Fragments of Mark’s gospel written about 50 AD, were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.
That date is important.
Since Jesus was crucified about 33 AD, it proves that Mark’s gospel was in circulation within a dozen years after Jesus’ death.
This is very important because it means that Mark’s gospel had to survive the acid test of all journalistic and historical writing – being published at a time when it could be read, criticized and, if unauthentic, denounced by thousands of:
- Jews
- Christians
- Romans
and Greeks who were living in Palestine at the time of Jesus’ ministry.
John Mark (Greek: Ἰωάννης Μᾶρκος, romanized: Iōannēs Markos) is named in the Acts of the Apostles as an assistant accompanying Paul and Barnabas on their missionary journeys. Traditionally he is regarded as identical with Mark the Evangelist, the traditional writer of the Gospel of Mark.
John Mark was a disciple from Jerusalem who assisted his cousin Barnabas
Barnabas (/ˈbɑːrnəbəs/; Ancient Greek: Βαρνάβας; Syriac: ܒܪܢܒܐ), born Joseph (Ἰωσήφ) or Joses (Ἰωσής), was according to tradition an early Christian, one of the prominent Christian disciples in Jerusalem. According to Acts 4:36, Barnabas was a Cypriot Levite. Identified as an apostle in Acts 14:14 he and Paul the Apostle undertook missionary journeys together and defended Gentile converts against the Judaizers. They traveled together making more converts (c. 46–48 AD) and participated in the Council of Jerusalem (c. 49 AD). Barnabas and Paul successfully evangelized among the “God-fearing” Gentiles who attended synagogues in various Hellenized cities of Anatolia.
Saint Peter (born Shimon Bar Yonah; died AD 64–68), also known as Peter the Apostle, Simon Peter, Simeon, Simon, or Cephas, was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus and one of the first leaders of the early Christian Church. He appears repeatedly and prominently in all four New Testament gospels as well as the Acts of the Apostles. Catholic tradition treats Peter as the first bishop of Rome – or pope – and also as the first bishop of Antioch.
Paul, also named Saul of Tarsus, commonly known as Paul the Apostle and Saint Paul,[8] was a Christian apostle (c. 5 – c. 64/65 AD) who spread the teachings of Jesus in the first-century world. For his contributions towards the New Testament, he is generally regarded as one of the most important figures of the Apostolic Age, and he also founded several Christian communities in Asia Minor and Europe from the mid-40s to the mid-50s AD.
He wrote Peter’s preaching in Greek while he was in Rome.
So, his account is from Peter.
He was later seized by a “pagan” mob (no doubt hired by the Jews) in Alexandria and pulled through the streets by a rope around his neck until he died. [401]
RELIGION: PAGANISM – Library of Rickandria
It was not the pagans who hated the early Christians, it was the Jews.
RELIGION: PAGANISM: Programs Before the Jewish Infiltration – Library of Rickandria
Since the Jews had a monopolistic control of much of the Alexandrian government and especially its commerce at that time, as well as ownership of the taverns, a pagan mob could be hired and stirred up quite easily for dealing with anyone whom the Jews had targeted.
Mark begins his gospel with John the Baptist announcing the arrival of:
“someone more powerful than I am.”
John the Baptist (c. 6 BC – c. AD 30) was a Jewish preacher active in the area of the Jordan River in the early first century AD. He is also known as Saint John the Forerunner in Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy, John the Immerser in some Baptist Christian traditions, and as the prophet Yaḥyā ibn Zakariyā (Arabic: النبي يحيى, An-Nabī Yaḥyā) in Islam. He is sometimes alternatively referred to as John the Baptiser.
That someone was Jesus.
RELIGION: CHRISTIANITY: Why Jesus was Not a Jew – Library of Rickandria
No sooner was Jesus baptized than,
“he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit, like a dove, descending on him.” (Mar 1:10)
This “spirit” plays a big role in Mark’s gospel.
The first conflicts with the Jewish scribes occured when Jesus forgave the sins of a paralytic.
