Christian Awakening

By Joellen Saddock

Although author Joellen Saddock was raised in a Christian household, she often found herself on the outside of religion looking in. In Christian Awakening, she narrates a coming-of-age story about the way she discovered answers to all her tough religious questions. More than anything, her story exemplifies how God’s law actively works to multiply desires and assist in creating a life of possibilities. Her story is about man’s mountain-moving potential that has, until now, been obscured by religious hypocrites.

Christian Awakening explores the deeper meanings of the Holy Bible, how it parallels other religions, and shares the message of a loving unity between all of God’s people. Saddock prods you to set aside the idea that man begins and ends in the confines of his own skin and suggests a broader perspective of what it means that men—of all religious backgrounds—are “given one spirit to drink” (1 Corinthians 12:13).

Through an intense scrutinization of many different biblical translations, interwoven between riveting personal experiences, a new message of religious tolerance emerges. Offering a fascinating perspective on Christ’s death, Saddock leaves you at the crossroads of the divine, suggesting the time has come to take each other by the hand and greet the dawn of “a new earth in which righteousness dwells” together as one united people (2 Peter 3:13).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Apr 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9798765227169

Joellen Saddock

Joellen Saddock resides in Virginia with her husband and 4 children. Although raised in a Christian household, she often found herself on the outside of religion looking in. Her story is a coming of age story about the way she discovered answers to all her tough religious questions. More than anything, her story exemplifies how God's law is actively working in life to multiply desires and assist in creating a life of possibilities. Her story is about man's mountain-moving potential that has--until now-- been obscured by religious hypocrites.

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ISBN: 979-8-7652-2715-2 (sc)

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Balboa Press rev. date:  07/11/2023

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1   A Bug (Locust) in Your Ear

Refilling the Wineglass and Renewing Your Mind

Is God an Old White Man?

The Likeness of God

The Ratified Law

The Law and You

Which Fruit Did Adam Eat?

Are Reparation and Forgiveness Mutually Exclusive?

Miserable Sinner

A Woman Scorned (and Other Personal Samaras)

The Sacrifice—Not a Sacrifice

Religious Tolerance

A Check from God: The Law in Action

About the Author

Introduction

As far back as I can remember, I have wanted to explain the beauty of Christ’s message, which stands in stark juxtaposition to mainstream Christianity. The progression of the year 2020 opened a chasm in consciousness that has prepared people to be able to receive this message. This happened because as the media’s agenda became more obvious, people became more and more skeptical of the forces that are currently governing them. My place in all this madness is to tell you that these same forces—mostly greed and power—that have corrupted the government, the media, and many medical practices have also corrupted the Christ message. This happened long ago. It happened before the formation of Christian churches. In fact, it happened before Christianity was even organized into a separate religion.

The corruption of the holy message happened first in Judaism. This is why Jesus often pointed out corruption among the priests, scribes, and Pharisees. He implied that these religious leaders were offering the Jewish people an altered interpretation of God’s law—one that made them hypocrites. He often pointed out their double standards. For example, he made fun of them for teaching laws that would prevent them from rescuing their own livestock on the Sabbath (Mark 12:11). He was careful not to contradict the Holy Book, but he was always able to offer scriptures that contradicted the laws that were being interpreted from them. I will be copying his format by using the Holy Bible to nullify the lies that many churches still teach regarding heaven and salvation.

I have written this book in an attempt to restore the true meaning of the original texts, making sense out of a Bible that otherwise appears to contradict itself. If you’ve picked up this book, it’s because you are ready for this message. It might sound scary at first—to unlearn all the early programing that most churches impose upon little children—but your happiness depends upon it. Do not be afraid. Jesus gave us permission to think outside the box. He used wineskins to represent belief systems when he told us that no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins (Mark 2:22 NIV). He was telling us that the old religious beliefs systems could not withstand the vastness of the real message that he shared.

Metaphorically speaking, the wineskins of the priests would burst under the rigorous examination of the scriptures that Jesus offered. Basically, Jesus’s message was too amazing to be contained within the confines of the old, limiting, religious salvation framework. Certainly, his reference to wineskins was not recorded because the fermentation process of grapes is pertinent to our salvation. Instead, it is our old beliefs that must be set aside like old wineskins because the old message—of a God who requires sacrifice and condemns people to hell—cannot withstand the truth that Jesus was teaching about a loving and forgiving God. Jesus did not travel such a distance, or endure so much, to make sure that we knew how to make a good glass of chardonnay. Instead, he spoke these words to give us permission to step away from our old beliefs so that we could soak up his teachings on the fertile soil of an open mind.

