temptation of Jesus Christ
Suppose that you have many children and that you love your children very much, but for some reason you are not able to be with them for an extended period of time. You are, however, able to assign someone to rule over them in your absence. Would you give that authority to the most evil person that you knew? That is basically what the Christian God did. In this study we will take a closer look at the anecdote where Jesus is tempted by Satan, and will flesh out the implications of these passages.

In Mark 1:12-13 you will find a very brief account of how, immediately after His baptism, Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit into the desert where Jesus is tempted by Satan for forty days. (See the footnotes for the significance of 40 days.) While the passage is small, there are a couple of huge issues with this text.

The first issue involves this question: Why would God (via the Holy Spirit), the epitome of good, lead His beloved Son into evil temptation? (Perhaps this is why in the Lord's Prayer Jesus included a prayer to God that He would not lead you into temptation!) The commonly accepted answer to this question is both so that Jesus could sympathize with our temptations and so that His sinless state would be all the more significant, as best relayed in Hebrews 2:18 and Hebrews 4:15. However, this is not a good answer because it feeds right into the next issue.

The second issue involves Jesus' status. By definition, God is sinless because sin is a transgression of God's will. Because Jesus was supposedly God, anything Jesus did is an act of God's will. So if Jesus did what Satan wanted Him to do, it would still not be sin.

Or consider that God is said to be perfect in His morality, and therefore He finds any wrongdoing utterly repulsive and would have only good desires. Given that Jesus is God, how would it then be possible to entice Him to do some evil? We are tempted because whatever the evil action is (or the gains from that action) which we are considering is enticing to us. If there is no enticement, then there is no real temptation. Saying that Jesus was tempted to sin is like saying that Jesus was also tempted to run at full speed into a brick wall. To this effect (and contradicting Hebrews 2:18 and Hebrews 4:15), James 1:13-14 sums it up well:

When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. NIV

Matthew 4:1-11 and Luke 4:1-13 cover the temptation of Jesus in more detail, although in Matthew's version it seems that Jesus just fasted for forty days and then was tempted by the Devil, as opposed to being tempted by Satan during His entire time in the desert the way that Mark and Luke suggest. Beyond that, these two accounts are nearly identical besides a discrepancy in the order of the temptations. In both accounts, Jesus is hungry after the forty days.

Matthew 4:3-4 and Luke 4:3-4 have Satan tell Jesus that if He is the Son of God, then He should turn a rock into bread to eat. Jesus replies by quoting from Deuteronomy 8:3 that man does not live by bread alone. There are several things to note here. Reportedly Satan knows that Jesus is the Son of God, thus lending inherent credibility to the Jesus story (or at least that was possibly part of the author's intent). Of course, this also implies that Satan was aware of the plan for Jesus, again lending credibility to the story of Jesus. It therefore also implies that Satan knew that Jesus was God, and so Satan should have known that it was pointless to try to tempt Jesus! Perhaps the oddest thing in this temptation is that changing a rock into bread would not have been a sin!

In Matthew 4:5-7 and Luke 4:9-12 Satan leads Jesus to the top of the Temple in Jerusalem and tells him to jump off because angels will protect Him, but Jesus refuses and quotes from Deuteronomy 6:16 that you should not test God. With regards to the angelic protection, Satan quoted from Psalm 91:11-12 as if it applied directly to Jesus. However, when you read Psalm 91, you will see that it is not so specific. Instead, Psalm 91 implies that anyone who puts their trust and love in God will be (in poetic language) protected from all harm and will be ensured a long (not eternal) life. (The bitter irony is that neither Jesus nor the Christian martyrs through the centuries were protected by God.) One question about this affair which demands an answer: Why would Jesus permit Himself to be led by Satan anywhere at any time?

Moving on to Matthew 4:8-10 and Luke 4:5-8, Satan again led Jesus, this time up to a high mountain and he showed Him “in an instant all the kingdoms of the world” and offers them to Jesus if He will worship Satan, which Jesus refuses by quoting from Deuteronomy 6:16. In optimal conditions, the range of visibility in earth's atmosphere is about 62 miles (100 kilometers). If the world's tallest mountain was in Jerusalem, you could not even see all of Israel from its peak with that level of visibility, let alone all the kingdoms of the world. Also, given that Jesus is God, everything already belongs to Him, so this is not much a real temptation. Perhaps the most disturbing part of this temptation is from Luke 4:6:

And [Satan] said to [Jesus], "I will give You all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to." NIV

Simply put, God gave Satan the rule over all of the kingdoms of earth. In case you think that Satan is lying, consider that the theme of Satan ruling earth is repeated multiple times in the NT, such as with John 14:30, John 16:11, Ephesians 2:2, Ephesians 6:12, and 1 John 5:19. Now imagine, if you will, a re-writing of John 3:16 as:

“For God so loved the world that He gave its rule over to Satan, the evil one, that whoever believes in him shall perish in the fires of hell.”

You may be wondering what the Gospel of John says about this episode of temptation. Nothing. In fact, John goes from John the Baptist seeing the Holy Spirit settle on Jesus (John 1:32-34) to saying that stating that “the next day” Jesus started to collect disciples (John 1:35-39). So much for Jesus' forty days of desert wandering!

Perhaps even stranger than John's omission is that this tale is included in the Gospels at all. There were no eyewitnesses to this temptation other than Jesus and Satan. Jesus did not yet have disciples at that time. Yet none of the Gospels relay the account as if Jesus had told them about this episode of temptation while they were sitting around a campfire. Instead, the account is inserted into the Gospels as if Matthew, Mark, and Luke had been around when it happened, and Matthew and Luke even have record of the words spoken! However, if the story is fabricated, then the chronologically telling of it, replete with dialog, would be natural. Furthermore, it would be natural that John (who was supposedly one of the Apostles) would miss this event in his record, because he probably did not have access to it.

Footnotes
If this story is fabricated, as the issues above seem to suggest, the reference in this anecdote to 40 days of fasting is likely an intentional literary device used to make a connection between Jesus and Moses. When Moses received the commandments from God, he was with God fasting on a mountaintop for 40 days. Tying into the legend of Moses would have lent credibility in establishing Jesus as the prophet spoken of in Deuteronomy 18:14-22.

Other forty-day references in the Bible include how long...

the rains of the flood last - Genesis 7:4
it takes to embalm Jacob/Israel - Genesis 50:2-3
Moses is with God on the mountain - Exodus 24:18
Moses is with God on the mountain - Exodus 34:28
it takes to survey the land of Canaan - Numbers 13:25
Goliath taunted the Israelites - 1 Samuel 17:16
it took Elijah to flee to the mountain of God - 1 Kings 19:8
it would take for Nineveh to be overturned - Jonah 3:4
Jesus was seen proving that He was alive again - Acts 1:3