12 APOSTLES WERE 12 LIARS

  
The Christian religion is based on Jesus Christ being our saviour according to the word of the apostles. Jesus appointed 12 and one went astray and was replaced.  Then Paul the most dedicated Christian preacher claimed to be an apostle and to be accepted by the others.

UNRELIABLE

The apostles and their followers twisted and lied about the Old Testament to make it seem to have predicted their saviour god. The apostles claimed that Jesus rose from the dead and formed a Church. This Church killed Jesus if he lived at all. The scriptures of this Church say that the apostles did nothing to try and save Jesus from the arrest which led to his death on the cross. The book of Acts says that the Holy Spirit came down on the apostles - Christians say this was the birthday of the Church. Even Acts doesn't say that. It is only one testimony and the Bible itself, on God's authority, says one testimony is no good. Is it too much to say that the Church killed Jesus and then used his memory to gain power and prestige and money and were willing to distort that memory in pursuit of these worldly blessings?

The early Church used fear to get money off its converts. This is admitted by the book of Acts when Peter’s magic murdered Annas and Sapphira. It is theft to scare people into paying.

St Paul in Romans 2:22 speaks of a Jewish sin of robbing temples.  He does not mean pagan temples for any Jewish robberies of temples were too few to even think about.  Given the hatred the Jew had for pagan idols the Jew would not go near the temple of a false god anyway.  Robbing temples refers to stealing from donors to the Temple in Jerusalem.  Even today we might speak of robbing Vaticans though there is only one Vatican so the plural means nothing.  Josephus wrote of how Jewish religious leaders stole money given by a rich woman to the Jerusalem Temple.  Jesus called the temple a den of thieves.  Maybe the apostles as Jews were robbing the temple too in some way!  Paul compares the sin to worshipping idols for that is stealing the worship due to God and giving it to something else.
 
The apostles used the resurrection of Jesus to present themselves as witnesses of God and his gospel. But Jesus himself said that the Law and the Prophets were so convincing that even a messenger of God rising from the dead would not be as good (Luke 16). They all knew fine well that these books were not that convincing.
 
How could the apostles be witnesses when we have only their word for it that Jesus said they were?
 
Had the apostles been sincere they would have done their utmost to provide character references and affidavits to support their claims and would have written as much as they could and ensured that their material would be preserved. They did not. They acted as if they didn’t care if the Church survived them long or not and that is a clue about their insincerity. God could not tell them how to guarantee that their papers would be with us forever so they were not in touch with the Holy Spirit at all. Jesus said that anybody who cannot be trusted in little things cannot be trusted in greater. And yet his apostles did not prove themselves worthy of trust.
 
The gospel of John says that Thomas and the apostles went with Jesus to the place where Lazarus was buried believing that they would die with Jesus for their enemies were going crackers. This is plain fanaticism for we read later that Thomas and the others were unable to believe that Jesus really rose from the dead. And we are expected to be impressed by the fact that the apostles allegedly died for their faith in Jesus’ resurrection.

GOSPELS LIED
 
If we can prove that the apostles and the four gospellers, who claimed to be preserving the doctrine of the apostles, were liars we have done all we need to do to show that Christianity is just a man-made scam. The Christian religion is based on them. Jesus supposedly left the apostles to teach us and if they cannot be trusted then he failed. He was a useless Son of God if he couldn’t preserve his message.
 
Matthew, Mark and Luke lied when they said Jesus was the Son of God despite reporting that Jesus when accused of casting out demons by the devil’s power said that the devil cannot have a kingdom if he casts out his own demons which was ridiculous for the demons might be more useful elsewhere.
 
We also have the abuse of Old Testament texts which were not even intended to be prophecies twisted into prophecies of Jesus. For example, Matthew said that a prophecy about a maiden giving birth to a son she will call Emmanuel and a prophecy about Rachel weeping for her children predicted the birth of Jesus and the massacre of the innocents. Neither prophecy he quoted does that at all. Christians answer that they were prophecies in a figurative sense but where does Matthew say that? The gospels were written to defend the faith and to do that it is best to ignore figurative prophecies unless you are desperate. Anyway figurative prophecies could mean anything and are an indication that the person interpreting them is gullible.
  
APOSTLES CAPABLE OF RELIGIOUS FRAUD
 
Jesus appointed twelve apostles, that is, chief witnesses that he was the Son of God as shown by his return from the dead (Acts 1). The word apostle means one sent. In 1 Corinthians 12 we read that apostleship is the first or chief office in the Church and that not all are apostles. Because the apostles were witnesses to the faith they were the foundation that the Church was built on (Ephesians 2:20).

Justin Martyr wrote that all the apostles lied about knowing Jesus the night Peter denied knowing him. They had no need to do that. Peter for example, should have stayed away from anybody who could ask him if he was a disciple and/or disguised himself.

The gospels do not agree on the names of some of the apostles. Very important people do not change their names and confuse so there was some kind of deception going on. Lies were being told in order to make fake apostles seem authentic.

We want to see if the apostles committed fraud in religion which would mean we should not have much confidence in them when they testify to Jesus being the Son of God, risen from the dead.
  
James condemned gossip in his epistle but that did not stop him approving of it when the Bible did it.

The apostles dishonestly pretended they didn’t notice the many deceptions and contradictions Jesus made. They didn’t want to. But many of them were more than obvious. For example, Jesus preferred to care for sinners than for the self-righteous. The latter need his help more for he has they that were the worst of sinners.

