Poor God

Poor God.  He gets blamed for everything.  Every time there is a natural disaster, people want to know why God didn’t prevent it.  In other words, why does He supposedly allow bad things to happen to good people.

Well for starters, he’s not a he; he’s not a she either and arguably not even an “it”.  God is simply the universal life force that permeates all of Creation. When people talk about God, they are usually referring to something that they think exists outside of themselves (like our Father who art in heaven, for example).  In reality, God exists everywhere and in everything. That’s why Jesus said that the Kingdom of God is within, inasmuch as the Kingdom of God is literally a kingdom of consciousness.

As Max Planck, the German physicist who originated quantum theory, said, “…there is no such thing as matter.”  That’s because everything is consciousness, even that which we call matter.  Most neurobiologists have stated that physics cannot  explain consciousness.  That’s not surprising because physics cannot observe what exists beyond space and time (the Cosmic Mind).

From God’s perspective, assuming that He can even have a perspective, Creation is perfect since it is self-generating and self-renewing.  It’s a circle of life, with no beginning and no end.  As for death, it is simply the end of the illusion we call life and the beginning of the remainder of eternity.  There are no “bad things happening” to anybody, only things that are necessary for the renewal of life.

We all have a need to belong to something greater than ourselves and to understand why we exist.  Towards that end, I believe that it is possible for anyone to have their own unique relationship with God.  Since God is within, our bodies form the altar from which we can connect to him.  A church and a religion are not required…and never intended.

“Our reality is an expression of a deeper order of existence that exists beyond space and time.”  -Michael Talbot

From I-God to the Missing Link

Filmmakers sometimes make multiple endings to their movies.  Then they test market one of the endings to see if the audience likes it.  Based on the responses they get, they might possibly substitute in one of the other endings.  Well, with respect to my last post “So Who Created God?,” I’ll give you a chance for an alternative ending.  Maybe one of these will fit better with your own perspective.

Alternative ending #1

Fast forward to today.  Our daughter is now in college and recently won an award for an innovative software application.  She calls it I-God.  It’s for people who are in need for a more direct relationship with God.  You just click a button and talk to God!

P.S. She doesn’t ask (or care) anymore who created God.

Alternative ending #2

The god of Genesis is hardly the ideal role model that most people associate with a supreme being.  He/they/it doesn’t even meet the basic requirements of some church dogma.  If you wanted a God who is omnipresent, you didn’t get it because God did not know where Adam was hiding (Genesis 3:9).  If you wanted a God who was omniscient , you didn’t get that either because otherwise God would have known in advance that the humans would eat from the Tree of Knowledge.  If you wanted a God that was omnipotent, well strike three.  If God was all-powerful, he could have created a more perfect being that could have acted the way he wanted and he would have insured that evil didn’t exist in the world.

The Bible tells us that mankind was created for one purpose – to tend to the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:15).  Having eaten the apple from the Tree of Knowledge, man became like God, to know good and evil (Genesis 3:22).  By obtaining the knowledge of good and evil, man was awakened to his true reality.  He (man) saw that he was naked and God was clothed.  Adam was ashamed (Genesis 3:10 ) because he realized that God was the master and his slaves were naked.  Even the Ten Commandments (see specifically the Tenth Commandment), said that it was morally okay to have slaves.  Slavery runs very deep in mankind’s  history – all the way back to the god of Genesis.

So if you didn’t get a god who was omniscient, omnipresent or omnipotent, what exactly did you get?  If you’ve read some of my past posts, you probably know that I would answer that by saying the God Below God.  However, the Vatican I believe has a different theory, one that they don’t discuss in church.  You see, they’ve recently built a new, powerful telescope in Arizona named Lucifer. What or who do you suppose that they are looking for and why did they name the telescope Lucifer (of all things)?  They wouldn’t be anticipating the Second Coming, would they?

Alternative ending #3

The gods created man in his own image.  Of course, most scientists would agree that life is mostly created in Nature through DNA.  That implies that our creator(s) have DNA themselves, as for that matter do all life forms.  It’s interesting to speculate exactly where the first man (Adam, if you will) got his X and Y chromosomes from since men inherit their Y chromosome from their father and their X chromosome from their mother.  Similarly, women (who have two X chromosomes but no Y chromosome) inherit one of their X chromosomes from their mother and the other from their father.   So where do you suppose that Eve get her maternal X chromosome from?

