Miracles, Prophecies and Precepts

Contents Updated: Tuesday, October 05, 1999

• Miracles
• Pagan Miracles
• Catholic Miracles
• Satanic Miracles
• Christ’s Miracles
• History Ignores Christ’s Miracles
• How Christ Got Into History
• Copies of Older Miracles or Prophecies
• Truth not Needed
• Miracles a Repudiation of Nature
• Prophecy
• Jewish Prophecies Not Fulfilled
• Babylon
• Prophecy Cannot Prove Divinity
• Moral Precepts: Golden Rules
• Love of Enemies
• Conversion and Repentance
• Origins and Explanations
• Death Bed Repentance

Miracles

When Christians are asked for proof of the divinity of Jesus Christ, they fall back on three things they consider wonderful: miracles, prophecies and precepts. Miracles are proof because they are divine acts beyond human power and the laws of nature. His propounding and practising perfect moral precepts proves he is a god because no mortal could think of such perfect ways of being and certainly cannot practise them, though that is just what we are enjoined to do.

Prophecies are again supernatural and beyond the ability of humans because only a god knows the future thus proving that the person who is a successful prophet is guided by a god. The prophecies of Christ were prophecies in the Jewish scriptures of his coming and were fulfilled, Christians believe, when he arrived in the person of Jesus. The theory is that God spent countless aeons sending prophets of the coming of His son, the saviour of the world, so that when he arrived people would know.

The same evidence proves the divine inspiration of the Christian bible, including the Jewish scriptures which contain all the prophecies of Christ. All stand or fall together, the divinity of Christ, the inspiration of the bible and so the Christian religion. The holy book has in it prophecies of the coming of the holy man. The holy man fulfils the prophecies of the holy book, adding further proof with supernatural miracles and superhuman precepts.

Now, would you believe, Christianity is not the only religion which appeals to miracles, prophecy and precepts as a proof of its divine origin. It is fairly safe to say that every religion makes the same claims, and no religion would be complete without them. And, oddly enough, believers in every other religion has the same attitude as the believers in Christianity—only their evidence is admissible! Hundreds of sects have been studied in history and anthropology.

Pagan Miracles

Religious history is thickly studded with miracles wrought in all ages and countries, wrought by gods, demigods and saviours. They come to us as well authenticated as those reported in the Christian bible—not very well. There is as much evidence that Zoroaster caused a tree to spring up in a man’s yard forthwith, of such magnificent proportions that no rope could be found large enough to reach around it, as that Jesus Christ caused a fig tree to wither away by merely cursing it.

We have equally good evidence that the Hindu demi-god, Krishna, restored two boys to life who had been killed by the bites of serpents, as that Jesus Christ resurrected Lazarus and the widow’s son of Nain. We have as much proof that Bacchus turned water into wine, as that Jesus did the same six hundred years later. The evidence, whether Pagan or Christian, is simply the unconfirmed report of the writer.

In fact if anyone has better evidence, it is the Pagan religions for often they have built impressive monuments in commemoration of their miracles. For the ancient peoples this was the highest tribute they could pay in memory of some outstanding feat or person, and therefore good evidence of them. Christians can find no such evidence of any of the miracles reported in their bible.

The historian Pausanias states upon current authority that Æsculapius raised several people from the dead and names Hippolytus among the number. He points to a stone monument erected as confirmation of one of the most astounding miracles ever wrought. Yet no Christian will credit the literal truth of the story.

Strabo tells us the ancient temples are full of tablets describing miraculous cures performed by virgin-born gods of those times. One case was of two blind men restored to sight by the son of god, Hercules, in the presence of a large multitude of people, who acknowledged the miraculous power of the god with loud acclaim. The sin-atoning gods of the orient performed the same type of miracles as those of Jesus Christ, such as cures, casting out devils and raising the dead. If the account of miracles by Jesus Christ proves him to have been a god, then the world must have been full of gods long before his time. How can anyone conclude otherwise?

Christians believe all the miraculous reports in the bible are true while those reported in Pagan bibles are fables or fiction. Pagans reported the miracles of transmuting water into blood, sticks into serpents, and stones into frogs. They performed all the miraculous feats of Moses with the single exception of turning dust into lice, which they would have regarded as disgusting and would not have wanted to report.

Originally magicians used an enchanting rod or wand when they wanted to perform a miracle. The Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians and other nations, including the Jews used this technique. Moses always performed his miracles with an enchanting rod he called the rod of God or the rod of divination (Ex 4). Why would God want to conduct his real miracles using the same conjurers' paraphernalia as the Pagans', unless they were the same conjuring tricks?

Catholic Miracles

Before the ecumenical movement got anywhere, the Roman Catholic church was looked upon and styled the mother of Harlots and Abomination by the Protestants. Yet, the Catholic religion must have divine sanction, if miracles are proof. In 1797, several pictures of the virgin Mary, situated in different parts of the country, were seen to open and shut their eyes for the space of six or seven months. No less than sixty thousand people actually saw this miracle happen including many bishops, deacons, cardinals, and other officers of the church, whose names are cited.

A withered elm tree was suddenly restored to full life and vigour by contact with the body of St Zenobis. This miracle took place in the most public part of the town, in the presence of many thousands of people. Contemporary historians recorded it and an inscribed marble column was erected where the tree stood.

