A Jesus Conspiracy Theory!

The following is a question I received and my response:

QUESTION-

"Could the prophesies from the old testament have been fulfilled not only intentionally by Jesus, but a wider organization as well? I know this sounds ridiculous, but I was bothered by the possibility that Jesus could have been part of a larger conspiracy to fulfill the prophesies and appear as the Messiah. If there was a hypothetical organization, and it's members included Mary and Joseph, couldn't they have chosen to go to Bethlehem to fulfill the prophesy of the Messiah's birth? Additionally, this secret organization was cult-like, then Jesus might have been willing to give his life to support the goal of the organization. Finally, a piece of strong evidence in favor of the resurrection of evidence is that he not only appeared to his disciples, but that he was perfectly healthy, leading them to believe in him and spread the news of his resurrection, even though they would die for it. But what if the disciples were all part of the organization as well? Then they might have made up the appearance of Jesus, and if they were members of this hypothetical organization/cult, they might have had incentive enough to die for spreading the message. Is it also possible there was simply a Jesus look-alike? I know this sounds ridiculous and it's definitely a conspiracy theory, but it has been bothering me, and I'd love if you could address it. Thank you."

ANSWER-

Thanks for your question...and I must admit it does sound a little far fetched! It's certainly possible that such a scenario could have happened, in a logical and physical possibility sense. But, there is really no evidence to suggest that it did. Whenever we think about historical events we can always let our imaginations run wild and conjecture about any number of possibilities. But, we should reign in our imaginations with logic, evidence, and in the case of scripture, the leadership of the Holy Spirit. If we do that, it will keep us from being troubled by outlandish possibilities.

Regarding the conspiracy you imagine in your question, I think you will see if we apply some critical historical discipline, it crumbles rather quickly. First, your imagined conspiracy seems to contain the idea of intentionality on the part of Jesus and possibly others who would be choosing to do certain things intentionally in order to fulfill Old Testament prophecies. You should not be troubled by the idea of intentionality. In fact, we can be quite confident that Jesus did certain things intentionally to fulfill OT prophecies. Scripture (Mat 5:17) tells us this explicitly! Jesus, being God incarnate, inspired the prophets to write what they wrote, he obviously knew what was intended and knew why he came - it was to fulfill the prophecies that he himself caused to be proclaimed. He told the religious leaders that the Old Testament scriptures in which they search for eternal life testify of him (Jn 5:39). So we see clearly that Jesus would be expected to "intentionally" fulfill the Old Testament prophecies. That certainly should not trouble you.

Secondly, what about others who may have also been intentional in their activities to fulfill prophecy. We have no indication that any of the others had such intentionality. In fact, prior to Jesus' resurrection, all scriptural evidence indicates that his followers, family, and others did not realize the true nature of his messiahship. Specifically, they did not expect or anticipate a suffering servant Messiah who would suffer and die a vicarious death for the atonement of sin. The idea of Messiah as a suffering servant may not have been completely absent prior to the post-resurrection understanding of Jesus by his followers, but it is greatly debated among scholars that such an idea existed at all. And it is almost certain, that no idea of a Messiah who would die a vicarious, atoning death existed prior to Christianity. This is strong evidence that the followers of Jesus would not have expected anything like what Jesus indeed was, a Messiah who would willingly sacrifice himself as a vicarious sin offering to the Father on behalf of his people. This, of course, would make it untenable that they were involved in a conspiracy to "fulfill" Old Testament prophecy in such a manner as to make Jesus appear to be the Suffering Servant of Isa 53 as a divine/human, Messiah who would suffer for the atonement of sin. Because there is no evidence that this understanding existed until after the resurrection of Jesus! It took a radical, transformational event to change the thinking of Jesus' followers in order for them to understand this new revelation of Messiah as One who would suffer for them and die as the atonement for their sin.

