A gospel of Judas?

The betrayal as a supporting role.

As is so often the case, the enemies of the gospel deal remarkably carelessly with certain facts. That was to be expected since the sinful person simply does not want to be confronted with the facts that unmask his own “right” as a lie. In this case, for example, a number of theologians and other people, who would like to be considered experts, claim that without the betrayal of Judas the crucifixion of Jesus would not have taken place. This would mean that we owe a lot to Judas. However, looking at the whole situation, as it unfolded at the time of Jesus' surrender to the Jewish/Roman authorities, is the conclusion, that the rulers of the people who, accompanied by the Roman soldiers, even without the help of Judas would have found Jesus. It probably would have taken some more time. In the overcrowded Jerusalem (because of the impending Passover) there were undoubtedly masses of witnesses in the neighborhood who were aware of the places where Rabbi Jesus regularly was to be found. Had the enemies of Jesus inquired, they would indeed have found Jesus without the help of Judas. The facts are further that it was primarily the rulers of the people who were eager to deal with Jesus. So the action started from them (and would have taken place anyway), which opportunity was abused by Judas giving them a helping hand with that. And then by claiming his traitor wage. Because the Jewish leaders went crazy and wanted to seize Jesus as quickly as possible, Judas played absolutely no crucial(!) role in this whole drama but only a supporting role. Incidentally, that does not hide the fact that it was precisely a disciple of Jesus who cooperated with the enemies of Jesus. That in itself is and remains a dramatic event and is an example of apostasy as it has been repeated many times since: betrayal from within your own ranks.

Jesus, knowing that His time of suffering was imminent, moreover made absolutely no effort to flee from His enemies. In Matthew 26:53-54 He, therefore, made clear to Peter during His capture: “Or do you think that I cannot call upon my Father and He will immediately set aside more than twelve legions of angels for Me? How then would the scriptures be fulfilled, which say that it must be done this way?” Until that time, Jesus had purposely avoided the Jews who wanted to kill Him, more than once. For example, in John 7:1 we can read a brief remark: “And after that Jesus went about in Galilee; for he would not rest in Judea, because the Jews sought to kill him.” Even during His presence in the temple, the Jewish leaders were possessed of hatred and kept trying to get their hands on Him, but because the time had not yet come they did not get the chance. How different was that with His captivity, when He said in Luke 22:53: “While I was with you daily in the temple, you did not reach out to Me. But this is your hour and the power of darkness.” In Matthew 26:2, even two days in advance, Jesus let His disciples know that all this was going to happen: “You know that in two days it will be Easter, and then the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.” He therefore voluntarily surrendered to the course of events and so it became reality as he professed in John 10:17-18: “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life to take it again. No one takes it from Me, but I discard it from Myself. I have power to lay it down and power to take it again; I have received this commandment from My Father”.

Then Satan entered him.

So the apostate disciple Judas had nothing to say about that. With or without Judas' role Jesus' crucifixion would have taken place anyway. The ladies and gentlemen of the theological front, who with their runaway fantasies and with a historically totally unreliable, antique and rattling novel in their hands (i.e. the so called “gospel of Judas”), seriously overestimate the role of Judas, push through all sorts of wild theories that bear witness to a deep aversion of the message that Jesus brought. If that is someone's motive, the phenomenon of “science” is eagerly misused for the umpteenth time to force through truths other than the real truth. History has already shown this countless times.

However, the foregoing does not alter the fact that the apostasy of that one disciple of Jesus was already predicted in the Old Testament. Just as several facts about Jesus' suffering and dying were recorded centuries ago in the writings of what we now call the “Old” Testament. Jesus quoted from that when He said in John 13:18-19: “I do not speak of all of you; I know who I have chosen; but the scripture must be fulfilled: He that eats my bread has lifted his heel against me. I already tell you before it happens, that when it happens you believe that I am it.” While He continues a little further in John 17:12 and prayed “As long as I was with them, I kept them in thy name, which thou hast given me, and I have watched over them, and none of them is perished, but the son of perdition, that Scriptures may be fulfilled.”

In John 6:70 moreover, Jesus had already announced the state of affairs in even harsher terms: “Have I not chosen you twelve? And one of you is a devil.” The latter was eventually demonstrated during the Passover meal by the apostate Judas, and in John 13:27: “And after this piece of bread, Satan entered into him. Then Jesus said to him: “What you want to do, do it urgently.”