Were these stories based on some phenomena really witnessed but which got magnified from molehills to mountains before they found their way into history? Or, were they manufactured as pious frauds, quite a profitable business with the practitioners of the Christian faith? Either will explain the miracles of the Christian bible.

If one persists that these really were miracles, one falls into suckingswamps of explaining God’s moral purpose. Why does he give a few people supposedly unequivocal evidence of his power while leaving all the rest of us to believe His earthly representatives who can easily be impersonated by devils, and often seem like them? Indeed who but a devil would cure a tree when he could save mankind from destroying the world?

Satanic Miracles

Among the workers of miracles reported in the bible the devil was among the best. No miracle could beat his transforming himself into an angel of light (2 Cor 11:14). It must better even Christ’s transfiguration. According to Paul (2 Thess 2:9) Satan was endowed with all power and signs, and lying wonders. If he had all power, no other being could have had more. All is everything, and God would no longer have been almighty. You could argue at best that God could only have equalled the Devil by also having all power, either being able to draw upon such power as there was. How then does miraculous power prove a supernatural being is a god and not a devil?

Revelation says the Evil One:

Doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do… (Rev 13:13-14)

Though here the devil’s power sounds somewhat restricted, we can still ask: What can a miracle prove to mankind, what end can it serve, or what good can possibly arise from the display of the miracle-working power, when a demon can deceive those that dwell upon the earth? How do we know the apostles themselves were not deceived in ascribing some of the miracles they record to Jesus instead of the devil? A miracle can prove nothing and performing it can accomplish nothing.

Christ’s Miracles

How can Christ’s miracles, assuming they are true, do anything toward proving his divinity, when he did not claim to be their author but, like the apostles who are reported to have performed the same miracles, merely the agent or instrument of the Father? The Father he doeth the work, is his own declaration. And the apostles seem to have accepted his word and his view of the matter. For proof listen to Peter:

Ye men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles, and wonders, and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves do know. (Acts 2:22)

A man who was among the closest to Jesus, Peter, declares with assurance that miracles were not performed by Jesus as a god, but as a man approved of God. Peter banishes at once all thought of his miracles attesting to his divinity. God performed all the signs and wonders on Jesus’s behalf. Indeed, Peter unequivocally declares that Jesus was not a god but a man—special perhaps, but still a man!

Why, if the miracles were so striking and extraordinary, were the Jews so ready to ignore them and turn against their erstwhile king? As his miracles seem to have had little effect toward convincing the people of his claims, they could have been little better than those of other wonder workers. Jesus’s frustration seems to show in his criticising the people for their unbelief, calling them fools and so on. If his tricks were intended to convince them that he was a god, they failed.

If someone said they would perform a miracle but it would be done in a locked room, and you would have to take it on trust that the miracle actually occurred. As soon as the miracle was declared completed, you would dash from friend to friend telling them of the astonishing miracle that had just happened—you didn't actually see it, but it was done, definitely! Miracles are often like this, and especially those that Jesus was supposed to have done.

Jesus would usually issue the command: See thou tell no man, after the feat was performed—but, of course, they did tell. Now if the miracles were proof of Jesus’s divine status, why were they held in secret and then supposedly kept secret afterwards? It is a contradiction in logic to say that private miracles were designed to dissolve public skepticism. And yet many, if not most, of his reputed miraculous achievements were of this character.

When he cured a blind man, he not only led him out of the town (Mk 8:23), but forbade him from returning to the city, for fear he would publish it. When he resurrected Lazarus, he did not call the whole country around to witness it, but performed the act before a private party.

The reanimation of Jairs’s daughter was in the same concealed manner, in a private room, where nobody was admitted but his three confidential disciples (Peter, James, and John) and the parents, none of whom make any report of the case. How, therefore, the reporter (Mark) found it out, when he was not present and no one was allowed to speak of it, or why he should betray his trust by publishing it, if told, is a mystery of Godliness. That simply means that the Christian can admit to neither of the possible alternatives.

When Jesus cleansed the leper, he sent him to the priest, enjoining him to say nothing to any man. The dumb, when restored to speech, was not allowed to exhibit any practical proof of the fact by using his tongue. His miraculous ambulation on the water was not only alone, but in the dark. His transfiguration took place only in the presence of his three favorite companions.

Finally, the crowning miracle of all, the resurrection, is not only represented as taking place in the night, but without one substantial or terrestrial witness to report it. Facts like these are not likely to persuade anyone who does not believe that pigs fly, or that aliens kidnap them to Alpha Centauri any night that no one is watching. Would any god with a vital message for mankind insist on a right to privacy?

History Ignores Christ’s Miracles

The absence from three hundred histories of that age of the slightest allusion to Jesus or any of his miracles proves with a cogency that no sophistry can contradict that there never was the miraculous being that his disciples claim. The absence of every event of his life from any record except those by his own disciples settles the conclusion beyond argument. The godlike achievements ascribed to him are fictional. He was so insignificant in his day, he was an object of no attention by any writer, scholar, historian, theologian, geographer or natural historian.

Christians censors destroyed many famous old histories which consequently no longer exist. Why, though, would they destroy any history that told of the exploits of Jesus? They would not have—unless the reports were not what the bishops of the church wanted anyone to read. Again we have a choice. Either Jesus was a nonentity or altogether imaginary, or his true story was not the one in the gospels and had to be expunged. Such a choice should banish any shadow of faith in Christian history.