And thirdly, that leads to the final element of your concern. Could the disciples have been part of a conspiracy to fake the death and resurrection of Jesus? This objection has been around from the beginning! In fact, it is referenced in the New Testament itself, see Mat 28:13-15. There is a reason this objection has not ever gained much of a following. It is because it is not very plausible. As noted above, Jews of the day did not expect such a Messiah as Jesus. Instead, they expected an anointed servant of God with special abilities who would come and deliver Israel and establish an earthly kingdom in which Israel would be preeminent under the rule of Messiah. Obviously, a suffering, dying, resurrecting, and ascending to heaven type of Messiah whose rule was in the hearts of mankind, and would be for Gentiles as well as Jews, was a total non sequitur! If they were going to concoct a conspiracy in order to establish a successful cult or organization, this is definitely NOT the one they would concoct! Additionally, why would they concoct a conspiracy that would ensure their own persecution and death? This would be utterly counterproductive.  Further, if the disciples were in on the lie, then why sustain the lie in the face of persecution and death? You said, "they might have had incentive enough" to die for the lie...but what could that have been? This in fact is one evidence for the validity of the resurrection itself, that the actual resurrection of Jesus provides the powerful incentive that would be needed to face persecution and death - not only for themselves but also for their families. They lost everything of worldly value - ostracized, persecuted, loss of reputation, and ultimately death and the probable destruction of their families. The actual resurrection of Jesus which validated his teaching about who he was, the kind of Messiah he was, and provided the hope of eternal life with him in glory, would be the incentive needed for what the disciples did. It seems inconceivable that they would have endured all that for a known lie which they themselves perpetrated!

 C**** hopefully, this helps to address your concerns. God bless you!

Hell, A Very Serious Subject

Don't be scared by the title or the length of this article. Jesus spoke often about hell so we must think about it and absorb its horendous truth.

"How Willingly Do People Go to Hell?
Does Anyone Standing by the Lake of Fire Jump In?
October 29, 2009By John Piper
Read this article on our website.
C.S. Lewis is one of the top 5 dead people who have shaped the way I see and respond to the world. But he is not a reliable guide on a number of important theological matters. Hell is one of them. His stress is relentlessly that people are not “sent” to hell but become their own hell. His emphasis is that we should think of “a bad man’s perdition not as a sentence imposed on him but as the mere fact of being what he is.” (For all the relevant quotes, see Martindale and Root, The Quotable Lewis, 288-295.)
This inclines him to say, “All that are in hell choose it.” And this leads some who follow Lewis in this emphasis to say things like, “All God does in the end with people is give them what they most want.”
I come from the words of Jesus to this way of talking and find myself in a different world of discourse and sentiment. I think it is misleading to say that hell is giving people what they most want. I’m not saying you can’t find a meaning for that statement that’s true, perhaps in Romans 1:24-28. I’m saying that it’s not a meaning that most people would give to it in light of what hell really is. I’m saying that the way Lewis deals with hell and the way Jesus deals with it are very different. And we would do well to follow Jesus.
The misery of hell will be so great that no one will want to be there. They will be weeping and gnashing their teeth (Matthew 8:12). Between their sobs, they will not speak the words, “I want this.” They will not be able to say amid the flames of the lake of fire (Revelation 20:14), “I want this.” “The smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night” (Revelation 14:11). No one wants this.
When there are only two choices, and you choose against one, it does not mean that you want the other, if you are ignorant of the outcome of both. Unbelieving people know neither God nor hell. This ignorance is not innocent. Apart from regenerating grace, all people “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Romans 1:18).
The person who rejects God does not know the real horrors of hell. This may be because he does not believe hell exists, or it may be because he convinces himself that it would be tolerably preferable to heaven.
But whatever he believes or does not believe, when he chooses against God, he is wrong about God and about hell. He is not, at that point, preferring the real hell over the real God. He is blind to both. He does not perceive the true glories of God, and he does not perceive the true horrors of hell.
So when a person chooses against God and, therefore, de facto chooses hell—or when he jokes about preferring hell with his friends over heaven with boring religious people—he does not know what he is doing. What he rejects is not the real heaven (nobody will be boring in heaven), and what he “wants” is not the real hell, but the tolerable hell of his imagination.
When he dies, he will be shocked beyond words. The miseries are so great he would do anything in his power to escape. That it is not in his power to repent does not mean he wants to be there. Esau wept bitterly that he could not repent (Hebrew 12:17). The hell he was entering into he found to be totally miserable, and he wanted out. The meaning of hell is the scream: “I hate this, and I want out.”
What sinners want is not hell but sin. That hell is the inevitable consequence of unforgiven sin does not make the consequence desirable. It is not what people want—certainly not what they “most want.” Wanting sin is no more equal to wanting hell than wanting chocolate is equal to wanting obesity. Or wanting cigarettes is equal to wanting cancer.
Beneath this misleading emphasis on hell being what people “most want” is the notion that God does not “send” people to hell. But this is simply unbiblical. God certainly does send people to hell. He does pass sentence, and he executes it. Indeed, worse than that. God does not just “send,” he “throws.” “If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown (Greek eblethe) into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:15; cf. Mark 9:47; Matthew 13:42; 25:30).
The reason the Bible speaks of people being “thrown” into hell is that no one will willingly go there, once they see what it really is. No one standing on the shore of the lake of fire jumps in. They do not choose it, and they will not want it. They have chosen sin. They have wanted sin. They do not want the punishment. When they come to the shore of this fiery lake, they must be thrown in.
When someone says that no one is in hell who doesn’t want to be there, they give the false impression that hell is within the limits of what humans can tolerate. It inevitably gives the impression that hell is less horrible than Jesus says it is.
We should ask: How did Jesus expect his audience to think and feel about the way he spoke of hell? The words he chose were not chosen to soften the horror by being accommodating to cultural sensibilities. He spoke of a “fiery furnace” (Matthew 13:42), and “weeping and gnashing teeth” (Luke 13:28), and “outer darkness” (Matthew 25:30), and “their worm [that] does not die” (Mark 9:48), and “eternal punishment” (Matthew 25:46), and “unquenchable fire” (Mark 9:43), and being “cut in pieces” (Matthew 24:51).
These words are chosen to portray hell as an eternal, conscious experience that no one would or could ever “want” if they knew what they were choosing. Therefore, if someone is going to emphasize that people freely “choose” hell, or that no one is there who doesn’t “want” to be there, surely he should make every effort to clarify that, when they get there, they will not want this.
Surely the pattern of Jesus—who used blazing words to blast the hell-bent blindness out of everyone— should be followed. Surely, we will grope for words that show no one, no one, no one will want to be in hell when they experience what it really is. Surely everyone who desires to save people from hell will not mainly stress that it is “wantable” or “chooseable,” but that it is horrible beyond description—weeping, gnashing teeth, darkness, worm-eaten, fiery, furnace-like, dismembering, eternal, punishment, “an abhorrence to all flesh” (Isaiah 66:24).
I thank God, as a hell-deserving sinner, for Jesus Christ my Savior, who became a curse for me and suffered hellish pain that he might deliver me from the wrath to come. While there is time, he will do that for anyone who turns from sin and treasures him and his work above all.
Trembling before such realities, and trusting Jesus"