“They thought to themselves,
‘How can this man talk like that? He is blaspheming.
Who can forgive sins but God.’” (Mar 2:7-8)
And, of course, in Judaism, God only forgives sins by first paying the fee of a roasted goat and a handful of silver to the priests of the Temple.
Jesus freed his disciples and everyone else from the Jewish swindle of the Mosaic Laws.
His was a new message that did away with the rabbinical frauds.
Jesus had brothers and sisters, according to Mark.
When his mother, Mary, along with his brothers and sisters, came to talk with him, they were rebuffed.
What could they do now except get themselves into trouble with the vicious Jewish priests and the wicked rabbis?
They had spent over thirty years with Jesus.
Why would they only now seek his council other than to try to gain what they had previously rejected?
All of these siblings had certainly had a difficult childhood together.
After all, how could brothers and sisters relate to an older brother who was the “son of God”?
Their mother and father, Mary and Joseph, both claimed that Jesus was born of a virgin, and it was also attested by the priests that it was so.
Mary had been inspected by the rabbis, since they claimed the authority and the right to not only be lawyers but also to be practicing gynecologists.
Those nasty, hairy-faced old perverts claimed to be experts at sniffing women’s menstrual rags and claimed to be authorities over women’s vulvas. (Babylonian Talmud, Book of Nidah)
Now after all of these years of their childhood together, after all of these years where their older brother had studied all of the scriptures to the point where he was more learned than any of the rabbis; and where their elder brother had spent long weeks and months in the wilderness praying and fasting; now, after all of this time, as he becomes famous, they show an interest in his knowledge.
They showed up in public claiming a part of the fame of this increasingly famous saint.
What else could Jesus do other than rebuff them as impediments to his calling?
He knew the danger that he faced and the dangers that they would put themselves into if they clung to him.
The Jews always murdered the:
- grandparents
- parents
- children
and grandchildren of those whom they hated.
For their own good, he rebuffed them.
His was a work of heavenly proportions.
It could not be belittled through connection to an earthly family.
Fulfilling the prophesies and closing the door on Judaism while opening the door to Heaven for Christians, was a big job.
Jesus no longer had any time for earthly relatives.
He taught using parables.
And the story of Jesus calming the storm is related in Mark 4.
Besides healing the maniac in Mark 5, actual mention is made of the Qi power of Jesus.
A woman who told herself, “If I can touch even his clothes, I shall be well again.” (Mk 5:28)
“Immediately aware that power had gone out of him, Jesus turned around in the crowd and said,
‘Who touched my clothes?’” (Mar 5:30)
Two aspects of Christian healing are revealed in this chapter:
the Qi power of the healer and the faith of the sufferer.
Most Christian healing in modern times is not effective because the healers rely upon faith alone.
They think that their own faith is sufficient but overlook the fact that Jesus developed his own Holy Spirit (Qi) through long years of prayer and meditation and fasting.
The ancient people wrote that the:
“power had gone out of him”
as a physical emanation because that’s what Qi is, a physically perceptible energy that is intrinsic (though subtle and hidden) within every living being.
The second aspect of Christian healing is the faith of the sufferers.
With faith that a healing method will work, the sufferer of illness marshals all of the healing powers of his own:
- mind
- spirit
- body
towards effecting a cure.
This, combined with the Qi power of the healer, cures the sufferer from disease.
This is not to say that other methods will not work besides Christian healing, but when Christian healing is used effectively both the personal power of the healer, and the faith of the sick person are of equal importance.
Christians misunderstand this because they take Jesus’ statement simply at face value.
He said to the woman who touched him, draining off some of his Qi,
“My daughter, your faith has restored you to health; go in peace and be free from your complaint.” (Mar 5:34)
Overlooking Jesus’ actual spiritual power, itself, many Christians think that their faith alone is sufficient to heal them.
But without the actual power of the Holy Spirit, they too often fail.
And failing, they lose their confidence and their faith.
