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GARNER TED ARMSTRONG
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GARNER TED ARMSTRONG
COVER PHOTO: DOUBTING THOMAS BY CARAVAGGIO. WHEN JESUS ROSE FROM THE DEAD,
THOMAS REFUSED TO BELIEVE IT UNTIL HE HAD SEEN AND PUT HIS FINGERS INTO THE
NAIL MARKS IN JESUS’ HANDS, AND PUT HIS HAND IN HIS SIDE. JESUS LATER APPEARED TO
THOMAS AND ASKED HIM TO TOUCH HIS WOUNDS. THOMAS THEN SAID ‘MY LORD AND MY
GOD’. JESUS SAID THAT THOMAS BELIEVED BECAUSE HE HAD SEEN, BUT SAID THAT THOSE
WHO BELIEVED BUT DID NOT SEE WERE BLESSED.
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CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter 1 The Birth of Jesus: The Greatest Story Never
Told
Chapter 2 Jesus the Creator--His Former Life
Chapter 3 Jesus’ Childhood, Education and Early Life
Chapter 4 Jesus and His Family
Chapter 5 Jesus in Palestine--The Historical Facts
Chapter 6 What Jesus Looked Like
Chapter 7 Jesus and John the Baptist: Incongruous?
Chapter 8 Choosing His Disciples
Chapter 9 Water into Wine
Chapter 10 Encounter with Satan
Chapter 11 Jesus’ Faith
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Chapter 12 Miracles and Healings-- Signs of His
Messiahship
Chapter 13 Demons
Chapter 14 “That which is born of the Spirit is Spirit”
Chapter 15 The Kingdom Parables
Chapter 16 Confronting the Pharisees and Sadducees
Chapter 17 Was Jesus a Lawbreaker?
Chapter 18 Satan and Judas--The Mental Perversion
Chapter 19 The Day the Earth Shook
Chapter 20 A Step Through Stone
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Introduction:
Meet the Real
Jesus
It’s time you met the real Jesus.
It’s time you knew Him as He was: sometimes brusque, abrupt
and authoritative. Always thoughtful, philosophical and profound.
It’s time you knew that Jesus could be the kindest and most gentle
human being on earth, showing boundless love, mercy and
forgiveness to those who genuinely asked for it and were in a
repentant spirit. But it is time to recognize that Jesus could also
radiate blazing anger and could hurl swift, incisive indictments at
all posturing egotists, self-righteous religionists, simpering crowd
followers, or even at His own beloved disciples when they got out
of line.
It’s time you knew that Jesus perspired just as you do; that He
grew desperately hungry and tired; that He almost starved to
death on one terrible occasion; that He suffered through the entire
panorama of human temptations, passions and emotions which are
common to us all; that He enjoyed food and drink; that He
appreciated feminine beauty.
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It’s time you knew that Christ could cry, shout, laugh and sing;
that He could enjoy the rough camaraderie of men of His own age
in an out-of-doors camp, or appreciate the glittering setting of
fabulous feasts in the most palatial of estates.
It’s time that you realized that Jesus was not a vagabond; that He
was a professional builder in the construction business, combining
the technology of “modern,” first-century engineering with the art
of the skilled craftsman.
It’s time you knew the Jesus who was admired by officers high in
the Roman army, who became a puzzle to Pilate, who was hated
by the Pharisees, greatly beloved by His disciples, held in awe by
the masses, detested by Judas, deeply admired by a proud mother,
intensely loved by John, rebuked by Peter, and who was just as
intensely human as you are.
Few know that Jesus was not born on or anywhere near December
25;
--that, as a boy, Jesus learned a profession; that He became the
senior member in a construction partnership; that He owned at
least one and probably two homes of His own; that He paid taxes.
--that Jesus slept indoors most of His life and frequently spent the
night in the homes of very wealthy people, including Romans as
well as religious opponents.
--that He was a personal friend of con artists, soldiers, fishermen,
cheats, liars, thieves, crooked politicians, religious leaders and
prostitutes.