Pastor John Piper

Why do we suffer?

One reason we suffer is so that God's power might be displayed in our lives (2Cor 4:7). What does that tell us about the value and worth of God's power being displayed?

Why Heaven?

When listening or reading certain treatments of the topic of heaven one could get the impression that heaven's joy is its streets of gold, pearly gates, beautiful angelic music, and reunion with friends and family. But this would be a subtle and tragic mistake. The Bible does paint an awe inspiring picture of heaven but leaves no doubt that the joy of Heaven is God Himself! The throne of God and the Lamb (Jesus) is the centerpiece and focal point of heaven (Rev 22:1-4). The point of heaven is that God will be there in the midst of His people, He is the gift, the reward, the treasure that we are to enjoy for eternity (Rev 21)! All the other benefits of heaven find their significance in that God Himself is in the midst of His people (Rev 22).

So this has tremendous implications for what it means to be a Christian and "heaven bound". The essential element to being a Christian is having been transformed from not loving and treasuring God to loving and treasuring God above all else! This is done through a sovereign work of God's grace to change our hearts from hard and rebellious to soft and submissive toward God (Ezekiel 11:19-20). Christians are ones who have been changed from hating His word and ways to loving His word and ways. Unless our hearts are in concert with the Apostle Paul's in longing for Christ's presence we have no reason to assume we will occupy the heaven in which Christ is the main attraction (2 Timothy 4:8).

Do you claim to be a Christian? Then test your claim by asking yourself this question, "why do I want to go to heaven"? If the answer isn't, "because Jesus is there!" you have reason to be very worried. Fall on your knees and cry out to God. Ask for a new heart of tender affection for Christ. Ask for a love for God and His kingdom, His ways and word. Ask Him to bring you to heaven...so that you can be with the lover of your soul, Jesus Christ!