Discover
the Power Within You
By Eric Butterworth
Discover the Power Within You is all about Jesus, and the volume of questions I
have received in response indicates that most persons know very little
about him. Here are ten of the most common questions asked about Jesus,
and some brief answers:
1. What
was Jesus' last name? Many
people will say Christ. One
person confessed that he had always thought Jesus was the son of Mr. and
Mrs. Christ. Actually there were no last names in those days. Christ
is simply the Greek version of the Hebrew word meaning messiah or savior. Christ is
not a name but the identification of a potentiality in man that Jesus
discovered and released.
2. What
about Jesus Christ? Jesus
demonstrated the divine dimension of man, the indwelling savior of
every person's soul. Peter saw this dimension in Jesus and said,
"Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God." Later Paul
indicated an awareness of the Christ as the divinity of man, saying,
"Christ in you, the hope of glory." Jesus so demonstrated his
divinity that people could not tell where one left off and the other
began. Thus he is often referred to as Jesus Christ, in the same manner
as historians refer to "Alexander the Great" and "Richard
the Lion-Hearted."
3. By
what name did Jesus' friends and family call him? It's unlikely that Jesus would have answered to any name other than
Yeshua, which is the Aramaic. In Hebrew it would be Joshua. In Greek,
Ihsous. In Latin, Jesus. The language spoken by Jesus and his disciples
was not Hebrew nor Greek nor Latin, but Aramaic.
4. Was
Jesus born on December 25th in the year beginning the Christian era? Almost
certainly not. The Christian era was not calculated until the sixth
century and was not accepted in Christendom until the year 1000. When
the Roman time was changed to a Christian method, the actual date of
Jesus' birth was conjectural thus it was set by
"guesstimate." Contemporary scholars think that the proper
date would be closer to 4 B.C. and the month probably August.
5. Since
Jesus is called "the son of David," is Mary listed in the genealogy?"
Strangely not! In Matt. l: and in Luke 3: the descent of Joseph is
traced from David. Mary is not mentioned. This poses some questions
relative to the Virgin Birth.
6. Was
Jesus a Christian? The
question is ridiculous, for the name Christian came later. Jesus was a good and pious Jew, as were his
early disciples. Paul makes reference to the fact that the early
Christians "went every day into the Temple to pray." This makes academic the charge that the Jews killed
Jesus. The Jews also spawned Christianity.
7. Did
Jesus intend to start a new religion named for Himself? We can say unequivocally that Jesus had no intent to
create a new religion or to foment a division or schism within Judaism.
He did seem intent upon
being an influence for change saying, "I came not to destroy the
law but to fulfill it." The law was the Torah. He came
into a time when his people had lost their way. They had always
been a devout and God-led people, with the early prophets bringing
great insights relative to the divine nature of man. But their religion
had settled into a mire of institutionalism. It was all form and
ceremony. All "first-hand
and immediate experience of God" had become merely a memory from
ages past.
8. Is God a Christian? Think
about it. There was no Christianity when Jesus walked the earth. What he
taught was a Universal Truth. His followers later made it into what we
think of as the Christian religion. Most of this happened over centuries
engineered by those more concerned with perpetuating a monument than
disseminating a message. I have often speculated on what Jesus would
have done if he had been seated around a table with a Buddhist, a Hindu,
a Moslem, and a Shintoist - discussing ultimate Truth. I just can't
believe that Jesus would have said, "You must all forsake your
beliefs and come and follow me." I think he might have pointed out
that the differences were chiefly a matter of semantics, and that there
is an underlying principle similar to the Christ idea in every religion.
I think he would have stressed the basic unity within the diversity of
religions, pointing out that the greatest need of all persons is to find
that indwelling unity with God, which is found in the principle of
divine Sonship, that we call the Christ.
9. Did
Jesus claim perfection for himself? No!
He once rebuked a young follower who knelt down before him and referred
to him as "good Master!" Jesus said, "Why callest thou me
good? None is good save God." He later said, "Be ye perfect as
your Father in Heaven is perfect." It was an ultimate for all
persons, himself included. He then went on to achieve that perfection in
the final overcoming, thus demonstrating the possibility for all men.
10. What
does IHS mean? It
is derived from a frequent abbreviation of the name Jesus in Greek
manuscripts of the New Testaments. IHS is composed of the first three
letters of the Greek word for Jesus, Ihsous. Erroneously, later meanings
were ascribed to IHS, such as Jesus Hominum Salvator.
So now, let me commend Discover the Power Within You to you. A religious book is usually
church-centered, Jesus-centered, and dogma-centered. However, Jesus
stressed a spiritual philosophy that is you-centered. You do not
accomplish Jesus' ideal simply by believing things about
him. You must come to believe about yourself what Jesus believed
about himself. So this book is not something to believe...it is
something to do. And judging
by the testimonies of hundreds of readers who have written to support
the claim, I think it can be the means of changing your life.
Commence your journey through the pages of Discover
the Power Within You…and let something wonderful happen to you!
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