A few lines are found in Josephus’s Antiquities of the Jews alluding to Jesus, but it is a forgery. All responsible critics, even of the Christian school, reject it as a base interpolation. The passage is not found in any edition of Josephus before Eusebius, who openly admitted that lies could be used as a medicine for the benefit of the churches. Another Christian Father, Origen, declares that Josephus made no allusion to Jesus. Origen lived before Eusebius, and Josephus makes no reference to Jesus, yet Eusebius recommends lying to benefit the churches, and suddenly the passage appears in every subsequent copy of Josephus. The conclusion is that Eusebius forged the passage.

Either Jesus led a totally obscure life or his own followers have erased his history from the records. Not even Christ’s famous biographers, Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, are noticed in history till well over a century after the birth of Jesus. And then the notice was by a Christian writer, Irenaeus.

On the face of it, Jesus was so obscure even in Judaea that the authorities had to pay one of his disciples to turn traitor and betray him so that they could arrest him. A god, from off the throne of heaven appears on earth and, despite miracles, precepts and prophecies, and a final public crucifixion near a great and crowded city, no one except a few immediate friends noticed! And even his friends, who believed him to have been God, forgot when he was born and which year he died. Plainly Jesus received little attention outside of the circle of his own credulous followers. How can anyone not believe then that much of the gospel story has been invented later to elevate Jesus in the supernatural rankings believed by his followers.

How Christ Got Into History

Honest Christians admit that the books called gospels were not written by eyewitnesses to the gospel events, though most tell schoolchildren a different tale. In the forty years or so that passed before the first was set down, the stories of Jesus grew and became distorted in the telling. Mainly the distortions were deliberate. The true story could not be honestly told, so the bishops changed the truth into God’s Truth—and so they have done ever since!

In that age it was easy because, the lives of great men were customarily enlarged in biography by their admirers, and no one thought anything of it. When stories differed the hearer chose what version they preferred. So too that is today, for Christian believers smile at rational argument against their beliefs. The only way that irrational beliefs can be held, while living an otherwise rational life in a rational world, is that they have no effect whatsoever on real life. Christianity is like that, and that is its only remaining strength. People can believe it and feel pious but it hasn't the least effect on their lives. It has become a lapel sticker for the respectable classes, or a matrimonial bureau for those who want to shackle their children’s minds.

In the stories of Alexander the Great, only those written years later contain the story of the sun becoming obscured and the earth enveloped in darkness at the time of his death. Similarly all the contemporary notices of Caesar’s death make no mention of the sheeted dead rising from their graves, which appears in Virgil’s account written later.

Nor are the miracles of Pythagoras recorded by his biographer Iamblicus, such as his walking on the air, stilling the tempest, raising the dead, related of him by any contemporaneous writers. Compare also Damos’s life of Apollonius with that of his later biography by Philostratus, which reveals the same exaggeration.

The conclusion reagarding the gospels is only natural to a mind unbefogged by priest-craft.

Copies of Older Miracles or Prophecies

Moses and the prophets were considered by the evangelists as archetypes of the coming saviour. The important incidents of their lives were worked over to make them fit the life of Jesus as the Messiah, the second Moses, for Moses prophesied:

A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up like unto me.

The transfiguration of Jesus therefore follows the model of the transfiguration of Moses on Mount Sinai.

Images of Jesus raising the dead suggest he was the equal of Elijah and Elisha who had done the same. Elijah was considered the last prophet to appear and for some was identified with Jesus himself rather than John the Baptist. Both Elijah and Jesus raise a widow’s son. However Jesus had to be their superior. They could only reanimate the body just after it had died but Jesus could raise Lazarus who had been dead four days. Elisha could only make three gallons of oil, but Jesus could make over thirty gallons of wine. The miracle of feeding one hundred men with twenty loaves is far excelled by the latter, who feeds five thousand men with five loaves.

Elisha met an unfordable stream in his travels and made a passageway across it, but Jesus did better by walking on the surface of water. Moses had to send the leper outside the camp before he could heal him, but Jesus could heal him instantly with a single touch. The same slaughter of the infants is commanded by Herod, in order to destroy Jesus, that Pharaoh had ordered to effect the destruction of Moses, and which even then was an ancient myth. Many of the miracles in the life of Jesus are improved copies of earlier miracles. The new prophet had to excel over the old ones. Since Jesus always did better, it proved he was more than merely a prophet like them, but was a god.

Several of Christ’s miracles were invented to fulfil messianic prophecies. The disciples of Jesus thought that the scriptures were full of texts foretelling the advent of their messiah. Passages are quoted as referring to Christ which, the context shows, could not have been the intention. In his first two chapters Matthew has five miracles taking place that the prophecy might be fulfilled regarding the messiah. Matthew, writing many decades after Christ’s advent, believing miracles to have been fulfilled, arranged his account such that they were. It was done under the religious conviction that the cause of God and the church required it to be done, and that therefore it was justifiable. What was good enough for Matthew was good enough for Eusebius and has, ever since, been God’s Truth.

Truth Not Needed

People in that age were not so scientifically precise as to require proof before making an assertion, or desist from making it without proof. Historians happily constructed entirely fictitious speeches for historical figures without a qualm, though the better ones were fairly meticulous in composing speeches of the sort that their hero would have made!

