Herbert W Armstrong

   Most people would say it hasn't changed much. They would say that the holy land, especially the Arab-occupied portions of modern Israel near the West Bank looked pretty much today just like they looked during the time of Christ, a few Arab nomads in tents and Tora Adobe huts, a dry barren, arid land of waste. But in reality, the area around Galilee where Jesus was reared and where he spent most of his adult life was far from a dry, arid, barren wasteland, but a glittering example of modern architecture and beauty, really something that would shock visitors if they were to see it in its entirety recreated today.

   No, all the time area of Galilee was anything but Farmersville, it was glittering, beautiful, a marvel of architecture and engineering as I've said so many times that Jesus Christ of your Bible, the one that is really revealed in the pages of scripture is a different personality. He had a different appearance, a different message, different doctrine came to the earth for a different purpose and is alive today. Far different even there from what most people assume. Not only was Jesus himself, different, his family, different, his clothing, his whole lifestyle, but so was the area in which he grew up and where most of his ministry was performed in the Jesus Christ Superstar Rock Opera of the day. The traditional vagabond image is perpetuated just like it always has been in the Sunday school classrooms around America in all of our big stage stained glass window, interior, you know, churches where this type of thing is taught.

   From little boyhood we have all heard the story about the little Lord Jesus away in a manger. We get the idea of camel trains of wise men who wore funny Persian costumes of shepherds with the old shepherd crook standing in the field with sheep batting or bleeding away. We got the idea of a tiny community of 16 or 20 people in mud and adobe and stone huts where everyone knew everyone. We got the idea of a person in sackcloth or something like our burlap with a torn garment with Japanese shower sandals. But in this case, of course, probably camel skin or something of this nature walking along dusty dirty roads where there were once in a great while, a little collection of huts or goat skin tents and tiny towns and villages. Always in the comics where religious organizations try to perpetuate this idea by artistry in the traditional pictures that are portrayed by passion plays and certainly the same thing is portrayed in the Jesus Christ Superstar Rock Opera.

   The idea seems to be that Jesus was a hippie. He was a vagabond Jesus. He was strange and weird and cut off from his society at that time, a farmer-type agrarian-type atmosphere, a background of illiteracy, of sheep herders and camel drivers, of small-town country folk. The story goes that Jesus even talked in parables in order to make his meaning simpler for those poor illiterate country folk of that day. Now, in this series of programs on The Life and Times of the Real Jesus, I have been uncovering not only the truth about his personality, his appearance and his message, but also now about the area in which he lived.

   Let's take a look at the area of Jerusalem, the Holy Land, Galilee and make a few simple comparisons. It's actually about the same size, somewhat smaller than the county of Los Angeles. This is the whole area of what is called the holy land. Now, we take this entire area that I was talking about and we divided up into the little section of Galilee where the entirety of Jesus ministry was conducted or most of it, as we'll see in just a moment, you get some kind of an idea. These people living in California of the tiny area in which most of Jesus ministry was conducted. The area of Galilee only one northern portion of what is called the Holy Land. Now, on an occasion or two when Jesus went down to Jerusalem, then he walked probably a distance of about from say, Santa Ana to San Diego, a distance of probably about 90 miles. People don't seem to realize that the Sermon on the Mount, for example, was not a sermon that was given down in Jerusalem. Many people have assumed the Sermon on the Mount was a sermon on the Mount of Olives. It was not, it was on a mountain overlooking the sea of Galilee.

   And I think that I may have gotten very close to that same mountain because when you read the Bible, instead of what a lot of people said about books, about books, which are written by people that wrote books about other people who wrote books about the Bible. And this is what you sometimes discover in theology. You don't really need to make that bigger hassle out of discovering what is the truth about the life and times of Jesus.

   All you got to do is what I've done, which is to go to the Bible itself, taking the Bible, seeing that Jesus was in the city of Kapur, that he walked only a short distance that he climbed up a steep mountain. I did precisely when I was near the ruins of Kernan, found a very steep mountain climbed well up into some of the rocks and found that there were many areas there where you could get a view of the whole area of the Sea of Galilee and did an on-the-spot World Tomorrow radio program from that site.

   It was quite an eye opener to me the first time I went there, I've been there many times since and it certainly changes your idea about the kind of an area that was during the lifetime of Jesus Christ.

   The important point to make is that people have tried to put Jesus in a certain setting. And from this, they have assumed that Jesus was a kind of a vagabond that he lived in a hill country where there were a few farmer folk and sheep herders where there were camel drivers and illiterate masses, but usually only small groups of people where everybody basically knew everybody, and everybody was pretty much related to someone else.