You too, Peter!

In addition, Judas was not the only one who made the wrong choice. While the apostasy of Judas was already a drama, what was added to it was the way the apostle Peter went wrong. The big difference with the behavior of Judas, however, was the incomparably different dedication of the impulsive Peter, who so well meant it but, concerning his wisdom, regularly failed. In the run-up to Jesus' crucifixion, this good-natured Peter made himself heard again. Like in John 13:37 where he says: “Lord, why can't I follow you now? I will dedicate my life to you!“ To which Jesus answers: “Will you dedicate your life to me? Verily, verily, I say to you, the cock will not crow, until you have denied Me three times.” The further course is known. Initially Peter shows remarkably more courage than the other disciples. We read in the Gospels that he is the only one of them who ventures into the lion's den: the house of the high priest. Of the other ten disciples, there is no trace left whatsoever, and that does indicate that Peter, on the other hand, did not simply leave his Master alone. But under the pressure of the circumstances, he finally collapses and after twice having sworn that he does not know Jesus of Nazareth at all, Luke is the only one to describe a particularly moving moment. In Luke 22:60-62 Peter says: “Man, I don't know what you say! And immediately, while he was still speaking, a rooster crowed. And the Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord how He had said to him, Before the cock crows today, you will deny me three times. And he went out and wept bitterly.” At that one moment when Jesus turned around and looked at Peter, Peter undoubtedly felt the ground sinking beneath his feet. It also shows that Jesus Himself was particularly saddened by Peter's denial because Jesus so deliberately turned around and sought eye contact with Peter. If I compare this moving outcome of Peter's initially still sincere act of courage and loyalty to His Master, while the other disciples had fled, my personal conviction is that Peter's betrayal for Jesus has been much more dramatic than the apostate behavior of Judas. Jesus had known about Judas for a long time that Judas was unreliable and not worthy of discipleship. The break between Jesus and Judas had long before caused a spiritual separation between the two of them, making Judas a real enemy of Jesus. And even though this is a particularly negative fact, it is always more tolerable to deal with an enemy than with a friend who behaves hostile. The friend of Jesus who acted hostile and unfaithful was Peter. We even read in Matthew 26:74: “Then he began to curse himself and swear: I do not know this man.” Cursing himself was a very serious matter and not just a simple talk. I once read an explanation about it that boiled down to Peter placing himself outside the circle of disciples because of his curse. Because Peter actually made a spiritual alliance with the devil.

It was therefore not without reason that after His resurrection in John 21:15-17 Jesus asked three times to Peter: “Do you really love me?” Peter's self-curse had to be broken again by his sincere confession that his love for his Master was really meant. In addition, it was an opportunity for Jesus to seriously admonish Peter because of his unfaithfulness to Jesus. I know for sure that the whole incident was particularly saddening for Jesus and made Him deeply sad. He therefore wanted to deal with it anyway. And that while the apostate Judas, meanwhile perished (he hang himself), in Jesus' mind, on the shore of that lake, would not have been much more than a distant memory.

The gnostic on repetition.

At the beginning of April 2006 I watched the detailed documentary that was broadcast by the National Geographic Channel following the publication of the text of the resurrected “gospel” of Judas. Just like the infamous writings found in Egyptian Nag-Hammadi in 1945 (including Thomas's “gospel”), this Judas gospel also appears to have a gnostic background. That gnostic background was briefly summarized: a gathering of ideas from various pagan religions and “Christian” variants thereof, with a strong emphasis on “hidden” knowledge. That knowledge is the way to salvation in gnostics. The same damned arrogance that caused the first woman to fall into the trap of Satan by believing to become “like God” can also be found in the corrupt doctrine of the Gnostics. A doctrine in which man himself is the highest moral authority to which he has to respond. For example, I read somewhere that the gnostic is his own legislator, but also his own highest judge. According to gnostics, moral rules of conduct are therefore not imposed on man by a higher authority. That this higher authority against Whom the Gnostics are kicking is the Creator of this world (and that is Jesus Christ!) is beyond doubt. It all simply boils down to the fact that sinful man with all his gnostic convulsions elevates himself to a god. And thus actually not appoints himself, but the father of lies, Satan, as the god to whom he has subjected himself. That is not freedom but slavery. The same slavery to the ruler of this world through which mankind once ended up in all this big misery!! The apostle Paul rubbed his readers this under the nose in 1 Corinthians 12:2: “You know that while you were still Gentiles, you blindly drifted to the stupid idols.” The Gnostics are a striking example of this slavery.

