This book is dedicated

to

all the Sons

and

Daughters of Light

*

The purpose of writing this book and the information contained there in is not for self-aggrandizement, nor is it for entertainment. It is a serious book with a fundamentally serious message. Any information in this book which differs from what one may have known does not reduce its credibility or detracts from the truth. This is the information I know to be true. As our motto says loud and clear: Take it or leave it.

The writing of this book is timely. It is time to reveal certain truths in order to set things free. Believe it or not, it makes no difference to me but it does to you.

This book reveals the Divine Message brought down by certain Messengers of Light throughout the ages and explain various things relevant to the Message - the True Gnostic Message.

By "Gnostic" I mean that of the divine truth from the pure realm. Throughout this book whenever the word Gnostic is used it is to be understood as that and not as having anything to do with any mundane Gnostic groups or their beliefs. I also want to mention that the information about the various works of the messengers are not channelled material in the sense of what the definition of channelling means today. Hopefully by the end of the reading of this book, you will have guessed where the information has come from.

In this book I shall confine my discussion about Messengers of Light only to Zoroaster, Buddha, Jesus and Manichaeus. I shall start with Jesus the Gnostic Messenger and end with Him.

Who was Jesus? The historical Jesus was very different from what people are taught to believe. The Jesus generally known to people today is the Jesus people over the centuries have enshrined in their imaginations, creeds and cultures. The modern Jesus was a scholarly reconstruction during the nineteenth century. Bearing in mind that no truth is immune to critical or hostile criticism and attack, what I am about to present in this book may not meet the approval of everyone.

What people generally know about Jesus of Nazareth come mainly from the New Testament. It must be mentioned from the onset that no parts of any books of the New Testament are older than 125 C.E., and none of the Christian writings were written after 200 C.E. Most of the writings were translations from other languages, long after Jesus' death. Hence, inaccuracies in interpretation, personal conviction and deliberate embellishments could have and did occur.

The discovery of the Qumran scrolls near the Dead Sea in 1947 and the subsequent publication of the Qumran literature in this century have provided new insights into the conceptual world of an important Jewish sect known as the Essenes, shortly before the composition of the New Testament writings. The Qumran documents, dated to the second century B.C.E. are older than the copies of the Hebrew Bible. They reveal the influences that shaped the environment in Jesus' time. Discoveries at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1946 have provided new insights into the political, social and religious climate of those bygone times. The Coptic texts available now are dated at the earliest from the fifth to the seventh century A.D. The English version of the gospels we have now were originally translated from Greek.

Contrary to common belief, Christianity as we know it did not originate with Jesus Christ, nor did the first church start with a blessing from Jesus. The first christians merely used his name, and his death, as a pretext for a new religion that does not truly represent the truth about Him or His teachings. There are numerous fictional embellishments and the invention of stories and quotations attributed to Jesus in the gospels and the Qumran documents.

Christianity assumed its orthodoxy under the decisions of the Roman emperor and the church councils in the fourth century by introducing various creeds and canons to the church. Clearly, the orthodoxy of the early church was intensely associated with political and other pressures.

By using the pesher method, a technique whereby texts were cited and then rewritten and reinterpreted in ways quite different from the original sense, the writers and compilers of various texts were able to invent, interpret or embellish stories which could be tailored to specific purpose or prophecy. However, it was an acceptable practice in those days. Hence, various texts were cited from different sources and then rewritten and reinterpreted according to the writer's personal convictions.

This was the method the writers of the scripture used to ensure that the scripture were kept timely and relevant and that what was recorded in the Old Testament found fulfilment in the New Testament, thereby creating an aura of authenticity and credibility.

Here are some examples of plagiarism and distortions in the Bible using the pesher technique:

1.      The Creation myth is based on the Mesopotamian Enuma Elish.

2.      The Old Testament version of the early life of Moses is based on the saga of the Babylonian King Sargon. The Moses myth is really a compilation of 3 antecedent ones as well as other stories:

      a.      From India there was the Hindu myth when Kali gave birth to the Sun God and placed him in a basket of rushes on the Ganges.

      b.      The same myth was reproduced for Sargon, the King of Akkad, in the third millennium BC: King Sargon, a son of a virgin bride of God, was set afloat on the river and rescued by the Divine midwife. He then spent a period of exile in the wilderness where he was tempted by evil spirits and later was elevated to the throne. The fatherless hero born of waters was a universal image of the Saviour king and has appeared in the myths of Persius, Horus, Jason, Oedipus, Joshua and Jesus.

      c.      An Egyptian model existed: The miracles attributed to Moses have been derived from Egyptian myths for there is an Egyptian model for the myth of Moses in Heracles of Canopus.

3.      Other stories added to the myth include:

*      The Parting of the Waters, as attributed to both Kali crossing the Ganges and to Isis.

*      Mother Rhea striking water from a rock.

*      She had also given Law tablets on a Holy mountain.