The Holy Spirit (the Qi) is a real power that can be developed and increased.
(See Appendix A: How to Develop Your Qi and Live Within Your Holy Spirit.)
The scriptures also fail to mention the fact that Jesus did not go into the various communities as a total stranger.
Miles Williams Mathis: OPENING DOORS – Library of Rickandria
Being born and raised among the local communities and having access to the boats with which to travel about Lake Galilee, he knew as friends, many of the people whom he later healed as a teacher.
Dreams, communing with God, meditation on life and death, and the other aspects of religious science, were known and practiced by many of those people.
It is reasonable that even those demoniac winos living in the cave, had shared a few skins of wine with Jesus in earlier times – just as anybody today can walk into a hobo encampment with a jug of wine and make instant drinking buddies among the bums and hobos.
Thus, Jesus could easily have known and talked with that maniac wino in earlier years before Jesus approached him with a crowd of people in Mark 5:1-20.
And always, night and day, he was in the mountains, and in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones. Mar 5:5
But when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshipped him, Mar 5:6
And cried with a loud voice, and said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God? I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not. Mar 5:7
For he said unto him, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit. Mar 5:8
And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion: for we are many. Mar 5:9
And he besought him much that he would not send them away out of the country. Mar 5:10
Now there was there nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine feeding. Mar 5:11
And all the devils besought him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them. Mar 5:12
And forthwith Jesus gave them leave.
And the unclean spirits went out and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea, (they were about two thousand;) and were choked in the sea. Mar 5:13
And they that fed the swine fled, and told it in the city, and in the country. And they went out to see what it was that was done. Mar 5:14
And they come to Jesus, and see him that was possessed with the devil, and had the legion, sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind: and they were afraid. Mar 5:15
And they that saw it told them how it befell to him that was possessed with the devil, and also concerning the swine. Mar 5:16
And they began to pray him to depart out of their coasts. Mar 5:17
And when he was come into the ship, he that had been possessed with the devil prayed him that he might be with him. Mar 5:18
Howbeit Jesus suffered him not, but saith unto him, Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee. Mar 5:19
And he departed, and began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him: and all men did marvel. Mar 5:20
Miracles and Healing
All of those people knew each other.
Understand this, and some of the hidden mysteries of the Gospels are immediately revealed to you.
Certainly, the children of the synagogue officials were also familiar to Jesus.
As he traveled around seeking the knowledge of those rabbis, he would have met their children.
Those children who had special powers and abilities would naturally have gravitated to this extraordinary man.
SPIRITUALITY: ENERGY: EXTRAORDINARY ABILITIES & KEEPING YOUR MOUTH SHUT – Library of Rickandria
All people must face the time of their eventual death.
Like it or not, we all must find our way to the door of Eternity and walk through.
In modern times, there is an entire funeral industry making a profit from both the dead and their living relatives.
So, the actual details involved with:
- dead bodies
- messy corpses
- smells of decomposition
and the work of digging graves or incinerating bodies, are all cleanly taken care of by the funeral homes for a convenient (and substantial) fee.
Although this is an important service, it also insulates from the psychological awareness of the living, the actual process and reality of physical death.
Thus, modern people tend to forget and ignore the importance and finality of death in our own, personal lives.
This ignorance makes us religiously and physically unprepared when death arrives.
This modern ignorance was not a part of the ancient peoples’ experience.
Their friends and relatives and acquaintances and neighbors were dying all around them in the days when air-conditioned houses and cold storage had not been invented, and the flies were quick to gather around the corpse.
Dead people did not take long to begin attracting flies and smelling rotten, and the sounds of mourners and the wailing cries of the believed were common in every neighborhood – this, in the days when the average life span was thirty or forty years and children often died of disease and malnutrition before the age of ten.
So, death was a common and familiar part of their daily lives.
Even the children knew about death.
A synagogue official’s daughter, who would have seen many dead people with her father in attendance, might easily have discussed with Jesus when he visited her father, her special knowledge and powers.
