Imagine you’re a parent to a young child, and they disobey you.

You then say to your child, “I can forgive you, but first I’ll have to kill your cat. I need the sacrifice of an innocent being, someone who didn’t sin, to forgive you of your sin. Without that, I have to inflict torture on you forever.”

What “loving parent” would say that to their child?

Only a hateful, vengeful, sadistic parent would say such a thing.

Why then, do Christians describe God as a loving Father—yet center their theology around a blood sacrifice deity and eternal torment?

Jesus historically repudiated blood sacrifice ideology and never mentioned a hellish afterlife.

How did this superstition become the cornerstone of Christian theology?

Cracks in Christianity’s Forgiveness Theology

When I began researching for my book Jesus Rewritten, I heard a common theme among people who were questioning Christian theology.

It went like this:

Confusion also arose for Christians who examined the “red letters” (the words attributed to Jesus in the Bible).

Looking at these red letters, it appears that Jesus’ teachings about forgiveness contradict Christianity’s blood sacrifice ideology.

Lastly, many deconstructing Christians expressed their instinctual repulsion with Christianity’s blood obsession and cannibalistic ritual of communion.

Does God need blood to forgive?

When I explored the lost gospels and theological origins of Christianity, Christianity’s forgiveness framework completely fell apart for me.

One group of Jesus’ earliest followers was the Ebionites.

Although later condemned as “heretics” by Imperial-Funded Christianity, the Ebionites preserved views closest to what Jesus historically taught.

They were a non-violent group who practiced vegetarianism, as a commitment to peaceful existence with all beings.

The Ebionites referenced The Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, which now survives only in fragments. This scripture—arguably written earlier than the canonical gospels—records Jesus saying:

“I have come to abolish sacrifices. If you do not cease from sacrificing, the wrath will not cease from you.”

(To learn more about the Ebionites and Jesus’ original historical teachings, read more in my book Jesus Rewritten.)

What is Forgiveness?

Standard Christian theology says that God “so loved the world” that it needed a virgin human sacrifice to forgive humanity of their sins.

Without such sacrifice, Christianity posits, humans are unworthy of spiritual solace, and would suffer infinite torture in hell.

But real forgiveness doesn’t need any act of violence inflicted upon an innocent person.

If God is love, then God is the highest state of understanding, consciousness, and connection in the universe.

The ultimate state of love cannot hold a state of unforgiveness in the first place.

Those are contradictory experiences.

Love is the ultimate state of understanding. It’s knowing why we made the choices we made.

Further, love is the ultimate state of empowerment.

Love cannot be harmed by the choices another person makes.

If you introduce darkness into the presence of light, the darkness dissolves. It holds no power in the presence of light.

As humans raise our consciousness, we grow in both understanding and empowerment.

That’s our human process of forgiving others and forgiving ourselves.

Can you think of an instance where this happened for you? Where you were harmed by someone, but then began to see how much they were hurting themselves?

As you healed yourself, you stopped wishing pain on your “enemy,” and began to wish healing upon them.

Perhaps you even stopped seeing them as your “enemy” in the first place. You may have become so empowered that you became grateful for the challenges they introduced into your life. (After all, a hero and victim are made from the exact same abuse.)

Forgiveness is a mental and emotional journey that humans embark upon.

Forgiveness is a transformation of human consciousness, so our mind becomes more like divinity.

But that’s not a process that ultimate divinity ever has to go through.

Dive Deeper in Jesus Rewritten

Jesus Rewritten: How Christianity Changed His Life, Death, and Message is for anyone hurt or confused by Christianity, but curious about Jesus.

Discover how doctrines like hell, blood sacrifice, scriptural inerrancy, female subservience, and the Trinity contradict Jesus’ original teachings.

Explore the questions Christians aren’t supposed to ask, and the history they’re supposed to ignore… a history you’ll never learn sitting in a church pew.

You’ll get a roadmap for spiritual wellbeing beyond religious doctrine.

Get your copy here!

LAUREN GEERTSEN is the author of numerous books on psychology, health, and spirituality. Her online publications have reached over 40 million readers. When a mystical awakening shattered her devout Christian beliefs, she set out to illuminate the hidden history of the Christian religion.

This Substack publication is produced without AI content

I do not use AI for any content, books, video scripts, or captions.

I value the heart, soul, and authenticity present in real human writing.

Share

When I was 21, a sudden mystical awakening shattered my devout religious beliefs.

In a state of meditation, and without the influence of any substances, I had an ecstatic experience of being connected to everyone, in all places, and at all times.

I felt like I had been transported beyond time and was in eternity—an eternity of love.

Yet this love far surpassed any positive emotion; it was an encompassing sense of being connected to a total Oneness.

