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The Missing Years.
t is a strange mystery! The missing years refer to the period between Jesus’ childhood and the commencing of his public ministry, curiously omitted from the New Testament record. He reappears later with the Gospel, good news. This message, where was it from? Was Christ a channel for Higher Intelligence? Was it the distillation of knowledge gained during this lost time? Maybe both. He is the logos, or Word of God. The man and this Eternal Word are inseparable, an even greater mystery.
We know little about the most famous man who ever lived. What we have is four books by four eye-witnesses. Matthew, Mark and Luke are the synoptic gospels, with John in a class by itself plus the Revelation. But what of the missing eighteen years between the ages of twelve and thirty? Not a word is mentioned about the most formative period in his development!
With trade routes, it seems hard to believe he never traveled at all but worked in carpentry, a trade of little use in his later life as an itinerant preacher. Why, if knowing he had but a short time in this world, would he not be at least curious to visit the great oriental mystery schools? The popular theory is that Jesus traveled extensively before returning to Judea and Galilee to begin his public ministry.
Mythos and Persona.
It is called the greatest story ever told. A legend larger than life: God Himself visiting the squalor of the earth as a man: Christ was kindhearted and sympathetic to the wretched suffering of those around him: Healing infirmity, the friend of sinners and outcasts: Giving absolution for mistakes made in life; compassionate and understanding of our flaws.
Truth Revealed to the Lowly.
In John Chapter 4. Jesus’ dialogue with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well is notable: First, it was a breach of social protocol for a Jewish rabbi to converse with a gentile woman- one of questionable reputation at that. Samaritans were considered mongrel Jews, but claimed the same Hebrew patriarchs as “our fathers who worshiped here at this mountain” (vs.12, 20). The disciples marveled at this, but said nothing. The Lord used the opportunity to say that the old ways had come to an end. “The time is coming, and already is, when God will be worshiped neither here at this mountain or at the temple in Jerusalem, but only in Spirit and in Truth.” In a surprising move, she invokes the name of the messiah: The Christ to come. cf. 21-27. Then Jesus reveals to her his identity, “I am he.”
Only by ritual blood sacrifices could one atone for sin, performed by the temple priests on certain festivals, requiring a pilgrimage for the people. The marble of the great shrine gleamed in the sunlight, standing proudly over Jerusalem as the very center of Judaism itself. Jesus stated that he was greater than the opulent temple. Sacrilege! Greater even than Abraham, the ancestral father of the Hebrews. The leaders were so appalled at this radical departure from tradition they accused the Lord of blasphemy. Later on, they conspired to kill him.
Joshua bar Joseph was circumcised, or b’rith milah meaning “Son of the Covenant,” on the eighth day, according to the law. At age twelve, bar-mitzvah:”Son of the Commandment.” The precocious lad astonished the elder rabbis in the temple for several days discussing the scriptures. Mary and Joseph thought he was lost, and a frantic search for the boy found him there. Luke 2:45-49. “Don’t you know I must be about my father’s business?”
The Family business not carpentry, but Architect of Life. We are left with only these words, Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man. The record falls silent before Jesus appears out of nowhere, a grown man of the age of thirty! cf. Matthew 2:27, 46-49; 3:13-17; Luke 2:52; 3:15; 23.
Coming to the Jordan River.
Among the crowds coming to John for baptism, he notices a man he instantly recognizes: The day he long awaited has arrived! He greets his cousin, and defers with humility- this is he! Christ the Lord. The harbinger reluctantly consents to baptize the only man who needed not repent of anything. As Jesus rose up from the waters, a Voice was heard from heaven… “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” Here is when the New Testament began.
Is this not Joseph’s Son? (cf. Luke 4:16-28).
The young rabbi visits his hometown of Nazareth, attending the local synagogue. He is invited up to read. The scroll was handed to him. He opened to the prophet Isaiah, 61:1,2. All eyes were fixed on him as the congregation of men sat thinking, we recall this man since his youth, is this not Joseph’s son? Jesus reads the ancient prediction, and implies he himself is the subject of Isaiah’s prophecy of Israel’s messiah to come.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, he hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek and the brokenhearted, the recovering of sight to the blind, liberty to the captives and deliverance to them that are bound. To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” He sits down again. There was silence before he drops the bombshell.