Furthermore, Jesus warned us to be wary of the yeast of the Pharisees. However, the Pharisees seemingly vanished into thin air, rendering Jesus’s warning as outdated and meaningless. Unless, of course, he was referring to all hypocrites in positions of authority in religious institutions. In the case that Jesus regarded the Pharisees as fundamentalists, then his warning is still relevant today. I doubt he warned us of a group that would immediately vanish, rendering his warning obsolete. If you pay attention to who Jesus trash-talked, it was teachers of the law, Pharisees, scribes, and priests. Jesus was specifically keying us into the idea that there could be corruption in religious institutions. He was telling us that sometimes the very people who are named authorities might not be experts at all. He gave people back their own authority when he told us that we had the wherewithal to know and identify spiritual truths. He did this by saying, Ye shall know them by their fruits (Matthew 7:16 KJV).

Basically, Jesus acknowledged corruption in religious institutions, and he told us to trust our own inner guidance system to see through that corruption. He was assuring us that we had the wherewithal to identify a wolf dressed in sheepskin. He said this long before the Pope’s Audience Hall was constructed to exemplify who Christian fundamentalists really want you to worship. If you haven’t seen pictures of this unusual building in Vatican City, I encourage you to look it up. The exterior of the building is built to resemble a snake. Jesus is immortalized in a torturous pose, and his hair is made to look like the head of a serpent. Here, sermons are delivered from inside the mouth of the serpent. All in all, the building leaves one with the impression that the serpent was the victor, and Christ the eternal victim.

Regardless, Pharisees were (and still are) fundamentalists who teach a literal interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. Therefore, Jesus’s warning is still both meaningful and relevant today. He did not warn people of a religious group that would disappear overnight. Instead, he spoke timeless truths by warning us that fundamentalists (Pharisees), teachers of the law (priests), and scribes (recorders) specifically taught an interpretation that had been altered by their yeast. When Jesus warned about the yeast of the Pharisees, he was referring to the way their interpretation altered the holy message. He compared their interpretation to yeast because when yeast is introduced to bread dough, it completely alters the product. Whereas manna is a nutrient-dense flatbread with a long shelf life, yeast adds a bunch of hot air into the bread, making it fluffy and prone to mold. Yeasty bread has a relatively short shelf life, while manna endures. In other words, God’s Word endures, while the interpretation (yeast) of the Pharisees cannot. They offered a completely different interpretation than the words that actually exist in the scriptures. Jesus issued his warning to explain that those running the temples were leading men away from the power and joy of God’s kingdom through their altered message. His instruction to be wary of the yeast of the Pharisees was a reminder to be open-minded to the ways in which erroneous leaders contradict the scriptures and entice people with altered messages.

Jesus warned us of corrupt temple leaders because he knew that this was going to be an ongoing problem, especially regarding the message that he came to deliver. The Bible verifies that Christ’s own message had been corrupted shortly after his death. Jude assured us that fundamentalists had already secretly slipped in among Christians and taught a doctrine that denies everything that Christ taught (Jude 1:4 NIV). In order to be considered teachers, these individuals must have snuck into positions of authority within Christian churches. The apostle Paul confirms this by writing to Galatians that some false believers had infiltrated our ranks, indicating that it was false believers who held a comparable rank to himself, that taught a message designed to re-enslave (Galatians 2:4 NIV).

Corruption was nothing new to the Jewish religious authorities, and that’s why Jesus called them hypocrites. During his ministry, Jesus had tried to explain that the old texts were symbolic stories. He treaded carefully around the scriptures, explaining that he understood the law as it was written—but not how it was being represented. He pointed out that people had gone mad over what they considered to be work on the Sabbath (Luke 14:5). He questioned the value of sacrifices altogether (Matthew 9:13). He suggested we quit worrying about God’s forgiveness and start extending some of our own instead (Matthew 9:6; 5:25). Considering that Jesus taught using stories (i.e. parables) it is a bit shortsighted to assume that Jesus was the only prophet who ever spoke spiritual truths in story format. Truly, most of the stories contained in the Bible are parables with deeper meanings that have been obscured by a literal interpretation of the holy texts. Teachers of the law taught that these stories were history instead of figurative to conceal the knowledge of how to enter God’s kingdom. This is why it is imperative to consider their symbolic meaning. The path is hidden in the parable, and corrupt religious authorities didn’t want people to discover it.

