By Akinpelu Olujoba
“But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”(Matthew 4:4)
With these words Jesus sternly rebuffed the Tempter, Lucifer!
After baptism in the Jordan, the bandages fell from the eye of the Christ. He became aware of His personality. He recognized that He was to bear witness for the Word, the Holy Word, to the whole of humanity down here on earth. Thus through the Act of baptism, His Mission was anchored spiritually.
John, also called the Baptist, fulfilled his own mission too—fulfilled his lofty task as a forerunner, he who reincarnated on earth specifically to prepare the way for the Christ, the Savior. This John had always acted as a faithful preparer of the way for Light happenings in the World of Matter.
After baptism Jesus desperately needed the peace of seclusion. Nothing the earth could offer was sufficient to satisfy His longing to withdraw from humankind. The recognition that He was to bear witness to the Word drove Jesus into the wilderness for further preparation. All the angelic hosts and nature beings ministered unto Him, whom the heavens had proclaimed as the beloved Son of God:
This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. (Matthew 3:17)
Thus the period of seclusion remained the most peaceful period of His entire earthly life, completely out of reach of evil volition of humankind—a grievous indictment against us, whom He had come to serve with unconditional Love.
But like lead, we always burden everything, obstructing the path of our Savior right from His youthful days up to His torturous walk to Golgotha. This obstruction was always felt not only within His immediate earthly family circle but outside of it.
But for wise circumspection and Divine Providence, Jesus would have been murdered even as an infant; recalling to mind with nostalgia the massacres of infants in Bethlehem of Judea on account of Him, a scheme executed under the bloody reign of Herod, about 7 BC.
Therefore, save for Joseph the carpenter, the youthful years of Jesus would have been laced with much misery and loneliness due to misunderstanding of His nature by human beings, not excluding even Mary, His earthy mother. Thus out of selfish mother love, Mary nearly ruined the melancholic youthful daydreaming necessary for the unfolding of His inner stirrings, of having to experience as a man among men. He was to learn our weaknesses, shortcomings, and inferiority complexes, through personal experience within short space of time.
Again, save for constant intervention of Joseph the carpenter, Jesus would have been exposed to needless harassment, chastisement, pressure, and ridicule from his teachers, who also at that time were priests of Judaism and serving their tours of duty in Jewish native synagogues in Nazareth.
Jesus was ridiculed and chastised because He always held opinions contrary to their rigid, lifeless teachings, the more so because the youth could not keep His views to Himself. Because He was not able to keep silent, His mother Mary was always anxious on account of her son, anxious that one day His nature would bring Him into serious conflict, if not into ruin through our mischief, as is always the case with anyone who dares to expose the flimsy character of existing dogmas. Yet the fears of Mary came to pass. Jesus was spared nothing, no thanks to hypocrisy of the priestly caste, the Sadducees, and the Pharisees.
However, the anxieties of Mary were justifiable as an earthly mother. Nevertheless, what she failed to realize was that if Jesus bent His Will by as little as air breadth to placate humankind, such subterfuge would have rendered His Mission impossible of fulfilment. Therefore her anxieties avails her nothing. She only imposed unnecessary sufferings upon herself. This prevented her from gaining the right kind of recognition until it was almost too late, when her son was about to be murdered in Golgotha.
Events unfolded swiftly, and Joseph the carpenter died sooner than expected. This happened when Jesus was just about sixteen years of age. Jesus stood by him till his last hours on earth, with great solicitude, at his bedside during these crucial moments of Joseph’s earth life. So stirring were the parting words of one who was so dear to Jesus: “So thou art He, after all.”
For at that momentous time the bandages also fell from the eyes of passing Joseph, and he was permitted to recognize the Christ in his foster son. He saw the Dove wings spread protectingly above Him, and the Cross of Rays directly in Him and with Him. Jesus Himself did not understand the import of these words from Joseph until something urged Him to go and see John the Baptist, who He had heard was preaching wise sayings and baptizing at the bank of the River Jordan.
But with the departure of Joseph from the earthly, also gone was the only human being who understood the nature of Jesus at a human level. Now alone and solitary, Jesus was compelled to face the duplicity, hatred, and persecution of humanity. And without realizing His Mission on earth, Mary also made the earthly separation between mother and son unnecessarily difficult, when the time came for it. For she too perceived inwardly that Jesus would never come back to her.