Greek philosophy and Hellenistic Judaism were among other things the sources from which the Gnostics once scraped their knowledge. That Hellenistic Judaism in itself was already a mixture between the world of thought of the Greek and Jewish traditions. The history of the Jewish people in the Old Testament also teaches us that despite all the reproofs, warnings and punitive measures, the people of Israël turned their back on Yahweh again and again and again and persistently worshiped the gods of the surrounding pagan nations. The period of Babylonian exile has also contributed to the strong pagan influence of Jewish thinking.

The tidal wave of confusion and uncertainty the writer Dan Brown has on his conscience with his book “The Da Vinci Code” has, among other reasons, that the also gnostic “gospels” of Mary Magdalene and of Philip through his book got a status of historical reliability. Later statements by this writer that it is only a fictional story and that the readers therefore have to decide for themselves what they want to believe about it, or not, have only made the damage worse. In this “gospel” of Mary Magdalene the following is proclaimed:

• The physical resurrection of Jesus is a myth.
• The Second Coming of Jesus is a myth.
• Jesus' suffering and dying is not the way to salvation and eternal salvation.
• Jesus claimed that there is no sin.

The last statement alone shows convincingly enough that the sinful person who wants to be his own judge at the time spoke of a status of holiness through this gnostic “knowledge.” This same long-standing resistance to the truth that sinful man cannot achieve any redemption of his own or in his own strength is now being continued in the form of New Age thinking.

The apostate Origenes.

What Mr. Dan Brown and other peers are trying to impose on us is that the Roman church would have suppressed “true Christianity” by destroying the Gnostic writings and persecuting the Gnostics. And that therefore the Bible gives a distorted picture of the true teaching of Jesus. Well, it was coming, and here it is: I have got bad news for Mr. Dan Brown and his peers, because in the following quote the aforementioned nonsense is being tackled hard. Here is a quotation from the English book “If The Foundations Be Destroyed”, written by Charles Salliby.

Quote:
The man who has perhaps put the most effort into blending Scripture with Gnosticism was Origenes (185-254 AD). Moreover, no one, to his shame this has to be said, has ever defended more apostate teachings that ultimately gained a permanent place in history than he did. Nevertheless, his influence on Christianity, from his time to ours, can hardly be captured in words. Not only did his ideas always attract the attention of the Roman Catholic Church, almost all Protestant scholars of this century have also been influenced by the power of the man's ideas. While his genius and understanding of the scriptures were extraordinary, his preference for Gnosticism, Platonism, Mysticism and the early heresies made him anything but a reliable leader or teacher. His teachings were repulsive. Although he is considered the greatest theologian of the third century, he learned that stars have a soul, that demons will be saved and he learned errors such as purgatory and trans-substantiation. He also learned (through his application of Greek philosophy) that Jesus was created and was not God from eternity. No wonder this man has ever claimed: the scriptures are of little use to those who understand them the way they were meant to be.
Origenes deliberately changed the Scriptures to match them with his own confusing philosophy, and so he has many of the removed texts on his conscience that we now miss in modern Bible translations. It was this Origen that influenced Jerome (340-420 AD), the latter of which translated the Latin Vulgate, which was elevated to the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church during the Council of Trent in 1546.
End of quote.

I now pick up the thread at that Vulgate again. This was in fact translated by Jerome into Latin from, yes, the Gnostic manuscripts that were “adapted” by Origen. Including the manuscript that later became known as the Codex Vaticanus as well as the Codex Alexandrinus. The Vulgate has never been anything other than a Latin version of the Gnostic errors that became an anti-gospel through Origen's actions. The Latin Vulgate, by the way, has been the standard Bible of the Roman church since its inception, long before the Council of Trent became involved. It has never been said that the Roman church eradicated Gnosticism, as if that disappeared Gnosticism would have been “the real doctrine of Jesus Christ.” The Roman religion, on the other hand, simply took over the Gnostic errors!! It is a religion that never had any difficulty absorbing pagan influences like a sponge.... because it is 100% paganism itself. We must therefore conclude that both this Roman religion and Gnosticism originate from one and the same demonic source and therefore, in summary, come down to the same thing: Jesus may not be God and He is not our Savior. The savior who is used as a figurehead by Rome (Mary, the natural mother of Jesus) is only a mask behind which Satan himself hides. He is therefore really the god in whose service the pope and associates are.
So.... if all those doubters (who after reading the book “The Da Vinci Code” now would like to know the truth) would have read the Bible on a regular basis, whole tribes would not have even bothered to buy that worthless mess from Mr. Dan Brown! And to all doubters who do not yet know what to think of Dan Brown's claims in his book “The Da Vinci Code” about, among other things, the alleged marriage between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, my advice is: read further on this page.

