What Separates Jesus From Crackpot False Prophets? Free Reprint Article

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What Separates Jesus From Crackpot False Prophets?

by James Barringer
5/03/2011 / Christian Apologetics

Psst. Hey you. Yeah, you. Come on over here. Don't look around; be natural. Good. Okay. So I hear you want to make a whole heap of cash money, right? Well, I've got a little tip for you.

Are you ready? Okay. Pick a religion - Christianity works best. Now tell everybody that the "True Faith" has become perverted and fallen away, and that you're here to restore it. Scads of people will follow you and you'll make heaps of money.

What do you mean, "does it work"? It's a tried and true formula, pal! Just look at Islam; that's how it got started. Muhammad claimed that the Bible had been perverted and distorted and that he was here to set the record straight. That's how Mormonism got started, too. And the Jehovah's Witnesses. Man, if you grab the Big Book Of Cults and open it to any random page, you'll probably find someone who started their cult by claiming that the True Faith had fallen away and that they were the only ones who were True.

Any idiot can make that sort of claim, and many idiots - Muhammad, Joseph Smith, et al - have tried. That's what makes Jesus himself so remarkable, though. Jesus never once made any attempt to break with the religion that he was coming from. In fact, he did the opposite: even though the Judaism of his day was bloated and dead, he supported it verbally and financially. He paid his two-drachma tax to help with the upkeep of the temple (Matthew 17). He kept all of the Jewish law, including observing the Passover ritual (Matthew 26; Mark 14).

Okay, you're saying, but he did have lots of fights with the Pharisees, the religious leaders of his day, right? Well, yes and no. In Matthew 23, he told his followers, "The scribes and Pharisees sit on Moses' seat, so practice and observe whatever they tell you." Give them the respect that their position demands, even if their conduct is shameful. Isn't that really odd conduct for a person who was about to stand the whole Law and rituals of Judaism completely on their head?

That brings us to the central point of it all, and the thing that shows Jesus to be a true prophet and not a false prophet: he did not come to destroy Judaism; he came to be its proper continuation. Yes, he did away with the dead Law of Judaism and instituted a new covenant of grace - but only because the entire Old Testament predicted that a day was coming when God would do precisely that thing (Jeremiah 33; Ezekiel 36). Yes, he did away with the priesthood, but only because a new kind of priesthood had already been prophesied (Psalm 110, quoted in Hebrews 4-8). He didn't come trumpeting that the Jews had lost their way - he came trumpeting that he was the continuation of everything that the whole of Jewish history had already been pointing toward. Everything in the Old Testament led up to Jesus and was completed in Jesus. The entirety of Scripture, Genesis to Revelation, is contiguous and has one message, because our prophet did not break with those who came before him, but rather continued in exactly what they believe.

All you have to do is fire up a quick Google search and you can find thousands, hundreds of thousands, of crackpots claiming that the Church has "lost its way" or "abandoned true doctrine" or however else they want to put it. Those people would call for us to make a full stop and then to resume course in a different direction. That's how you can tell they're false prophets. Jesus was a continuation, not a full stop. He took the Old Testament and kept right on going with it, not pausing to erase a single iota, jot, or tittle from the Law (Matthew 5:18). He entered what might be the single most broken religious system in the history of the world, and he supported it with his words, his actions, and his money, right up until the day he fulfilled every prophecy that the religion itself had made about him. He is a true prophet of the true faith. Anybody can erase everything that came before him and create his own religion. Only Jesus could take everything that came before him, continue to observe and support it, wrap it all up into a new covenant, and keep utter continuity from the day of creation until the day you read this.

There are a lot of other reasons that we can know with certainty that Jesus was the Messiah prophesied by the Old Testament, but this is one notable way in which he's different from the vast majority of other people who are considered to be the originators of new faiths. Of course anyone who is familiar with the teachings of Jesus knows that he didn't invent any new moral doctrine himself at all, but merely emphasized what had already been written in the Jewish law all along, so it's somewhat inaccurate to even call him the founder of a religion. The same cannot be said of the many people who attempt to elevate themselves to his level.

Jim Barringer is a 38-year-old writer, musician, and teacher. More of his work can be found at facebook.com/jmbarringer. This work may be reprinted for any purpose so long as this bio and statement of copyright is included.

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