What You Believe Matters

Jesus made clear that if we are to be his true disciples we must hold to his teaching.  The statement is exclusionary but it does not exclude other teachings it merely states that if you are to be his disciples you must hold to his teaching.  Now if you want to be someone else's disciples just hold to their teaching. The choice is yours.  But you cannot be his true disciples and hold to some other teaching. So the question becomes what did Jesus teach? It stands to reason that you cannot follow teachings that you do not know.  According to the Gospel of Thomas he warned us not to believe leaders who say the kingdom of God is in the air.  In the Gospel according the gospe writer Mark he warned against those who would come saying I am Christ and who would deceive many.  He also said there are those who have the keys to knowledge who won't go in themselves and who will hinder others.  The bottom line is that the true teachings of Jesus have been supplanted by something called the Gospel of Christ which originated with and only existed in the mind of Saul of Tarsus (aka St. Paul). It was readily accepted because it requires nothing but faith in the Christ -- you don't have to do anything but have faith.  No matter how laudable that teaching may be it is not the Gospel of the Kingdom of God and it is not the gospel taught by Jesus.  When Jesus promised that we would do greater things than he had done the proviso was that we hold to his teaching.