The apostolic writers go beyond this though. Disciples of all religions considered it a religious duty to supply omissions by guessing, conjecture or creativity. They used assumption for proof, made positive assertions when there was no proof and even when the proof was contrary. Religious history is full of this kind of elasticity of conscience and it goes on today with equal vigour. Pious lying is justifiable. Paul says:

If the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory, why am I judged a sinner? (Rom 3:7)

It is no sin to lie for the glory of God. God often justified a lie, the ancient people felt. The bible is full of proof of this. The prophets often disclose it, and the apostles were their strict imitators. Jeremiah asks God:

Wilt thou be to me as a liar? (Jer 15:8)

Ezekiel has God replying:

If a prophet is deceived, I the Lord deceived that prophet. (Ezek 14:9)

The writer of 1 Kings (22:23) has God putting a lying spirit into the mouth of his own prophets. If God might habitually depart from the truth, it was sufficient for the apostles. The case of Paul lying for the glory of God proves they were morally capable of doing this. New Testament writers had to build a reputation for Jesus and his band of disciples. If the facts did not fit then they were eased into place.

When they sat down to write the history of their messiah, long after his death, they found they had not the evidence before them that the prophecies had been fulfilled. It was all-important to show that the prophecies had been fulfilled to the letter in his practical life. The difficulty was easily surmounted.

A fame for signs and wonders was the great asset of the age. No devout disciple would allow any rival to outdo him. Nothing could match a miraculous display of divine power. Hence the history of all the gods and demigods of illiterate and superstitious people, including that of Christ, is loaded down with miraculous feats.

Miraculous stories were so numerous, and so varied in character, that there was no little difficulty in finding those which seemed to be the fulfillment of any messianic prophecy in the scriptures. A story had long been going the rounds that the parents of a young god had to flee with him out of the country, to save his life from being destroyed by its jealous ruler. The parents were the parents of some Eastern god but they supposed it must refer to Jesus, because it seemed to fit a possible prophecy in the Jewish scriptures.

The story of the darkness at the crucifixion they incorporated as a part of the history of Jesus, because they had seen a text in Joel which they supposed presaged such an event, and they knew such events happened at the death of gods and great kings. And so for the other miracles now found related as a part of the history of Jesus.

Among Christians it was almost universally agreed that it was an act of virtue to deceive and lie to promote the interest of the church. They not only practised it but reduced it to system. They justified it as meritorious to lie in a good cause. That is God’s Truth.

Even the most pious and devout professors of religion did not consider a rigid conformity to truth morally necessary in their desire to promote the glory of God and the salvation of souls. The Christians' elasticity of conscience was and is such that they do not even realise that they are lying! Even when lying was being avoided, Christians still exaggerated and invented, drawing copiously upon their imaginations to supply omissions or colour in the pictures of history.

Accept Christians as liars and miracles as real occurrences. Accept pious lying and reject reason.

Yet, to reject the miracles is not to reject Jesus as historic. No person who is acquainted with Grecian history doubts that Alexander the Great was born in Macedonia, and founded a city in Egypt bearing his own name. Yet not one of those readers will credit for a moment what one of his biographers relates of him, that he stopped the sun in its course, or that he had no human father.

We all accept Pythagoras as a real being while we reject the story of his walking on the air. Are we morally bound to accept Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome, as mere fabulous beings, because their biographers relate the incredible story of their being suckled by a wolf?

Many other illustrations might be given in proof of the falsity of the assumption that, because a portion of a man’s biography is found to be incredible, the whole must be rejected as false, as unworthy of credence. This would be to annihilate history. For no biography of any person, and no history of any nation, can be accepted as fully pure, unmixed truth. There is always more or less chaff with the grain and it is our duty to separate them.

Much more lovely and beautiful would Jesus’s evangelical history stand before the world if stripped of the wild, the weird, and the miraculous. Much more interesting is he when viewed and respected as a man than when worshipped as a god, guilty of the frequent violation of his own laws. The Hidden Jesus: The Secret Testament Revealed (AskWhy! Publications £12.99 $30) tells this story of Jesus as a historical figure and explains the critical principles which support the reconstruction.

Miracles a Repudiation of Nature

Miracles involve an utter repudiation of all law, all order and all system. It introduces in their stead chaos, anarchy, and universal confusion. It is the doctrine of God’s whim and fancy which the Essene precursors of Christianity rejected. The doctrine which accepts every event that ever occurred as harmonious operation of nature is more beautiful and more rational than a lawless god’s caprices chosen, not to make the people better, more moral or more righteous—for miracles cannot do this—but to make them gape. What a smart God we have!

Yet whatever they might believe of the scriptures or the New Testament, few Christians give the possibility of a miracle a second thought in their everyday lives. No Christian farmer will sit back and pray that his cows are fed or his fields planted. If he does, he goes out and feed s the cows and plants the crops anyway, showing he has no belief that the miracle will occur without a human to help it. If such prayers were more easily answered than they are, the world would be chaotic.

Fortunately they are not answered at all, and we can rely on the discoveries we have made through careful observation that Nature works in certain fairly predictable ways that we can make use of. Now that really is a miracle. If you want to believe in a good god then believe that he has been good enough to set nature in motion and has now gone away. Nature is the miracle, and thankfully it is quite harmonious.

Some Christians still believe that misfortune like sickness is a supernatural punishment inflicted by God. It were true that God punished people with sickness then it would be useless to study medicine. Instead habitual criminals should be given immunisation wholesale. Alternatively all sick people should be burnt at the stake as sinners, or at least jailed to cut down the crime statistics.

