
       The teachings of Jesus and the beliefs he held during his lifetime were immediately left behind in the development of Christian thought that moved forward after his life.  If we look at this history in broad strokes, we see a trend of Christianity straying farther and farther from its origin.  It seems that today’s world shows an ever-growing awareness and an unprecedented progressive tendency.  While traditional people remain and will resist any kind of thinking beyond what was taught to them, this portion of the population may not be prominent enough to influence the whole.  Among Christians, a historical awareness will grow immensely in future years.  A yearning will spread, to distinguish the doctrines that were added into Christianity over time from the actual intent of the religion’s namesake.  It may take decades or even centuries, but the outcome will be inevitable:  There will be a great reversal in the trend of Christian history.  There will be a progression back to its original form.  A movement will grow in numbers that will remove layers of doctrine, one after the other, just as if the clock started moving backward, until nothing is left except a conception of what Jesus introduced to humanity on behalf of God, before any other thinkers made such claims.  When this trend sweeps through the United States and Europe, influencing masses in its wake to worship as if we were living at the time of Jesus, following only his ideas, the church as an institution will remain strong to lead the way.  However, because the theological clock will have moved backward, the extreme proliferation of diversity in Christendom will reverse into more and more uniformity of belief and practice.  Between regions, between denominations, between divisions of every kind, we will see instead of differences, increasing similarities.  Human history is filled with great reversions.  Just one example is how Christians were at one time persecuted, shunned and killed by the Roman Empire.  But later that empire became a Christian institution.  Our country has gone from African-American slavery to African-American leadership.  The great reversion coming in our future will play itself out in the arena of the Christian religion, undoing history in search of the source, and undoing diversity in the process.  It is crucial to note that part of what will make this process possible will be a method of reading Jesus’ words as metaphorical, and not as literal statements.  So what is it that happened since Jesus’ lifetime?
       If we look far enough back into history, we find only Judaism, the theological beginning for the Christian religion.  Monotheism, the perception of a divinely revealed religion, and the authority of the Hebrew scriptures, were all at the core of the religion by the time the Romans assumed control of Jerusalem in 63 B.C.E.  The Jewish population did not share one spirit.  They divided into Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, Zealots and a majority of common people. 