The Aquarian Gospel (Part 3)
We have already seen that the so-called Aquarian Gospel disagrees with the inspired New Testament of God. It seeks to explain where Jesus was from the time He was twelve until He began His public ministry at the age of thirty. As one might expect from any manmade “gospel,” It contains many errors—the chief of which is denying the Deity of Jesus (already examined), but there are many other contradictions of what the New Testament teaches.
Jesus is still in India, by the Ganges River, when He received news from a caravan that His father has died and His mother is inconsolable. Jesus assures her that Joseph is faring well and that there “is no power in grief to mend a broken heart” (57). Basically, He tells her to get busy serving, and she won’t have time for grief. He also assures her that John would take care of her (58). Is this John the Baptizer or John the brother of James? At age 13 or 14, it is hard to tell.
The Empire Strikes Back
Jesus gets into a brouhaha with the priests because of His emphasis on “equal rights” and the “uselessness of priests” (59). People were neglecting their shrines and their wheels of prayer (59). What happens next is a blend of what occurred in Acts 19 (when the multitude wanted to kill Paul) and the crucifixion itself.
The incensed priests beat Jesus, spat upon Him, “called Him traitor,” and “threw Him, bleeding into the street” (61). Afterward, they urged Him to depart, but He refused (cf. Acts 19:30-31). The priests wanted to arrest Him, but they had no basis to do so; so, they trumped up some charges but could not follow through because the people defended Him. Finally, they hired a murderer, but friends sent Jesus away (61).
Jesus then dwells with priests of Buddha, who welcome Him. They believe a form of evolution, which Jesus combats, but He overstates the case a little by saying: “Time never was when man was not. That which begins will have an end. If man was not, the time will come when he will not exist’ (65). What is the proof of this statement?
Once again, Dowling (the author of The Aquarian Gospel) has Jesus proclaim that Heaven is a state of mind, adding: “God never made a heaven for man; He never made a hell; we are creators and we make our own” (71). First, God dwells in Heaven; a fact mentioned many times in the New Testament. Jesus taught, for example, people to pray, “Our Father in heaven” (Matt. 6:9). Faithful Christians have an inheritance “reserved in heaven” for them (1 Peter 1:4). God may not have made heaven for man, but He invited Christians to be there with Him. Although He did not create Hell for man (but for the devil and his angels—Matt. 25:41), men will abide there as punishment for their sins.
Men may like to think that heaven and hell are a state of mind and that all these things simply reside in the human heart, but the Scriptures do not teach these ideas. Heaven is a real place, where God and the angels dwell (and man will, too, someday). Hell is an actual place of torment which the ungodly will, sadly, experience forever. God created it for those who do not love Him, for those who are not thankful for what He has given them, and for those who refuse to obey Him.
One wonders what Dowling meant when he had Jesus teach of “Father-Mother-God” (74). “How is one saved?” one might ask. One will search in vain for anything like repentance and baptism (Acts 2:38). No salvation comes from serving others. Yes, “man can never save himself except he lose his life in saving other men” (78). While it is true that we must live unselfishly, we need the blood of Jesus to wash away our sins (Rev. 1:5; Heb. 9:12).
Tibet, Westen India, and Healing
In chapter 36, Dowling has Jesus break new ground. First, with a little help from a friend, Jesus reads all the sacred manuscripts. He teaches in many cities and is received well by “men of low estate” (83). Then comes a direct contradiction of the Scriptures. A woman has an infant son who is close to death. The doctors declared, “There is no hope; the child must die” (83). Does this next sentence make sense?
The woman heard that Jesus was a teacher sent from God, and she believed that he had the power to heal her son (84).
She heard that Jesus was sent from God? What was the evidence for it? In this case, she must have heard it from one or more people whom she trusted. But even if that was the case, it does not imply that Jesus could do miracles, and here is the proof. John was a man sent from God (John 1:6). He came with a message from God (Matt. 21:25). Yet John did no miracle (John 10:41). So, it is incorrect to assume that someone can do miracles just because he was sent by God.
“But,” someone might protest, “didn’t Nicodemus say that he knew Jesus had come from God?” Yes, but it was based on what Jesus did—not what He taught. Nicodemus said in John 3:2: “Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs You do unless God is with him.” What signs? None are specifically stated, but John records in John 2:23 this general description: “Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name when they saw the signs that He did.” Dowling has it backwards. He has a woman concluding that, on the basis of His teaching, He could do miracles. The Bible has Jesus doing miracles and Nicodemus concluding He was a teacher come from God.