Jewish resistance.

The creation of Gnosticism was also contributed by the Jews who had returned to Egypt, by combining Greek philosophy, Jewish traditions and various remnants of pagan mystery religions to what has since distorted the truth under the collective name “Gnosticism”. In particular, the Jewish philosopher Philo, who lived in the Egyptian city of Alexandria at the time, is known for this. This Philo, in turn, had a major influence on the later Origen (see above). About the Jews who remained in Israël a few centuries before, during the performance of the prophet Jeremiah after the majority of the Judean population had been taken to Babel, we read in Jeremiah 42:19-21 that Jeremiah clearly warns them. He did this with the words: “The Lord has spoken to you, you remnant of Judah, Do not go to Egypt! Know well that I have warned you this day; for you have deceived yourself at the expense of your life when you sent me to the Lord your God with the words: Pray for us to the Lord our God, and tell us according to all that the Lord our God will say and we will do it. For I have told you today, but you will not listen to the voice of the Lord your God, namely to everything with which He has sent me to you.” These laggards nevertheless settled in Egypt. That a curse rested on their stubbornness was ultimately reflected in the fact that these Egyptian Jews, like the Jews who constantly opposed Paul during his missionary journeys, exchanged the message of the gospel for the curse of a religious, gnostic mixture of paganism and Judaism. Thus, against God's prohibition, Jeremiah's contemporaries had returned to Egypt. The same Egypt from which the people of Israël once were led away by Yahweh. Just like 2 Peter 2:22 says: “They have come upon what a true saying goes: a dog that has returned to its vomit, or: a washed sow to the mud pool.” This now undoubtedly also applied to the apostate Jews who had returned to Egypt, who in later centuries had a part in the origin of the Gnostic. I also read somewhere about the gnostic Nag Hammadi writings the telling comment that “it is remarkable that all of its fragments originate in Egypt.” And that makes you think!

Knowledge that makes blind.

In the first centuries since the gospel was spread by the apostles, but even during their missionary journeys, the followers of this Gnostic religion, with its mixture of pagan and “Christian” elements, proved to be fierce opponents of the gospel of Jesus. In their world of thought there was still room for a “Christ” or even for Jesus Christ, but for them Jesus was nothing more than a messenger of the gods or perhaps a prophet. He is not the only begotten Son of God, according to the Gnostics. There is absolutely no place in Gnosticism for Jesus' suffering and dying as the only way of salvation for the man who has fallen into sin and is alienated from God. On the other hand, one promotes the (hidden) knowledge that “forms the way to salvation for the initiated in Gnosticism”, and Jesus' role as a prophet is merely that He makes man aware of the necessity of seeking the god within himself and “remembering himself” That this redemption has nothing to do with an actual redemption was again convincingly brought to the attention of the apostle Paul in 1 Timothy 6:20-21: “O Timothy, keep what has been entrusted to you, keep yourself out of the reach of the unholy, hollow sounds and the contradictions of the so-called knowledge. Some, who are spokesmen for it, have lost track of faith.”

So for the Gnostics, it is man himself who must look for the god within himself. This arrogance is also the standard of all things in today's New Age, and this actually means that the “New” Age lie is just an old lie that has once again opened the attack on the gospel of the Kingdom of God in our days. Sin may no longer be called sin in our world, which is being destroyed by lawlessness and normlessness. While the Bible speaks of the old and sinful man who must die in order to live by God's holy standards. The sinful man, on the other hand, believes he has found a god within himself. However.... as long as man worship the god in himself, he will have to deal with the demon who wants to play god in his life. That is the tough reality. People who are nevertheless so busy and raise their own little self through the Gnostic/New Age route will eventually disappear into the eternal abyss. The edge of that abyss is always at least one step closer than one wants to believe but one is only convinced of that after the last step....

The foolishness of God is wiser than people.

