Things Jesus Never Said

BOOM! Mr Sullivan nails atheists, modernists, and various sorts of Protestants, including 'prosperity Gospel' preachers, all in one essay. Very well done!

From Catholic Stand

By Ray Sullivan

A lot of preachers and laity are going around today claiming that Jesus said, or didn’t say certain things. For instance, I have heard atheists claim that Jesus NEVER claimed to be God.  Somehow, this misstated fact makes it okay in their minds to not believe in the entire New Testament but Jesus did claim to be God. For instance, in Mark 14:61-62, the following exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees occurs:

again the high priest asked him, ‘“Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?’ And Jesus said, ‘I AM; and you will see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.’

Jesus answered in the affirmative with the very name of God from the Old Testament, “I AM.” The bottom line is NEVER let a biblical illiterate interpret the Bible for you since they have no clue what they are talking about. Jesus was crucified because the Pharisees accused him of “claiming” to be the Son of God, so atheists’ ignorant assertion that Jesus never claimed to be God carries no weight whatsoever.

Homosexuality

Another ludicrous gem from non-believers is that Jesus never condemned homosexuality, which somehow, in their minds, means that sodomy is acceptable. To them, the “real” sin of Sodom was inhospitality. The entire Bible, not just the words of Jesus, is God-breathed.  In Romans 1: 24-32, St. Paul, speaking infallibly for God (as Romans is the Word of God, not just Paul’s), says:

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever! Amen.

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a base mind and to improper conduct. They were filled with all manner of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity, they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s decree that those who do such things deserve to die, they not only do them but approve those who practice them.

St. Paul, speaking for God, also condemns homosexuality in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and 1 Timothy 1:9-10. The book of Jude also condemns sodomy in verses 1-7. Again, do not let people with a hidden agenda ever interpret the Bible for you, as they will self-interpret it to their own destruction, as the Bible itself warns in 2 Peter 1:20.

So what about some of the things that people allege that Jesus said?

Earthly Rewards

Jesus never said that huge rewards await you in this life for being one of His followers.

Just turn on some of the Protestant cable channels, and you will hear the “health and wealth” gospel. That is, “Send me (the TV preacher) a faith seed (your money), and God will reward you IN THIS LIFE with even more money!” That is a huge lie. Jesus told the rich young man to sell all that he had, give it to the poor (not to Him!), and then come and follow Him. The rich young man would then have treasure in heaven, not here on earth. Many very wealthy preachers scam the widows and ignorant among us with this ploy. Jesus Himself predicted this in Luke 20:47:

They devour the houses of widows and, as a pretext, recite lengthy prayers. They will receive a very severe condemnation.

A corollary of this is “God wants YOU to be rich and prosperous in this life”. Well, Mother Teresa certainly wasn’t rich and prosperous in this life. St. Maximilian Kolbe, the Saint of Auschwitz certainly wasn’t rich in this life. The apostles weren’t rich and prosperous in this life. On the contrary, the Bible warns us over and over and over again about the lure of riches and how it can lead a person straight to hell:

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 23:19-24) 

The hungry he has filled with good things; the rich he has sent away empty. (Luke 1:53) 

For the love of money is the root of all evils, and some people in their desire for it have strayed from the faith and have pierced themselves with many pains. (1 Timothy 6:10)

I’m more than sure that there are some rich people in heaven, but they are there because they renounced their love of money for their love of Christ.  Sirach 3:30 says that almsgiving atones for sins, so if you want to atone for your sins, then start giving money, sacrificially, like the widow did with her two copper coins right in front of Jesus.

The Bible Alone

Jesus never said that the Bible by itself was all that was needed to get to heaven.

As a matter of fact, the Jews at the time of Jesus had no set canon, which is why the Essenes, the Pharisees, and the Sadducees all believed different things about God and salvation. The current canon of the Bible with all 73 books in it was established by Pope Damasus I in 382 AD at the Council of Rome.  From that point forward, the scriptures were all written down and everyone knew what they were. Up until that time, almost four centuries after Jesus, oral teaching of the faith had taken place. This, of course, was commanded by Jesus right before the Ascension (Matthew 28:20). Since there was no set Bible up until that time, there could have been no “Bible alone” theory either.  