The apostle Paul even assured us that the old stories were symbolic. Regarding Sarai and Hagar, he said, Now this may be interpreted allegorically because he wanted people to understand the deeper meaning in the stories that Abraham had told (Galatians 4:24 ESV). Thinking of these old stories as historic events, rather than parables, does nothing but confuse the reader. Man is left with more questions than answers when he is told that snakes used to talk, that God specifically grows fruit to tempt men, and that he sometimes drowns entire continents of people. When these stories are taught as history, it does little to help men understand their role on earth or to bring any clarity of purpose to their lives.

What is the point of reading a Bible if the stories are not relevant today? Are they simply warnings to avoid articulate reptiles and unidentified fruit? Or are there deeper meanings that we’ve missed because the stories have deliberately been mistaught? I submit that the latter is true, and I’ll explain why, but first, I need you to trust me that it’s okay to think outside the box. Jesus used a number of examples to try to explain that we cannot receive his message if we are trying to fit it into the framework of our old beliefs—so fasten your seatbelt and open the throttle of your mind. You will be renewed if you are able to transform the mind of any stagnating religious beliefs that have gone unchallenged for too long.

CHAPTER 1

A BUG (LOCUST) IN YOUR EAR

It might seem confusing that God is described as both forgiving and punishing, yet there is a way to make sense of this conundrum. There is a biblical interpretation that upholds logic, explains punishment, and clarifies how God’s unwavering love shines on all people at all times. I implore you to set aside your old wineskins (belief systems) just for a moment. By doing this, you will come to understand all the joy that is available to you so that you might come into the fullness of who you really are and build a life that you really love. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to understand your purpose here. You deserve freedom and personal power. You deserve to express and receive love and joy, and I want to re-explain Jesus’s message in a way that gets you excited about your future.

I will be using many different translations of the Bible to explain the truths that have been hidden through the ages. Using multiple translations helps bring clarity by allowing us to cross-reference ideas. The true meaning of the Bible emerges more clearly when we can eliminate the occasional blunder of an ignorant translator or the intentional misleading of Pharisaic translators. Most biblical translations are similar; however, on rare occasion, one version is so far off track that it helps to reference the same scripture in multiple versions. It might seem like I am cherry-picking scriptures by using various translations to build my own case. I am. However, I only do this when one scripture makes no sense—literally sounds like nonsense—while another translation fits perfectly into Christ’s teachings. I encourage you to compare the translations for yourself so that you can see the differences firsthand.

Yirah, for example, is a Hebrew word that means something between fear and awe. The English language does not contain a word that possesses the exact same meaning. As such, God was often described as one who should be feared—when he is really one for whom we should feel reverence. One little word can color the way we think, see, and feel about God. For example, one translation says that Jesus was heard by God because of his reverence (Heb 5:7 ESV). However, when we read the same line in the NKJV, it sounds completely different. In this version, God heard Jesus because of his godly fear.

Reverence and fear are completely different feelings, so it is wise to consider how these statements fit into the greater context of the Bible. Since God is defined as love, and it seems odd to fear love, we can conclude that reverence is a better translation than fear (1 John 4:8 NIV). If our goal is to be heard by God, and the Bible says that Jesus was heard because of his reverence, then we need to shift our emotional state from fear to reverence. This, of course, does not mean that God ignores the irreverent. Truly, I tell you that God hears everyone. However, it did appear as though God was listening to Jesus more closely. It seemed this way because Jesus was able to multiply food, heal people, calm storms, and generally defy physics. These events gave the appearance of being heard by God. However, what the Bible was really explaining was how to use God’s law to express our own personal power and create our own reality. It was Jesus’ power that gave his audience the impression that he was being heard by God.

Those heard by God receive whatever they ask for in prayer (Mark 11:24 NIV). By explaining that Jesus was reverent, the Bible was cluing us in to how our attitude is paramount in moving matter. Jesus’s mindset of reverence had everything to do with why his prayer requests seemed to be fulfilled so quickly. If we blindly accept one version of the Bible over another, and we to try manifest our desires by projecting fear, we may become frustrated when God does not seem to hear us. Furthermore, we might become disillusioned about the truths contained in the Bible. This is why it’s so important to keep an open mind.