This revelatory experience catalyzed my decade-long journey through Christianity’s hidden history, lost gospels, and theological plot holes.

Above all, I was compelled by the question, “What is love?”

I began to recognize the startling discrepency between love and the God presented by Christianity.

Standard Christian theology says that God “so loved the world” that it needed a virgin human sacrifice to forgive humanity of their sins. Without such sacrifice, Christianity posits, humans are unworthy of spiritual solace, and would suffer infinite torture in hell.

But that’s not love.

It’s not love to require an innocent person to die for guilty people.

It’s not love to require a blood sacrifice.

It’s not love to send people to infinite punishment for finite sins.

Above all, it’s not even possible for a loving God to forgive people.

God—the ultimate state of love—cannot hold a state of unforgiveness in the first place. Unforgiveness is a love-impoverished state of consciousness.

Because many Christians hold a distorted concept of God, they maintain a distorted concept of love… and vice versa.

Have you ever dated someone who said, “I love you,” but treated you poorly? Have you had a parent who said, “I love you,” yet proceeded to pour generational pain into you?

When we think of love merely as affection or bonding, we develop a warped definition that leads to gaslighting, abuse, and confusion.

No wonder Christians say, “God loves you,” in one breath, and then say, “But God is going to send you to eternal torment,” in the next.

Christian theology has left countless people guilt-ridden, ashamed, confused and sexually mixed-up. These are the results of fear-based thinking… love could never produce such outcomes!

In my book Jesus Rewritten, I posit that a more accurate understanding of God requires a rational and consistent understanding of love.

Consider the following points, an excerpt from the chapter titled, “What Is Love?”

Love cannot be harmed.

Christians often describe God as disappointed, heartbroken, or hurt when humans sin. To this, I say: balderdash.

Humans feel disappointed, heartbroken, and hurt because our brain produces emotions in response to our thoughts. Thoughts that produce negative emotions come from a consciousness of fear, not love.

Love is a consciousness, a frequency of connection we receive through our brains and bodies. That frequency doesn’t feel emotions.

Here’s another way to think of it. Get yourself an opaque box and put a lid on it. That box contains darkness. Now, bring that box out into the sunlight and open it.

Does the darkness still exist inside? No. Dark ceases to exist in the presence of light. A truly loving person is sunshine in action.

Whatever pain and trauma inflicted upon them ceases to exist in the light of their heart. It simply dissolves. These people have chosen to carry no grudges or resentments. They do not need the people who hurt them to “burn in hell”—because the consciousness of love cannot coexist with desiring another person to suffer.

Instead, they see the acute suffering and disconnection of those who hurt them. They feel compassion for the darkness—the blocked channels of love—existing inside their aggressors.

And they can do this because love is flowing inside them, healing them, and making them impenetrable to harm. Sadly, many Christians have never known a truly loving person . . . and they curb their own journey to love by idealizing an unloving, unjust, man-made concept God.

Love doesn’t rescue someone from the consequences of their choices.

Have you ever tried prying someone away from an addiction, abusive relationship, or self-harming behavior?

You might feel deep pain watching them hold onto this pattern or belief that hurts them. Yet what happens when you try to argue, wheedle, or nag them out of that behavior? Often, they will get angry at you or accuse you of ignorance or bad intentions. They may even cut off contact with you.

Plus, they probably (and accurately) sense your hypocrisy, that you are trying to take the speck out of their eye before taking the log out of your own.

If they think that, they would be right. Consider the way you are gripping onto an unhealthy relationship with them.

If you try to take an unhealthy value away from someone before they are willing to question that value, they will often grip onto it more tightly.

Sure, they may be holding onto an anchor that’s dragging them underwater. Yet they think they are holding onto their life raft.

And if you hold onto them while they hold onto the anchor, you’ll be dragged underwater.

Trying to save someone who doesn’t want to be saved can be a suicide mission.

Even if it doesn’t kill you, it will surely kill your health, your peace, your glow, and your joy. Going on a rescue mission to save someone from the consequences of their own actions isn’t love for them, or for you.

If you honestly analyze your motivations, you’ll find yourself broadcasting bandwidths of fear, not love. You’re likely afraid of being alone, afraid of new environments, afraid of developing new skills, or afraid of relying on love instead of control.

God—the force and source of love—doesn’t pry away our addictions or man-handle away our self-sabotage.

It lets us learn by experiencing the consequences of our actions.

Here’s where Christians will argue, “God created hell. That’s the consequence of choosing sin.”

Yet hell is an experience of shutting out the frequency of love (and Jesus never referenced “hell”). Hell is much more here and now, in people’s minds, than it is an afterlife phenomenon.