“Today this scripture is fulfilled in your ears!”
What did he say? How dare he! Knowing their thoughts, he chides them for their skepticism citing examples from scripture of the precious few in Israel who truly believed the prophets such as the widow of Sidon, and Naaman the Syrian, a gentile- the only leper cured in the Old Testament. It was an outrage!
Chased out by a mob, Jesus took his message elsewhere: Not one of Judaism or political revolt, but of a light within the soul of every man and a personal knowledge of the Living God: A kingdom already and not yet. “And they were astonished at his doctrine, for he spoke as one with authority, and not as the scribes.” Jesus’ words are impeccable, utterly irresistible. A message not of law but of grace. Not of punishment but forgiveness. Jesus understood we are only human beings, frail and weak of mind.
Judaism did not appear until after the return of Judah from Babylon. The captivity began in 586, BC, centuries after the Hebrew patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. The Lord appeared as a Jew, the time was right, the empire was united under the Greek language and Hellenistic culture. Alexandria, not Jerusalem was the hub of Jewish thinking. The Romans built good roads for trade and travel along with a bustling maritime. Citizens were free to move about the world as they pleased.
The Jews had expected a great savior to free them from Roman occupation, but Jesus said first we must be saved from ourselves. The Son of David was not received by those of his own tribe, Judah, who still await their messiah. And Christians are watching for the Lord’s return. Both are looking for a man to worship. The man Jesus did come, but Christ has never left.
I AM the Light of the World; I am the Way, the Truth and the Life; I am the Door; I am the Alpha and Omega; the Resurrection; the Good Shepherd; the True Manna; the Water of Life, etc.
| Jesus the Water of Life – Powerful Scene from Ben-Hur |
Jesus’ teachings were extemporaneous, he wrote nothing down that we are aware of. Only some words scrawled in the sand in defense of an adulteress-yet his beautiful Words have been preserved for us in red. Why red?
A rubric is a word or section of text that is traditionally printed in red ink for emphasis, often seen in missals. The word is derived from the Latin rubrica, meaning red ochre or chalk. This pigment requires a separate stage in the production of a manuscript.
Around 1900, rubrication was incorporated into the King James Version to distinguish the words spoken by Christ during his life because it lacked quotation marks. The gospel writer John said all the books in the world could not contain the things Jesus said and did. There must be more…
Other Sources Concerning the Missing Years.
1908, by Levi H. Dowling (1844-1911). “The Philosophic and Practical Basis of the Religion of the Aquarian Age.”
“From the Akashic Records, the story of Jesus, the man from Galilee, how he attained the Christ consciousness open to all men. A record of the missing eighteen years, a period strangely silent in the New Testament; a period spent traveling and learning from the masters, seers and wise men in the temples and schools of Tibet, Egypt, India, Persia and Greece.”
The title “Aquarian Gospel” comes from naming ages in terms of the dominant positions of constellations in the sky according to the earth’s axial precession.
The 20th century marked the dispensation when this record would be revealed and understood, moving out of the former Age of Pisces (Christianity), to the Age of Aquarius (religious science).
The introduction describes the dramatic events in the heavens; the transition of Pisces, a water sign, to the age of Aquarius, an air sign seen in the inventions of aviation, radio, telegraph, etc.
What is an Age?
A terrestrial year is the movement of the earth around the sun, 365 days with four seasons. The sun moves through the elliptical, twelve tropical zodiac signs, equaling an Age, about 2,100 years. A sidereal year lasts for approximately 25,968 terrestrial years: The solar system revolves around a distant central sun in a 26,000-year precession of the equinoxes. It’s a voyage of eons along the sidereal zodiacal belt. (2012 was expected to be a momentous sidereal year, a theory based on the Mayan calendar).
Ιησούς Χριστός. This book addresses the misunderstanding between the name of Jesus, and his title as the Christ: It doesn’t refer to a Jewish messiah, or even a human at all, but the attainment of a high level of self-mastery or Christ Consciousness: A stage difficult to reach but open to every man. The Lord said, You marvel at my works. Greater things than these will you do!
The Aquarian Gospel has the ring of inspiration and truth, and to a degree satisfies the puzzle. Astounding clarity about the prehistoric origins of our ancestral religions. The mentoring of his cousin John, and Jesus’ decision to leave for the orient with a traveler, a wealthy friend from India.