Scientific research into mitochondrial DNA has led scientists to conclude that all living humans descended from one woman who they have labeled as Mitochondrial Eve.  Unfortunately, they have never been able to pin down the exact origins of Eve (out of Africa?) or explain where the original Eve got her chromosomes from.  The solution to this seeming paradox is that the gods of Genesis were both men and women and they genetically mixed their DNA with the DNA of then-existing earth hominids to produce a hybrid – homo sapiens sapiens (modern man).

Epilogue

In the original post, I didn’t choose alternative ending #1 because I thought that it might be inappropriate for the subject matter, although I’m sure some would disagree with that sentiment.  I didn’t choose ending #2 because I had recently posted about the Vatican and their Lucifer telescope.  As for the third ending, I felt that it was too scientific and that my conclusions rightfully required a much fuller explanation.  You see, Mitochondrial Eve was actually one of the gods of Genesis and nothing less than the so-called missing link in evolution!

So Who Created God?

When our daughter was just five years old, she told us about God and His creation.  Needless to say, we were floored.  I couldn’t have said it much better myself.  Furthermore, we were completely blown away when she added,  “So who created God?”  I guess that’s what Jesus meant by out of the mouth of babes!

Of course, the answer to that question depends on just how you define God.  If you define God based on the Bible, then you get an answer that you might not have otherwise expected. In the Bible, it’s made pretty clear that God created man.  But, which God?  Is it Yahweh, Jehovah, Elohim, El Shaddai or just plain El?  Is it all of them or perhaps even none of them?

The biblical record

So, let’s start at the beginning (Genesis).  In Genesis 1:26, it says “Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness….’” There are several points here.  First, God was obviously not alone!  Second, he didn’t create man by himself!  Furthermore, the beings that God was with had the same image and the same likeness as he did.  But how could God have any image or likeness?  Doesn’t it say in John 1:18 that no man has ever seen God?  Then how could Adam and Eve have seen and talked to God?  For that matter, how could Jacob have actually wrestled with God (Genesis 32:24-30)?

The same pattern of multiple gods reoccurs in Genesis 3:21 which says, “And the Lord God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us….’”  How’s that again?  Man has become like God (one of us)?  As shocking as it may sound, Jesus actually confirmed the point that men are gods (see John 10:34).  It all comes back full circle in Psalm 82:1 which says, “God presides in the great assembly, he renders judgment among the gods.”  So it’s critical to come to an accurate understanding of who the god(s) of the Bible really were.

The Bible says that Adam (first man) was created in approximately 3750 BC (which corresponds with the beginning of the Jewish Calendar some 5,700 years ago).  Anthropology and archaeology, however, have convincingly proved that man’s roots go back much further, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of years.  Obviously, the biblical chronology is suspect, to say the least.  Beyond that, the Bible stories (the Old Testament, that is) covered a period of over 3,000 years and, during that period, it’s clear from archaeology and ancient scriptures that the Hebrews/Israelites worshipped many gods.  Even the Bible tells us that after Adam and Eve mankind worshipped different gods and it also tells us that Abraham’s father worshipped other gods; after Abraham…ditto, and so on.   Monotheism, itself, may actually have its roots in Egypt.  Sigmund Freud, for example, traces the roots of monotheism to the Akhenaton cult religion of the god Aten (see Freud’s book “Moses and Monotheism”).  According to some people’s reckoning, Akhenaten was pharaoh in Egypt during the time of Moses and thus the tie-in to monotheism.

Archaeology and the historical record

Many of the recent archaeological finds in the Holy Land show that the historical record disagrees with the Bible (e.g. see the BBC documentary “The Bible’s Buried Secrets”).  Among the discoveries is that Yahweh was also a god among the pagan Canaanites.  Yahweh, in fact, had a female consort – the goddess Asherah.  How’s that for a twist on an old story.  As for King Solomon and King David, they seem to be mostly missing from the archaeological record, as is Moses for that matter.

In Mesopotamia, ancient writings reveal that the ancients believed in a pantheon of gods (not unlike the Greeks who would come later).  Pictures of these gods can be seen on their clay tablets and they are depicted as real flesh and blood human beings, albeit from a very advanced race.  This, then, according to ancient records was the beginning of modern civilization as we know it.