Even a little child may explore death and pretend to die, holding her breath and slowing her heartbeat.
So, when the messengers reported to the synagogue official,
“Your daughter is dead” (Mar 5:35),
Jesus knew differently.
He said,
“The child is not dead, but asleep.” (Mar 5:39)
So, he took her hand and said,
“Little girl, I tell you to get up.” (Mar 5:41)
The little girl awoke and began to walk about.
It is significant that Mark 5:42 mentions that she was twelve years old because this is the age when a little girl becomes a woman by Hebrew reckoning.
Jesus had cured her of her little girl phantasy of dying.
When she awoke, she was no longer a stupid little girl playing games but a young girl awake, at twelve years.
Mark 6 mentions the names of Jesus’ brothers –
- James
- Joseph
- Jude
and Simon and also indicates that he had at least two sisters.
But Jesus could work no miracles in his own hometown at Nazareth because the people there knew him as a carpenter.
So, they did not believe that he was anything more than a carpenter.
SECRET SOCIETIES: Communism & Freemasonry – The Red Dragon & the Black Beast – Library of Rickandria
Their lack of faith prevented them.
So, Jesus said,
“A prophet is only despised in his own country, among his own relations and in his own house.” (Mar 6:4)
He only cured a few sick people by laying-on-of-hands, that is, with his own spiritual power.
Jesus sent out his Twelve Disciples in pairs.
“And he instructed them to take nothing for the journey except a staff (Matthew and Luke mention no staff) – no bread, no haversack, no coppers for the purses.
They were to wear sandals but, he added, “Do not take a spare tunic.” (Mar 6: 8-9)
Thus, they were to be poor mendicants who could cast out devils and cure the sick, all very useful skills in every ancient community.
Mark tells how king Herod had John the Baptist beheaded in order to fulfill his oath to his wife’s daughter.
And again, the miracle of the loaves is related.
This time, the numbers fed were five thousand men (not counting women in the usual Semitic bias).
They had twelve baskets full of scraps of bread and pieces of fish left over.
But Mark doesn’t mention where the baskets came from.
After all, in the wilderness, where would they find baskets unless the people brought them with them for carrying their own provisions?
Mark tells how Jesus walked on the water of the lake and got into the boat with them.
The story is truthful because walking on water is possible only when one is in the spirit.
This is one of the Eighteen Supernatural Powers.
But this story is probably combined from two different stories since Mark says that Jesus got into the boat, and they all arrived on the opposite shore together.
But then again, for anyone who can walk on water in the spirit, who can fathom what other abilites he may have?
Being at two places at once is also one of the Eighteen Supernatural Powers known and practiced by the ancient peoples.
In Mark 7, Jesus discusses the “tradition of the elders.”
This is a long list of laws, injunctions and practices added to the Mosaic Law by the Pharisee rabbis.
This “tradition of the elders” was thoroughly condemned by Jesus who told them,
“You put aside the commandments of God to cling to human traditions.” (Mar 7:8)
This is a fact of Judaism: the Jews wrote the Laws of Moses and claimed that they were the “Word of God.”
But then the Pharisees, lawyers that they are, invented countless ways of evading those very laws which they called the “Oral Law” and which they later wrote down as the Babylonian Talmud.
There is not a single law of Moses that the Jews do break, nor is there a single law in the Hebrew Bible that the Jews do not turn into its total opposite through the dishonesty of the Babylonia Talmud.
Who else does everything opposite to what God commands, other than devils?
This is not to say that the Hebrew Bible is the Word of God – not by any means – but for those who claim that it is and then turn it upside down, what else can the Jews be other than actual demons by any definition of the word?
In Jesus’ day, the Talmud was still an oral tradition and had not yet been written into book form.
With the Oral Law, the rabbis and the Pharisees could pretend to have a knowledge that was unknown to either the Sadducees or the Essenes or the common Jews.
