Table of Contents
PREPARATION FOR JIHAAD
POLICY CHANGE
Jesus will not be a sitting-duck for a clandestine arrest by the Jews. He prepares his disciples for the impending showdown. Discreetly, so as not to frighten his disciples, he introduces the subject of defence. Gently he begins:
“When I sent you without purse, and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye anything?” And they said, “Nothing” Then said he unto them, “But now, he that hath no purse, let him take it, and likewise his bag; and he that hath no SWORD, let him sell his garment and buy one!”
(HOLY BIBLE) Luke 22:35-36
This is a preparation for Jihaad, a Holy War — Jews against Jews! Why! Why this somersault? Did he not advise them to “turn the other cheek”; “to forgive seventy times seven” (70 x 7 = 490)? Did he not send his chosen Twelve with the advice:
“Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves; be ye, therefore, as wise as serpents, (?) and as harmless as doves.”
(HOLY BIBLE) Matthew 10:16
TO ARMS! TO ARMS!
The situation and the circumstance have changed and as with any wise and able general, the strategy must also change. The disciples were already armed. They had some foresight. They had not left Galilee with bare knuckles. They responded:
“. . . Lord, behold, here are two SWORDS.” And he said unto them, “It is enough”.
(HOLY BIBLE) Luke 22:38
The missionary, so as to retain the impression of the “meek and gentle Jesus”, “the Prince of Peace”, pleads that the SWORDS were spiritual! If the swords were spiritual, then the “garments” must also be spiritual. If the disciples of Jesus were to sell their SPIRITUAL garments to buy SPIRITUAL swords, in that case they would all become SPIRITUALLY naked! Furthermore, one does not lop off peoples physical ears with spiritual swords —
“And, behold, one of those who were with Jesus stretched out his hand, and drew his SWORD, and struck a servant of the high priests, and cut off his ear.”
(HOLY BIBLE) Matthew 26:51
The only purpose of swords or guns is to maim and to kill. People did not carry swords to pare apples and bananas in the time of Christ.
WHY COUPLE OF SWORDS ENOUGH?
If this was a preparation for war, then why should two swords be “enough”? The reason is that Jesus was not contemplating a battle against the legions of Rome. Since his “friend” Judas was in league with the Temple authorities, he was expecting a clandestine, underhand attempt by the Jewish oligarchy to seize him. It would be a question of Jews against Jews. In such a battle against the Jewish temple servants and the riff-raff of the town, he would prevail. Of that he was sure. He had with him Peter (the Rock) and John and James (the sons of Thunder) together with the other eight, each vying with one another to go to prison for him; to die for him. 1 These were all Galilians. They had a reputation of Zealotism, terrorism and repeated insurrections against the Romans.
Armed with sticks and stones, and the swords, and fortified with the spirit of self-sacrifice which they had avowed for their Master, he was sure to knock hells into any Jewish rabble that dare confront him.
1. “Likewise also said all the disciples.”- (Mathew 26:35)
A MASTER TACTICIAN
He had proved himself a skilful strategist and planner, alert and resourceful. This was not the time to sit and twiddle thumbs; to be a sitting-duck, cooped up with his disciples in the upper-room! No, not for him. He leads his platoon, in the middle of the night, to Gethsemane-Gethsemane — an olive press — a courtyard built of stone walls some 5 miles out of town.
On the way, he unburdens to them the seriousness of the situation. The implications and the explosive nature of the coup that failed. Now he must bear the wrath of the powers that be. The price of failure!
You do not have to be a military genius to appreciate that, Jesus (pbuh) deploys his forces as a master tactician, in a manner that would bring credit to any Officer out of “Sandhurst”1. He places eight of the eleven disciples at the entrance to the courtyard, commanding them:
“… Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder.”
(HOLY BIBLE) Matthew 26:36
1. A leading military academy in England.
The question that would bug any thinker is: “Why did they all go to Gethsemane? To pray? Could they not have prayed in the upper-room? Could they not have gone to the Temple of Solomon, a stone’s throw from where they were, if prayer is all that they wanted to do? No! They went to the Garden so that they might be in a better position to defend themselves!