Reverence and fear will never produce the same results, so we want to be certain which one Jesus was embodying so that we can correctly imitate him. After all, the goal of every Christian is to imitate Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1). We imitate Christ not so that we can meet the same demise, but because we want to embody love, wield our own power, and become the intentional creators of our life experience. We can’t properly imitate Christ if we haven’t received the right message. Even the simplest of scriptures can be vastly different from one translation to another. They are not all telling us the same thing. One tells us to fear God, another to revere him, yet those two emotions produce completely different chemical reactions in our bodies. They will produce vastly different circumstances and manifestations in our life experience. Reverence is in alignment with God, while fear is very far from him.

Now, before I get into the heavy stuff, let me give you another trivial example of why we want to do a little research on translational differences. Let’s reconsider John the Baptist’s diet. Due to our reliance on the interpretation of others, it is widely accepted that John the Baptist ate locusts and honey (Matthew 3:4). Most churchgoing folks assume that John dined by scooping honey out of beehives and crunching on the little exoskeletons of grasshoppers. The insect, known as the locust, is technically edible. However, before we envision the wise man picking bug legs out from between his teeth, let’s ponder the likelihood of a prophet having to work so hard to extract just a few meager calories from an insect. It seems like a rather primitive way for a wise man to eat. He’d have to spend his entire day catching locusts to get enough calories to survive. He’d barely have enough time for prayer. One might speculate that since locusts eat leaves, maybe John was just doing his part to salvage crops and prevent famines.

While his diet might have been altruistic, it seems unlikely because honey locust is also a tree that produces edible legumes. The honey locust (scientifically known as Gleditsia triacanthos) grows a pod containing edible pulp. It’s possible that our understanding of John’s diet depends upon whether or not there was a comma or an ampersand between the words honey and locust. My point is not to convince you that John ate legumes instead of insects. I am fairly certain that his diet is mildly relevant at best. My point is that we shouldn’t put all our proverbial eggs in one translational basket. It is also noteworthy that the honey locust tree is also available in a thorned variety. This plant is also called sting of Christ (épine du Christ) in French, and false thorn of Christ (Falscher Christusdorn) in German. It’s almost as if we are being told that the tree is tied to Christ in some way.

We should notice that the name of the honey locust tree pervaded many nations, specifically tied to Christ, while the locust diet did not permeate any religious rituals. This indicates that scribes might be able to mislead people with scriptures, but they could not infiltrate the horticulture field and rename a tree to erase its relationship with John the Baptist. Perhaps the tree has been named accordingly because John the Baptist paved the way for the Christ message by preaching a doctrine of repentance even before Jesus arrived on earth (Matthew 3:2).

About John, it was written:

For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said, The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight.’ (Matthew 3:3 ESV)

From this perspective, John kept the path of Christ straight by teaching that forgiveness comes from repentance (changing one’s mind) rather than from sacrifice. This is why John the Baptist called out all the Pharisees and Sadducees who came to be baptized when they heard him warn of the impending arrival of the Christ (Matthew 3:7). John knew that they taught that strict adherence to the law of sacrifice was what saved, yet obviously they didn’t believe their own words when they showed up to repent for their wrongs in front of John.

Basically, the reference to, and various names of, the honey locust tree indicate that John was like a false thorn of Christ, while Jesus was to become the real thorn in the side of those who taught a doctrine of sacrifice. What John started, Jesus came to complete, and the irony that Jesus was dressed in a crown of thorns for his execution should not be overlooked.

Again, I am not saying that John didn’t eat grasshoppers. My goal is just to make you aware that a tiny symbol (like the ampersand) can change the man’s diet from honey-dipped bugs to beans. While it doesn’t really matter to me what he ate, there is a huge difference between what we’ve been taught and the possibility that he simply ate legumes. I don’t think that his diet was paramount. It was probably recorded because people wanted to try to emulate him, and they thought that it might be his food choices that made him holy. However, the apostle Paul made it clear that other people’s diet shouldn’t be of too much concern to us.