God cannot condemn people to infinite separation, because the frequency of love always exists. It always exists for us to “tune into.”

It never shuts anyone out—it can’t. It’s an equal and infinite opportunity provider.

Love invites you and others to growth.

Growth, as I define it in Jesus Rewritten, is surrendering to transformation, and love is the intelligence that guides that transformation.

The force that guides the acorn into an oak tree is the same force that guides a hardened heart to open, or clouded perceptions to clear. It’s the same force that connects any pain to its perfect medicine.

“If you love me, you will make me comfortable,” is an unspoken agreement in many relationships. That’s codependency, not love.

In such a dynamic, individuals are shackled by each other’s fears and insecurities. Love calls a person to growth and invites them into their highest expression.

However, it never forces or manipulates a person into improved behavior.

When another person is not willing or able to grow, love shows us how to grow ourselves instead.

There is no loss of love, just a loss of connection to love.

Perhaps one of the greatest spiritual lessons we can learn is that love—like God—never stops, or ends, or leaves us.

The frequency of love aways exists, even if no humans are tuning into it. Only we can forget it or leave it.

In love, worthiness and unworthiness don’t exist.

It’s impossible for God to see humans as worthy or unworthy of love.

Christians frequently describe the human race as “unworthy sinners.” They say that we are unworthy of God’s love, yet God loves us anyway. They believe we are unworthy of eternal life in heaven, but Jesus died to give us a heavenly hall pass we don’t deserve.

But when it comes to divine love, there are just degrees of separation chosen by each human, not worthiness or unworthiness.

You see, it’s impossible for God not to love everyone, all the time, in the same way, to the same degree, because that is what God is. The concept that humans are “unworthy” could only originate from humans who, themselves, are so separated from God that they don’t love what they create.

For example, a man might create children whom he doesn’t love—not because of who the children are, but because of who the man is. The “child unworthy of love” says nothing about the child, and everything about the parents.

Christianity’s concept of an “unworthy human race” says nothing about God, and everything about the people who believe such a concept.

Dive Deeper in Jesus Rewritten

Jesus Rewritten: How Christianity Changed His Life, Death, and Message is for anyone hurt or confused by Christianity, but curious about Jesus.

Discover how doctrines like hell, blood sacrifice, scriptural inerrancy, female subservience, and the Trinity contradict Jesus’ original teachings.

Explore the questions Christians aren’t supposed to ask, and the history they’re supposed to ignore… a history you’ll never learn sitting in a church pew.

You’ll get a roadmap for spiritual wellbeing beyond religious doctrine.

Get your copy here!

LAUREN GEERTSEN is the author of numerous books on psychology, health, and spirituality. Her online publications have reached over 40 million readers. When a mystical awakening shattered her devout Christian beliefs, she set out to illuminate the hidden history of the Christian religion.

This Substack publication is produced without AI content

I do not use AI for any content, books, video scripts, or captions.

I value the heart, soul, and authenticity present in real human writing.

Share

Topics Discussed

• Who were the Ebionites and Nazarenes?

• Did Constantine’s conversion to Christianity actually happen?

• How “Imperial Christianity” suppressed the views of the earliest Jesus followers

• Why “heretic” and “conspiracy theorist” have the same meaning…and it’s a compliment

Dive Deeper in “Jesus Rewritten”

Jesus Rewritten: How Christianity Changed His Life, Death, and Message is for anyone hurt or confused by Christianity, but curious about Jesus.

Discover how doctrines like hell, blood sacrifice, scriptural inerrancy, female subservience, and the Trinity contradict Jesus’ original teachings.

Explore the questions Christians aren’t supposed to ask, and the history they’re supposed to ignore… a history you’ll never learn sitting in a church pew.

You’ll get a roadmap for spiritual wellbeing beyond religious doctrine.

Get your copy here!

LAUREN GEERTSEN is the author of numerous books on psychology, health, and spirituality. Her online publications have reached over 40 million readers. When a mystical awakening shattered her devout Christian beliefs, she set out to illuminate the hidden history of the Christian religion.

This Substack publication is produced without AI content

I do not use AI for any content, books, video scripts, or captions.

I value the heart, soul, and authenticity present in real human writing.

Share

Topics Discussed:

• How a “Private Vindictive Jesus” birthed End Times theology

• Why Paul’s “Personal Jesus” differs from the historical Jesus

• How Paul conflicted with Jesus’ appointed successor, James

• The difference between a spiritual leader and a spiritual manipulator

Dive Deeper in Jesus Rewritten

Jesus Rewritten: How Christianity Changed His Life, Death, and Message is for anyone hurt or confused by Christianity, but curious about Jesus.