The gods of Genesis

Voltaire once said that, “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.”  In this case, God may have existed but he was never present.  So when an advanced race of beings took over on planet Earth, mankind was in awe of their capabilities.  They truly were our creators, they just weren’t the Prime Creator.  Even if they weren’t divine, they were no less than gods to the ancients.  However, these gods of Genesis were not exactly angels (no pun intended).  They tried to keep man from knowing the secrets of the universe ( see the Genesis stories about the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life).  The gods were angry and very violent.  In addition to the stories in the Bible where God slaughtered innocent women and children, ancient Indian Vedic texts talk about wars among the gods.  Ancient Irish texts refer to them similarly.  Over time, the remembrance of these gods in legends and folklore would be replaced by a desire to invent God – thus religion.  That’s not to say that God doesn’t exist, just that the gods of Genesis were not truly God.  Monotheism as we know it today is simply a myth – a way for mankind to relate to the Infinite which, as the Pascal Wager states, is infinitely incomprehensible.

Epilogue

None of this, of course, answers the question of who or what is God or my daughter’s question as to who created God.  Perhaps, it was intended that we should never know.  However, one has to ask the question as to why the general public has never been told the truth about the gods of Genesis.  Our government knows, the Vatican knows and certain members of secret societies know – but not the masses.  You see they, the masses, were created to till the garden (of Eden that is).  So, why would you ever tell them?  If you did, they might just wake up and realize that they were naked.

God’s Bad-Hair Day

God spoke to me last night.  He was angry, actually perhaps more frustrated than angry.  He couldn’t understand how his creation could have gotten so far off track.   Unfortunately, I had no answers for him.

The reason for his frustration was how could man build such edifices in his honor and at the same time blame him for the suffering in the world.  Aside: Actually God is rather embarrassed by this whole worship thing.  It’s totally unnecessary in his view.  He simply wanted to know why mankind can’t take personal responsibility for their own actions.  It’s a very valid point.  What can one say other than it’s easier to blame someone else.

God seems to realize, even expects, that we’ll make lots of mistakes exercising our free will.  However having given man the gift of free will, he’s upset that he gets the blame for man’s actions.  After all, what’s a god suppose to do anyway?  Is he suppose to butt into man’s affairs in violation of free will and contrary to his own Natural Laws of the universe?

Apparently, the world was never meant to be perfect and certainly never meant to be free of suffering.  After all, if the world was already perfect, what would be the point of life?  Anyway, if mankind does not like the world the way it is, we are free to change it.  As Gandhi once said, all we need to do is to “ Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”

Epilogue

Later that same day, my wife told me about how awful her day had been (i.e. flaky people of all different stripes and flavors).  I could really empathize with her.  She just needed someone to listen to her vent.  Wonderful (not), now I have both her and God that I have to listen to when they have had bad-hair days.

“What we are is God’s gift to us.  What we become is our gift to God.”

-   Eleanor Powell

The Second Coming

A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center concerning the Second Coming of Christ got the following response from a majority of Christians – he’s not coming (at least not by the year 2050).  Only  32% of Catholics, for example, believe in the Second Coming.  The results weren’t totally lopsided, though, as a majority of white evangelicals, people living in the South and those without a high school degree thought that he actually would return. In reviewing the survey data, one could easily draw the conclusion that educated, mainstream Protestants generally don’t believe in the Second Coming.

Other interesting tidbits that most people don’t associate with Christianity:

• Surveys show that 25% of Protestants believe in reincarnation. Side note: The Buddhist Law of Cause and Effect is included in the Bible (i.e. as you sow so shall you reap).  So too are the stories of the man who was born blind at birth (from the Book of John) and the identity of John the Baptist (from the Gospel of Matthew), both of which imply reincarnation.
• The concept of the Trinity was not adopted by Christianity until 300 years after Jesus.  Side note: The word “trinity” is not even mentioned in the bible.
• The first Bible was actually a Catholic Bible as it was the Catholic Church that originally compiled the Bible.  The Catholic Bible was the Christian Bible for over a thousand years of Christianity.  Side note: Unfortunately, not too many Christians ever read the Bible in the early years.  It wasn’t  available to the general public until The Gutenberg Bible was published in the 1450s. Even though there have been changes from the Catholic Bible to the various versions of the Protestant Bible, each bible is considered to be the Word of God by those who use it.