We might try to lead exemplary lives only to find we get a cold and become bronchitic or go deaf or develop a cancer. Have we been sinners or does God sometimes just let his little critters lose for no reason? Such laws as we could deduce from this regime of God might, in any case, be only temporary because his fancy might change.

The age of miracles, however, is gone. It has died as science and human understanding has progressed. Nature is the miracle. Understand her and there is no need of all the other petty conjuring tricks that simple, primitive and uneducated people call miracles. It is illiterate, ignorant and superstitious people who recount the longest list of miraculous acts, who invent a god to bring order into an imperfect world then have him violating his own laws for trivial reasons.

The miracles which occur today are the miracles of science. It is a miracle when a simple and frightened youth is saved from death row, having been terrified into confessing to the rape and murder of a young girl, and the true murderer is identified and given life. DNA analysis allowed this because Nature is harmonious, not subject to the quirks of superbeings.

Christians love miracles. Say to a group of Christians that you can tell them all about miracles. Wow! They are agog! Then… Oh! You mean miracles of nature and its application. Not Real Miracles! Groan! Yawn! For Christians and others who are supersitious, Real Miracles are supernatural. Real Miracles are therefore not real. Miracles that are demonstrably real are of no interest to them. They are not Real Miracles. God’s Truth! Lee Siegel, Professor of Religion at the University of Hawaii, pointed out this interesting paradox.

Prophecy

After miracles the next proof given by Christians for the divine guidance of their religion is prophecy. Every religion and none has its prophets and seers, who claimed to be able to foresee events of the future. And there is little difference in the proofs each one has left to the world that they possessed this power.

Tacitus, the Latin historian, prophesied to the letter the downfall of the Roman empire and its attendant calamities more than five hundred years before its occurrence. And Solon, one of the seven wise men of Greece, foresaw and foretold a series of calamities which befell the Athenians two hundred years before they were realized. Marcus Tullius Cicero about 50 BC prophesied:

There will arise after many ages, if we may credit the Sibylline oracles, a hero who will deliver his oppressed countrymen from bondage.

This was General Washington... Or Nelson Mandela? Giuseppe Garibaldi? Bernardo O'Higgins? Chaim Weizmann?…

Cicero’s prophesy has been fulfilled over and over again.

Jewish Prophecies Not Fulfilled.

The texts of the Christian bible called prophecies, if claimed as predictions of future events beyond the powers of the natural mind to foresee, have failed. Few of them have been fulfilled in any sense, and those few required no divine prescience to foresee the result.

Many events have happened in every country, anticipated by studious people, as the result of natural causes such as the ravages and downfall of cities and the overthrow of empires. Jewish prophets were angry because more powerful nations had overpowered Israel and held the Israelites in subjection. They felt that God must eventually right these wrongs to His chosen people and were always prophesying against the conquering nations like Egypt, Assyria and Babylonia. Naturally this was in reality just wishful thinking and many of the prophecies never happened. Babylon, Tyre, Damascus, and other cities belonging to those hostile neighbours the Jews so much envied and execrated, were not destroyed and some survive to this day.

The prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, all poured out thunders upon Damascus. Isaiah declared it should be a ruinous heap (Isa 17:1). Jeremiah predicted its destruction by fire (Jer 49:27). Damascus still stands, with a large population. It has suffered less by ravages of war and the scythe of time than almost any other city of the east. It has stood nearly three thousand years without becoming anything like a ruinous heap.

The prophecy against Tyre has failed also. Ezekiel declared it should be destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar and never be found again (Ezek 26-29), but two hundred and fifty years after Nebuchadnezzar’s time Alexander had to seige it into submission, having found it a strong commercial city. It still is. St Jerome, of the fourth century, declared it to be, then, the finest city of Phoenicia and was astonished that Ezekiel’s prophecy had so utterly failed. Christians try to pretend it is a different city because it has been rebuilt on a slightly different site. You might as well claim that London is a different city after the Great Fire or San Francisco is a different city after the earthquake.

Ezekiel prophesied the fall of Egypt, the desolation of Egypt, the destruction of Egypt, not one of which has occurred. In 2,500 years Egypt has been conquered several times but is bigger and more populated than ever. Prophecies about the restoration of the lost tribes and the perpetuity of the throne of David are complete failures.

Babylon

Isaiah’s prediction against Babylon yields more proof of the failure of Jewish prophecy:

It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. (Isa 13:20)

It never suffered such a calamity. Babylon was not destroyed according to the prophecy. For centuries after Isaiah’s time, it repeatedly resisted some of the most powerful sieges and the mightiest armies led by some of the most skilful generals that ever held a baton—Cyrus, Darius, Alexander the Great, Antigonus, Demetrius, Poliorcetes and Antiochus. The predictions of Jeremiah (51:8), Her end has come, of Isaiah (13:22), Her days shall not be prolonged, and desolation shall come upon her in a day were simply wrong. Babylon gradually declined by the removal of her inhabitants to other and newer cities.

