Chapter 54: The Jerusalem Church
The second line of slander usually attacks Jesus and segments of the New Testament accredited to Paul’s authorship, from which the Christian church takes most of its new covenant doctrine. Paul is classified as the Evil Liar or the Heretic, stemming from the Dead Sea Scrolls concerning the Essenes and the Teacher of Righteousness, described as the “Spouter of Lies” and the “Unscrupulous Liar” 13 of the early church. Paul is described as the one who corrupted the religion of the early church centered in Jerusalem, along with doctrines taught by the Gnostic Teacher of Righteousness. In fact, Mandaeans and Manicheans believed Paul was a false prophet, who led his disciples away from the true religion; they believed Paul’s false religion was not based on the true teachings of John the Baptist (and the mentor of Jesus), who they believed. 14
The Jerusalem church led by James is portrayed to be the mystical Essene religion. Gnostics assert that it was Paul who besmirched the teachings of Jesus with his so- called heretical doctrines, which took root after the demise of the Jerusalem church in 70 C.E., when the church center was transferred to Rome, under Roman influence and Pauline doctrine. In fact, in 318 C.E., according to Gnostic sources, a delegation of Jesus’ immediate descendants, the Desposyni, traveled to Rome to argue the church should be transferred back to Jerusalem, back to its mystic roots, but Constantine refused. So, too, do Gnostic writers remember Mary Magdalene and her heirs opposing the Roman apostolic succession of Peter, in favor of James and the Jerusalem church. 15 In this tradition, Mary Magdalene was an Essene priestess who married Jesus.
Under this guise, Masonic and Gnostic writers refer to Paul as the Liar; the Heretic; and the enemy of Jesus’ brother, James the Just, who supposedly was one of the Teachers of Righteousness portrayed in the Dead Sea Scrolls. What the Gnostics are endeavoring to accomplish is to ascertain that it was Paul who proclaimed the divinity of Jesus and not Jesus or any of the disciples who formed the early Jerusalem church, that Paul stood alone in this assertion. Gnostics believe that the deviant Pauline sect maliciously elevated Jesus to deity status and that those who are loyal to the Vatican are heretics. 16 The elevation of Jesus to deity is said to have taken place after the crucifixion by his corrupted followers from the Pauline sect. The Gnostics believe Jesus did not come to sacrifice Himself as the Lamb of God for the sins of the world. They assert that Jesus was sent to humankind as an enlightened, spiritual guide, in the same ideology as Buddha and Mohammed, to teach humankind enlightened secrets, aiding us in our evolution to godhood.
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