From the disciples perspective, they were certainly disappointed that Jesus did not return in their lifetime, as he had promised them.  Yet, 2.000 years later some Christians are still expecting Jesus to return (in their lifetime), hence the poll referenced above.  There is no biblical evidence to suggest that Jesus will return although, faith being what it is, believers will believe regardless.  There’s certainly nothing wrong with believing in something and hoping that it will happen.  Similarly, there is nothing wrong with being certain that it will happen even if that might be illogical and without biblical support.

Down through history (on several occasions), sages, pundits and doomsayers have predicted the end of the world and religious figures have then declared that the so-called End Times were near.  Most recently, it was the end of the Mayan Calendar that got everyone excited.  Of course, the end of the Mayan Calendar came and went and we’re all still here.  What a surprise!  Of course, Christianity did sort of get one thing right.  Evolution of the species requires that we eventually leave this 3^rd dimension plane of existence (the End Times) and ascend into a higher state of consciousness (heaven).  This will happen, however, with or without the Second Coming.   Besides, if Jesus did return either of three things would happen: His message wouldn’t be understood, or his message would be understood but he would not be believed, or he would be branded a heretic and crucified (again).

Reality, Really?

What is real?  What about dreams?  Are dreams real and our experiences while awake really dreams, and just how could anyone ever tell the difference?

Whether we realize it or not, we define reality based on information received from our physical senses.  Unfortunately, our physical senses are really little more than transmitters of electrical signals.  These signals are sent to the brain where they are interpreted and labeled as reality.  We then overlay logic and biases to form our ideas of what we think is real and what is not (i.e. our perception of reality).

Take seeing for example.  Our eyes actually see in 2D, but thanks to our brain we experience objects in 3D.  This process of “seeing” actually takes place in an extremely small area of the brain.  We have no way to know for certain that the objects we see actually exist outside of ourselves.  We, that is our brain, might actually be simply watching a computer monitor.  The scientific word to describe experiencing a 2D reality in 3D is holographic.  Michael Talbot, in his book “The Holographic Universe”, describes how this all works, “Our brains mathematically construct objective reality by interpreting frequencies that are ultimately projections from another dimension, a deeper order of existence that is beyond both space and time:  The brain is a hologram folded in a holographic universe!”

Just when you thought that it couldn’t get any weirder, science comes along with a new theory that we might actually exist inside a computer simulation!  Theoretical physicists have begun to explore that part of creation that lies beyond space and time.  For example, they are trying to answer the question of what came before the Big Bang.  These investigations have resulted in new and very interesting theories, like the Multiverse (i.e. the existence of many universes).  In the process, they found something rather earthshaking even for them. They found that their equations had a computer code embedded in them.  We’re talking about the same kind of computer code that your computer’s web browser uses.  This computer code describes the fundamental nature of reality in 1s and 0s.

As a result of their findings, it has been theorized that we might therefore exist inside of a computer simulation not too unlike the movie ”The Matrix”.  The computer simulation would have to have been developed by a very advanced race, perhaps even by our own species sometime in the distant future.  You might think that this is a bit of a stretch but Einstein did say that space/time was a construct.  In any event, it sure makes one reconsider the nature of reality and consciousness.  By the way, how’s that for Intelligent Design?

“Reality is merely an illusion, although a very persistent one.”

- Albert Einstein

A Test of Faith

When it comes to faith, it’s important that one understand what they believe in and why.  Blind faith is just that…blind.

Let’s start with the Bible and John 1:18 which says that, “No man hath seen God at any time.”  So if you believe that the Bible is the Word of God, you have a conundrum.  You see there are lots of biblical stories where people see God, beginning at the very beginning (in the Garden of Eden).  Which one is wrong?   Regardless of the answer to that question, the Bible cannot be the Word of God since both John 1:18 and the stories about seeing God both can’t be right.  At best, all the Bible could be is the word of man about God.

Then there’s the whole concept of monotheism – the belief in one and only one God.  Actually, the Israelites believed in multiple gods, from the time of Cain until the Torah was finally written some 3,000 years later.  Exactly, how do we know that?  Well for starters, recent archaeological evidence shows that the Israelites believed in more than one God.  Beyond that, there is the Bible which mentions multiple gods in many places.  For example, in Psalm 82:1 it says that, “God presides in the great assembly; he renders judgment among the gods.”