Literate Hebrews would come to them quoting from the Hebrew Bible, but the scheming Pharisees could maintain a deceitful advantage over such “laymen” by making up their own interpretations based on a:
“secret oral tradition that God had whispered into the ear of Moses and that only we Pharisees know.”
The Oral Tradition is nothing more than lies and deceits and false reasoning which the idiot Jews to this very day mis-name as “knowledge.”
If you actually read the Talmud, you will come to understand that the “Oral Tradition” of the Jews is double-talk and deceit, the basic requirements of every rabbi and every Jewish lawyer!
With the Oral Tradition, Jesus correctly perceived that the rabbis
“make god’s word null and void for the sake of your tradition which you have handed down. And you do many other things like this.” (Mar 7: 13)
Being an expert in the lies of the Oral Law, is the basic requirement of a Jewish rabbi and of the Jews.
So, by rejecting this Talmudic Law system, you can understand that Jesus was not a Jew.
RELIGION: CHRISTIANITY: Why Jesus was Not a Jew – Library of Rickandria
The lying modern Jews claim that he was one of them, only so as to steal a glory that is not theirs.
Jesus teaches purity of heart and mind which is contrary to what the rabbis teach.
The rabbis teach that a Jew can be as obscene and vile as they can be and yet call themselves “holy” just as long as they follow the laws and regulations written down in the Hebrew Bible and in the Talmud.
Ritually washing a cup before drinking from it or strapping a leather box onto their heads when they pray or living in a booth once a year or eating unleavened bread once a week, etcetera; all of these things make them “holy” even though they:
- lie
- steal
- masturbate
- betray
- murder non-Jews
and have sex with children.
To the Jews, following the laws of the rabbis makes them holy regardless of how:
- obscene
- fiendish
- vile
they are in daily life.
Falsely calling themselves “holy,” is not a hypocritical character flaw for a Jew.
Hypocrisy is actually a Jewish “virtue” since by such means they swindle a respect from the non-Jews to which they are not entitled.
Jesus condemned such mendacious hypocrisy.
He taught that no amount of ritual washing of cups or hands, or the eating of kosher foods could make a Jew “holy” when they had
“evil intentions, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, malice, deceit, indecency, envy, slander, pride, and folly in their hearts
All these evil things come from within and make a man unclean.” (Mar 7: 21-23)
And yet, this is what the Jews still practice today.
Adhering to the Babylonian Talmud (the “Tradition of the Elders”), they pretend to be holy but inside, all Jews are vile and evil as is proven in many ways such as by their Talmud, their political actions, their Media Monopoly and their swindling and their betrayal of Mankind. (see Volume III, The Bloodsuckers of Judah)
And yet, the Jews smile and insist upon their “innocence” and their “pure motives” and their “high moral character,” but their own writings and their own actions prove that they are lying.
They were liars and deceivers in Jesus’ day, and they are even worse today.
Time did not make the Jews a better people, it allowed them to perfect their obscene villainy.
Mark 8 tells of the miracles of the loaves, feeding four thousand people with seven loaves of bread and a few small fish.
Seven basketfuls of scraps were left over.
A note to remember:
Jesus again warned against the yeast, the leaven, the deceiving lies of the Pharisees.
Peter is the first to understand that Jesus is the Christ.
Jesus takes:
- Peter
- James
- John
up a mountain where they see him transfigured,
“his clothes became dazzlingly white,”
and
“Elijah appeared to them with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus.” (Mar 9:3-4)
“And a cloud came, covering them in shadow; and there came a voice from the cloud,
‘This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him.’
Then suddenly, when they looked around, they saw no one with them anymore but only Jesus.” (Mar 9: 7-8)
Next, Jesus casts out an epileptic demon from a boy.
And he foretells his own death and resurrection.
“John said to him, ‘Master, we saw a man who is not one of us casting out devils in your name; and because he was not one of us, we tried to stop him.’
But Jesus said,
‘You must not stop him.
No one who works a miracle in my name is likely to speak evil of me.