   The central highlands of Samaria, the area where Jesus grew up were very, very blessed. They had plenty of water, an abundance of trees. The soil was very, very wonderful soil, deep soil, great quantities of grass. The cattle were the envy of all. Galilee was so wonderful a country to live in that in fact in many people beside the Jews lived there.

   From the time of Isaiah, it became known as Galilee of the Nations because it attracted settlers in many other parts of the world. Josephus said that many foreigners lived there. Josephus, one of the most eminent of all Jewish historians who lived way back just this side at the time of Jesus Christ, Galilee, especially where Christ grew up was in those days then abundantly blessed every inch of it was cultivated and had some of the best soil on earth, the cities and over 240 of them in that tiny Galilean area.

   So, think of it much like Los Angeles might have been way back around the twenties or thirties where there were many, many, many dozens of little townships back even in the forties when I first came to the Los Angeles area, you could drive through miles orange groves and going from Pasadena to Bell or Bell Gardens or Downy, now no longer solid city.

   There were 240 cities in that day and the population so many Josephus said no township had fewer than 15,000 souls in it. The population then roughly was somewhere close to 3 million people in the Galilean area where Christ's ministry was performed.

   This gives a completely different flavor, a different perspective and point of view to the Ministry of Jesus Christ than the traditional Sunday school one. During the time Jesus went on trial for his life before Pilate, they revealed the Pilate that he was a Galilean and people talked about Christ of the area of Galilee continually.

   It's mentioned in the Bible in Luke 23 verses five through six (Luke 23:5-6). And they were the more fierce this is at his trial when Pilate is being spoken to now saying, he stirs up the people teaching throughout all Jewry beginning from Galilee to this place.

   When Pilate heard of Galilee, he asked whether the man were a Galilean also in the book of Mark chapter one and verse 39 (Mark 1:39), I'm reading now of the King James translation. The one that most people I think commonly read and he preached in their synagogues throughout all Galilee. Remember 240 cities, a minimum of 15,000 per city or town.

   If you prefer that word, approximately 3 million people in the area. And he preached throughout that area. It was called a great ministry. It was not done in a corner. Jesus ministry began where John the Baptist left off and it said of John the Baptist that his was a very great ministry where tens of thousands of people had flocked to hear him preach and were baptized of him through all of that area.

   So, the traditional idea of a vagabond hippie type person wearing kind of ratty old clothing with wispy hair and a thin scraggly beard. A few people that had no money that had to beg or borrow that always slept out of doors is utterly beside the point and absolutely untrue.

   I have shown time and again. And you can see it when you write for the booklet we're showing you on, The Real Jesus, that Christ was a homeowner, that he was a taxpayer that he paid his own way that he wore clothing of such expensive make that when it came time for his crucifixion, Roman soldiers gambled over it, that he looked like any average ordinary Jew of his day. He escaped out of crowds in the glittering modern, beautiful city of Jerusalem, time and time again, when they tried to kill him.

   Judas remembers the Biblical story itself goes, was given a tremendous sum enough to go, retire to a ranch for life except that he hung himself as a result of it for betraying Jesus because they had to pick him out of a crowd where he was absolutely just one of the crowd. They couldn't have possibly known which one he was, which also indicates that the disciples were wearing a pretty good quality of clothing too, when you stop to think about it.

   The traditional view, the Sunday school one versus the biblical one. That's what this is all about. I'm asking young people to talk about one way. Turn on with Jesus. Yes. But which Jesus, the real Jesus of the Bible? Look, if you're going to worship someone, if you're going to say I worship Jesus Christ, you're going to claim that you believe in the Christian religion and Christ is your savior. You would think that as much as people like to find out about the matinee idol about, you know, what kind of body odors he uses odors and prevention of odors.

   What kind of soaps? What are his personal tastes or hers or habits? Whether that's a wig or real hair clothing where they shop this type of thing, you know, when it's a human being that is alive right now today and people are very, very excited about this person. They want to rush up and get their autograph, they want a picture, assigned picture of them so they can look at it, just gobble up all these magazines written about little personal tastes, much of which I suppose is sheer apple sauce.

   But it always seems to me to be a cop-out when I mention to people. Yes. But wouldn't you want to know what Jesus looked like if the Bible tells you? And they say, well, it isn't important what he looked like because he belongs to us all. Well, to me that's escapism in one of its worst forms. It's merely trying to say you want to hang on to your household image of Jesus, the kind of a little household God that people have in the backs of their minds instead of the real Jesus, the way he was.