• But you are completely different: you have come to know Christ.
• Yet you have heard of Him and have been taught in Him, as this is the truth in Jesus,
• that you, as far as your former walk is concerned, discard the old man who goes to ruin, according to his misleading desires,
• that you are rejuvenated by the spirit of your thinking,
• and put on the new man, created according to the will of God in true righteousness and holiness.

For those who don't care, the apostle Paul has written the following statement (in three parts) in Romans 8:6-8:

• For the mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace.
• Because the mind of the flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God; by the way, it can't be either:
• those in the flesh cannot please God.

The same hatred and enmity towards Jesus' work of redemption and the same contempt for it have now been plucked out of the mothballs and once again form the driving force behind so many attacks and suspicions of the gospel message under the name “New Age”. That is a message of which (again) Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 1:19-25:

• For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and I will destroy the understanding of the understanding.
• Where is the sage? Where the scribe? Where is the dispute of this time? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
• For since the world in the wisdom of God by its wisdom did not know God, it pleased God to save those who believe, by the foolishness of preaching.
• After all, the Jews want signs and the Greeks seek wisdom,
• but we preach a crucified Christ, it's an irritation for the Jews, a foolishness for the Gentiles,
• but for those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, we preach Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God.
• Because the foolishness of God is wiser than the people and the weakness of God is stronger than people.

What Paul is referring to here is the great contradiction between those who sincerely want to give up their stubbornness and accept the gospel in faith on the one hand and those who, persistent in their foolishness, reject God's outstretched hand. The (contemporary) Gnostics believe they can achieve salvation through their hidden “knowledge” in their arrogance. For those who believe the gospel, however, Paul described an infinitely better alternative in 1 Corinthians 2:6-7: “Yet we speak wisdom to those who are ripe for it, but wisdom not of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, whose power is destroyed, but what we speak as a mystery is the hidden wisdom of God, which God has already ordained from eternity to our glory.” The hidden “knowledge” of the Gnostic/New Age, on the other hand, is unmasked by the apostle in Ephesians 4:17-18: “I say this then and I declare in the Lord that you may no longer walk like the Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their thinking, darkened in their minds, alienated from the life of God for the ignorance that reigns in them, for the hardening of their hearts”. This ignorance only makes sinners even greater sinners, who live in spiritual darkness because their minds are controlled by the father of lies. The apostle Paul spoke about the spiritual blindness that resulted from this in 1 Corinthians 2:14-16 to declare the following: “But an unspiritual man does not accept what is of the Spirit of God, for it is foolishness to him, and he cannot understand it, because it can only be judged spiritually.”
What strikes and surprises me time and again is the ridiculous arrogance of those unspiritual people who, in the eyes of the world, pass for scientists and who also have an air of “the scientist to be taken seriously” around them. However, the “wisdom” of these people will have to give way to the foolishness of God. Because the foolishness of God is by no means foolish but is only called foolish by those who are spiritually blind in their foolish arrogance and pride.

The pitfall of gnostic redemption.

That the real foolishness must be sought on the side of all those enemies of the gospel became clear to me once again when I saw the aforementioned documentary broadcast by National Geographic Channel. In it, among other things, the meaning of Jesus' death on the cross was “revalued”, thus giving Jesus' sacrifice on Calvary a completely different meaning.

The first thing that stood out was the above-mentioned overvaluation of Judas' role as a traitor. It made the overwhelming impression that compared to Judas, the other disciples were just a bunch of silly necks who had hardly understood Jesus' message. The Judas who plays the leading role in the Gospel of Judas was the “chosen” disciple who was aware of this. And thanks to the role of Judas who handed over his Master to the hysterical superiors of the Jewish people, the crucifixion could continue. Christianity, following this line of reasoning, should be grateful to Judas for that. On the other hand, there is the irrefutable fact that because of the underlying gnostic way of thinking, the gospel of Judas emerges from the pen of religious people who, with contempt and disapproval, regarded the suffering and death of Jesus as a ridiculous and totally useless display. The sacrifice of Jesus and the path of suffering that He went has no (redemption) value to the Gnostics.
The twist I am referring to is therefore shown in the following two points:

• In the Judas gospel, written by Gnostics, Judas is the apostle of the apostles who was the only one who understood what it was all about and for that reason handed over Jesus to His enemies, so that thanks to Judas' cooperation Jesus' crucifixion actually took place.
• However, Gnostics absolutely do not believe in Jesus as the Son of God and even less in His sacrifice on Calvary as the way to deliverance from sin.