He meets with Brahmans, Buddhists, teaching on their errors. In Egypt, Jesus asks to be tested as an initiate and passes all seven of the difficult degrees. He is awarded the sign of circle seven. In Greece he explains how the Oracle at Delphi works. In every land he visited he was recognized as a master, and answered questions posed by the wisest men. He returns home to Galilee with the wisdom he distilled, the doctrines he shared with his own school of initiates:
All the elements in creation, from protoplast to plant, mineral, animal and man are on a long trek, evolving from being unaware to God-consciousness. After many incarnations the soul finally awakens, then continues to evolve over much time until it attains the Christ: It is to this end we are created.
The Urantia Book was published anonymously in 1955. It contains detailed records concerning life in the inhabited universe, the mechanisms of planetary hierarchies and the racial history of our own world, called “Urantia.”
Over 2000 pages, with an exhaustive commentary on the life of Jesus Christ which almost defies comprehension. In this record he travels too, with the same friend from India he met in the Aquarian Gospel. He sails the Mediterranean world in order to better understand the gentiles; his intent is to reform Judaism with his gospel. Each year of his entire life is meticulously accounted for including exact dates. There are confusing details in this lengthy chronicle, detracting from the Christ we know in the Bible.
Avatar अवतार (Sanskrit) avatāra; a manifestation of deity in bodily form; an incarnate divine teacher. It relates his mission as an Avatar from the universe, attended to by a host of angels and other celestial intelligences who actually perform the wonders for him. In the early stages of his public ministry, Jesus seems unsure of himself, reticent as he struggles to come to terms with the ethical implications of the powers afforded him, and his destiny as the Son of God. The complexity of its cosmology makes for tedious reading and boggles the mind, beyond the scope of average understanding. We are left to wonder. The Urantia Book is quite an impressive work, well worth examining by the advanced student or anyone interested in learning more about the missing years of Jesus Christ.
In 1894 Nicolas Notovitch published a book called The Unknown Life of Christ. He was a Russian doctor who journeyed extensively throughout Afghanistan, India, and Tibet. Notovitch journeyed through the lovely passes of Bolan, over the Punjab, down into the arid rocky land of Ladakh, and into the majestic Vale of Kashmir of the Him-alayas. On one of his journeys he visited Leh, the capital of Ladakh, near the Buddhist convent Himis. He had an accident resulting in a broken leg, and stayed at the Himis convent. There he learned of the existence of ancient records of the life of Jesus Christ. In the course of his stay he was shown two large yellowed volumes containing the biography of St. Issa. Notovitch enlisted a member of his party to translate the Tibetan volumes, while he carefully noted in the pages of his journal over two hundred verses from the curious document known as “The Life of St. Issa.”
When he returned to the western world, there was controversy as to the authenticity of the document. He was accused of creating a hoax and was ridiculed. In his defense he encouraged a scientific expedition to prove the original Tibetan documents existed.
One of his skeptics was Swami Abhedananda. Abhedananda journeyed into the arctic region of the Himalayas, determined to find a copy of the Himis manuscript or to expose the fraud. His book of travels, entitled Kashmir O Tibetti, tells visiting the Himis gonpa and includes a Bengali translation of two hundred twenty-four verses essentially the same as the Notovitch text. Abhedananda was thereby convinced of the authenticity of the Issa legend.
Oahspe (O-as-pee), is a channeled work published in 1882 by John Ballou. It contains the missing historical records regarding the origins of earth’s major religions. The teachings of the great prophets and law-givers, Zarathustra of Persia, Brahma, Capilya and Sakaya of India, Abraham and Moses of Egypt, Joshu of Nazareth, Eawahtah of the Americas, and Po, Chine and Confucius of China.
Their teachings and doctrines are presented with a contemporary perspective on the New Age through spiritual progress. According to Oahspe (wisdom), all of humanity is responsible for assisting in its own development, and to that end it provides ample guidelines for ethical conduct in our day. The pages are divided to show the corresponding histories of the etherian realms above and the events of the corporeal world below. Oahspe has the ring of authority and Truth, a message for man in the modern century.
Copyright © 2018, The Pulpit
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