The Truth As I Experience It

For the sake of the question I am about to ask you, I am going to use the word "Christianity" as a catch-all term referring to every modern religion that has spawned from the teachings of Jesus Christ. The question is this: "Does Christianity today mirror the essence of the actual life and teachings of Jesus Christ?" This is a very broad question which will come with a plethora of different answers. For myself and many others, I think when we look at the actual words Jesus spoke and the actual way he lived his life, our answer to that question is "No". Christianity has become a collection of organizations that have unintentionally traveled far from the the original intent and message of the Christ. Jesus Christ was clearly inclusive and accepting of everyone, nonjudgmental, and he taught a message of love, of the Christ within each of us, of a heaven on earth to be experienced in this lifetime and of a God who was accessible to all, in all, ...

    Throughout my relationship with Unity and the Bible, I have heard many differing opinions and theories on who the Essenes were and what role they actually played in the events surrounding the New Testament story. There are also questions about the amount of influence they may have had over the Bible writers and the writings themselves. In this piece I will attempt to clarify who these historical figures were and what role they actually had, if any, in the creation of our Bible.     My introduction to the Essenes came around the age of ten when my parents, who had been students of Edgar Cayce's readings for decades, began to tell about how this community may have influenced Jesus' life and our history. Up to this point, all of my understanding on the topic was strictly from my parents’ perspective of the Cayce work, until I became a teenager and was so fascinated by these stories that I decided to study the Cayce material for mysel...