The contemporary liberal (New Age) theologians who believe that with this Judas gospel in their hands they have a weapon with which they can finally deal with that Jesus of Nazareth (and with His message) rolling over each other in order to have their say. The pitfall hidden under their Gnostic mindset is this adjusted meaning of Jesus' sacrifice on Calvary. The Gnostic version is, summarized, that thanks to Judas' share, the body of Jesus was killed, thereby releasing the divine part of Jesus from that body. However, such a “redemption” has no special value at all because every person is “redeemed” when his body dies. The result of Judas' betrayal is a salvation that has nothing to do with reconciliation with God.

A worldly religion.

If I read the question asked somewhere in relation to the Judean gospel: “Bomb under Christianity?” my answer to that is that people no longer need to ignite the fuse of that bomb because Christianity/spiritual Babylon has long since been destroyed. The serious warning that Jesus made in Revelation 3:1 is just as current as it was then: “And write to the angel of the church in Sardis: This is what He says, who has the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars: I know your works, that you have the name that you live, but you are dead!!” It was certainly not without reason that the apostle Paul, when he said goodbye to the elders of Ephesus in Acts 20:29-30, left behind this penetrating warning when he said: “I know myself that after my passing, grim wolves will come to you who will not spare the herd; and men will arise from your own midst who speak the wrong things to draw the disciples after them.” Referring to the same spiritual enemy, Jesus spoke to His disciples in Luke 22:31-32: “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has longed to sift you like the wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith should not fail.”

Since the apostles spread the gospel and the first congregations expanded, Satan has been continuously engaged in sowing divisions, in bringing grim wolves into the congregations, and in erosion of the message. The result is extensively described in Revelation under the names “Babylon”, the “great whore who sits by many waters” and “mother of the whores and of the abominations of the earth”. This church, which was increasingly taking shape in the first centuries, is considered by theologians and church historians to be the “emerging Christianity” that eventually, mainly in the form of the Roman Catholic Church, grew into a world religion. In this world, however, a world religion is equivalent to a worldly religion.

The Word of God is alive and powerful.

However, the gospel of Jesus is still alive and well, and Jesus' modern-day disciples are certainly not impressed by the frantic efforts of pagan scientists who, with or without an air of Christianity, merely demonstrate their own blindness in the name of “science”. Resistance, rebellion and hostility to the God of heaven and earth are as old as humanity. How our Creator deals with this, among other things, was recorded by the prophet Isaiah, in Isaiah 44:24-25: “Thus saith the Lord your Redeemer, and your Former of the womb: who stretched out the heavens, I alone; who expanded the earth by My own strength; who overthrow the signs of the false prophets and the fortune tellers as fools denounce; who make the wise go back and make their knowledge foolish”.
Their foolishness is, among other things, that they completely fail to notice that the Bible in its current form, contrary to all “scientific” suspicions, is the only book in the world that can change people's lives for the better. While writing this it came to my mind that a Dutch “Evangelical Broadcasting Company” once broadcasted a program that back then was called: “God changes people.” However, in a later stage from the title of this program the word “God” was filtered out by this broadcasting company. Wich, for years, had been systematically eroded from within by unspiritual people. Unspiritual people who stood stiff with theological knowledge but who did not show a real living relationship with Jesus Christ. That God can change people nevertheless remains an unavoidable fact and many of them were touched deep in their hearts by the God of heaven and earth, precisely by reading the Bible. That does not just fall out of the sky because the secret behind it is read loud and clear in Hebrews 4:12-13: “For the word of God is alive and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, and it penetrates so deeply that it separates soul and spirit, joints, and marrow, and [is] a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart, and no creature is hidden from Him, for all things are open and uncovered before the eyes of Him for whom we have to account.”

The reality is exactly as Paul once predicted. Concerning the grim wolves that would invade the congregations. I have already let my thoughts go about that on another page of this website. To put that piece of fearless male language back into the battle, I quote below from my own archive:

Begin quote:
The Jesuit order is more a military order (with a very heavy and long-term education) than that this order has anything to do with religion. Founded by an occultist in the sixteenth century, and partly with the aim of resolving the effects of the Reformation on the Vatican, the Jesuit Order has since then, with unprecedented fanaticism, engaged in just about anything that (still) is not Roman. By weakening these “enemies of Rome” from the inside out and eventually by exterminating them. The most dirty jobs this fanatic and ruthless order with its cadaver discipline has already done for the Vatican and that happens all too often because Jesuits fulfill functions such as that of Protestant pastors(!), Protestant theologians or by holding another position within a (not Roman) church, congregation or organization (such as a broadcaster). It is therefore very obvious that the liberalism that has invaded Protestant theology is also the work of this Jesuit order.
End of quote.