If not one god, then what?  The answer is that the Israelites originally believed in the concept of a personal god, Yahweh, who became their god when they chose him (The Covenant).  If they hadn’t have chosen him, he no doubt would have never been considered to be a god and there would have been no Old Testament (the Jewish Bible) and therefore no Judaism, and perhaps no monotheism either.  Without Judaism, it is unlikely that Christianity would even exist today as it has its roots in the prophecies about the coming of a messiah in the Old Testament.

As for ethics, if you want to base your faith on a strong set of moral values, perhaps the Bible’s Ten Commandments is an excellent place to start.  But you should know, that the Ten Commandments say that slavery is acceptable.  If you don’t believe me, check out the Tenth (10^th) Commandment.  Obviously, God (?) felt that it was acceptable god-like behavior to subjugate another human being.  What more can one say.

Ultimately I suspect, though, that people want to base their faith on the truth.  Again, the Bible gives a clue as to how to go about doing that.  It says to seek the truth and the truth will set you free.  The only thing that the truth could set you free from, obviously, is a lie.  Jesus was talking about the religious beliefs of his time.  He rejected that theology just as he rejected the money changers in the temple and he explicitly warned his followers not to be led astray by the “wolves in sheep’s clothing.”  That warning is just as valid today as it was then.

So here’s my challenge, a test of faith so to speak.  Have faith, but have a well thought-out rationale.  It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it should be yours and not something that you accepted blindly from one of the wolves in sheep’s clothing.  As opposed to church dogma, you can change your faith as the experiences of your life suggest. It can be based on the Bible, if you like, but it shouldn’t be because you believe that the Bible is the Word of God (because it isn’t).  Your new faith should be something that you live every day and not just on Sunday, because faith is not about believing, it is rather about being and doing; in essence, it is a way of life. It should define who you are as a human being (your core principles) and should incorporate the promise of everything that you can become while here on Earth.  Keep in mind, though, that a religion and a covenant are not required…and never were intended.  Are you ready to take the test?

The Vatican Surprise

In Vatican City, lies perhaps the world’s greatest library, aptly named the Vatican Library.  Recently, certain documents were made public by the Vatican from its Secret Archives which lie in a labyrinth of underground tunnels.  Nevertheless, the files concerning the Vatican’s role in World War II and the Holocaust and their relationship with Hitler are still completely under wraps, as are many other documents (i.e. any documents about the Vatican and its faith which are too dangerous for the general public to know about).

To add to the intrigue, the Vatican has in recent years constructed a new telescope at its observatory on Mt Graham (in Arizona).  The telescope has been named Lucifer which is a direct reference to what they are looking for (i.e. the return of Lucifer).  In that vein, Monsignor Corrado Balducci, a member of the Vatican Curia, has previously gone on television a number of times to talk about the extraterrestrial phenomenon and has stated that extraterrestrials are real – that they exist.

Father Jose Funes, the Director of the Vatican Observatory, went even further in his infamous “The Extraterrestrial is My Brother” interview by stating that Christians will eventually need to reevaluate their faith and come to a new understanding of the Bible.  In effect, the Word of God will morph into the Word of the extraterrestrial gods.  This is something that I have previously gone into some detail about in previous posts such as  “Who Were the Gods of the Bible?”, “Whose God Is It?” and “The God Below God”.

The real Vatican Surprise, though, is when they announce that mankind’s savior is an extraterrestrial.  They will undoubtably state that, since God was an extraterrestrial, Jesus was the son of a union between an extraterrestrial (The Holy Spirit) and Mary.  As for fate of the Catholic Church, the Vatican believes that the prophecy of St. Malachy will come to pass and that the current pope will be the last!

For more on this subject, you can read Tom Horn’s series “Exo Vaticana” (www.newswithviews.com/Horn/thomas186.htm).

 

The Historical Jesus

The enduring question of the ages remains:  Just who was Jesus?  Millions revere him and possibly even await his return.  They all claim to know the truth about Jesus.  Some say that he was God, others say that he was the son of God and yet others say that he was simply just a man.

Yet, the vast majority of people in the world don’t even worship him.  Islam, for example, considers Jesus to be a prophet (but not the messiah) and Judaism says that Jesus, a Jew himself, didn’t meet the Old Testament requirements for their messiah. Despite the fact that Judaism did not accept Jesus as their messiah, Christianity did.  At least, that is, Emperor Constantine and the Holy Roman Empire did.