Therefore, the woman in The Aquarian Gospel did not draw the correct conclusion. So, how does Dowling finish this tale? The woman brings the infant to Jesus to be healed, and Jesus sees that she has faith for it to be accomplished. He prays, “My Father-God, let power divine o’ershadow me, and let the Holy Breath fill full this child that it may live” (84). The people are amazed and confess: “This surely is the Holy One made flesh…” (84). This is a fact declared in John 1:14, by the gospel writer John, who wrote it long after Jesus had ascended into Heaven. Yet, oddly, people in Tibet knew it before Jesus began His public ministry.
Then Jesus began to heal all manner of diseases and even taught many others how to heal (what did that involve? one wonders). From this point on, Jesus stays busy healing people (89, 92, 101). Dowling rips off what happened at the pool of Bethesda in John 5. In this instance, the event occurs at a spring near Persepolis in Persia. Their “deity came down and gave a virtue to the waters…that the sick who then would plunge into the fount and wash would be made whole” (102). Jesus tells them they do not need a specific time; if they have faith, they can be healed any time (103).
Jesus talks with a little girl there and asks her if she is afraid she will get there too late to be healed, and she replies that she can get to the water any time. Jesus then tells her that she doesn’t even need to go to the water at all. “The very air we breathe is filled with the balm of life” (104). She breathes it in and is made well. Notice the conclusion that Dowling has the people draw: “This man must be the god of health made flesh” (105). Many other times it is noted that Jesus healed multitudes (108, 110).
Now, what is the problem with Jesus performing all these miracles wherever He goes? Dowling seems to be acquainted with the gospel of John. He should, therefore, have known the contents of John 2:1-11, which describe Jesus turning water into wine, which must have been unfermented to correspond to His teachings on sobriety. Verse 11 relates to the subject of miracles: “The beginning of signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee and manifested His glory; and His disciples believed in Him.” The verse does not say, “Jesus now continued working miracles in Galilee the way He had in India and Tibet.” This was the beginning of all His signs, and the very first was in Cana of Galilee. The Aquarian Gospel is false on this count alone.
Other Borrowings
Dowling freely lifts out similar events and even identical expressions from the New Testament as Jesus travels though Asia. One of those involves telling the parable of a king who loved his subjects and sent his son to give them precious gifts. Some priests became jealous because the king’s son did not give them the gifts to distribute to the people. They claimed, therefore, the gifts were counterfeit. The people beat the son and drove him out. He prayed (in King James English), “My Father-God, forgive…they know not what they do” (85).
Sound familiar? He also takes with Him “water and the bread of life” (86). In Persia, Jesus meets the wise men, the magi, who had brought Him gifts sometime after His birth. Now, according to tradition, their names were Gaspar (sometimes called Caspar), Melchior, and Balthasar. But, no, in The Aquarian Gospel their names are Hor, Lun, and Mer. When they meet up with Jesus, all four of them are transfigured (as Jesus, Moses, and Elijah were in Matthew 17:1-5) (93). No reason for this “transfiguration” is mentioned.
Jesus uses an illustration that makes a valid point, but it is one found later in the New Testament. This situation involves people having a good time at a party. A man comes there, wearing rough clothes and looking rather haggard. The crowd had no compassion, however. They “jostled him against the wall” and made fun of him. A frail woman came in, but they deduced her to be a prostitute; the crowd jeered at her and drove her from the hall. Finally, a hungry child came in and asked for a morsel of food; she too was driven out, and the crowd resumed having a merry time (146-47).
Jesus was asked to join in the festivities but declined. His pity for the poor man and the hungry child would not let him. Nor could He separate himself from “the one in female garb who came up from the haunts of vice to ask for sympathy and love, who was by you so ruthlessly pushed back into her den of sin” (147). Jesus then tells the crowd whose chief goal was mirth: “I tell you, men, what you have done to these, my kindred, you have done to Me” (147). The illustration is outstanding, but Jesus would use it later in the New Testament the last week of His life (Matt. 25:31-46).
The Origin of Evil
Surprisingly, Jesus praises the people of Persia for their “purity in worship and in life.” He also praises Zarathrusta (95). As He explains their religion, it seems that one God created all—including “seven spirits who created heaven and earth” (96), which is not recorded in Genesis 1—or anywhere else in the Bible. There are “seven Spirits of God” in Revelation 4:5, but this is a symbolic number, and no creative power is assigned them.
According to Dowling, two of the seven spirits were “of superior strength”; one created all that is good, and the other created evil. Jesus tells them that God cannot create evil. All that the seven Spirits created was good. They desire to know, then, where evil came from. Jesus explains that sometimes when things that are good and pure are mixed, discordant things are produced. “So evil is the inharmonious blending of the colours, tones, or forms of good” (97).
Who can believe this explanation? Everything God created was good, but various combinations of it all produced evil? No, what allowed for evil was the privilege of free will. Being disobedient and making the wrong decision brought sin into the world. Obeying God would have kept the world as pristine and fresh as the way God made it. Except for Jesus, all of us have disobeyed God.