SHOCKERS FROM THE BELOVED DISCIPLE - HE SEEMS TO INVALIDATE OTHER GOSPELS!

The four gospels have interesting differences. 

One huge difference is how the John Gospel seems to know only of what Jesus got up to in Jerusalem while the others place him as being mostly active in Galilee and only bothering with Jerusalem at the end.  That difference certainly proves that if Jesus existed, then the John Gospel was not written by an apostle and was a liar for he claimed to be the beloved disciple and Jesus' close companion.  Nobody who travelled with Jesus would be obsessed with just what he did and said in Jerusalem.  And especially when the other gospels only mention one trip to Jerusalem that was cut short by Jesus' crucifixion. 

The difference shows the early Church was in a position to tell huge whoppers about Jesus.  That makes you wonder about the evidence for his existence.  In John, Jesus isn't even baptised for that is too degrading for a man who was increasingly being turned into a semi-God by the Church.

Another major difference is how exorcisms are important in the other gospels while John never mentions the subject.  His Jesus never casts out demons.

The beloved disciple, the one who claimed he was especially close to Jesus Christ, wrote in John 1.18 that nobody ever saw God but that his only Son Jesus is the one that made him known. He is clearly hinting that nobody before Jesus had revelations from God that could express what God was. He is saying we need Jesus to know God for we cannot see God. He is clearly saying then that it is Jesus who is the word of God and not any scripture. Scripture is second-hand and therefore of no value. It's not scripture really. It’s just words. He is probably writing the gospel for it is better than nothing. The Jesus of the other three gospels does not agree that nobody can know God without him. He regarded the scriptures as revelations of what God was like while John’s Jesus does not though he saw them just as revelations of facts and not of what God was like in himself. The John gospel then denies the Jesus of these gospels. It says he never existed.

The Christians argue that John means that the Son did make God known before he physically appeared on earth for he spoke to the prophets. But the verse plainly says that God needed to be made known for nobody had ever seen him and somebody that did see him had to do this. This would make no sense if a prophet who had not seen him but was getting revelations would do. It must also imply that we have to have a mystical experience and see Jesus in visions and see for ourselves before we can know God. This is contrary to the apostles’ teaching and limits the true Christian faith to a handful of mystics. So mysticism and visions then produced the gospel not history though what he author knew of history and geography may have got worked into his experiences. He may have believed that when he saw the blood from Jesus’ side at the cross that it was a mystical presence with Jesus suffering not an actual one. St Francis of Assisi used to have visions in which he witnessed the crucified Jesus and was with him.
 
The John author claimed obliquely that he lay on Jesus’ breast the night Jesus was betrayed. His is the only gospel that talks like an eyewitness account. He claimed to be Jesus’ favourite disciple. Yet he hinted a lot that his Jesus was a mythological figure, a parable or a spiritual abstract divine force that could behave like a personal being.
 
The author of the John gospel wrote three epistles.
 
The First Epistle of John chapter 1 has some mysterious we saying they have seen and touched the word of God which was intended to silence heretics who denied the coming of Jesus in the flesh and that he was the Messiah. But it is not said if he was touched like a man or if he was touched in a vision. The heretics that the authors had to contend with said that Jesus was only a spiritual being appearing in a vision that could only seem to be touched. Yet the author gives no adequate reply to them. This tells us that there was no evidence for the reality of Jesus or that the heretics believed that Jesus was not a person but a symbol or perhaps there was no evidence and the heretics denied the existence of Jesus. They probably considered Jesus to be a myth that had spiritual significance. The author knew that touching and seeing Jesus would not shut the heretics up but he still pretended he thought it would. He was desperate for evidence that did not exist. Or his saying about the seeing and touching was meant to stop heretics saying Jesus was not a vision or a man but a myth. Either way proves there was no Jesus at all.

John called these heretics Antichrists. John says that the Antichrist is coming but many Antichrists have come which indicates that it is the last hour (1 John 2:18). There must have been a huge number of them and they must have been putting the Church in real danger of losing the faith meaning Jesus would soon have to bring about the last day before the Church would be annihilated for Jesus promised there would always be true believers. John says the Antichrist is nigh which is why he used the expression hour and not year or week to accentuate that it was a short time.
 
