Tag Archives: miracles

The Story of the Circum-Schism
Paul Hijacks Christianity

Ignorant outsider declares himself the authority on Christianity

When a man named Paul (also known as Saul) saw that Stephen had been killed, he approved. With the high priest’s permission, Paul started beating, imprisoning, and killing all the Christians he could find.

But then, while Paul was going from Jerusalem to Damascus, Jesus blinded him with a flash of light from heaven, and then sent a Christian from Damascus to un-blind him. Paul had a change of heart, but he just couldn’t make himself stop sinning.

Paul spent several days with the Christians in Damascus, during which he didn’t learn anything about Jesus from them. Then he suddenly started proclaiming that Jesus was the son of God, which confused everyone.

The Jews in Damascus wanted to kill Paul now that he was promoting Christianity. But he escaped back to Jerusalem, and tried to join the Christians there. At first they didn’t believe that their enemy was really a Christian now, but someone convinced them.

But then the Jews there tried to kill him too. So Paul went away and started preaching his own foolish message of Christianity to the world. People thought he was insane. Paul preached only to foreigners, who weren’t familiar with Jesus and so had no preconceived ideas of what he was actually like. Paul and his companions suggested that they might harm people who didn’t do what he thought God wanted. And the terrified foreigners complied.

Three years later, Paul went to Jerusalem briefly and met the Christians there for the first time, again. The apostle Peter (also known as Simon or Cephas) also started preaching Christianity to Gentiles, which the other Christians of Judea thought was wrong. They thought only Jews could be Christians. But Peter said he had had a dream that God told him to eat animals that were forbidden by God’s law. Therefore, it must be okay for Gentiles to be Christians.

Paul briefly questions the reliability of his knowledge about Jesus

Over a decade later, Paul heard that Christians from Judea were teaching Gentiles that they couldn’t be saved unless they were circumcised. Paul, having never actually met Jesus nor learned the original church’s doctrine, had been teaching something quite different. He had taught his followers that Jesus had made all those useless old Jewish laws obsolete. Especially circumcision.

So Paul decided to go to Jerusalem again, to talk with the apostles and make sure he was getting the message right. He found that, contrary to what he thought the spirit of Jesus had revealed to him, the original Christian church believed that all Christians had to follow all the Jewish laws, including circumcision. Peter, who tended to say foolish things, discussed the matter with Paul, who he thought was awfully hard to understand. They seemed to come to an agreement, but that didn’t last long.

The apostles sent Paul out with a letter telling the Gentile Christians that they only had to follow a few Jewish laws. But Paul really didn’t think even Jews needed to follow even those laws. He sometimes pretended to think people were still under the law though, in order to be more convincing to people who thought that way.

The original Christians attempt to debunk Paul’s misinformation

Then Jesus’s brother James convinced Peter and the rest of the Jewish Christian church and even Paul’s companion Barnabas that Gentile Christians did indeed have to live like Jews. Paul opposed them and called them hypocrites.

The Jewish Christian church in Jerusalem sent out their own missionaries to the foreign churches Paul had founded, teaching them their version of Christianity, which Paul disagreed with. They taught Paul’s followers that they had to obey the Jewish laws, including circumcision. They pointed out that they were Jesus’s own chosen apostles, and Paul was not. Some members of Paul’s churches started turning away from Paul and his comrade Apollos, and started following Peter.

So Paul started writing his followers defensive letters, proclaiming himself to be an apostle. He insulted and demonized the “other” apostles, insisting that they weren’t any better than him, and he didn’t need their opinions.

Paul’s insistence on lawlessness gets him arrested

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Paul Hijacks Christianity
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The Story of Ananias and Sapphira
The Communist Cult

The disciples of Jesus were given the ability to perform miracles better than Jesus, and they convinced thousands of people to join their new religion. The members of this original Christian church didn’t keep any personal property; they shared everything they had. Everything they earned had to be brought to their leaders to be distributed among the community according to their needs.

The goal was for everyone to be equally well off, with no one having too little or too much. Everyone was to be paid the same regardless of how much or how little work they did, just as Jesus (and his ancestor David) had taught.

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The Communist Cult
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The Story of the Crucifixion of Jesus
Jesus Goes Back Home for the Weekend

Mad, bad, or God?

Jesus spent a lot of time with disreputable people. He violated the sabbath law, and encouraged others to do the same. When he saw people trying to enforce God’s law, Jesus got in the way. He told his followers to further break God’s laws by refusing to take oaths, eating unclean food, drinking blood, and hating their parents.

Jesus would go on long rants against the Jewish religious leaders. He acted like he thought he was God. He cured some people’s disabilities, only to give them to others. Jesus rudely discriminated against foreigners when they begged him to heal their children. He performed exorcisms despite knowing that it would make people worse off in the end. He sent a legion of demons to massacre someone’s livestock, just because the demons asked him to. This made everyone in that town want Jesus to go away. So he did.