Jeremiah further predicted that her sea and springs should dry up (Jer 51:38) and then declared the waves of the sea should come upon her (Jer 51:42) and finally that she should sink to rise no more (Jer 51:64). And Isaiah’s prediction (Isa 1:39) of ruin and destruction covered not just Babylon but the land of the Chaldeans. It all implies that the whole of the land of the two rivers, Mesopotamia, would be flooded by the sea to a depth of about two hundred feet at least since Babylon is 300 miles inland. Yet the country is a powerful Arab state whose leader is not to everyone’s taste but is able still to cause the USA and the UN considerable trouble.

Babylon eventually fell into ruin all right but Jeremiah’s prophecy was that it shall become a wilderness, wherein no man dwelleth (Jer 51:43) and Isaiah’s was that it should not be dwelt in from generation to generation. Yet Babylon has been rebuilt and from 1101 AD has been called the town of Hillah. Hillah is situated within the precincts of ancient Babylon thus proving it is not a wilderness, wherein no man dwelleth. What remains of the old town is just north of the new one. Furthermore archaeologists confirm that Arab tents have often been pitched on the old site.

Is the prophecy true or false? Well, in the fulness of time all cities will be in ruins, but Babylon was not utterly and finally destroyed suddenly, but declined gradually to be rebuilt at a later date under a new name. It is pure sophistry to pretend that a town which is rebuilt when an earlier one is ruined is a different town. Jerusalem itself has been repeatedly rebuilt, sometimes after total destruction. And it has had different names. It is plainly wrong that no Arab would pitch a tent on the site of Babylon. The prophecy is false.

Prophecy Cannot Prove Divinity

The bible itself shows that truthful prophecy can do nothing toward proving the prophet divinely inspired and a religion true. A heathen and an unbeliever could and did succeed as well as the true disciples of the faith. The proof is found in the history of Balaam.

His representation of a star coming out of Jacob and a sceptre out of Judah (Num 24) is often quoted by Christian writers as presaging the coming of Christ, thus making an unbeliever the oracle of a messianic prophecy. The Christian subterfuge that God might make a righteous man of any nation the vehicle of prophecy is not possible here, for the bible declares he was not a righteous man, but the very reverse. He was a heathen of sinful and ungodly habits.

The author of 2 Peter tells us that, at the very time this so called prophecy was uttered:

He loved the wages of unrighteousness. (2 Peter 2:13)

This negates any Christian plea that he might have possessed the true spirit of prophecy by virtue of being a righteous man and drives us to admit that an ungodly unbeliever can make a true prophecy. How then does prophecy, even if proved correct, show that the prophet is genuine or the religion true?

Another case, and one similar to that of Balaam in its essential points, is found in the New Testament. Caiaphas, whose name means Prophet, though not claiming to be a believer, utters a prophecy in the interest of the Christian religion for which the bible itself gives him full credit as a prophet (Jn 11:51).

All argument for Christianity based on the gift of prophecy, must be invalid. The power to foretell future events is not restricted by the bible itself to any nation, to any religion, to any faith, to any belief, or to any moral or religious qualification. What, then, is prophecy worth, or what does it prove?

Moral Precepts: Golden Rules

Another proof given by Christians of the divine hand behind their religion is the perfect life and moral standards of the son of god.

Jesus Christ spake as never man spake. (Jn 7:46)

If this were true, then gods must have been plentiful before the Christian era. Not one of the moral maxims which Jesus uttered cannot be found in the older bibles of other nations, the writings of the Greek philosophers long before the birth of Christ or the Jewish scriptures.

No dissertation on the excellence and originality of Christ as a moralist, would pass muster unless it proclaimed triumphantly the Golden Rule as the utmost of fresh morality:

All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them. (Mt 7:12)

Does this famous rule not place Jesus eminently above any other moralist that ever lived? Er… No! Christians flaunt their usual ignorance of classical and oriental history by pinning this wrong-headed label on to their hero. Confucius gave the same rule six centuries earlier but the Christian disparages it as being in “a merely negative form”. It is untrue.

A disciple, one day asked Confucius to put in a single word the essential rule of life. A word, in Chinese, means a single Chinese character, or even two characters combined in one. So, Confucius gave his rule in an ultra short form. The character he used was the composite character “as heart”; have one heart with your fellow men, or behave to them as you would have them behave to you. To express it in one word in English is harder but is usually given as: “Reciprocity”. Lao-tse, his contemporary, expressed it also.

The Golden Rule was proclaimed by Pagan moralists and a Jew of the sect Jesus opposed—the Pharisees—in a variety of ways long before the founder of Christianity was supposed to have originated it. It is a natural sentiment of any human being who is not a psychopath. Would I like to be treated thus? is the question that should arise in the mind of anyone ready to inflict pain or punishment. Regrettably we now know it is too easily overruled by the voice of authority.

The Golden Rule is proverbial all over the world:

Do as you would be done by.

There are many variations:

Golden Rule by Pittacus, 650 BC

Do not to your neighbour what you would take ill from him.

Golden Rule by Thales, 560 BC

Avoid doing what you would blame others for doing.

Golden Rule by Confucius, 500 BC

Do unto another what you would have him do unto you, and do not to another what you would not have him do unto you. Thou needest this law alone. It is the foundation of all the rest.

Golden Rule by Sextus, a Pythagorean, 406 BC

What you wish your neighbours to be to you, such be also to them.

Golden Rule by Aristotle, 385 BC

We should conduct ourselves toward others as we would have them act toward us.

Golden Rule by Aristippus, 365 BC

Cherish reciprocal benevolence, which will make you as anxious for another’s welfare as your own.

