Do You Believe Jesus?

By John A. Popken

Many beliefs practiced in mainstream Christianitysome much older than New Testament writingsfind their roots in a blend of ancient pagan worship, philosophy, and allegorical interpretation. The early church in Rome, familiar with these ancient beliefs and practices, attempted to Christianize them and then force fed them to the churches of the Roman Empire. And just like church groups back then adopted those beliefs and practices, Christians today continue to adopt questionable beliefs from the society around them.

Do You Believe Jesus? presents a theology that dares to confront mainstream beliefs, most of which are cloaked in tradition. It finds its basis in the words of Jesusthose he personally taughtand in the writings of the early church fathers. It is an alternate theology and may have some serendipitous similarities to other theologies that are also out of the mainstream, and it will challenge mainstream beliefs that in no way represent the gospel as taught by Jesus.

If you have questioned whether or not your church and its beliefs are taught by Jesus, then it is time to explore what Jesus actually taught. Or if you do not attend church and do not know what to believe, then listening to Jesuss words can start you on a new path, settling questions in your mind and providing peace of mind by exposing new truths.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Apr 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9781973626756

John A. Popken

John Popken is a retired entrepreneur and passionate Bible scholar. He attended Pierce College in Woodland Hills, California. John has a history of starting and managing businesses since 1963. These ranged from retail service stations to manufacturing. He also spent a few years working in the aerospace industry. Most notable of the programs was Lockheeds SR-71 Blackbird developed in the famous Kelly Johnson Skunk Works. While working for Northrop Aviation he participated in the design and testing of recovery systems for Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo spacecraft. Among the businesses started by him were CAD/CAM Applications, a computer aided design and manufacturing company which specialized in new product development. John also developed a proprietary process for injection molding ferrous metal materials, the resulting company, Advanced Forming Technology grew to become the largest company in the world employing the Metal Injection Molding Process. John, following the sale of Advanced Forming Technology, purchased Proto-Tel Inc., a manufacturer of telecommunications products. He managed that company until his retirement in 2005. Following his retirement John consulted to industry for another five years. In addition to the years spent in industry, John has been an avid and serious Bible scholar since his early twenties. He has developed a theology during his many years of study which differs from tradition we see practiced in churches today. He believes todays professing Christians need a wakeup call and a return to the doctrines taught in the first century church. John currently resides in rural south central Kentucky.

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Copyright © 2018 John A. Popken.

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ISBN: 978-1-9736-2676-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-2677-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-2675-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018904842

WestBow Press rev. date: 04/30/2018

Unless otherwise stated, all scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (CEV) are from the Contemporary English Version Copyright © 1991, 1992, 1995 by American Bible Society, Used by Permission.

Scripture marked (BBE) taken from the Bible in Basic English translation of the Bible.

Scripture marked (YLT) taken from the Young’s Literal Translation of the Bible.

Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from THE MESSAGE, copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter 1     Why Did Jesus Come to Earth?

Chapter 2     Veiled Message

Chapter 3     Saint Status

Chapter 4     Lord of the Old Testament

Chapter 5     The Missing Elements

Chapter 6     Traditional Religious Practices

Chapter 7     The End of This Age

Chapter 8     The Age to Come

Endnotes

About The Author

PREFACE

A s an avid Bible scholar, I am acutely aware the world is fast approaching the time Jesus described as the great tribulation. I’m haunted by the realization that billions of people who profess a belief in Jesus and call themselves Christian don’t believe what he said or heed the warnings he gave, through no real fault of their own. False doctrine passed down through multiple generations has deceived them.

Everything we need to know about the future and our fate is available within the pages of our Bibles. With this work, I hope to call attention to that fact and inspire those interested to chart a course of an independent and open-minded pursuit of the truth.

Following his miracle of feeding five thousand souls with five loaves of bread and two fish, Jesus was being sought out by a large crowd of people who had earlier witnessed the miracle. Read John 6:28–29 (NIV, emphasis mine). One of them asked, What must we do to do the works God requires? Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent."