John says that the Antichrists are denying that Jesus came in the flesh and was the Christ. So we have a plethora of people who regarded Jesus as important but denied that he was a real flesh and blood man and who denied that he ever claimed to be the Christ. They contradicted nearly everything in the gospels by saying that. If Jesus never claimed to be the Christ then all the sermons in which he claimed to fulfil Old Testament prophecy are fabrications and he never rode into Jerusalem on a donkey to the cheers of the people like the Messiah was supposed to do. Maybe he only just did it but wasn’t meaning to fulfil prophecy. These witnesses were saying that the gospels are untrue. There might have been no gospels in those days but it does not matter. They were still proving that the gospel Jesus never existed. To ridicule these witnesses to the absence of historical data as heretics is totally foul and unfair and fraudulent for we know nothing about them as people. To say that Jesus existed despite them is as bad as saying that Jack is guilty of murder and not interviewing the witnesses who say they know he is innocent. When the Christians like John were boasting about being of God and saying that anybody that would not listen to their gospel was not of God (1 John 4:6) it is plain that they were too hellbent on convincing people and making threats and causing sectarianism to be trusted. Such nastiness only becomes an option when people know deep down that their opponents or maybe are right.

Why would the heretics deny that Jesus was the Christ? They had no need to deny that Jesus was the Christ. They could have reinterpreted the title and held that Jesus was a spirit that had legal authority from David to rule Israel. These traditions must have been created out of the knowledge that there was no man called Christ and there was no historical Jesus. But if Christ had to mean a man sent by God as king they would have denied that Jesus was the Christ. The Christians used that interpretation of Christ which explains why the heretics said Jesus was not the Christ.
 
The heretics denied the coming of Jesus in the flesh. They may have said that Jesus was a vision because matter was evil so being good he could not take a human body. Why did these heretics deny that Jesus was a man at the start if there was a man called Jesus for that would not have made them very plausible? Why did they risk destroying their message by adopting an unpopular and unusual opinion if that was what their opinion was? If they wished to subvert the Church as the epistles of John says then they could have done that better by seeming to have had a lot in common with the Church. Their testimony then is very powerful. It is a convincing witness that Jesus was a myth or a person a religion assumed who existed without evidence. But even then they or some of them could have believed that Jesus was a spirit that did not get entangled in matter but just spoke to inspired men.
 
Why does John find it so offensive that they denied that Jesus came in the flesh and was the Christ that he singles these two things out? Since the Church taught that Jesus suffered to save us it would not matter as long as they believed that he suffered for sins and he could do that without being a material being. You would expect him to focus on that if they denied that which they must have done. How do I know this? Because they must have reasoned that since Jesus did not have a body he did not atone for sins and that was why their denying the flesh was such a problem. Yet John dwells on their denial of the flesh of Christ. The reason he does that is because he hates them saying Jesus never lived as a man because it is true. John’s reaction to the heretics shows that he was sure they were right about Jesus. That was why he was so deeply hostile to them.

John said that we must test the spirits and we must do it by asking each spirit if it believes that Jesus Christ came in the flesh. If it says he has then it is from God (1 John 4:1-3). Had there been acceptable gospels or records about Jesus in those days he would have told us to check what the spirit says alongside their statements. (He hadn’t even thought of writing his yet.) That would be a more reliable and thorough test. A spirit could tell you that Jesus came in the flesh and was the Christ and still lead you astray. How would you know the spirit would mean it when it says Jesus was the Christ and came in the flesh? My belief is that John would have replied that because there was no evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ apart from a few men claiming visions of him that no demon would say Jesus existed. That is the only way to make sense of John here. Plainly John could not do any better. His gospel was a mystical novel not a biography of a real person who could be touched and talked to. He as good as tells us that straight out.
 
The way John talks shows plainly that there was no historical evidence for the existence of Jesus for he couldn’t use that history. He either didn’t know of any gospels or knew they were fiction if he did.
 
John’s own gospel then was believed to have come from spiritual communication with a spirit and he did not claim that there was any scientific or historical verification for it. He did not want anybody to regard his gospel as reliable unless the spirit told them it was. It was not history that was meant to verify the gospel but a sense that God was revealing things to you. He would have approved of people rejecting his gospel as drivel but only if they were sure the spirit of God was telling them that. He was rejecting the view that any other gospels should be accepted because of an alleged historical foundation. Matthew, Mark and Luke then would have been advocating that view so the John Gospel rejects their canonicity. It tells us not to trust them.