Golden Rule by Isocrates, 338 B.C.

Act toward others as you desire them to act toward you.

Golden Rule by the Pharisee, Hillel, 50 BC

Do not to others what you would not like others to do to you.

By the time the gospels were written Golden Rules were given on every hand, and the sentiment of the Golden Rule of Confucius and Jesus was as familiar as the belief in one God. The same rule, often chosen as the most characteristic saying of Jesus, is:

Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

Yet, Jesus was merely quoting the Old Testament (Lev 19:18). Indeed, Jesus recognises that he is indebted to the Jewish scriptures for his Golden Rule when the passage in which he cites it in the gospel (Mt 7:12) ends with: “For this is the law and the prophets,” meaning, of course, the Old Testament.

A saint may seem to love his neighbour as himself but also loves the reward in heaven his altruism will yield. Others might enjoy praise even on earth. There is nothing wrong in such altruistically expressed selfishness. At least it directs good rather than ill at others and the world.

Love of Enemies

Love to enemies is also erroneously credited to Jesus Christ. Most of the religious books and religious teachers of the Eastern religions breathe forth a spirit of love and kindness toward enemies.

Forgive thy foes, nor that alone;
Their evil deeds with good repay;
Fill those with joy who leave thee none,
And kiss the hand upraised to slay.

Search the Christian bible in vain to find a moral precept superior and better expressed. Never was love and forbearance toward enemies more sublimely expressed than in the old Persian ballad. A more modest admonition than Christ’s Love thine enemy, which seems morally impossible, is that of a Roman slave, Publius Syrus, who urged people to:

Treat thine enemy as though a friend, and he will become thy friend.

Others are:

• To strike a man, or vex him with words, is a sin. (Avesta, Persian bible)
• Even the intention to strike is a sin. (Avesta, Persian bible)
• Desire not the death of thine enemy. (Confucius)
• Acknowledge benefits, but never revenge injuries. (Confucius)
• We may dislike an enemy without desiring revenge. (Confucius)
• To revenge yourself on an enemy, make him your friend. (Pythagoras)
• It is much better to be injured than to kill a man. (Pythagoras)
• It is not permitted to a man who has received an injury to revenge it by doing another. (Socrates, in Plato’s Crito)
• Return not evil for evil. (Socrates)
• Let no man be offended with those who are angry at him, but reply gently to those who curse him. (Code of Menu)
• Let him endure injuries, and despise no one. (Code of Menu)
• Commit no hostile action for your own preservation. (Code of Menu)
• To be revenged on enemies, become more Virtuous. (Diogenes)
• Pardon the offenses of others, but never your own. (Publius Syrus)
• The noble spirit cures injustice by forgiving it. (Publius Syrus)
• You can accomplish by kindness what you cannot by force. (Publius Syrus)
• Better overlook an injury than avenge it. (Publius Syrus)
• It is enough to think ill of an enemy without avenging it. (Publius Syrus)
• It is a kingly spirit to return good deeds for evil ones. (Publius Syrus)
• Receive an injury rather than do one. (Publius Syrus)
• Be at war with men’s vices, but at peace with their persons. (Publius Syrus)
• Endure all things if you would serve God. (Sextus)
• Desire to be able to benefit your enemies. (Sextus)
• Cultivate friendship for an enemy. (Pittacus)
• Be kind to your friends that they may continue so, and to your enemies that they may become so. (Pittacus)
• Prevent injuries if possible; if not, do not revenge them. (Pittacus)
• Speak evil of no one, not even your enemies. (Pittacus)
• An enemy should not be hated, but cured. (Seneca)
• To act unkindly toward an enemy will increase his hate. (Antonius)
• Be to everybody kind and friendly. (Antonius)
• All nature cries aloud, Shall man do less
  Than heal the smiter, and the railer bless? (Hafiz, a Moslem).
• Learn for yon orient shell to love thy foe,
  And store with pearls the hand that brings thee woe;
  Flee, like yon rock, from base, vindictive pride,
  Emblaze with gems the wrist that rends thy side. (Hafiz)
• Bridle thine anger, and forgive thine enemy; give unto him who takes from thee. (Quran)
• Seek him who turns thee out, and pardon him who injures thee. (Quran)

The Christian who supposes all goodness to be confined to Christianity or that Christianity is superior to other religions is just ignorant and smug. Love and kindness toward all mankind, both friends and enemies, is not confined to the teachings of Jesus or to the Christian religion, as many have supposed, but is a natural sentiment, however poorly applied in practice. It is no proof that whoever teaches them is either a god or divinely inspired.

Conversion and Repentance

One of the worst follies ever seen under the sun and one displaying the greatest ignorance of history, science, and human nature is the mistake of evangelical conversion or “getting religion”. When conversion is plainly an emotional release or the acceptance of a psychological prop, how can we excuse those people called evangelists who still claim it to be the power of God operating upon the soul of the sinner? Ignorance or insanity are the only pleas that can acquit them of the charge of dishonesty. It is the psychological and emotional manipulation of uncertain and often unstable people for dubious purposes often selfish and morally evil.

Do the thousands of people who still undergo this conversion process as the hands of some charismatic preacher know that it is an old Pagan custom? It was practised in heathen countries before a soul was converted to Christianity.

