Let us examine the pretended prophecies which are contained in the
Gospels.
Firstly. An angel having appeared in a dream to a man named Joseph,
father, or at least so reputed, of Jesus, son of Mary, said unto him:
"Joseph, thou son of David fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for
that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring
forth a Son, and thou shalt call His name JESUS; for He shall save His
people from their sins." This angel said also to Mary:
"Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with God. And behold, thou
shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth a Son, and shalt call His
name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the
Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father
David. And He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of His
kingdom there shall be no end!" Jesus began to preach and to say:
"Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Take no thought for your
life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body
what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than
raiment, for your Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these
things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and
all these things shall be added unto you."
Now, let every man who has not lost common sense, examine if this Jesus
ever was a king, or if His disciples had abundance of all things. This
Jesus promised to deliver the world from sin. Is there any prophecy
which is more false? Is not our age a striking proof of it? It is said
that Jesus came to save His people. In what way did He save it? It is
the greatest number which rules any party. For example, one dozen or two
of Spaniards or Frenchmen do not constitute the French or Spanish
people; and if an army of a hundred and twenty thousand men were taken
prisoners of war by an army of enemies which was stronger, and if the
chief of this army should redeem only a few men, as ten or twelve
soldiers or officers, by paying their ransom, it could not be claimed
that he had delivered or redeemed his army. Then, who is this God who
has been sacrificed, who died to save the world, and leaves so many
nations damned? What a pity! and what horror!
Jesus Christ says that we have but to ask and we shall receive, and to
seek and we shall find. He assures us that all we ask of God in His name
shall be granted, and that if we have faith as a grain of mustard-seed,
we could by one word remove mountains. If this promise is true, nothing
appears impossible to our Christ-worshipers who have faith in Jesus.
However, the contrary happens. If Mohammed had made the promises to his
votaries that Christ made to His, without success, what would not be
said about it. They would cry out, "Ah, the cheat! ah, the impostor!"
These Christ-worshipers are in the same condition: they have been blind,
and have not even yet recovered from their blindness; on the contrary,
they are so ingenious in deceiving themselves, that they pretend that
these promises have been fulfilled from the beginning of Christianity;
that at that time it was necessary to have miracles, in order to
convince the incredulous of the truth of religion; but that this
religion being sufficiently established, the miracles were no longer
necessary. Where, then, is their proof of all this?
Besides, He who made these promises did not limit them to a certain
time, or to certain places, or to certain persons; but He made them
generally to everybody. The faith of those who believe, says He, shall
be followed by these miracles; "They shall cast out devils in My name,
they shall speak in divers tongues, they shall handle serpents," etc.
In regard to the removal of mountains, He positively says that "whoever
shall say to a mountain: 'Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the
sea;' it shall be done;" provided that he does not doubt in his heart,
but believes all he commands will be done. Are not all these promises
given in a general way, without restriction as to time, place, or
persons?
It is said that all the sects which are founded in errors and imposture
will come to a shameful end. But if Jesus Christ intends to say that He
has established a society of followers who will not fall either into
vice or error, these words are absolutely false, as there is in
Christendom no sect, no society, and no church which is not full of
errors and vices, especially the Roman Church, although it claims to be
the purest and the holiest of all. It was born into error, or rather it
was conceived and formed in error; and even now it is full of delusions
which are contrary to the intentions, the sentiments, or the doctrine of
its Founder, because it has, contrary to His intention, abolished the
laws of the Jews, which He approved, and which He came Himself, as He
said, to fulfill and not to destroy. It has fallen into the errors and
idolatry of Paganism, as is seen by the idolatrous worship which is
offered to its God of dough, to its saints, to their images, and to
their relics.
I know well that our Christ-worshipers consider it a lack of
intelligence to accept literally the promises and prophecies as they are
expressed; they reject the literal and natural sense of the words, to
give them a mystical and spiritual sense which they call allegorical and
figurative; claiming, for example, that the people of Israel and Judea,
to whom these promises were made, were not understood as the Israelites
after the body, but the Israelites in spirit: that is to say, the
Christians which are the Israel of God, the true chosen people that by
the promise made to this enslaved people, to deliver it from captivity,
it is understood to be not the corporal deliverance of a single captive
people, but the spiritual deliverance of all men from the servitude of
the Devil, which was to be accomplished by their Divine Saviour; that by
the abundance of riches, and all the temporal blessings promised to this
people, is meant the abundance of spiritual graces; and finally, that by
the city of Jerusalem, is meant not the terrestrial Jerusalem, but the
spiritual Jerusalem, which is the Christian Church.
But it is easy to see that these spiritual and allegorical meanings
having only a strange, imaginary sense, being a subterfuge of the
interpreters, can not serve to show the truth or the falsehood of a
proposition, or of any promises whatever. It is ridiculous to forge such
allegorical meanings, since it is only by the relations of the natural
and true sense that we can judge of their truth or falsehood. A
proposition, a promise, for example, which is considered true in the
proper and natural sense of the terms in which it is expressed, will not
become false in itself under cover of a strange sense, one which does
not belong to it. By the same reasoning, that which is manifestly false
in its proper and natural sense, will not become true in itself,
although we give it a strange sense, one foreign to the true.
We can say that the prophecies of the Old Testament adjusted to the New,
would be very absurd and puerile things. For example, Abraham had two
wives, of which the one, who was but a servant, represented the
synagogue, and the other one, his lawful wife, represented the Christian
Church; and that this Abraham had two sons, of which the one born of
Hagar, the servant, represented the Old Testament; and the other, born
of Sarah, the wife, represented the New Testament. Who would not laugh
at such a ridiculous doctrine?
Is it not amusing that a piece of red cloth, exhibited by a prostitute
as a signal to spies, in the Old Testament is made to represent the
blood of Jesus Christ shed in the New? If--according to this manner of
interpreting allegorically all that is said, done, and practiced in the
ancient law of the Jews--we should interpret in the same allegorical way
all the discourses, the actions, and the adventures of the famous Don
Quixote de la Mancha, we would find the same sort of mysteries and
ridiculous figures.
It is nevertheless upon this absurd foundation that the whole Christian
religion rests. Thus it is that there is scarcely anything in this
ancient law that the Christ-worshiping doctors do not try to explain in
a mystical way to build up their system. The most false and the most
ridiculous prophecy ever made is that of Jesus, in Luke, where it is
pretended that there will be signs in the sun and in the moon, and that
the Son of Man will appear in a cloud to judge men; and this is
predicted for the generation living at that time. Has it come to pass?
Did the Son of Man appear in a cloud?