Jesus said he was there to save the world, but he really just wanted to watch the world burn. He went into the temple and wrecked everything and chased the people out with a whip. He promised that those who followed him would not be excessively burdened, but then he required people to do completely pointless and unreasonably unpleasant things.

Jesus insisted on talking in confusing parables, and then got mad when no one understood him. The more he talked to people, the more they hated him. But he couldn’t figure out why. He offered people a reward, but said they could only get it if they didn’t expect a reward. People thought he was demon-possessed. Even his own family thought he was crazy.

God betrays Jesus

But there were also a lot of people who were convinced that Jesus was the Messiah, which the Jewish leaders were worried would get the Jews in big trouble with their Roman overlords. God inspired the high priest to point out that it would be better for one man to die than for the whole Jewish nation to be destroyed over the treasonous claim that Jesus was their king. So the Jewish religious leaders that Jesus had so often disparaged plotted to get him killed. Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples, agreed to get paid to hand Jesus over to them.

Jesus knew what they were planning, and he didn’t want to die. He repeatedly asked God to prevent his death if that was possible. But even though it was possible, God chose not to save him, because he wanted to see him suffer. God wanted to strike Jesus with a sword. How else could God demonstrate his righteousness and justice, if not by getting his innocent son killed instead of punishing all the actual evil people? Unless Jesus let himself be killed, God wouldn’t love him anymore.

Judas “betrays” Jesus

The religious leaders sent soldiers to arrest Jesus. Judas had arranged to let them know who they were after by kissing Jesus. But Jesus told them who he was himself, so Judas didn’t actually have to do anything. But he kissed Jesus and got paid for betraying him anyway. Later, Judas decided he didn’t want that money, and gave it back to the religious leaders, and he also used it to buy a field.

The soldiers took Jesus to the high priest. After he was questioned by the high priest, Jesus was sent off to the high priest, who for some reason wanted to know if Jesus was the son of God. When Jesus replied that he was, the high priest was shocked that Jesus would say such a thing, and the Jewish religious leaders said Jesus should be put to death for blasphemy. But though the Jewish law said Jesus had to be killed, the Jews didn’t have the right to execute anyone under Roman law.

So they handed him over to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, who for some reason thought Jesus was the king of the Jews. Even though no one but those astrologers had ever called him the “king of the Jews” before. And even though the Jews didn’t recognize him as their king. And even though Jesus had refused to become king of the Jews. And even though Jesus, being a descendant of Jehoiachin (AKA Jeconiah), wasn’t even eligible to be king of the Jews.

Pilate didn’t think Jesus had done anything wrong, and he wanted to release him. But the crowd insisted that he should be executed, because the Jewish leaders had somehow gotten all their people to suddenly stop liking Jesus.

So Pilate handed Jesus over to his soldiers to be crucified, while blaming the Jewish people for his decision and proclaiming himself to be innocent, as if he couldn’t overrule the commoners. (It was really God’s fault, though.) The soldiers stripped Jesus, stole his underwear for themselves, beat him, mocked him, and nailed him to a cross. He died, and was put in a tomb.

The totally convincing account of the resurrection

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Jesus Goes Back Home for the Weekend
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The Story of the Temptation of Jesus
The Devil is Surprisingly Bad at Making Deals

After he was baptized, Jesus started following the devil around for some reason. The devil suggested turning rocks into bread so that Jesus would have something to eat after fasting for 40 days. But Jesus didn’t think it was right to eat only bread, so he chose to eat nothing.

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The Devil is Surprisingly Bad at Making Deals
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The Story of John the Baptist
Too Many Herods!

John the Baptist, a relative of Jesus, was in the wilderness of Judea, baptizing and insulting people. People thought he was demon-possessed. He made people get in the river, even though it’s possible to be baptized without getting wet at all.

Jesus (now grown up) came to the river where John was baptizing. John thought Jesus should be the one baptizing him, because he thought Jesus was greater than him. But Jesus wasn’t actually any greater than John, so Jesus had John baptize him instead.

Then John was put in prison for claiming that it was against the law for King Herod‘s son Herod to marry his niece Herodias after she divorced his brother Herod Philip. Herod and his wife Herodias both wanted to kill John, but Herod was hesitant to kill someone who was thought of as a prophet.

On Herod’s birthday, Herodias got her sexy daughter to help her convince Herod to have John beheaded immediately. Herod was very distressed at the thought of having to kill the man he wanted to kill. But he did it anyway, because he had promised to give his hot stepdaughter/niece whatever she asked for.