   And more importantly, the way he is now what he is doing today. Growing up in that area of Galilee, in the city of Capernaum, Christ would have been very familiar with the sophisticated Hellenistic civilization that was around and within Galilee, the Greek language was the universal language then, just like French was back in the 18 hundreds. And the best Greek in the New Testament was written by Jesus half-brother James, of whom it is said Jesus himself was his teacher, James was so literate in his writing of Greek that many people began to assume that James may well have grown up in some Greek city.

   The apostles were born and reared and labored and worked in the area of Galilee. For a very specific reason, Jesus was going to send them first from Galilee to Jerusalem, then to Samaria. And as he said to the uttermost parts of the earth where that universal language of Greek was spoken. Now people have assumed they were a group of uneducated farming folk.

   Nothing is further from the truth. Luke was a physician. Matthew was a tax collector who lived right there in the city of Capernaum astride the crossroads of commerce, language, culture, music, art, literature of the day. As a matter of fact, literary giants of the Roman world came from near Galilee where Jesus grew up and where he preached the city of Gadara, one of the cities of the Decapolis located near the southern shore of the sea of Galilee gave rise to one of the most influential men of the Hellenistic world in the field of philosophy and fine arts.

   As a matter of fact, gave rise to many of them. And this important literary city was only 18 miles away from Capernaum and less than 30 miles from Nazareth. Strabo, writing the first decade of the Christian era names men from Gadara, who had become very famous, such as Philotimos, the Epicurean and Meleager and Manipus, the serious comic and the contemporary orator whose name was Theodore, believe it or not.

   These names may mean little to us today, but they meant much to the Roman world. They were as famous for them as our, as our major actors, philosophers, or writers. Maniptus, about 260 B.C. was famous because he was the man who most influenced Varro, one of the greatest literary giants of the Roman world. And besides this, he influenced also the notable Horace, even Seneca, Juvenal and even Petronius the most famous men of Roman literature.

   This Maniptus from the small town of Gadara was a literary giant. Melager was another gathering who was a poet and writer of music. Melager was so important as a poet that he marks the principal turning point in the history of poetry from Homer to modern times. The direction he pioneered was followed by other men. The Romans, particularly Ovin, Caputus learned from him.

   In fact, from Meleager, the singers of the early renaissance in France in Italy derived their styles more than from anyone else. Yes, believe it or not. Even early European music had its birth in Gadara of Galilee, a town within walking distance of the place where Jesus grew up. Philototus was from that town, and he flourished in the First Century B.C. He was the domestic philosopher and advisor to Julius Caesar's father-in-law. He was also a major poet, and his influence is found in most of the great Roman literature and poetry of later times.

   In fact, many scholars feel he was a teacher of the literary giants during the time of Augustus Caesar. The point I would like to ask you in all of this, with this tremendous cultural and literary city of Gadara very close, with an easy walking distance of the town where Jesus and his disciples grew up. And when you read in the life of Jesus, how they sang hymns together of the things they spoke, how Jesus, when he went to the Capernaum of Galilee to the tiny synagogue there, they handed him the roll of the scroll of Isaiah.

   Now the Bible as it was written in scrolls was a very precious thing. Only a few copies exist not tens of thousands, but perhaps numbered in the very few hundreds and very, very precious and of inestimable value. Yet he opened that scroll instantly right to the place where there was a prophecy that he said this day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. Jesus had had access to libraries, to literary and cultural centers of his day.

   And yet in preparation for that ministry, there is no statement that he ever went to Jerusalem prior to the time his flight from it as a baby and his return to it yearly at the Passover for only a few days each year with his parents. Where did he study? Where did he learn these things? Where did he have access to some of the literature of his time in the area, the immediate environs of the Sea of Galilee, which was a glittering jewel and marvel of architecture, engineering and a far cry from the nomadic desert, arid wilderness.

   Most people have assumed through the falsity of tradition that that area of Galilee was. What about the area of Capernaum? When you go there today, you see one Monastery, you see a lot of ruins. I was first there in, I believe 1966. It seems to me just before the Jew-Arab conflict. I pretty sure that was the year. A matter of fact, I heard when I walked a garden on the other side of the ruins of the very little synagogue where Jesus was given that scroll and from which he quoted that prophecy that I mentioned briefly and I was told that there had been an American tourist there only months or perhaps a year before who had walked over near that very same stone wall, which at that time was the border in the no man's land area.

