It was obvious to me, and should be to anybody with a semi-functioning brain, that someone who passes the heart test with such flying colors like the Voice couldn’t have instructed John to make such a fraudulent claim — a claim that cost millions of people their lives, with no hope of them ever “rising again”.
If the resurrection was untrue, it would have had to have been created by these disciples after the death of this GOAT of goodness. No way Jesus would have allowed it while he was alive…
So did they wait until he was gone before trying to pull off one of the greatest Bernie-Madoff-like scams in history? Did they, the spiritual sons of the greatest religious leader in history, go from preaching love to conning millions of people?
It wouldn’t be the first time. Some of the greatest kings throughout history have had some pretty evil sons that followed them. (Just check out the lives of the great Emperor Marcus Aurelius and his megalomaniac son Emperor Commodus.) It could logically follow that these spiritual sons of Jesus could have been hell-bound prodigals who chose to make a permanent home in the filth of deceit.
If they did create this horrendous lie, despite being chosen as the ones to hand on this way of love, what could have been the powerhouse motivator to lead them to commit such evil?
Could their hearts have been infected with what J.R.R Tolkien called dragon sickness?
Tolkien so powerfully taught through fiction that, no matter the time period, where gold is found… so also will be the dragons of humanity grasping for it with all their hearts. And if history class had taught me anything, at least the ones I wasn’t too high for, it’s that these dragons will put on any outfit so long as it leads them to gold. And one of the favorite costumes of these dragons are religious garbs.
Take for instance Pope Leo X. This guy's twisted heart burned for the rich-rich life. And it didn’t take a rocket scientist to know Dragon Leo X’s primary motivation for being the head of those who claimed the resurrection was to satisfy his lust for gold. When he was elected Pope, the first words that surged from his dragon-sick heart were, "God has given the papacy to us, so let us enjoy it."
In his first two years as the elected leader of the Way, he burned up the entire papal treasury. In all, Leo spent about four-and-a-half million ducats in six years. To put that in perspective, a Venetian ducat (which was actual gold, 3.545 grams to be exact) today would be worth about an equivalent of 150 U.S. dollars. That means in less than six years this religious pirate spent approximately six-hundred and seventy-five million dollars on “enjoying the papacy”. He even set his annual salary at ninety million dollars… not too shabby for having your main workload be the sale of indulgences and partying.
Leo X turned the Vatican into a straight-up frat house. He would throw the biggest and sickest parties in Rome for his friends, sparing no expense: bull fights, binge-drinking, and orgies were just a few items always available on his party’s menu. He would do anything to “enjoy the papacy” with his friends. And these same friends and family who partied with him like it was 1999 were the same ones he bought political and religious positions for throughout Europe — scandalously using the Church treasury to do so.
He would continue to remark throughout his time as the leader of these resurrection believers: "How much we and our family have profited by the legend of [the Voice], is sufficiently evident to all ages."
And greedily profit off the claim of the resurrection he and his bros undeniably did.
I had to ask myself the hard questions: Was this Pope Leo X a spiritual dragon-child of John and the other first leaders? Like father, like son? Was this all a Da Vinci-type conspiracy based on these eye-witness disciples after the death of this Voice making the same announcement: ‘God has given us this opportunity, so let us enjoy it?’ Was John and the first Pope, Peter, the original hosts of this heart-plague being passed down through time to the other Church leaders like Leo X?
The answer was a confusing one. There was a major problem with this greedy-heart theory: John and the others had no chance of making it rich, not even to earn a little bit of cash, by claiming the resurrection.
When history books speak about the very dragon-sick leaders during the dark ages, like Pope Leo X, they speak about leaders who abused positions of power for wealth and comfort. As Pope Leo X’s life clearly testifies, where there is power and politics there is also most certainly gold. Hence the rise of these religious-political dragons of the dark ages.
Yet I began to see that these greed-sticken revelers were very unlike the early eye-witness disciples, like John, at least in being booty-seeking pirates. The gain of gold was not something even remotely offered to those who held unto the claim of the resurrection some fifteen hundred years earlier.
Indeed, very far from it...
What exactly did one have to gain by holding onto a fraudulent claim of the resurrection? Besides being harassed and hunted by the prominent religious leaders of their time, leaving them impoverished and homeless, John and the others were also under the murderous eye of the almost-all-powerful Roman Caesars. The Emperor Nero, who reigned from 54 – 68 A.D., became a specialist, like a Ted Bundy-level specialist, in the killing of those who held onto the claim of the resurrection. And like Bundy, Nero reveled in their deaths…
When three of fourteen districts in Rome burned to the ground, Nero, not letting a good crisis go to waste, used the fire as an opportunity to clamp down on the growing influence of early Christians which he despised. He scapegoated the resurrection believers for the origin of the fire and began crucifying them and worse: “During gladiator matches he would feed [them] to lions, and he often lit his garden parties with the[ir] burning carcasses [as] human torches.” Two of the lead eye-witnesses of the resurrection were killed during his persecution: Peter, who was crucified upside down, and Paul, who was beheaded. Both refused to forsake their testimonies of the resurrection, even unto horrendous deaths.
There was never a chance for gold. There was only being hunted and facing a gruesome end. Being an early believer in the resurrection was almost always a life-sentence to poverty.
If their resurrection claim was fake news, it had to be motivated by something other than dragon sickness. What could be on par with gold as such a powerhouse motivator? Could it be possible the scheming was motivated by the fame of it all?
The Next Article: Famewhore
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