The person who will eat anything is not to despise the one who doesn’t; while the one who eats only vegetables is not to pass judgement on the one who will eat anything; for God has accepted that person. (Romans 14:3 GNT)

Regardless of what John ate, it is very important to know if our current interpretation of the Bible has more to do with the grammatical or botanical knowledge of ancient translators than it has to do with spiritual truths. In this case, John the Baptist’s diet might be irrelevant, and the story might just be foreshadowing of the tree that sustained John but punctured Jesus. Regardless, it makes me wonder how many similar blunders translators may have made about stories that are much more relevant to everyday life. How do we know we can trust the old interpretations that have been handed down to us?

My goal is not to force my opinion on you; it is to open your mind to the possibility that even the best-intentioned translators can only translate from their own pool of knowledge. If they don’t know horticulture or grammar, they might miss an ampersand or comma—and they might end up teaching us that wise men eat bugs instead of beans.

While the prophet’s diet might be an honest mistake, it’s important to acknowledge that the Bible includes a threat—a deterrent—to people who intended to add anything, or take words away, from the holy text (Revelation 22:18 GNT; Revelation 22:19 GWT). To include this warning in the scriptures makes it pretty clear that the prophets of yore knew that translators were going to attempt to alter the holy texts. If we’ve been misguided about the diets of wise men, how much more could we have been misguided about Jesus’s messages, which carry more weight than diets? Jesus was born into a religion that claimed to be God’s chosen people, and yet he said their interpretation was wrong. He said that the very people who held the authority to translate the meanings of the holy texts had taken away the key to knowledge and misled masses of people (Luke 11:52 NIV). What if this is still true today? What if many churches today are run by Pharisees disguised as holy men? The time has come to reconsider the knowledge that has been handed down to us. You can be certain that the key to knowledge is still contained in the good book, hidden within Jesus’s many stories, but it has been obscured by the current interpretation, which often contradicts what was written in the Bible. More than two thousand years ago, the literacy rate was extremely low, and people relied upon others to read and interpret the scriptures. Luckily, those days are behind us. Today, most of us can look, research, and read for ourselves. Once you start unraveling the false doctrine you’ve been taught, I think you will find the current interpretation of the Bible to be like swallowing a locust; the real meaning is much more palatable and pleasing.

REFILLING THE WINEGLASS AND RENEWING YOUR MIND

Jesus had a great understanding of the laws that run the universe, and he came to help us find our way out of the matrix that the Pharisees had been constructing around us. He told us that we need to be open-minded to be able to receive this message. In fact, Jesus often taught outside of the confines of the temples because this is where he found the most open-minded people. He taught among drunkards and sinners because they could receive his message while those who believe themselves saved by their religious affiliation could not. He spoke spiritual truths about the scriptures, to those who had ears to hear, and those people were not often found in religious institutions. That’s why he traveled by foot and gave sermons on mountaintops. However, his goal was not to dismantle Judaism to form a new religion; it was to preserve both by re-explaining what the old scriptures really meant (Matthew 9:17). This is also what the apostle Paul was referring to when he asked us to be transformed by the renewing of your mind (Romans 12:2). In other words, Paul asked us to be changed by revamping the very thoughts we hold. He went on to assure us that once we open our minds to new possibilities, we will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing, perfect will. Basically, Paul was saying that once we open our minds, we do not need an intercessor because God’s will becomes obvious and testable to each one of us.

Wineskin comparison aside, another way that Jesus told us to be more open-minded was by saying, Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 18:3). Obviously, he did not mean that we should become incontinent, grab toys out of each other’s hands, and/or cry when we don’t get our way. Instead, he meant that we need to suspend our current beliefs and become as open-minded as children.

I don’t know if you’ve spent any time on a playground, but the last time I was there, I heard one little boy tell another that he was going to be an elephant when he grew up. Children believe in all possibility. They lack any preconceived notions that might prevent them from believing what Jesus taught.

Adults, however, often hear and process things through a framework of beliefs that cloud their understanding and prevent them from receiving the fullness of the Christ message. For example, Jesus might tell a group of people that they can receive anything they ask for in prayer—even to the extent of moving mountains—but adults assume he was exaggerating. The adults might justify their lack of belief by presuming there were limitations that he failed to mention or that he was embellishing. They might use a cop-out when their own prayers go unanswered by saying that their prayer just wasn’t God’s will. However, Jesus did not say that we can receive whatever we ask for if it’s God’s will. He offered no stipulations whatsoever.