   It was no man's land for a mile or so in between, between the Arabs on the one hand and the Jews on the other and rifle shot had rung out and she had fallen to the ground with a bullet in her stomach. Events like that did occur from time to time. I looked among those ruins of the little synagogue.

   It was small from the standpoint of the number of seats and the number of people who could have crowded into it perhaps 100 or two at the most. I don't know but very fine in its building of solid granite and other kinds of stone. Most of the important and the very expensive stones of marble and all the facades have long since disappeared and been taken away.

   But many of the original stones, the floor, the columns were still there. And if it were a building that were sitting in the courthouse square of any city in America today, it would be one of which the populace would be very, very proud. And you can't imagine the number of civic movements there would be to try to keep such a building from being demolished because it would last on and on the city of Capernaum where Christ spent most of his ministry.

   This was in and around that town and it's where the Apostles came from, was a wealthy city on the main highway between Egypt and Mesopotamia. Matthew sat as a tax collector along this Roman road and you can still see remnants of the gigantic oil presses, the mills and so on that gave rise to quite a commercial industry of that day.

   The synagogue that I mentioned was built in Hellenistic style and it had very rich furnishings and rich building materials. Christ himself commented on the affluence of the society in which he lived and walked and worked when he said in the 11th chapter of the book of Matthew, upgrading the cities where his mighty works were done. And verse 21 (Matthew 11:21) I'm reading, woe unto you, Chorazin, woe unto you Bethsaida for if the mighty works which were done and you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.

   But I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment than for you and you Capernaum, talking about his own, not hometown but a town in which he lived and worked and very likely owned a home because there's a great deal in the Bible about Christ going back and forth from a home in which there had to be room enough for 120 of them. Matter of fact, that's the very home where he was on the occasion that they took stones loose from the skylight area and let a cot with a sick man down inside because of the tremendous crush of people that were there because they wanted the man to be healed of Jesus.

   And he said, woe unto you, or you Capernaum, which are exalted unto heaven shall be brought down to hades. Or in other words, the grave, death, destruction, not the kind of a false idea of an ever burning hell fire that people have through tradition. The Greek word hades simply means grave. The lower regions has nothing whatsoever to do with fire, believe it or not, which I have proved in the past and will in the future, for if the mighty work which have been done unto you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained under this day.

   So, the point is Jesus showed that the affluence of the environment in which many of his miracles were done. So contributed to the attitude of call it worldliness, call it an over attention to material goods. The same diseases of affluence prevailed then in the cities and towns where Jesus lived and worked as they do in our modern society today. There were just as many diversions, just as many temptations, many of them of the same kind. There were just as many giant public affairs and events, triumphal marches, circuses and lions and wild animal shows including later on, of course, in the Roman Empire, the throwing of Christians into the arena.

   But even during Jesus day, many sports events, cultural, literary events, musical groups and so on. And the cities and towns of that area, nearly all of them had their outdoor arenas as I was showing last time, Herod the Great, even prior to Jesus birth was a man who had a great foreign aid program, a man who had caused great public buildings, many of them, one in particular up in the city of Cesarea, over two miles long with giant Corinthian columns along the entirety of the route.

   So what I'm trying to point out is that the area of Judea of Galilee of the Middle East during Jesus day was not at all like people have imagined it was because of the false traditions, the theological misconceptions, the Sunday school lessons that have tried to perpetuate Jesus as a hippie and a vagabond and the area in which he grew up as a poverty stricken, illiterate nomadic desert wilderness. It was nothing at all like that.

   As a matter fact, Caperna was such a wonderful physical environment. It became a spiritual handicap for its people. Now, the point in all of this is that even as Capernaum was a highly cosmopolitan city and the Middle East itself finally developed Jerusalem, a glittering city, of one of the most beautiful buildings even attested to by Romans themselves, that man had ever seen the Hellenistic temple of the day of Herod.

   And people have missed this. They don't seem to commonly know it. They don't understand it when people think Holy Land or Bible times, they almost automatically erase everything that has to do with beautiful buildings with affluence. And they think only of the depressed nomadic shepherd desert like wilderness with scraggly tuffs of grass and a few bleating sheep, a few scrawny goats and once in a while, a camel caravan or they think of Persian dancing girls and come with me to the casbah, but whatever it is, it's a perverted idea when you really look at what did happen, what it was like.

   And you're going to find that just as much as the physical geographical area and the historical concept of the area in which Jesus grew up is so completely different in reality than from tradition. And what most people have thought you're going find that the message of Jesus Christ of Nazareth and what Jesus himself is like in appearance and personality is just as different.