Observe, Jesus does not take the eight with him to pray. He positions them strategically at the entrance to the courtyard; armed to the hilt, as the circumstances would allow:
“And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee. . . Then saith he unto them. . . tarry ye here and watch with me.”
(HOLY BIBLE) Matthew 26:37-38
Where is he taking Peter and John and James now? Further into the Garden! To pray? No! To make an inner line of defence — he had put eight at the Gate, and, now these zealous Zealots (the fighting Irishmen of their day), armed with SWORDS, to “wait and watch ” — TO KEEP GUARD! The picture is very vivid; Jesus leaves nothing to our imagination. A-n-d HE (alone) prayed!
JESUS PRAYS FOR RESCUE
“. . . and began to be sorrowful and very depressed. Then saith he unto them, ‘my soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death’ . . .”
“And he went a little further, and fell on his face (Exactly as the Muslim does in Salaat), and prayed, saying, “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.” (This is the quality of a good Muslim who submits his will to the will of God).
(HOLY BIBLE) Matthew 26: 37-39
“And being in an agony, he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat was, as it were, great drops of blood falling down to the ground’’
(HOLY BIBLE) Luke 22:44
MESSIAH SOBS FOR HIS PEOPLE
Why all this bewailing and lamentation? Is he crying to save his skin? It would be highly cynical on his part to do that! Did he not advise others:
“And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out . . . And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.”
(HOLY BIBLE) Matthew 5:29-30
We would be doing Jesus a grave injustice if we thought that he was crying like a woman to save his body from physical harm. He was crying for his people — the Jews. They held a queer logic, that if they succeeded in killing any would-be Messiah (Christ), it would be a sure proof of his imposture. For God Almighty will never allow His truly “anointed one” (Christ) 1 to be killed — (Deuteronomy 18:20). Hence the insistence of the Jews as a people, as a whole, in rejecting Jesus, the son of Mary, as their promised Messiah — “The eternal rejection.”
1. Messiah. “Anointed,” Christos, “Christ.” For full explanation, see — “Christ in Islam.”
IMAGINATIVE VERSION
This harrowing sob-story, the blood-curdling cries and lamentations would evoke sympathy in the hardest of hearts. And the hot-gospeller and the Bible-thumper is not averse to its effective exploitation. We are told that Jesus was destined to die for the sins of mankind. That he was “being prepared for this vicarious sacrifice before the foundation of the world”. That even before the material universe came into being, there was a contract between “Father and son,” and that in the year 4000 A.A. (After Adam) 1, God himself in the form of Jesus, as the second person from the enigmatic Trinity2, was to get himself hanged to redeem mankind from the Original Sin and their actual sins.
1. According to Christian calculations the world and everything in it is 6000 years old.
2. “Trinity”: The closest approximation to the Christian dogma of the trinity as found in the Bible — “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one” – (1st Epistle of John 5:7) — has now been unceremoniously thrown out as fabrication in the R.S.V., the most up-to-date translation of the Bible. See — <!a href=”http://www.jamaat.net/bible/BibleIntro.html”>”Is the Bible God’s Word?”<!/a> for further Biblical interpolations.
JESUS UNAWARE OF HEAVENLY CONTRACT
From the “call to arms” in the upper-room, and the masterful deployment of forces at Gethsemane, and the blood-sweating prayer to the God of Mercy for help, it appears that Jesus knew nothing about the contract for his crucifixion. It reminds one of the Biblical Abraham, leading his son to the slaughter with the bluff that the Lord will provide a ‘scape-goat.’
AN UN-WILLING VICTIM
If this was God’s plan for a vicarious atonement to redeem mankind, then obviously He had chosen a wrong substitute. This candidate was most reluctant to die.Arming! Wailingi Sweating! Crying! Complaining!1 Contrast these responses with those of Lord Nelson, a war-hero, who gave up the ghost with these undying words:
“THANK GOD, I HAVE DONE MY DUTY!”. There are millions today, who would happily immolate themselves for king and country, with smiles on their faces, with shouts of “Amandhia!” or “Allahu-akbar!” or “God save the Queen!” Jesus was an un-willing victim. If this was God’s scheme of salvation, then it was a heartless plot. It was murder in the first degree, and not redeeming self-sacrifice.
