(February 10, 2023 at 9:19 pm)Huggy Bear Wrote: Jesus's ministry didn't start till he was 30, John's whole purpose was to prepare the way for the Messiah, essentially being the opening act. once his job was done, he had to exit the stage.
An yet not all of John’s disciples got the message. John the Baptist’s disciples stick by him even though by all rights they all should have made a mass exit for Jesus. Instead, John’s sect thrives alongside Jesus’ the whole time, even after John’s death. Meaning that John the Baptist was not the opening act for Jesus. To his followers, he was nothing less than the Christ himself.
And it seems that the sect of John the Baptist survived till today, the Mandaeans, beyond the frontiers of Christendom, all through the centuries.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