   When you write for this booklet, The Real Jesus, The Real Jesus booklet goes into the question of what Jesus looked like, whether or not he had long hair, what were his personal tastes, likes, dislikes and habits? Did he live in a home or did he always camp out of doors? Was he a vagabond and the world's first hippie or did he dress rather neatly? And was he clean? Did he at any time come head to head with the establishment?

   The answer is no and the proof is there. Did he break any laws? Did the incident of plucking corn on the Sabbath day and giving to his disciples break a law as one young man active in various hippie organizations alleges and wrote me a letter about, did he when he cast out the money changers at the temple that's in the song, you know, put your hand in the hand and when the buyers and the sellers are no different fellow from what I profess to be and so on. It's sung a great deal by the young people today. Did Jesus break a law when he cast those people out of the temple?

   That's in this booklet too. The Real Jesus, what was he like? Was he an average Jew of his day? What tribe was he? What color was he? Everything is all here in this one booklet. It's a very controversial booklet, a much needed booklet in this day and age when Christ himself said, the one major message you would be hearing about him is merely the story that he is the Christ, that Jesus is the Christ. And he said even preaching that message, they shall deceive many.

   So that booklet, The Real Jesus is free of charge. It does not ask you to join anything. There is no request for money, there is not even an envelope or anything of the kind in here that even politely or subtly urges you to do anything of the kind, but it is very valuable information. It's right out of your Bible. I challenge you not to believe one word of it until you look it up in your own Bible and prove it to yourself. It will have some colorful illustrations. It's got a blue cover with this kind of an institutionalized box here, it's called The Real Jesus. It is free of charge and no price and be sure to request the booklet, Just what do you mean the Kingdom of God is the Kingdom God something within you.

   Maybe somewhere along your religious experience, you've heard someone say that maybe you even thought it was in the Bible. Did Jesus actually say to a group of carnal minded Pharisees the Kingdom of God is within you? There's a scripture in the Bible which people seem to think says that you read of that in this booklet.

   Can the Kingdom of God be a nation on this earth? Take a look at Great Britain no longer great. Can anyone who formerly espoused the idea that the British Empire was virtually the kingdom of God on earth still believe in that today. Did Hitler believe that he was a would be Messiah and ushering in a kind of a German millennium, a kingdom of God with Hitler himself at the obvious helm. What does that make out of Him? Some kind of a would be Messiah? No doubt.

   Well, the Kingdom of God has been grossly misunderstood this booklet shows you that it is an actual kingdom with a King, with a territory with subjects and with laws by which those subjects are ruled. And in each case, it is not some philosophy or theory of man. It is no idea of ours. It is rather one biblical scripture after another that shows you in plain layman's language straight from the shoulder, plain talk. Exactly. What is the Kingdom of God? Is it heaven? Here, really is the entire epitome all wrapped up in a nutshell of what is the promise Jesus Christ of Nazareth gives to humankind.

   He came talking about the Kingdom of God time and again, he said, the Kingdom of Heaven is like unto this like unto that like unto the other thing. He said, it's like unleavened that a woman hid in measures of meal until all was leavened. He said, the Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom of God is like unto when a man found a pearl of great price and he went and sold everything that he had to achieve that one. He said, the Kingdom of God is like when a young nobleman went away into a far country to get for himself a kingdom and to return, he talked about the children of the kingdom being cast out. He talked about a great wedding supper. He gave many analogies many examples of what he meant by the Kingdom of God. This booklet goes through the scriptures on that subject and shows you as no other booklet we have exactly what is the Kingdom of God. It is free of charge. There is no price for it. Just what do you mean the Kingdom of God?

   And also while you're at it, be sure to write for the number of the Plain Truth magazine. Remember what you're hearing is the soundtrack of a daily television program. You're hearing the sound part, the audio portion only of a daily taped television program, which is going out to many, many television channels all over the United States and Canada. So, if you're hearing it right now on radio and yet you may live in an area where you just did not know you could get it daily on television. Maybe it's an early morning time in your area. You'll find out when you write for the Plain Truth magazine, it will give you the television log. Maybe you'd rather see as well as hear these programs on television and it's free of charge. No price as is the booklet, Just what do you mean the Kingdom of God?

   So, send your request to Box 345 Sydney, New South Wales. The address is Box 345 Sydney, New South Wales. Remember there is no price, there's no advertising in any of the literature that I've mentioned. It's free of charge, no cost whatsoever. It's sent gratis. The address again is Box 345 Sydney, New South Wales. Until next time, this is Garner Ted Armstrong saying goodbye friends.