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--that Jesus did not come to save the world some two thousand
years ago, that He has not been trying to save it since, and that He
is not trying to save it today.
--that Jesus did not die of a broken heart; that He was not
crucified on “Good Friday”; that He was not resurrected on
“Easter Sunday”; that neither Jesus nor His disciples ever
celebrated (or taught anyone to celebrate) Christmas or Easter.
--that Jesus had to prove to doubting disciples by incontrovertible
evidence that He had truly been resurrected.
--that Jesus Christ is alive today, is planning to return to earth and
has actually begun His “countdown” from heaven!
If your own values are those of the common person, the real Jesus
may insult you, shock you, please you, challenge you, inspire you,
surprise you, make you wonder. But He will never bore you.
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Chapter 1
The Birth of
Jesus:
The Greatest
Story
Never Told
Jesus was born sometime in the late summer or early autumn of 4
B.C.
The first time I ever made this statement to anyone I was viewed
with a combination of doubt, incredulity, hostility and outright
pity.
“How in the world could Jesus have been born before Christ?” I
was asked.
It so happens that the present system in the Western Christian-
professing world of counting years either prior to or subsequent to
the event of our Savior’s birth was not established until the work
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of Dionysius the Little, many, many centuries this side of the
event.
In the events surrounding Jesus’ birth, God managed to move a
whole empire by causing the world leader of that time to establish
an entirely new government bureau (the taxing and census
bureau) which finally resulted in Joseph and Mary ending up in
Bethlehem at the time of Jesus’ birth! Part of the requirement of
the vast worldwide census-taking was each family returning to the
city of its origin (“And all went to be taxed everyone (into) his
own city” (Luke 2:3-4), so since the Bible claimed Joseph was of
the lineage of David (as both genealogical records in Matthew
and Luke prove) he had to journey with his wife who was in an
advanced state of pregnancy from Nazareth to Bethlehem, which
is called the “city of David.” The census in Palestine took place in
our faulty chronological reckoning about the year 4 B.C.
From early on, Mary understood that she was pregnant. She knew
the meaning of the interruption of the normal menstrual cycle;
after all, hadn’t an angel actually told her this would happen?
Though it must have been nearly unbelievable, and there surely
must have been moments of doubt, Mary’s training and deep
religious education, including the quality of her own character
and the deadly seriousness of the impending persecutions and her
knowledge of glances of those in her own community, must have
all been weighing heavily upon her mind as she contemplated her
gradually changing form, slightly swelling belly, and growing
breasts.
Even though there probably had been many sessions between
husband and wife, poring over those prophecies they knew
referred to what was happening within the body of Mary herself,
explaining why this shocking transformation in their own private
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lives had turned their little world upside down, they did not have
perfect understanding of many vague references later revealed by
the gospel writers, and by Jesus Himself.
Naturally, Joseph and Mary had been living with the pain of
growing notoriety ever since friends and relatives learned of
Mary’s pregnancy. They were fully prepared to accept it, as
Mary’s humble statement, “Behold, the. handmaiden of the
Lord,” clearly shows.
Still, it was tough, and they were as human as you and I.
Oh, there were close friends and relatives who knew the truth.
After all, Elizabeth and Mary were cousins, and Elizabeth was
carrying the baby who would grow up to become John the
Baptist—both remembered the remarkable occasion when the two
babies had reacted so obviously when the two expectant mothers
met. Joseph and Mary could spend time with such people, away
from the smirks and knowing stares of the hypocrites.
But suffered when friends talked behind their backs; they hurt
when former friends shunned them; they Probably had second, or
even third, thoughts about the tremendous burden they had
assumed, as would any other normal human beings. But they had
the courage to see it through.
It may have seemed a cruel twist of fate, to be required by the
Romans to travel all that distance during the final, crucial month
of pregnancy. It is clear that Joseph and Mary were not acting out
any special predestined fulfillment of prophecy, or they would
have seen the predictions that Christ was to be born in Bethlehem,
and would have tried to travel earlier, at an easier time, and to
have arranged accommodations more suitable than the hasty, last
ditch improvisation of a manger.
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