God must be indifferent to the means whereby people come to the Christian truth. He must be concerned only with ends not with means. The practice of converting people from one sect to another by the popular priesthood was prevalent under the ancient Persian system, and was carried on there quite extensively more than three thousand years ago. The process was essentially the same as that now in vogue amongst modern evangelical churches, and the effect the same.

At their large revival meetings the whole congregation would sometimes become so affected under the eloquent ministrations of the officiating priest, as to cry, and shout, and prostrate themselves upon the ground, which was afterward found to be drenched. On these occasions they would confess their sins to each other, and to their priests. Those very sins they condemned were, perhaps, amongst the best acts of their lives, while their real crimes were overlooked and justified, instead of being condemned, thus showing that an honest, just, and sensible god could have had nothing to do with it.

In times past revival meetings were observed in Arabia, carried on by one of the Moslem sects.

Turn, turn, sinner, unto God; confess he is good, and that Mohammed is his prophet. Wash, and become clean of your sins, and paradise is open before you. Without this nothing can save you from eternal fire.

Tears flowed plentifully and everybody appeared to be affected. One of his hearers, upon being converted, fell upon the floor shouting:

Your words pierce my soul.

The Christian churches stigmatize and condemn Mohammed as a false prophet. If God is the god of us all, what is He doing converting people to a false religion, or even allowing His conversion techniques to be used for false ends. If it is not the work of God, why does he allow the so-called evangelic preachers of Christianity to use the methods of a false religion. Either way, if God is almighty why is he again being confusing? To say one is the work of the devil and the other the work of God, when both are so clearly and obviously the same in method, is to insult the brains God gave us.

Origins and Explanations.

There are several circumstances which point unmistakably to the mundane origin of the phenomenon of conversion.

The character of many of the conductors of revivalist meetings, in the USA at any rate, is sufficient to exclude any divine agency in the matter. Among the most powerful revivalists—those who could deal out damnation to the people and convert an audience quicker than Old Nick can strike a match, are those who themselves are guilty of criminal acts whilst they convict souls of sin and convert them to God. Despite their terrible record, they are so charismatic and their converts so enthralled that they are themselves almost treated as gods able to do no wrong. Often they finish up very rich indeed—which is, of course, the point! These reverend crooks usually claimed to be called by God to their ministerial burden and God rewards them amply.

What is called conversion and repentance for sin is the emotional manipulation and revival of early impressions. No sound minded person has ever been persuaded charismatically to embrace any religion unfamiliar to them before their conversion. The failure of missionaries in any country with a well developed religious culture is proof enough. The exception is children received by Christian schools set up by the missionaries to indoctrinate the young, thus welding them to the Christian faith before they are able to think.

Charismatic conversions are not made amongst intelligent or learned people (except the emotionally unstable) but amongst the ignorant and superstitious classes, who have not sense or intelligence enough to see the lack of difference between the religion they are converted to and that they are converted from. When the religions are different, God can do little toward converting any nation to Christianity which has always been biased to another religion. What happens in Christian countries is that some people are born again, into the Christianity they thought they had lost as guileless children, a sort of Peter Pan Christianity or, a better analogy, a Wizard of Oz Christianity. There are few real converts.

Death Bed Repentance.

The whole process has been with Christianity since before its birth. Jesus was sent out as the Nazarene to convert the Simple Of Ephraim, meaning the sinning Jews who had turned apostate and had allied themselves with the Greeks and Romans for gain or even just for an easy life. For the Nazarene and the Essenes the importance of the conversion was twofold.

1. To try to ensure that as many of the Chosen People as possible would enter God’s kingdom on earth, which was imminent then.
2. To ensure that God’s armies on earth would be strong enough to evict the gentiles from God’s holy city of Jerusalem, a prerequisite of God’s introducing the kingdom.

Gentile Christians were told by renegade Jews like Paul that they too were included among those who might be saved from eternal death and so the whole process began of attempting to convert people before the kingdom arrived. Now the first Christians expected the return of their messiah after forty years. So the habit of conversion had forty years to develop before anyone started to puzzle about the failure of the saviour to return. By then the bishops had their excuses ready and Christianity or Judaism for gentiles had got a firm bridgehead.

Much importance is attached by the orthodox churches to the act of getting religion in the dying hour, death bed repentance, after the fashion of Constantine who made Christianity official but refused to repent until he died to give him half a lifetime of guiltless sin. The church that can get a mortally sick person to repent can forever claim them as their own. No matter that the person is aged and senile, wracked with pain or fever, delerious or even unconscious, the professional Christian by the bedside will accept them as a lost soul found by simply assuming the dying person wants to be saved!

People do not condemn their wrong acts or a wrong course of life, in their dying moments, unless they had previously believed them to be wrong. What does repentance add to this? It is supposed to be sincere regret and self-condemnation for being a sinner, but who is to know this but God. So what is the use of it?

When it happens, the phenomenon of repentance is simply the operation of a natural law, by which fever, disease or the passing of the light generally cancels from the memory the last impressions made upon the mind first, thus leaving the earlier impressions to rule one’s failing judgement. Dying people are then virtually children, controlled by their early convictions which, if their late belief and conduct disagree, cause a mental conflict called repentance. Thus in their ultimate confusion, some Christian soul stealer will have them negate a lifetime of convictions. Instead of being the visitation of God, as Christians claim, repentance is terminal senility, a natural effect of a failing mind.

Conversion, repentance, getting religion and being born again are simply natural psychological disorders the exploitation of which goes back into antiquity.

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