I have been reading a lot of religious history lately and
I’ve come to the conclusion that, when Jesus gave up the ghost on the cross at
Calvary, the most difficult part must have been knowing that he was leaving his
legacy in the hands of relatively weak men.
As honorable as the Apostles were, they did not compare to
the savior and although Christianity survived it was not in the condition it
would have been if Jesus had remained with us a while longer. The deterioration, although minor at first,
continued through successive generations of the church hierarchy until we have
the many branches of Christianity that we find today.
It seems that, to find the true path to salvation, one needs
to, as my cousin Richard says, “Read the Red.”
Read the actual words of Jesus, as transcribed by the Apostles, and add
to that his miraculous works, and build on that. It is the same tact that Martin Luther, John
Calvin, and even the Puritans took. They
wanted to cut through all the pomp and ceremony that had become attached to the
church and “get back to the basics,” but even they did not take it far enough.
With much effort, including an austere lifestyle, fasting,
and other disciplines, Jesus made some amazing discoveries regarding our
purpose here on earth and ways to overcome the earthly obstacles that tended to
debase most of human existence. In the
book of Genesis, after God created our world, he gave man Dominion over all
living things, which is to say he gave us control over nature. Jesus had control over nature when he calmed
the tempest while crossing the sea from Galilee to Gerasenes. Do we have Dominion over nature today? I think not, but Jesus showed us how to get
back to that position of Dominion. We
only need to do as he did, walk in his footsteps, believeth in him.
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