Millions profess a belief in Jesus. According to a study, The Changing Global Religious Landscape, by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, 2.3 billion Christians are around the world.¹ About one-third of the world’s population believes in Jesus Christ in one form or another. The World Christian Encyclopedia contains information on an incredible 33,000 distinct Christian denominations in 238 countries worldwide. A denomination is defined as an organized Christian group within a specific country.² Since each of these groups call themselves Christians, one supposes that all of the members of these groups, with 33,000 distinct sets of beliefs and an unknown number of separate doctrines, believe in Jesus.

Most of us believe in Jesus because we want to secure everlasting life for ourselves. But how can we determine exactly what to believe and how to practice our faith with thousands of individual organizations proclaiming their differing dogma? They cannot all be right? Where can we find the truth?

The apostle John, speaking of Jesus, wrote, "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth" (John 1:14 KJV).

It seems reasonable that most, if not all, would agree the source for the truth is God’s Word. It is, after all, the instruction book for the worship of the deity we call our God. The Bible contains history, prophecy, a code of conduct or rules of law, instruction on worship, and God’s very words. It spells out God’s plan and provides a prescription or formula for obtaining eternal life. "Jesus saith unto him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me’" (John 14:6).

While praying to his Father, Jesus asked him to sanctify his apostles. To sanctify one is to make him or her holy, so Jesus asked his Father to make his apostles holy with his truth and explained the source of that truth is God’s Word. "Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth" (John 17:17).

We find truth then in Jesus since he is part of the family of God and God’s Word is truth. True doctrine must then come from this source. It must come from God. Doctrine from another source is not from the deity we worship.

My personal search for the truth spans more than fifty years, and my interest dates to my childhood. As a young boy growing up in Minnesota, I was required to attend Sunday school and church. I always had a hard time reconciling the idea of a loving and all-merciful God giving mankind two choices: behave in the manner he prescribes and live forever peacefully in heaven or follow our own instincts and live forever in hell while being subjected to eternal punishment and torture.

One memory that looms large in my mind is asking my Sunday school teacher, What will we do in heaven?

Her answer went something like this, We will float on the clouds, staring at the face of God while listening to the screams of those in hell.

My almost immediate reply was, I don’t want to go there.

For this, I was spanked.

My best friend was Catholic, and my church believed Catholics were heretics and doomed to hell. But my friend and his church believed in God and my fate as a Protestant was hell. I was taught I am Christian; he was taught he is Christian. My father, a Christian, went off to war to fight Christians. My God! Did our Almighty God really author all this confusion? Is this really God’s way?

I just could not accept it, and when I reached an age where I could make my own decision on church attendance, I quit. I went on with my life, believing I was an atheist, denying God, albeit with some tinge of doubt in the back of my mind.

Some years later, as a young adult with a family, my wife asked me to attend church with her and the children.

I revolted and said, No! There is no God.

This reaction produced a significant strain on our marriage, but not wanting to give in, I told my wife, I will prove there is no God.

Little did I know where this would lead. I had bitten off more than I could chew. I began reading the Bible with no real thought as to how to study it. While reading Daniel 8 one evening, I came to the realization that Daniel was talking about Alexander the Great, his conquests, and the Medio-Persian Empire. And he was doing this before Alexander was born. Wow! History! History in advance! Daniel got my attention. I have all my life been a lover of history, ancient history in particular. My study took on an even more serious note.

It was too late to rescue my ego as I admitted to my wife I might have been wrong, but it was not too late to embark on an exciting lifelong study of God’s Word. From that day forward, I began to study with real purpose, searching for God’s truth. Being unencumbered with the influence of any of the many religious organizations and their dogma, I have been able to establish my beliefs based solely on God’s Word. Tradition had no grip on me since I had no formal ties to any church and no religious affiliation. I began to develop a whole new picture of what God’s plan was all about, an image most will find unfamiliar and hard to believe. And now I find myself advanced in age with a wealth of knowledge, of which few are privy, wondering how to communicate what I have learned to an unwilling populace.