At least some of the heretics might not have believed that there was an apparition of Jesus teaching in the early thirties of the first century in Palestine or that it was important if they did believe. What was imperative to them was their experience of Jesus now. It was what Jesus communicated to them now that mattered. This Jesus could have been a part of an impersonal God and more like a force that works on the mind like a person rather than a real person. He could have been a force from Heaven for guiding them. The heretics did claim guidance by spirits from Heaven which shows that it makes sense to hold that they would have considered what Jesus was saying to them to be what counted.

The same Epistle teaches that the children of God love one another. They love one another because it is easy for them to keep the commandments of God because they believe in Jesus as the Son of God and whoever does that overcomes evil (5:1-9). This insults unbelievers and accuses them of not being able to be as good as Christians. John cannot be trusted with his portrait of Jesus when he had such an arrogant and self-important and plain horrid agenda. Plus the Jesus of his gospel is quite stroppy in relation to the Jews which means that his Jesus’ argument that the world must see how Christians love one another and be impressed by it so that they see the work of grace in it has no meaning for if you can be nasty in the name of love people are not going to think there is anything special about you.

John said that there are three witnesses that God has given for Jesus being the Son of God which are water, blood and the Spirit which all testify to each other telling the truth. He says this is God’s testimony, its composed of those three, and God’s testimony is better than any human testimony though human testimony has its uses.
 
The Christians say he means that the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, the blood of the cross and the Holy Spirit testify to Jesus. But then why didn’t he say baptism or even better baptism in the Jordan? Why does he say the blood for what would that have to do with showing he was the Son of God? Paul said the blood was an embarrassment.
 
Others say it is our baptism represented by the water and our Eucharist represented by the blood and the Holy Spirit that testify by giving us the grace to see who Jesus is. But when the Holy Spirit works through the sacraments that interpretation cannot be right for that is the one witness and the passage says there are three. And why would John describe the sacraments so vaguely? The sacraments were never claimed to miraculously and instantly make you see that it is probable that the claims made for Christ are true. All Christians see them as helps for the journey to a stronger faith.

There is an interesting assertion in 1 John 2:27. It tells the readers that they need only God to teach them, they need no man. So what is John writing for? Why does he warn that they need to be well-grounded and taught to resist the deceiving religious preachers who say Jesus was not the Christ and/or did not come in the flesh? He was teaching himself for he wrote in 1 John 2:26 that he writes what he writes to his people to warn against religious liars and deceivers. All agree that the text does not ban religious teachers. It only bans man-made religion promoters. It only bans those who are passing on their own message not God’s for God is the only teacher.

Traditionally the text is taken to treat Christian scriptures and tradition as the very literal word of God.

But surely the only way to avoid mistaking man's doctrine for God's is to commune with God like Moses, face to face?
 
John is clear that the water, blood and Spirit are not human testimonies but divine. They have something to do with what God shows the individual Christian. They have nothing to do with human agency because John’s argument that the divine revelation was better than human revelation would not work if we had to listen to men telling us what God has done for that is human testimony. They stand for three mystical experiences that give you a visionary experience of Jesus. John’s Christians then got their faith by unusual experiences unlike the rest. The water and the blood stand for techniques used to cause the experiences. They describe forms of torture that induce visions. The gospel Jesus needed to have the visions himself this same way in order to learn who and what he was. Verse 10 tells us that whoever believes in Jesus has the testimony in himself – it’s a private mystical experience. Whoever does not have this testimony is calling God a liar and does not believe. So the experience not gospel stories could make you believe. They cannot make you believe because there is no evidence only spiritual mystical evidence. This is why John said earlier that anybody who belongs to God does not need a teacher but has the light of God inside his heart that tells him what to believe and to stand by what he has been taught from the start (2:27). So why did John write a gospel? Probably to express what he felt he was told about Jesus in visions for he made it clear that the only evidence for Jesus was “supernatural” mystical experiences.

Bible only people point out that this "letter was late and the Church had enough sacred New Testament writings to survey at that stage with which to check the message. They deny that the letter advocates the view that oral tradition or personal revelation was enough. In fact that John had to write says it all."  A lot of assumptions there.  John does not even mention other texts.
 
John, allegedly the youngest apostle of Jesus, is supposed to have written these things. If he did then we have an apostle telling us Jesus never really existed as a man. Or that if he did exist, evidence was irrelevant or non-existent.

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