Today’s Christian Heretics?, Edition 2, Ed Houry, Amazon 

Jesus instructed that “not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven” (Matthew 7:21-23, and similarly Mark 3:35, Luke 6:45, James 1:22, 1 John 2:17, Romans 2:13). Today, there are 7.8 billion persons on this earth, 7.6 billion more than Jesus’ day. Who is doing the will of the Father in today’s world? Who are today’s Christian heretics? This book was written to open minds and hearts, and to promote a better understanding of what Jesus’ teachings mean in today’s world, and how Greco-Roman influence largely displaced Jesus’ ministry. 

Jesus’ message emphasized loving our neighbors as ourselves, living by the golden rule, caring for the poor, the afflicted and imprisoned by giving, not just from our abundance, but giving time, effort and love with self-sacrifice to those from whom no love or return is sought, quietly and without notoriety. Jesus’ message has been relegated to near obscurity and insignificance by today’s Nicene Christianity.

Today’s Nicene Christianity was developed when the Greco-Roman pantheon of gods and goddesses was being replaced, when the earth was considered flat, the center of the universe, and when even Roman emperors were accepted as gods. As late as 1633, Galileo was prosecuted by the church in Rome for his heliocentric beliefs. This book shows why the church’s earlier developed Nicene beliefs, long after Jesus’ ministry, are equally questionable and detract from Jesus’ ministry.

Paul already believed in a resurrection before Jesus (Act 23:6-8). Jesus’ teachings did not include the Nicene beliefs in the Trinity, Adam’s sin forever infecting all humanity, and worshipping Jesus as Lord and Savior because Jesus allegedly died for our sins. These beliefs were developed during the first five centuries by the church in Rome bent on stamping out Gnosticism and other beliefs. Scriptures make a compelling case that Jesus earned eternal life, because of his exemplary life and faithfulness to God: not because Adam ate forbidden fruit.

Rather than considering the sale of indulgences by the church in Rome as a corruption and not works, the Reformation abolished even faith-based works in favor of the questionable concept of justification by faith alone. While the Reformation had the laudable impact of eliminating indulgences, it diminished Jesus’ ministry, which was largely focused on faith-based works. The Eastern Orthodox churches were never corrupted by the sale of indulgences, and were unaffected by the Reformation.  The church in Rome abolished the sale of indulgences but retained faith-based works in the complex world of salvation.

As set forth in this book, the fact that churches have not emphasized Jesus’ teachings or adapted Jesus’ teachings to today’s world has resulted in greed and a quest for power and undue influence corrupting our democracy, worsening our concentration of wealth, and oppressing our large majority. The undue influence results in the usurpation of public appropriations to create private wealth rather than public benefit, by manipulating the levers of government. This book shows how this is being accomplished.