(Herodias’s daughter married Herod’s other brother who was also named Herod Philip. And later, she married the son of one of Herodias’s two brothers who were named Herod. Herodias’s other brother, Herod Agrippa, later persecuted the disciples of Jesus, and then an angel killed him for failing to point out that he wasn’t a god. Herod Agrippa’s son was… Herod Agrippa, who met the “apostle” Paul.)

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Too Many Herods!
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The Story of the Birth of Jesus
The Massacre of the Innocents

Over a hundred years after the time of Esther, Judea (the home of the Jews) was taken over by the Greeks when Alexander the Great arrived. And three hundred years after that, the Roman Empire took it over.

A carpenter named Joseph, who was descended from the kings of Judah, was engaged to a woman named Mary. Then God impregnated her, which nearly caused them to break up. But God insisted that Joseph should marry Mary anyway, so he did. But he didn’t have sex with her until after she gave birth to God’s baby, which they named Jesus.

While Mary was pregnant, Joseph decided to go to Bethlehem to take part in the governor Quirinius’s census of Judea. Even though Joseph didn’t live in Judea, and even though the census wouldn’t happen till several years later. And Jesus was born there.

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The Massacre of the Innocents
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The Story of Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and Daniel
Daniel in the Lions' Den

Fake fortune tellers exposed

After Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon captured Jehoiakim (the third-to-last king of Judah), the four smartest aristocratic young men in Judah were brought to Babylon to be Nebuchadnezzar’s advisers. Their names were Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah, and Daniel, but king Nebuchadnezzar renamed them Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and Belteshazzar. (Apparently one of those new names wasn’t so catchy.)

Nebuchadnezzar had a troubling dream about a big statue being smashed by a rock, which then became a huge mountain. He decided to see if his magicians could tell him what it meant. To make sure they were really capable of interpreting it, instead of telling them what he had dreamed about, he demanded that they tell him first. The magicians said that was impossible; only a god could do that. Since they couldn’t read his mind, the king decided to have all the wise men in Babylon killed for being frauds.

But the king’s wise adviser Daniel said that wouldn’t be necessary, because his God could help him do what the king demanded. Daniel described the dream and said it was a prediction about the kingdoms that would come after Nebuchadnezzar’s. The king was very impressed, and he promoted Daniel and his friends to high positions.

Daniel obeys the king

After he had a dream about a huge statue, Nebuchadnezzar decided to make a huge statue. He decreed that everyone had to worship the statue or die. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to worship it, so the king had them tied up and thrown into a furnace. Daniel didn’t get thrown into the furnace, so apparently he was willing to worship the king’s idol.

God sent an angel to protect Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and they came out of the furnace unharmed. The king was very impressed, and he promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to high positions.

God continues to communicate badly

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Daniel in the Lions’ Den
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The Story of Jonah and the Fish
It was This Big!

God told a prophet named Jonah to go to the Assyrian city of Nineveh and announce that it would be destroyed soon. But Jonah knew God well enough to know that he wouldn’t actually do what he said he would do. Jonah didn’t think it would be right to deliver a false prophecy, so he ran away from God and hid on a ship that was going somewhere else.1

But God sent a storm, which nearly wrecked the ship. The sailors found out that Jonah had angered his God and brought a storm on their ship. So Jonah suggested they throw him overboard, to divert God’s wrath away from the ship. But the sailors didn’t want to kill him. They tried to sail back and return him to land, so he could resume his mission.

But God liked Jonah’s idea better, so he made the storm worse and prevented them from getting back to land. So the sailors reluctantly threw Jonah overboard, and the storm stopped. God sent a huge fish, which swallowed Jonah and then threw him up on land three days later.

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It was This Big!
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The Story of Elisha and the Mean Boys
God Rescues His Servant From Persecution

The life of Elijah the prophet ended when God took him up to heaven in a whirlwind. He was succeeded by his servant Elisha, who gained the ability to do miracles like Elijah had done. As Elisha was walking along, a bunch of boys saw him and started making fun of him because he was bald. This bothered Elisha, so he stopped to put a curse on them. Then God sent two bears out of the woods to maul the mean little boys, so the bald prophet could continue on his way without anyone reminding him that he was bald.

The end.

The moral of the story

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God Rescues His Servant From Persecution
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The Story of Elijah’s God Contest
The Gods Must Be Lazy

During the reign of the evil King Ahab, some of the Israelites began to abandon their God. They started worshiping another god, called Baal. So Elijah, a prophet of God, challenged Ahab and the 450 prophets of Baal. He had them meet him on a mountain in the presence of the people of Israel.

Elijah had a bull killed and put it on an altar to sacrifice it to God, but didn’t set it on fire. The prophets of Baal did the same for their god. The prophets kept calling to Baal all day, asking him to prove his existence by setting his bull on fire himself, but Baal didn’t respond. Elijah suggested shouting louder, in case Baal was asleep or something, but that didn’t help.

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The Gods Must Be Lazy
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