What they want to tell us.

I have placed a short anthology below of what is being proclaimed by scientists concerning what they think is “startling” Judas gospel, accompanied by some inevitable commentary from my own. It is recommended that the following is read with the quotation just mentioned in mind, because of all the fuss about this Gnostic scripture, several normally well-camouflaged (Roman) theologians sometimes skew their mask unintentionally!!

One prof. Dr. Van Oort, who thinks he has to deal with the garbage dump called gnostics, is of the opinion that the description: “The night of betrayal” is no longer acceptable. According to him, it must be: “The night in which Jesus was delivered.”
My comment: Entirely in the Gnostic tradition, Judas is thereby relieved of his apostasy and emphasizes his alleged important hero role. How deep must a person fall before he dares to call black white and white black without blushing?

To the question: “Why was Jesus handed over?” is the answer from Prof. Van Oort: “That remains a mystery.”
My comment: It seems that you must have Prof. Dr. standing before your name in order to not being able to understand what the gospel of the Kingdom of God is all about. The Bible as a whole is clear enough about the underlying reason for Jesus' suffering and dying. If this Prof. Dr. still dares to claim that it remains a mystery this proclaims once again what Jesus once prayed in Luke 10:21: “I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and the wise, but have revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, because that has been a good pleasure for you.” Clear?

The aforementioned Prof. Dr. Oort believes that the earliest Christians of descent were Jewish and that their way of thinking can be found in the Gospel of Judas.
My comment: There is no dispute about the Jewish origins of the earliest Christians. The New Testament, however, is full of Jews who belonged to those earliest Christians, and we find their way of thinking in the Bible!! And certainly not in a dubious scripture that only years later was created by people who might have called themselves “Christians” but were certainly not among the earliest Christians. With the misleading claim that the Gospel of Judas would reflect their “way of thinking,” it is actually said that we should not take the New Testament Bible books too seriously. However, the books in the New Testament have just ended up there because they were generally accepted and believed and thus reflected the real “way of thinking” of those earliest Christians.

We are not yet finished with this Prof. Van Oort, because according to him there is no doubt that the Gospel of Judas is a Gnostic scripture and therefore a unique addition to our knowledge of an important movement in early Christianity.
My comment: How important is a movement within that early Christianity that, as the Bible has shown in the foregoing, produces only a spiritual potion mixture? A mixture of various elements from pagan religions and a gospel that, after being thoroughly streamlined, is no longer a gospel at all? A movement that Paul correctly wrote about in 1 Timothy 6:20-21: “O Timothy, keep what has been entrusted to you, keep yourself out of reach of the unholy, hollow sounds and the contradictions of the so-called knowledge. Some, who are spokespersons for it, have lost track of faith.” Gnosticism is therefore certainly not an important trend but an attack on the gospel of Jesus and whoever is a spokesperson has indeed lost track of it.”

Another figurehead on the theological/scientific front is church historian Elaine Pagels. She has a book on her conscience in which she makes a comparison between the equally dubious “gospel” of Thomas and the gospel of John. The tendency in it is that, according to the Gnostic Gospel of St. Thomas, man should be able to acquire knowledge in his own strength in order to be able to push through his own salvation, whereas in the Gospel of John only passive faith in Jesus is the way to salvation.
My comment: There is a great deal in it that if, for years, someone immersed himself fanatically in everything that smells of gnosticism, in this case also the preference of this church historian definitely goes for the redemption variant of the Thomas gospel. That in the Gospel of Jesus, Jesus strongly emphasizes that without the help of the Holy Spirit man will absolutely not be able to understand the things that are above Him will therefore be an incredible story in her view. This distortion of the facts reminds me of Isaiah 5:20-21 where we read: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil; representing darkness as light and light as darkness; making bitter pass for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and wise in their own judgment.” Because this Gnostic shrugs her nose for the message of Jesus, she brings herself under the judgment of which Isaiah spoke here.