Anyone who is not against us is for us.’” (Mar 9:38-40)
Although this is generally true, it left the door open for the Christians to be deceived by Saul of Tarsus who entered the Christian community praising Jesus while sowing his
“leaven of the Pharisees.”
It is not that Jesus was wrong in his statements but that the early Christians were too easily deceived by the leaven of the Jews.
Jesus’ real Hebrew name was “Yahshua,” translated as “Yah-Saves” or “God-Saves.”
Thus, his name became synonymous with the Hebrew god, Yahweh or Yah, which by this time was a name of God that the evil Jews never mentioned.
Further, Jesus explained the benefits received by those who donate to Christain monks and nuns.
This had been recognized in all of the great religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism, as well as the Egyptian religions whereby the ordinary people gained blessings through their charity towards the religious community.
Such a religious system only becomes a fraud when the religious adepts are overcome by greed and live lives of ostentatious idle luxury rather than prayerful, humble poverty.
The monks seek knowledge of God; they are not monks because of a free handout.
It is a disciplined and difficult life.
Mark 9:42-50 has become a warning to modern day Jews because they are such a constant
“obstacle to bring down one of these little ones who have faith.”
With their treachery and subversion against all religions, their obscene violence and pornography in the Media, and their constant attacks upon Christians and on the Church, Jesus warns each Jew that because of the hellfire that awaits him that such a Jew:
“would be better thrown into the sea with a great millstone round his neck.” (Mar 9:42)
It is much kinder for that Jew to be drowned in the sea than to be allowed to continue practicing his evil against Mankind and against little children.
This is good advice for modern times:
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Jesus forbad the Pharisee Jews to divorce because they were so enthusiastic about throwing aside their wives so as to pursue their lusts.
He loved little children and recommended that the rich man give up his wealth to the poor and become an itinerant monk.
He foretold his own persecution.
And cured a blind beggar with only a word, “Go,” he said,
“your faith has saved you.” (Mar 10:52)
The leaven of the Pharisee Jews is why modern people cannot be healed and why medical costs are so high.
Since the Jews control modern medicine, their allopathic method assures a constant supply of sick patients but very few cures.
After all, Jewish physicians can’t make money off of healthy people.
It is the sick and the weak upon whom they prey.
So, the Jew doctors want people to remain sick, never be healed and to repetitively have the patients return for expensive “treatments.”
Jesus threw out the moneychangers from the Temple:
“So, they reached Jerusalem, and he went into the Temple and began driving out those who were selling and buying there; he upset the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those who were selling pigeons.
Nor would he allow anyone to carry anything through the Temple.
And he taught them and said,
‘Does not scripture say:
My house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples?
But you have turned it into a robber’s den.’
This came to the ears of the chief priests and the scribes, and they tried to find some way of doing away with him; they were afraid of him because the people were carried away by his teaching.
And when evening came, he went out of the city.” (Mar 11:15-19)
It should be noted that Jesus understood how corrupt the merchant-moneylenders were (and are) but he didn’t understand the international conspiracy that had created the Temple in the first place.
Jesus was a country preacher who was a professional carpenter by trade.
He had studied scriptures but not international finance.
Seeing that the bankers were sullying religious merit, he struck at the very heart of Judaism – the making of profits from the Sumerian Swindle and its related financial scams.
The bankers were in the Temple because that was the organizational center of their business empire.
The merchants were there selling animals so the “sinners” could have them butchered and barbequed by the priests.
And the entire Jewish gang was there to make money for the Jews.
It was Herod’s Temple.
It was shiny and new, built with the gold given him by the international cartel of Abraham’s First National Bank and Pawn Shop.
It was an imposing, fortified, new and shiny, stone monument protecting the “sacred” gold.
But Jesus emphasized the power of prayer.
When one has become the perfect saint, prayer has the power to do great things in both the spiritual and the physical world.
Looking about at their overturned counting tables with the scattered coins, the scribes (those writers of lies and traditions) and the elders (the Pharisees and Sadducees) asked him,
“What authority do you have acting like this?