Among other things it is extremely important to understand why Jesus had to withdraw to the wilderness. He had to spend three solid years out of sight of human beings, before He decided to step forth finally, to approach them in their great distress, to enter into His lofty task.
It may be worthwhile also to reflect deeply on why Jesus had to spend such a long period of up to three years in the wilderness. For unlike John and other prophets who needed the seclusion of the wilderness to deepen their knowledge, to gain the recognition of Truth necessary to attain the right level of maturity before they could enter their missions, the case was different with Jesus, because He was the Word incarnate, the One who has since ancient days been sealed with God and in God, as part of God.
So He was the only One who could give the Word directly, unblemished, without any inter-mediation. And this exactly is what we need so urgently, even if we fail to realize the urgency of it as a result of our deep fall into the snares set for us by the Darkness. The Word is what we need, not the needless spilling of His blood on the cross, a dastardly crime in itself.
Despite the desperate urgency of the task He had to fulfill, Jesus had to withdraw into seclusion still—for two reasons.
First, He needed absolute peace and tranquility. This was to prepare His gross material physical cloak, so that it could bear the Divine Power now fully anchored in it. For despite troublesome preparations in higher Realms against this hard task before His earthly birth, this very last phase in gross matter cannot be dispensed with. Another great deal of forbearance, above all unconditional Divine Love.
Second, and just as important: if Jesus was to help humanity through the Holy Word, He must give it a form. And that form must be suitable to help us in our distress and desperate plight, so that Light will be anchored here on earth. With this, the grip of darkness that had surrounded the souls of human beings would loosen gradually.
For the Word is. It is Life itself, and in Its Primordial state unassailable to all that is spiritual. It is Unsubstantiate and therefore formless. Therefore, without Christ first giving the Word a form, it could not be of any avail to us earth dwellers. For this difficult task, the significance of Christ’s Mission and His sacrifice of Love must burn in our souls with a flame of passionate awe. It is the Word we should venerate, not the person of Jesus—let alone His blood.
Lucifer was aware of all this, because it is branded in the Laws of Creation. Therefore he schemed to cut off the process of this natural development. His real goal was to deny us access to the Word, even before Jesus approached humanity. For this reason he chose the perfect time to devise a temptation against the Son of God. So he said to Jesus:
If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. (Matthew 4:3)
Paraphrasing the meaning: “These time-wasting preparations will avail you nothing. Begin your task in earnest, and use immeasurable powers at your disposal to create a blazing, broad pathway for men. This easier way will appeal to their spiritual indolence, their love of comfort as well as their intellectual goal. Make their paths broad and easy with enchantments, miracles, and healings because this is the only thing that will appeal to their spiritual indolence and weaknesses—not the immense Power that lies in thy Word, which they will never heed anyway. Abandon severity and strictness, and you will see how they blindly flock after you. I offer to help you achieve this as quickly as possible because I understand the weaknesses of human beings better; I control them through invisible threads, and they succumb easily to the promptings of my temptations.”
In short, Lucifer wanted Jesus to resort to the kind of human love which is somewhat soft and gentle, because it harbors germs of selfishness. However, the greater part of Divine Love is severity. The Living Love is not sentimentally weak and ignobly yielding. And Christ, being an embodiment of the Living Love, could not have acted in any way contrary to the Will of His Father.
This paraphrase represents in a nutshell the real intentions and dark motives behind which Lucifer intended to beguile the Son of God. But his real intention was effortlessly unmasked by One who is far superior, and he was rebuffed:
Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God …. (Matthew 4:4, emphasis added)
Which also otherwise means:
Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat … which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed. (John 6:27)
With this Jesus rejected the adversary and reminded him that He had not come here in vain, “for God the Father had sealed His two Sons: Jesus and the Son of Man.” Jesus proved He was unsusceptible, invincible, and undeceive able.
Yet what audacity, what insolence is contained in the earlier part of Lucifer’s address to Jesus: “If thou be the Son of God ….” Is this not a serious expression of doubt about the immeasurable Power that lies in God and in His inviolable Omnipotence? “If thou be”?