4.      The story of the Ten Commandments which were supposedly given to Moses on the Mount was copied from:

      i      The story of the Canaanite god Baal-Berith, the "God of the Covenant".

      ii      The Commandments of the Buddhist Decalogue.

      iii      The life of Zoroaster who had also received the Law from Ahura Mazda from the mountain top, and

      iv      King Hammurabi who received the Laws from the Babylonian God from a mountain top also.

The virgin birth of Jesus it is based, not on fact, but on the mythology of virgin births in the stories of Adonis, Tammuz, Mithra, Osiris, Apollo, and so on. Apart from these various Saviours, the virgin birth was also attributed to Zoroaster, Sargon, Persius, Jason, Miletus, Minos, Asclepias, Zeus and Plato.

5.       Many of the miracles of Exodus had been described in the life of Isis. Moses' flowering rod, river of blood and tablets of the law were all symbols of Isis. Moses' miracle of drawing water from the rock was first performed by Mother Rhea after she gave birth to Zeus.

6.      Joshua stopping the Sun had been also a feat of Isis and Hecata (Diana, Moon Goddess, Queen of Heaven, Patron of midwives) and the Thessalian Great Mother.

7.       The Pentateuch was rewritten by Ezra.

8.      References to Reincarnation were removed by the church in the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 AD, a long time after the original gospels were supposed to have been written. It stated that: " Whosoever shall support the mythical doctrine of the pre-existence of the Soul and the consequent wonderful opinion of its return, let him be anathema." Hence, the belief in reincarnation, which was part of all other religious beliefs and mythological myths around the world, and in the writings of Plato, only became heretical five centuries after Jesus.

9.      The Sophia of Jesus Christ is plagiarized from the Gnostic speech by Eugnostos the Blessed (Nag Hammadi Library).

10.      The Story of the Resurrection is from the so-called pagan Spring ritual of the birth of Venus, and also from the death of the "Son" of the Divine Mother Aspect at the Northern Spring Equinox (March 21, the date later chosen by the Church for the Easter celebrations, which has nothing to do with the actual date of the death of Jesus) and his Resurrection on the third day to renew the life of the earth. This story was repeated in various cultures in all eras, and existed long before the Christian Church claimed it for its own.

11.      Ishtar (Aphrodite, Esther of the Old Testament and the Babylonian Queen of Heaven) also descended into Hell and rose on the third day, the Day of Joy!

12.      Prayers to Ishtar, the Babylonian Queen of Heaven were plagiarized by Jewish Priests for their version of the Bible as were prayers to Osiris.

Thus, this practice of borrowing from others and using as one's own, giving the necessary modifications and twists to suit the occasion, was not a practice of antiquity alone. In fact, it continued right up until the nineteenth century. The claim made by the Catholic church of indisputable authority based on its position which can be traced back in an unbroken line to the time of Jesus in the case of the New Testament, and to the very cradle of civilization before David, Moses, Abraham and so on, in the case of the Old Testament, is false. Indeed, the claim of absolute authenticity of the Bible is spurious - there is no unbroken line linking the present day Bible to the time of Jesus. The oldest records belong to the 4th century.

Clearly, NO compilation of the Bible has remained intact from the early days. Most versions of the Bible are based on the following:

     a.      The Codex Vaticanus from the fourth century, written in Greek, now at the Vatican.

     b.      The Codex Sinaiticus, also in Greek from the fourth century, in the British Museum.

     c.      The Codex Alexandrinus, in Greek from the fifth century, also in the British Museum.

     d.      The Codex Bezae from both the fifth and sixth centuries, at Cambridge where the church actually banned the study of Canon Law in 1535.

The most ancient of the Hebrew texts are the second century BC papyri of Nash found in 1902.

In the 4th century Jerome, papal secretary, collected some Hebrew manuscripts, edited them and produced the Latin Vulgate which differed markedly from the original texts, and destroyed the originals. Other church fathers including Iraneus, Theodosius, Lactantius (church fathers who "established" church scriptures) also carried out selective editing and extensive revision before destroying that which they felt was not wanted by the Church, or was unsafe to keep intact, lest the truth of what they had done be found out. Hence, what remained was a compilation they created which they spuriously claimed to represent the Truth.

As for the King James version of the Bible which was compiled in 1611, it was based on collections made by Erasmus in the sixteenth century. Erasmus relied on the Byzantine collection assembled in Constantinople between the fourth and fifth centuries and published them in 1516. All the above codices differ from one another and from the King James version.

The various versions of the New Testament were extensively revised and in the revised version of 1881, interpolations that had caused much suffering were removed.

In summary, the Bible is a collection of various articles from various sources which were rewritten, perverted, plagiarized, distorted and confused, added to, deleted and abused in order to suit the aims of the Church hierarchy.

Before we embark on the story of historical and metaphysical Jesus, it is important to know something of the background surrounding the time before and after the birth of Jesus in order to gain a better understanding of the spiritual, political and social climate and influence into which Jesus was born. As Jesus' parents were Essenes we need to look at the historical and spiritual background concerning this Gnostic Jewish group.