Or who gave you authority to do these things?” (Mar 11: 28)
These evil lawyers claimed that they had the authority to be governors of the Temple Treasury and the dictators over the lives of the Jews because the law books that they had written, themselves, gave them such authority.
In other words, they had given themselves the authority through the carefully constructed fraud of the Hebrew Bible.
That their alleged “authority” was based entirely upon literary forgery and historical hoaxes was not something they wanted to discuss.
That the Torah had declared themselves to be the inheritors of great power and wisdom, is what counted in their eyes, even though none of it was true.
Their law books said they were the very voice of God, and that’s what they wanted everyone to believe.
But here was this Jesus calling them:
“liars, deceivers, hypocrites and murderers”
and turning over the tables of coins and letters of credit by which they swindled the wealth of the world.
Certainly, Jesus told the truth; they were, indeed, such:
- criminals
- con artists
- thieves
But how did He know?
And who gave him the authority to oppose the evil schemes of the “holy” Jews?
But Jesus avoided their verbal traps and did not tell them from where he drew his authority.
Among his various teachings and parables in Mark 12, Jesus upsets the idea that he is a descendant of David.
Much has been made of this by both Christians and Jews.
According to the Jews, the Christ must be descended from David.
But Jesus claims that this is negated by the Psalm 110 where David calls the Christ, Lord.
Thus, the Christ is not David’s son but is directly the Son of God, higher than David and existing before him.
But in fact, the Psalm only gives a minor hint which the Jews, in their usual fakery, expound upon to mean more than it does.
Jesus further condemns not just the scribes of his day but, by extension, the Jews of today.
“In his teaching he said, ‘Beware of the scribes who like to walk about in long robes, to be greeted obsequiously in the market squares, to take the front seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets; these are the men who swallow the property of widows, while making a show of lengthy prayers.
The more severe will be the sentence they receive.” (Mar 12: 38-40)
Over the centuries, the Jews had refined the money-making techniques of Abraham’s First National Bank and Pawn Shop.
They had installed a money slot whereby the believing Hebrews could drop in the monetary donations to what they thought was a donation to God.
Modern day Muslims use the same Jewish system of raking in the profits (called zakat) by sucking them out of the pockets of believers and into the money slot inside the mosques and musjids.
Jesus watched the Hebrews dropping their donations into the bank slot and he commented on the ratio between what the rich donate versus the donations of the poor in his parable of the widow’s mite.
While the rich donate a little bit from what they have in great excess, poor people donate from what they need to live.
So, the donations of the poor are higher in the eyes of God than the donations of the wealthy.
A single coin from a rich man who has millions of coins is not as much as a single coin from a poor man who only has a few coins.
It is the same valued coin, but it takes a much greater ratio out of the poor man’s meager funds to make such a donation than it does out of a rich man’s excess.
In Mark 13, Jesus foretells the destruction of the Temple and the persecution of the Christians by the Jews.
“Be on your guard:
they will hand you over to the Sanhedrin; you will be beaten in the synagogues; and you will stand before governors and kings for my sake.” (Mar 13:9)
His warning was heeded.
When the Romans attacked Judea and Jerusalem in 70 AD, the Christians knew in advance to escape while the stupid Jews were killed or enslaved.
Jesus predicted his return in Mark 13 as:
“coming in the clouds with great power and glory; then too he will send the angels to gather his chosen from the four winds, from the ends of the world to the ends of heaven.” (Mar 13: 26-27)
Modern people should take heed of this since airplanes and the very radio and television transmissions can carry Jesus in the clouds with great power and glory.
This is another reason why the Jews want to monopolize radio and TV, to prevent this from happening and to fill the airwaves, instead, with Jewish filth.
The advice of Jesus to “stay awake” has been followed for over two thousand years in the various Christian monasteries and convents.
The monks and nuns have kept vigilant prayers and watches throughout the days and the nights, waiting for Christ’s return.
