Belief is for the experimentative

In Jesus Christ’s day, “most of the masses were careless listeners willing to listen to hearsay rather than check out the facts for themselves,” writes R. Dawson Barlow in his book The Apostasy of the Christian Church.

“Many were willing to quickly dismiss the claims of Christ because hearsay said that Christ was born in Galilee. Here were men who had heard our Lord in the flesh and were disclaiming His authority because, according to the ‘grapevine,’ He was not born in Bethlehem, the city of David which, according to the Old Testament prophecies, foretold centuries earlier the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem.

“The historical fact is He was born in Bethlehem! That was a matter of legal record and could easily be checked out.

“Herod was an antagonistic unbeliever, yet he believed the integrity of the Scripture enough to find out where the Messiah would be born by having some under his authority search back to Micah 5:2 (‘But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting’).”

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Mainstream Christianity is forever hyper-focused on the life of Jesus Christ being our example.

As Jordan explains, “A lot of people are willing to follow the example of the lowly Galilean as He walked the shores of Galilee, and follow the stranger of Galilee, and follow the example He made, and follow the teachings that He gave, and follow Him in His flesh in His earthly life, but Paul doesn’t focus on any of that—he goes right through the Cross, because the preaching of the grace of God is there.

“When you trust Christ you are to trust a message from Paul that is so fundamentally, radically different from everything in human viewpoint and the way the world works, but preachers have everyone glued to Christ’s earthly ministry to Israel under the Jews’ kingdom program.

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“You know what the world’s like? You got a guy next door with a chem lab in the basement and he tells you, ‘I’m fixing to discover a fuel source that will do away with our dependence on oil.’

“Beaker A, Beaker B and Beaker C are in front of him and he decides, ‘I’m going to mix Beaker A and Beaker B.’

“There’s a gigantic explosion and as the paramedics are toting him off on the stretcher, you ask, ‘John, John, what happened?!’ He says, ‘I mixed Beaker A and Beaker B. It didn’t work.’

“After about six more times of that, mixing Beaker A and Beaker B and getting an explosion, you say, ‘Hey, what about C?!’

“That’s what Paul’s talking about: ‘Here’s the philosophy of human viewpoint and the way of the flesh, and then there’s Christ’s message to me, but you know what people will follow? They'll follow A and B and forget about C. That’s what the world does.' ”

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In Luke 1 and 2, Mary is more than willing to be the mother of the Messiah, but in her son’s public ministry she stood among those who thought Jesus Christ was insane and deranged.

When Jesus was out teaching in Mark 3, for example, Mary and His half-brothers were among those who, when they heard Christ’s words, thought He was “beside himself,” meaning mad in the head or off His rocker.

“They don't believe in Him and they're not believing what He's saying, and that’s why He says, ‘Hey, the people who aren’t my kinfolk are the people who believe me,’ ” explains Jordan.

“Mark 3:31:35 says, [31] There came then his brethren and his mother, and, standing without, sent unto him, calling him.
[32] And the multitude sat about him, and they said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee.
[33] And he answered them, saying, Who is my mother, or my brethren?
[34] And he looked round about on them which sat about him, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren!
[35] For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.

“Another unmistakable rebuke is in Luke 11:27-28: [27] And it came to pass, as he spake these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto him, Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked.
[28] But he said, Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.

“Now there's a verse somebody should ask anybody who wants to worship Mary about! This woman sees Christ and says, ‘Man, your momma is a wonderfully blessed lady,’ and Jesus says, ‘No, no, no, really the one who's blessed is the one who believes on me.’ ”