Major Yeats-Brown, in his “Life of a Bengal Lancer”, summarises the Christian Doctrine of the Atonement in just a single sentence:
“NO HEATHEN TRIBE HAS CONCEIVED SO GROTESQUE AN IDEA, INVOLVING AS IT DOES THE ASSUMPTION, THAT MAN WAS BORN WITH A HEREDITARY STAIN UPON HIM: AND THAT THIS STAIN (FOR WHICH HE WAS NOT PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE) WAS TO BE ATONED FOR: AND THAT THE CREATOR OF ALL THINGS HAD TO SACRIFICE HIS ONLY BEGOTTEN SON TO NEUTRALISE THIS MYSTERIOUS CURSE.”
3. “Eli, Bi, La’ma sabach’thani? … Why hast thou foresaken me?” For fuller explanation of this cry, see “What is His Name?”
GOOD FOR EXPORT
“No heathen tribe!” proclaims this Britisher. But the mighty nations of the West, live and die by this “Fiction”. If it is no longer fit for home consumption, then it is still good for export! More than 62,000 full-time missionaries (Modern-day Crusaders) are raising the dust throughout the world. Harassing the “heathen” as they call them. Over 40% of these cultists are “born-again” Americans! 1
Strange as it may sound, after every outpouring of prayer, Jesus Christ found his disciples lulled to sleep at their post. Again and again he bewailed:
“What could ye not watch with me for one hour?” — (HOLY BIBLE) Matthew 26:40.
“And again he (Jesus) went away, and prayed, and spoke the same words. And when he returned, he found them sleep again …” — (HOLY BIBLE) Mark 14:39-40.
Poor St. Mark bemoans that the disciples could give no excuse for their lassitude, their somnambulism. He records:
“neither knew they what to answer him”, — (HOLY BIBLE) Mark 14:40
However, the most lucid, the most coherent and systematic of all Gospel writers, St. Luke, hazards a guess for this anomaly. He says:
“And when he (Jesus) rose from prayer, and was come to his disciples, he found them sleeping for SORROW.”
(HOLY BIBLE) Luke 22:45
1. “Born-Again:” The latest cult among the Christians. Billy Graham claims that there are 70 million such cultists in America. Immaculate people, veritable angels! Yet in that nation over a quarter million “gays” gathered in San Fransisco last June on a pilgrimage, led by 50 lesbians on motorbikes. In New York, there are only one million more women than men and of the “men” it is said that one third are sodomites! Overall there are 10 million “problem drinkers” (meaning DRUNKARDS), in the U.S.A. If all this is true with 70 million veritable angels (“Born-Again”) in their midst, then it gives a lie to Paul’s : “…a little leaven leaveneth the whole …” — (1 Cor. 5:6). Here in the Christian West not even one third can ferment the loaf. Strange!
UNUSUAL REASONING
St. Luke, though he was never one of the elected Twelve disciples of Christ, holds numerous distinctions according to Christians. Among them, the “most historical”, the beloved “physician”, etc. As a Physician, his theory of men “SLEEPING FOR SORROW” is unique. Cries and waitings, sobs and sorrows were in abundance from Jerusalem to Gethsemane on the lips of Jesus (pbuh) which would shock and alert to wakefulness any un-ebriated1 person. Why were the “lullabies” of woe, lulling the disciples to slumber? Was their psychological make-up any different from that of twentieth century man? Professors of physiology opine that under shock, stress and fear the adrenal gland secretes a hormone into the bloodstream — nature’s own injection — which chases away all sleep. Is it not possible that the disciples of Jesus had eaten too much and drunk too much: remembering that food and drink was all “on the house,” 2, i.e. FREE!
1. “Un-ebriated”: a sober person, not drunk.
2. Note to translators: please do not attempt a literal translation of English idiom and figures of speech.