The interesting thing about Jesus is that he hardly appears in the Bible.  There is actually more Christian scriptures about Jesus that aren’t included in the Bible than stories that are included.  To the extent that Jesus does appear in the Bible, it’s primarily in the gospel stories of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  Unfortunately, those stories happen to conflict in certain respects.  So one has to wonder just exactly who was this person who is arguably the greatest man who ever lived and why is there so little information about him in the one place that you would expect to find it(in the Bible)?

To begin with, the historical Jesus wasn’t just an ordinary person.  He was a member of a royal family descended from King David, through his father Joseph.  The Magi did not visit the new-born child because they were expecting the birth of God, since the concept of a spiritual messiah was unthinkable to the Jews. They came to pay homage to an important royal birth.  It was the birth of someone who, according to tradition, might grow up to someday to be their messiah by  delivering the Jews from their oppressors, the Romans.

But why wasn’t more said about Jesus in the Bible?  There should have been volumes written about him, not just the few gospels that we find there.  Why, for example, were the gospels of Mary, Phillip. Peter and Thomas, among many others, intentionally excluded from the Bible?  Even some of Paul’s letters were not allowed into the Bible.  Upon reading these documents as well as other important 20th century finds like the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Library, one thing becomes very clear.  Christianity didn’t suddenly appear completely intact as we know it today. For the first 300 years following the crucifixion, Christianity took many different forms.  Some of those forms stood in stark contrast to others.  For example Paul’s teachings were completely different from the Church of Jerusalem which was headed by James, the brother of Jesus.

The early Christians were expecting the apocalypse and the return of their messiah.  By the second century, it was somewhat obvious that the messiah would not return.  Instead, Jesus was transformed into the Logos, a revision of a much older Greek concept.  Western Civilization would be converted into a Hellenized version of Judaism.  In retrospect, had any of the gospels of Mary, Phillip, Peter and Thomas been included in the Bible, Christianity might very well have looked very different today.  Instead with the Council of Nicaea in 325AD, Christianity became the Roman imperial theology.

All other ways of worshipping Christ were declared by church leaders to be heresy.  All other writings were burned wherever possible and people were told that they were not to read them.  The true teachings of Jesus were suppressed. Christians would never learn that Christ came as an evolutionary step in the growth of mankind, as an example of a fully-evolved human.  That same Christ energy is encoded in our DNA and therefore there is no need for Christ to return. You see, he’s already here.

The Man Who Would Be Messiah

Growing up as a Christian, I always wondered why Christianity chose a Jew to be their savior. Somehow it just didn’t compute.  For that matter, why did Christianity accept Jehovah as God when he was in reality the personal god of the Chosen People?

In reading the Bible stories, it’s clear that Jesus set out to fulfill prophecy, from riding into Jerusalem on a donkey to allowing himself to be caught by the Romans and crucified.  There’s just one catch.  The biblical concept of a messiah was one of a Jewish messiah which was strictly for the Jewish people, which by definition excluded the Gentiles.  As part of their culture, Jews believed  that a messiah would be their king who would lead them to victory over their oppressors; King David was a prime example.  However, a spiritual messiah (such as Jesus) would have been all but unthinkable.

Other interesting sources on this subject are the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible itself.  The Dead Sea Scrolls indicate that there could be two messiahs at any one time, one a king descended from David and one a high priest descended from the priestly caste of Aaron.  In addition, some people of Jesus’ time actually believed that John the Baptist was the messiah (see the Gospel of Mark).

The ultimate problem is that the Jews never accepted Jesus as their messiah because he didn’t qualify according to their reckoning and according to their culture (see, among other things, the Book of Isaiah).  Interestingly enough, Christians who believe in the virgin birth might be surprised to learn that this alone would make it impossible for Jesus to be the messiah.  The reason is that the messiah had to descend from the House of David and Jesus could only have descended from David if Joseph was his biological father.

Down through the ages, there have been many pretenders who wished to be the messiah or whose followers generously bestowed that title on him.  Of course, the world is still waiting for the one who will supposedly usher in a new age of peace.  According to the Book of Isaiah, it will be a time when the whole world will worship the one god of Israel and when all Israelites will have been returned to their homeland; and it will be a man who will be referred to as Immanuel.  Obviously, he hasn’t come yet.