I joined a church in rural Kentucky with a wonderful congregation I love dearly. But they, like most congregations, I believe, are woefully misinformed. We have a pastor, a kind and good man who believes in the tradition he teaches, which has been passed down for generations. He fears any sort of change.

Each week in the Bible study class I attend, I explain what I believe to be flaws in the beliefs of this congregation and point to scripture that supports my beliefs. I see very few signs of anyone willing to really take a critical view of what he or she believes with an open mind. I have generated some interest, but as yet, no converts. A very slow process it is, with a very small audience of about a dozen members. I know in the twilight of my life that I don’t have a lot of time to spread what I believe to be the truth. I need to reach a larger audience if I am to have any chance. Therein lies the inspiration for this work.

We must glean everything we need to know about Jesus from the roughly 180,000 words of the New Testament and the references to him by the prophets of the Old Testament.

Having already acknowledged we believe in Jesus, we must now learn to believe Jesus in order to understand the truth we are all seeking. Believing Jesus, in spite of the scant bit of information we have to review, will prove to be much harder than believing in him. The individual religious traditions, which have been passed from one generation to the next, in some cases, for hundreds of years, will not die easy.

How so? I’m asked.

Just as one simple example: Millions of professing Christians believe we either go to heaven or hell at death. Their religious organizations have taught this belief for generations, but Jesus said, "And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven" (John 3:13).

Millions more believe they will go to heaven with Jesus when he returns and resurrects their dead bodies. Yet John, when writing what Jesus revealed to him in the Revelation of Jesus Christ, concerning the kingdom and those who reign in it, wrote, "And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth" (Revelation 5:10).

The source of many of our individual beliefs comes from the teachings of our particular religious organizations, not God’s Word. Since, as already stated, they cannot all be right, it holds one day there will be a lot of disappointed professing Christians. I cling to the hope I might be able, through this work, to convince some of them to revisit and learn through their own personal study of God’s Word.

I often furnish materials to the Bible study class I attend, some of which I authored as well as documents written by others. I have noticed, if I make references to a Bible scripture, it is rare someone will actually look it up. For this reason, I normally provide the supporting scripture within the written material so those reading it will not have to look it up, which they rarely do in any event. Learning from experience, I have attempted as much as possible to let God’s Word tell the story as originally written by arranging Bible passages by subject, in a logical order, so the reader is seeing and reading God’s Word pertaining to the subject matter being discussed. I am not rewriting or trying to tell a new story; rather I am helping to explain an old one.

Many will no doubt find the content controversial, but for the most part, they will be reading God’s Word. This work will attempt to lift the veil and expose the truth. Perhaps some will heed. I encourage the reader to pay particular attention to the Bible passages presented, for they tell the story. I merely direct the reader down the path, as I present the evidence that tells that story.

But the word of the LORD was unto them precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little (Isaiah 28:13).

I don’t bring impressive credentials to this work, and I don’t have a wall full of diplomas and awards. I’m a simple man of modest means and average intelligence. The knowledge I have accrued over the years is the product of dedication, a strong belief in God, the application of God-given intelligence, prayer, and thousands of hours of study of the Bible, early church writings, as well as the works of many other dedicated scholars.

Understanding comes to those who seek it, and I have sought it for the bulk of my adult life. I could not begin to thank all those I have learned from, through their writings and publications, people who neither know me nor know of my pursuits. The depth of knowledge required to formulate a picture of God’s plan is greater than any one individual possesses. Many thanks to those dedicated scholars (past and present) who have published works to which I have had the privilege to access and examine. Their works have provided me immeasurable value in my search for the truth.

As we delve into the content of this work, some will no doubt find parts or perhaps all of it controversial. It is a book written for those open-minded individuals who profess Christ with no intent to offend anyone. I believe all those who profess Christ are good God-fearing people and have a sincere belief in their worship. But while you may be sincere, you could be sincerely wrong. If that statement offends you, you may want to choose another book. This one is not for the fainthearted or easily angered.

If,