This has not been time wasted since the knowledge of the Holy Spirit and the elevated mental acuity thus gained has caused a blossoming of Humanity in every Christian land and the building of great churches and religious institutions.
But the “wakefulness” that Jesus taught was of a spiritual and God-consciousness.
RELIGION: Reaching the Godhead – Library of Rickandria
Remaining ever-aware of the Presence of God helps people from committing various mistakes and follies in Life simply because they keep their spiritual vision alert and see that God is ever-present and ever-watchful.
The chief priests and scribes were looking for a way to arrest Jesus by some trick so as to have him put to death. (Mar 14:1)
Judas Iscariot offered to betray him.
Judas Iscariot (/ˈdʒuːdəs ɪˈskæriət/; Biblical Greek: Ἰούδας Ἰσκαριώτης, romanized: Ioúdas Iskariṓtēs; died c. 30 – c. 33 AD) was, according to Christianity’s four canonical gospels, one of the original Twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ. Judas betrayed Jesus to the Sanhedrin in the Garden of Gethsemane, in exchange for 30 pieces of silver, by kissing him on the cheek and addressing him as “master” to reveal his identity in the darkness to the crowd who had come to arrest him. In modern times, his name is often used synonymously with betrayal or treason.
Again told, is the story of the Eucharist where Jesus broke some bread and said,
“Take it, this is my body.” (Mar 14:23)
and he took a wine cup and said,
“This is my blood, the blood of the covenant, which is to be poured out for many.” (Mar 14:24)
The misunderstanding among both Christians and non-Christians is that Jesus was speaking only of himself.
He had reached that stage of religious Oneness with God that he could speak in the terms of Oneness.
In fact, everything that we eat, or drink is part of the body of God.
Thus, Jesus offered the bread and the wine as the body and blood of God while being fully at One with his divine awareness of this unity.
Finally, at the little farm of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed that the anguish that he was about to experience could be avoided.
“Father,” he said, “Everything is possible for you.
Take this cup away from me.
But let it be as you, not I, would have it.” (Mar 14:36)
He knew what suffering he was about to experience.
But as the Christ, he knew that to fulfill the scriptures, to bring the lies of Judaism to a close, and to give people a direct access to genuine religious experience, that he would have to suffer and die, otherwise, his people, the Hebrews and all of Mankind would continue to be ravaged by the Monsters of Babylon posing as Jewish priests and rabbis and as your friendly banker and the Jewish doctor smirking at your bedside.
They crucified Jesus at about 9 AM.
About 12 noon,
“there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour [3 PM]” (Mar 15:33)
At this time, Jesus fulfilled the final prophesy from the psalms and cried out,
“My god, my god, why have you deserted me?” (Mar 15: 34)
And he:
“gave a loud cry and breathed his last.
And the veil of the Temple was torn in two from top to bottom.” (Mar 15: 37-38)
It should be noted that there was no spear thrust into his side in either Matthew or Mark.
Matthew was an eyewitness of the events and Mark wrote Peter’s witness of the events.
Then, Joseph of Arimathea put Jesus in his own tomb wrapped in a shroud and rolled a stone against the entrance to the tomb.
This was Friday evening, the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath.
Early Sunday morning at sunrise, Mary of Magdala and Mary the mother of James, and Salome went to the tomb to anoint Jesus.
But they found the tomb open, Jesus gone and a young man in a white robe who said to them,
“There is no need for alarm.
You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified: he has risen, he is not here…
He is going before you to Galilee; it is there you will see him, just as he told you.” (Mar 16: 6-7)
Jesus appeared to the Eleven disciples and said to them,
“Go out into the whole world; proclaim the Good News to all creation.
He who believes and is baptized will be saved; he who does not believe will be condemned.
These are the signs that will be associated with believers: in my name they will cast out devils; they will have the gift of tongues; they will pick up snakes in their hands and be unharmed should they drink deadly poison; they will lay their hands on the sick, who will recover.” (Mar 16: 16-18)
So ends the Gospel of Mark.