The current fad among so many Protestants seems to be “me and my Bible alone,” and that’s all I need but that can’t be true since so many Protestant Bibles have footnotes in them. Including footnotes and other references defeats the idea that the Bible is easy enough to understand on our own, without someone else to interpret it for us. If this were true, then those explanatory footnotes in Protestant Bibles shouldn’t be there.

Jesus did not say, “Write everything down in a book, make sure everyone gets a copy, and whatever they come up with is okay, even if it’s totally wrong.”

The Bible does say that the church is the pillar and bulwark of truth, so only that church (the Catholic Church) has the primacy of what the Bible actually means. After all, the Church was there at the time of Peter and the apostles, as it was founded on giving Peter the keys to the Kingdom (Matthew 16:19).(These keys had been taken away from the Jews as shown in Matthew 21:43.)

Evolving Theology

Jesus never said to let His teachings evolve with modern times so as to make them acceptable to sinners.

A lot of ministers and priests conform their views of scripture based on the current zeitgeist of the culture. They have done this with artificial birth control, abortion, divorce and remarriage, and sodomy. Some have even come out and said that their views are “evolving” on issues. The thought process seems to be that since I know good people who are contraceptors, homosexuals, or remarried divorcees, then that makes it okay. Well, either they are right, or the Bible is right. Sinners who demand acceptance of their personal sin, and pastors who acquiesce to them, will all have to answer to Jesus, not to each other, their congregation, or you and me.

Man-Made Churches

Jesus never said, “Upon this rock, I will build my churches.”

There are over 30,000 Protestant churches, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Mormonism, etc., in the world today. None of these meets the biblical criteria that Jesus founded one, and only one church. John Smythe (founder of the Baptist Church), John Wesley (founder of the Methodist Church), Martin Luther (founder of the Lutheran Church, Henry VIII (founder of the Anglican Church), and Joseph Smith (founder of the Mormon Church) all disagreed with Jesus and his founding of one and only one church. Their followers also disagree with Jesus on this. They can all be saved, of course, if they are invincibly ignorant of the Truth that the Catholic Church teaches. However, without the grace from the sacraments of the Catholic Church, it will be tough. Many of them believe that the Catholic Church became corrupted in the early going, and therefore, men had to create their own churches in its place. That kind of thinking makes a liar out of Jesus, who did say that the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church. He also said that the tares and the wheat would grow together in His church, side by side, and that is so evident today, with sexual predators seemingly everywhere in His church, and in man-made churches as well (Jim Jones, David Koresh, etc.).

Holy Communion

Jesus never said that the Eucharist was only a symbol of His body and blood.

In John chapter 6, Jesus says over and over again that we must consume His flesh and drink His blood to have eternal life. He even compares it to the supernatural manna from Heaven and says that it is the food that leads to eternal life. That is why in the Lord’s prayer He says to give us this day “our daily bread”. (Manna was also daily bread from heaven). Look as you may, you will never see the word “symbol” anywhere when referring to the Eucharist. Just like Jesus was disguised as an ordinary man, just so, the Eucharist is disguised as ordinary bread. Just as the forbidden fruit led to damnation, the Eucharist leads to salvation.

A plastic banana is a symbol of a real banana, and provides no nourishment whatsoever. If the Eucharist were only a symbol instead of the risen Christ, then it would have no salvific power, either.

Being Saved

Jesus never said that we must accept Him as our personal Lord and savior in order to be saved.

No, those words are not in the Bible and are part of the Protestant “tradition” that someone made up. Peter says when asked what must we do to be saved: “You must repent and be baptized (Acts 2:38).” Baptism saves us, says Peter in 1 Peter 3:21.

Of course, there is more to being saved than being baptized, which is our initial justification. Jesus commands us to do all of the necessary good works in Matthew 25:31-46. Jesus is VERY clear during this sermon that if you don’t do these things, then you will be a goat and cast into hell.

There is nothing wrong, of course with having Jesus as your personal Lord and savior, but Catholics are much closer to Jesus than that, because He is part of us after Holy Communion, and 1 Corinthians 6:17 says that we become one spirit with Him then.

A Final Caution

So be very wary of people who say things about Jesus and the Bible, because a lot of them are making it up as they go along to either get your money or to get you to accept their sin as being okay.