Additionally, blaming God’s unknown will both contradicts Paul’s claim that God’s will is knowable and testable, and it fails to explain the existence of false prophets. You see, Jesus warned his followers to be aware that false prophets would demonstrate with miraculous signs to deceive even the elect (Matthew 24:24 NIV). If false prophets can perform funny business in the form of miracles, we have to wonder why deceit would be classified as God’s will, but good health would not be his will for those who pray for it but do not receive it. Clearly, there is something more to the story. Jesus said that we could move mountains, and these words came out of the mouth of a dude who withered trees and walked on water—so it seems unlikely that he was exaggerating, especially considering that he said true believers would do greater works than these miracles that he performed (John 14:12 ESV).

Jesus specifically told us to change so that we could think the way that little children think. He told us this because our ability to enter the kingdom is dependent upon our ability to receive his message with an open mind. In order to understand what Jesus was really teaching, we need to set aside—just like old wineskins—that which we’ve come to believe as concrete reality. We need to try to hear what he taught from the same land of possibilities that children spend so much of their days in.

Let me give you an example of the malleable mind of children: In 2015, when an Italian boy fell into a frigid canal and was submerged for forty-two minutes. Eventually, his body was pulled from the fifty-nine-degree water, he was resuscitated, and he immediately began talking about his favorite soccer team. Scientists—who previously said it was impossible to live without oxygen for forty-two minutes—began saying that freak incidents like these can occasionally happen to the young because the automatic reflex to drop the heart rate and divert oxygen to the brain is more active in children. This is not a reflex that people age out of for any other reason than, when left unchallenged, our beliefs harden and cause our imagination to atrophy. We become practical realists instead of wide-eyed-dreamers. We begin to believe in reality as we see it, and we adopt beliefs about how long the body can live based on what science has told us.

Jesus told us to be like little children, not because their reflexes were better, but because their minds were wide-open. Our diminished reflexes are a result of our diminished beliefs in possibilities and not the other way around. Most children are flexible (both mentally and physically) because they are still exploring the physical rules to which they are subject. Being like a child is being mentality flexible. Jesus called us to open our minds and hear his message outside of the confines of religious framework. That is why he primarily preached outside of the temple walls (https://time.com/3897897/how-an-italian-boy-survived-42–minutes-underwater/).

Another way that Jesus told us to open our minds was by saying, If any of you want to be my followers, you must forget about yourself (Matthew 16:24 CEV). Jesus wasn’t simply telling us not to be so self-centered. He was explaining that the best way to really hear his message was to forget everything we’ve ever learned. He wanted us to forget everything that we believe defines ourselves. We are all comprised of the varying beliefs that have either been taught to us or that we have deduced from personal experiences. However, not all these beliefs are true. For example, if a child was bitten by a dog when he was little, he might grow up to believe that all dogs are bad and dangerous. The child who grew up with a loyal dog might believe all dogs are good. However, neither belief encompasses the variety of dog behaviors and dispositions present on earth today. Likewise, if a child was taught that money does not grow on trees, he might grow up to have limiting beliefs about the prevalence and availability of money. Not all the conclusions that we’ve arrived at are true, so it was Jesus’s best advice to completely forget everything that defines us as who we think we are; only then can we become movers of mountains. In fact, Adam was advised against eating from the tree of knowledge because knowledge is regarded as factual, and facts are not malleable.

Another way that Jesus reminded us to stay open-minded was by making us aware that people enter God’s kingdom in an unexpected order. He told us that prostitutes and tax collectors were often entering the kingdom before priests. This is a shocking statement considering that most of us believe that religious teachers should have more favor with God than whores. Yet, make no mistake, Jesus said that greedy tax collectors and faithless whores were often able to enter the kingdom before the very people who were teaching God’s laws (Matthew 21:31).

Jesus turned religion on its head by undermining religious authorities, and they did not appreciate it. They killed him over this stuff. However, it was not merely because he exonerated whores over priests that he was persecuted and ultimately crucified. It was compounded by the fact that he demonstrated the power to heal the infirm—while those purporting to be spiritual leaders could not. This completely undermined their authority. Temple leaders knew that they could not maintain influence over the masses if people believed Jesus, witnessed miracles, noticed their inabilities, and recognized the religious hypocrisies that they taught.

Jesus’s command of God’s law was so great that religious leaders had to get rid of him. His murder was a well-orchestrated plan. It is recorded that religious leaders went away and met with the supporters of Herod to plot how to kill Jesus (Mark 3:6). Again, it is important to remember