With this introduction, Lucifer intended to incite Jesus into anger which would have momentarily swept Him out of psychic tranquility—the most lethal weapon at His disposal in that momentous hour. This “if thou be the Son of God” is the most carefully schemed aspect of the whole temptation saga. It reveals how crafty Lucifer could be and how sinister his dark motives always are. We human beings should take special notice of this.
We should also render fervent thanks to the Throne of Grace, to God Almighty, for granting us the sacrifice of Love through Jesus and for strengthening His most beloved Son at that hour of temptation. Through this Jesus vanquished the Darkness, rendered Lucifer harmless, and won victory for humanity—for those who are ready to hear and to heed His words!
“To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.” (John 18:37)
With this momentous proclamation before Pilate Jesus put a golden seal of confirmation on the reason why He came to this world: “To bear witness unto the truth.” This proclamation, coming from Christ directly, is more than sufficient to displace any contrary reason. Any other purpose, no matter how popular and agreeable to the majority of men on this earth, must have been fabricated to suit an intellectual goal of a few individuals. Because the majority of men prefer tinsel to pure gold and arrant nonsense to simple truth!
A well-orchestrated crime against the Mission of Jesus has supplanted all the major signposts He placed to save humankind. Clearly, replacing the real purpose of Christ’s Mission with a counterfeit one is highly reprehensible. Yet we did not shrink from doing it.
We did not even stop there. We elevated the falsehood to a principal dogma in the Christian faith—namely, that Jesus came mainly to die for the sins of mankind. And because its alluring sound soothes our ears, the majority embraced it. Slowly but surely, the spiritual exertion needed to gain strength was denied—even from early childhood.
The goal of this scheme was to cultivate spiritually puffed-up human beings. But alas, they are like hothouse plants that cannot withstand the storms; even though that is the way spiritual highwaymen wanted it. For with this, they hope their followers will be more pliable to be manipulated for material gains of this earth. This act is reprehensible.
It is equivalent to promoting the exact opposite of what Christ preached and laid down His Life for. It is hardly possible to awaken anyone who needs further proof outside this basic fact from the deep spiritual slumber he has fallen into.
“That I should bear witness unto the truth”!
This is similar to the words addressed to Mark the day Jesus accepted him as a disciple:
“I am the Truth and the Live. No man cometh to the Father but by me!”
—and again with what He proclaimed to His disciples:
“Behold, I came to show you the way to the Father. I came out of the Love and will always be the Love, which holds the earth. I hold you with many invisible threads, so that you do not fall. And that is why I live among you and bring you the Word. Only a few will absorb It as I wish, but if they work in my spirit, there will be light on earth before the end comes”. (From Past Millennia—The Life of Jesus on Earth, p. 279)
On every occasion, the emphasis remained constant – bringing the Word to humanity.
To reap the blessings connected with His great sacrifice of Love, however, it is left for each individual human being to understand the true Mission of Christ and to grasp it more purely. This is a task each must set to achieve. Therefore if we wish to have Light here on earth before the end comes, then we must transform the Word of the Lord into deed in our lives and in our experiences.
But today what we have on earth is total darkness instead of Light. Is this not sufficient proof that we have misinterpreted the true Mission of Christ and misplaced the signposts He placed to help us? And by nailing Christ to the cross of crucifixion, we have demonstrated beyond measure how unworthy we are to receive the Mercy of God in humility.
Eliminating the Truth Bringer as a blasphemer was a serious crime. We thereby denied ourselves any chance of receiving more enlightenment through the Word and any chance to gain recognition of Truth. So taking away the physical body that served Christ here on earth through crucifixion is equivalent to embracing Darkness instead of the Light of God. This is a grievous indictment, for no human soul can achieve the level of maturity required of it by itself without recourse to the Word—only through the Word, not through the blood.
Coming from out of the Light all the way down to this mire, and taking the arduous task upon Himself, Jesus showed us the way back to the Light. Through this we received the Word of Truth direct from the fountainhead. He was the only One who could do this at that time.
That He had to lay down His Life for the sake of this Word is a further proof and confirmation of how serious our plight was and how important the Word is for our salvation. But this does not translate to automatic forgiveness of our sins, nor does it mean that Christ carries away the burden of our sins.