The apostles acted like the Jews by practicing that religion. In reality, the apostles were heretics by today’s Christian standards and were supporting a system that opposed the claims of Jesus – they deceived their countrymen and women. By encouraging their Jewish devotion, Jesus showed them that he was a true son of Satan but they didn’t give a damn. Jesus and them would have set up their own brand of sectarian Judaism if they had had any integrity.

Jesus and the apostles let Judas carry their purse though Judas was regularly stealing from it (John 12:16). And then they preached honesty and condemned tempting others. They must have told that he did this if it is true proving that they expected people to listen to them telling them not to reveal the secret faults of others while they did that themselves. What frauds they were! It is more likely that they let it happen for they would not have been gullible enough to think that the money was falling out or anything.

The Book of Acts says that the apostles lived a long time after the alleged supernatural happenings in relation to Jesus that they saw. Yet their enemies are supposed to have been thirsting for their blood like men wandering through a desert pining for water. The apostles could not have survived so long without hiding and depending on people to tell lies for them. They must have commanded lies. This would prove that they did not expect God to look after them. In that case, they would have to be frauds.

The Christians scoff at the miracles in non-Christian scriptures but don’t complain about the writer of 2 Peter being credulous when he declared that a donkey spoke like a human according to the Old Testament but they use the writer to defend their claims about Jesus. It is tragic that history and reason and fairness have to be sacrificed so that Christians can compliment themselves on the great Jesus they follow for in following him they follow what they want him to be so it is all about themselves. It’s selfish in the horrible sense of the word.

The Bible says that Jesus’ followers and admirers were accused of fraud and wickedness by the Jews. If so then there are far better grounds for disbelieving the Bible tale of Jesus than for accepting it. There were hundreds of negative and hostile testimonies from the critics and only five from believers. These are the gospels and the book of Acts. Jesus’ followers were mainly interested in his faith healing and we know too little about the apostles to hold that they were all agreed about the story of Jesus. Still, you have crazy clergy saying the apostles must have been telling the truth when nobody debunked them!
 
The Christian religion is unable to give adequate verification of any of its claims. For example, we know we have to accept the simplest explanation we can find. If the gospels are convincing (they are not - an empty tomb and apparitions afterwards of the person who had been in the tomb still does not prove a resurrection) in relation to their claim that Jesus Christ rose from the dead it is easier to believe that the miracle is in the credibility of the records and not in the miracle of resurrection. The plausibility of the records only means that the records are plausible not that they are correct. Something rather different from an actual resurrection could have been what really happened. Then some forces set to work to guide writers to tell a story that supported a resurrection story and was believable. The lesser miracle of psychic guidance of the writers is what should be accepted not the huge miracle of resurrection.

Christians argue that the gospels must be historically true when they teach that such a stupid and untrustworthy bunch of people bore witness to the resurrection and to Jesus. They think that nobody would have invented the stuff about them. But maybe the authors did not realise the folly of doing this or saw the advantages it brings. In the nineteenth century, Joseph Smith claimed that he tried to deceive the angel Moroni and get the Golden Bible off him to sell it and his visions were certainly hoaxes regardless. He told this lie to make his story more believable to the stupid. When a religion thrives regardless of the failings of the founders which has happened all the time why not admit or invent those failings? Admitting or inventing the failings actually can help!

Please don’t argue that when such a bunch of apostles had so many holes in their brand of religious testimony that it must be true for that would mean that the liar is more reliable than the honest person.
 
The apostles were capable of religious fraud.
 
I could write for a month on the lies of the apostles but they told plenty and certainly were not fit to be witnesses of the so-called Christ or anybody else for that matter.

CONCLUSION
 
Only a fool would trust in apostolic teaching. The Christians claim to be the apostolic Church. They thereby call themselves liars.
 
BOOKS CONSULTED
 
ALLEGED DISCREPANCIES OF THE BIBLE, John W Haley, Whitaker House, Pennsylvania, undated
BIBLICAL EXEGESIS AND CHURCH DOCTRINE, Raymond E Brown, Paulist Press, New York, 1985
CHRIST AND PROTEST, Harry Tennant, Christadelphian Publishing Office, Birmingham, undated
CHRISTIANITY FOR THE TOUGH-MINDED, Editor John Warwick Montgomery, Bethany Fellowship, Minnesota, 1973
Conspiracies and the Cross, Timothy Paul Jones, Front Line, A Strang Company, Florida, 2008
IN DEFENCE OF THE FAITH, Dave Hunt, Harvest House, Eugene, Oregon, 1996
JESUS AND THE FOUR GOSPELS, John Drane, Lion Books, Herts, 1984
JESUS HYPOTHESES, V Messori, St Paul Publications, Slough, 1977
NEW AGE BIBLE VERSIONS, GA Riplinger, Bible & Literature Foundation, Tennessee, 1993
THE BIBLE UNEARTHED, Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, Touchstone Books, New York, 2002
THE CASE FOR CHRIST, Lee Strobel, HarperCollins and Zondervan, Michigan, 1998
THE HOLY BIBLE NEW AMERICAN VERSION, Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington DC, 1970
THE JESUS EVENT, Martin R Tripole SJ, Alba House, New York, 1980
THEOLOGICAL DICTIONARY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. Kittel Gerhard and Friedrich Gerhard, Eerdman’s Publishing Co, Grand Rapids, MI, 1976
THE PASSOVER PLOT, Hugh Schonfield, Element Books, Dorset, 1996
THE UNAUTHORISED VERSION. Robin Lane Fox, Penguin, Middlesex, 1992
THE VIRGINAL CONCEPTION AND BODILY RESURRECTION OF JESUS, Raymond E Brown, Paulist Press, New York, 1973