Gnosis connoisseur and emeritus professor Gilles Quispel (now deceased) made the statement about the Gospel of Judas: “From what I have seen so far, I deduce that concerning new knowledge about the figure of Jesus there is nothing to be expected from this Gospel of Judas. It's about the second century. Yet this find is indeed a huge enrichment for church history.”
My comment: Well, well.... if there is no new knowledge there is nothing to be expected from this fantasized scripture concerning “the figure of Jesus” nor will it be the case concerning “the figure of Judas.” The latter was namely the screaming message that was made public during the disclosure (by the National Geographic Channel) of the “scientific” discoveries concerning this dark novel. As if fate was ultimately favorable to us and we could all now find out what a wonderful guy this Judas really was. In contrast, of course, to what those Gospels preach that were once dumped by “the church” in the biblical canon.
The sobering reality, however, is, as prof. Gilles Quispel rightly stated, that there are no new facts in the Gospel of Judas at all, neither about Jesus, nor about Judas. This emeritus professor Gilles Quispel, by the way, openly stated that he nevertheless dared to call himself a gnostic.
The complete hysterical bustle around this pathetic story from the second century is only aimed at being able, in the style of a Satan who sees his time running out, to do as much damage as possible in the hearts of those people who are still genuinely seeking truth. If only we realize!

In February 2006 I read in a message that theologians within the Vatican also wanted to “recalibrate” the traditional view of Judas. According to them, Judas was “not intentionally bad, but he only fulfilled his role in God's plan.” This rehabilitation of Judas would immediately solve the problem of an apparent lack of pity from Jesus for one of his closest co-workers.
My comment: Apparently these gentlemen theologians were already feeling the impending rainclouds: the storm of the announcement of the text of the Gnostic Gospel of Judas, announced before April 2006. It is of course also quite possible that, in the footsteps of the Gnostics, they have no difficulty in distorting the true facts. They already did the latter with their Roman Catholic version of the gospel. The Roman Catholic religion is one hundred percent paganism, even though it has been given a Christian color. And not only that: the Roman religion is even an adapted form of Satanism. In an interview with the Dutch writer Gerard Reve, in which he spoke about his own Roman background, among other things, he made the following statement about the “Jesus” of Roman Catholicism: “That son has nothing to say because his mother takes all decisions“ With which he very concisely depicted what that idolatrous, pagan Mary worship comes down to.
The truthfulness of Jesus' gospel is not served by those conscious theologians anyway. It really doesn't matter whether they adhere to the Roman error or to the Gnostic error. Moreover, by claiming that Judas was not intentionally bad, they completely ignore Jesus' own statements about Judas' behavior. So from where do they get that problem about Jesus' lack of pity? Judas consciously chose to be an enemy of Jesus and was rightly called a devil by Jesus. Especially for this kind of theologians Jesus had the following message in John 3:36: “He that believes on the Son has eternal life; but he who disobeys the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” For: “it is terrible to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31). Nobody changes this truth anymore.

One last quote as a bouncer. I received the following response myself as a result of this page, which at the time was not yet in its full glory online. At the time of this reaction, my complete fireworks had not yet been set off, but apparently the message behind it already did and that prompted an anonymous reader the following “encouragement”:
“How do you know for sure that the gospel of Judas is not true? Do not give feedback from the Bible. Give a specific answer. Why do you tell all this? Maybe you have the spirit of anti-christ. If you read very carefully and think about the gospels, it is not about other people, but about you as a person. Who are you really??”
My comment: The gospels, and of course I mean the gospels in the Bible, are indeed not about other people, but not about me either. They are about Jesus Christ, about His gospel of salvation and about the foundation and expansion of the Kingdom of God on this earth. I am aware that our old and sinful person has a seemingly irreversible tendency to want to be the subject of conversation himself, but the Bible does not care about that. And that is why it only pays attention to important matters. Such as the call for repentance and our laying down of our old and sinful person, with the warning that nothing of it will come true without Jesus Christ or without His Holy Spirit. Despite all our own efforts. In Ephesians 4:22, already cited above, for example, we read this: “....that, as far as your former walk is concerned, you discard the old man, who perishes, according to his misleading desires.” Then the Gnostics/New Agers, on the other hand, may throw their proud, arrogant head into the wind to reach “enlightenment” in their own strength, reality is they just keep walking in the darkness like ordinary sinners. And that's why I write about it.