World Famous Cults and Fanatics Read Online Free PDF

While Jesus was wandering around the countryside preaching in
the open air, no one worried about him. But when he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey (fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah) and was greeted with enthusiasm by the people, the Jewish establishment
became alarmed. And when Jesus threw the money changers out of the temple, they saw the writing on the wall and had him arrested. The arrest had to take place in a garden at night to avoid causing
trouble.
    Of the four Gospels, only one, that of John, claims to be that of an eyewitness. When Jesus is taken before Caiaphas, the high priest asks him about his teachings, and Jesus tells him to ask
those who have heard him – to the indignation of the high priest’s servant, who slaps his face and tells him not to be impertinent. It is in the other three Gospels – by writers
who do not claim to have known him – that Jesus answers the question about whether he is the son of God by replying that he is “Son of Man” who will sit on the right hand of
God.
    In John’s account, Pilate asks him if he is the king of the Jews, and Jesus replies that his kingdom is not of this world – meaning, in effect, that Pilate should not imagine he is
claiming any political leadership. “I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth.” There is certainly nothing here about claiming to be the Messiah.
    To Pilate’s disgust, the Jews then demanded Jesus’s execution, declining to allow him to be pardoned in honour of Passover. And so Jesus died, like so many other messiahs and
political agitators, by crucifixion.
    How, then, did Christianity go on to conquer the world? The answer lies partly in the many stories of miracles that circulated about Jesus – including the story that he had risen from the
dead. A Jewish sect called the Messianists (or Nasoraeans) believed that Jesus would return and lead them against the Romans. At this point, a convert to Christianity named Paul produced a strange
and mystical new version of Jesus’s teaching that seemed to have very little to do with anything Jesus had actually said. Paul declared that Jesus was the Son of God (which Jesus had denied)
who had been sent to redeem Man from the sin of Adam, and that anyone who believed in Jesus was “saved”. In fact, Jesus had preached salvation through the efforts of the individual, and
insisted that the Kingdom of God is within everybody. But since there was still a widespread belief that the End of the World would occur within a year or so, Paul’s version of the Christian
message was a powerful incentive to belief. The Messianists regarded such a notion as absurd and blasphemous, and since they were politically stronger than Paul’s Christians, it looked as if
their version would triumph.
    However, as it happened, the Messianists were among those wiped out by Titus, the son of the Roman emperor Vespasian, who was sent to put down the latest rebellion. He did more than that; he
destroyed the Temple and carried its treasures back to Rome. Paul’s “Christians” were so widely scattered that they were relatively immune from massacre. And so, by a historical
accident, Paul’s version of Christianity became the official version, and the “vicarious atonement” – the notion that Jesus died on the cross to redeem man from the sin of
Adam – became the basis of the religion that went on to conquer the world.
    By the year AD 100 it was obvious that the world was not going to end within the lifetime of Jesus’s contemporaries, and that Jesus, like so many other messiahs,
had quite simply been wrong. But by that time, Christianity was too powerful to die out. It was now a political force, the focus of all the dissatisfaction of the underdogs and victims of Roman
brutality. The belief now spread that the end of the world would occur in the year AD 1000. And, as we have seen, there was so much violence, pestilence and bloodshed around
that time that the believers had no