Discover how doctrines like hell, blood sacrifice, scriptural inerrancy, female subservience, and the Trinity contradict Jesus’ original teachings.

Explore the questions Christians aren’t supposed to ask, and the history they’re supposed to ignore… a history you’ll never learn sitting in a church pew.

You’ll get a roadmap for spiritual wellbeing beyond religious doctrine.

Get your copy here!

LAUREN GEERTSEN is the author of numerous books on psychology, health, and spirituality. Her online publications have reached over 40 million readers. When a mystical awakening shattered her devout Christian beliefs, she set out to illuminate the hidden history of the Christian religion.

This Substack publication is produced without AI content

I do not use AI for any content, books, video scripts, or captions.

I value the heart, soul, and authenticity present in real human writing.

Share

Topics Discussed

• Why the story of God needing a human sacrifice isn’t a “love story”

• Which lost gospel reveals that Jesus hated blood sacrifice ideology

• Why one ancient Jewish group rejected animal sacrifice entirely

• Why communion—originally a pagan blood ritual—didn’t come from Jesus

Dive Deeper in “Jesus Rewritten”

Jesus Rewritten: How Christianity Changed His Life, Death, and Message is for anyone hurt or confused by Christianity, but curious about Jesus.

Discover how doctrines like hell, blood sacrifice, scriptural inerrancy, female subservience, and the Trinity contradict Jesus’ original teachings.

Explore the questions Christians aren’t supposed to ask, and the history they’re supposed to ignore… a history you’ll never learn sitting in a church pew.

You’ll get a roadmap for spiritual wellbeing beyond religious doctrine.

Get your copy here!

LAUREN GEERTSEN is the author of numerous books on psychology, health, and spirituality. Her online publications have reached over 40 million readers. When a mystical awakening shattered her devout Christian beliefs, she set out to illuminate the hidden history of the Christian religion.

This Substack publication is produced without AI content

I do not use AI for any content, books, video scripts, or captions.

I value the heart, soul, and authenticity present in real human writing.

Share

When I was 21, a sudden mystical awakening shattered ​my devout Christian beliefs​.

In this video, I share some of the questions I started asking… questions that “broke” Christian theology for me.

These questions catalyzed my decade-long journey through Christianity’s hidden history, lost gospels, and theological plot holes.

Ready to answer these questions for yourself?

If you ask a Christian these questions, you may receive the following responses, as I once did:

“It doesn’t have to make sense, you just have to accept it. That’s what faith is.”

“Well, that’s a challenging question, but I believe in Christian doctrine.”

“You should just pray until it makes sense to you; the Holy Spirit will give you peace.”

Are these responses satisfactory answers?

I wasn’t satisfied. That’s why I went on a soul-searching journey through history, theology, and Biblical scholarship.

What I learned left me stunned — because I had never learned this history sitting in a church pew.

I discovered that Jesus’ life and teachings have been completely reshaped by political, financial, and socio-cultural influences.

It turns out, Jesus’ earliest followers held beliefs that contradict most of modern Christian theology.

Dive Deeper in Jesus Rewritten

Jesus Rewritten: How Christianity Changed His Life, Death, and Message is for anyone hurt or confused by Christianity, but curious about Jesus.

Discover how doctrines like hell, blood sacrifice, scriptural inerrancy, female subservience, and the Trinity contradict Jesus’ original teachings.

Explore the questions Christians aren’t supposed to ask, and the history they’re supposed to ignore… a history you’ll never learn sitting in a church pew.

You’ll get a roadmap for spiritual wellbeing beyond religious doctrine.

Get your copy here!

LAUREN GEERTSEN is the author of numerous books on psychology, health, and spirituality. Her online publications have reached over 40 million readers. When a mystical awakening shattered her devout Christian beliefs, she set out to illuminate the hidden history of the Christian religion.

This Substack publication is produced without AI content

I do not use AI for any content, books, video scripts, or captions.

I value the heart, soul, and authenticity present in real human writing.

Share

I recently released my book Jesus Rewritten: How Christianity Changed His Life, Death, and Message.

The most common question I’ve received—from people who have not yet read the book—is, “But do you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior?!?”

So, for those wondering, here’s the answer…

I experience God’s salvation every moment of every day.

Through my connection to God, I’ve been saved (healed) from illness, trauma, and abuse that many people consider “impossible” to heal from.

And, I reject Christian salvation theology because it contradicts what Jesus historically taught.

I know, that can be shocking or confronting for Christians to hear.

Once, I felt the same way.

When I was 21, I experienced a sudden mystical awakening that shattered my devout Christian beliefs.

I started asking questions that Christians aren’t allowed to ask.

Then, I embarked on a decade-long journey through Christianity’s hidden history, lost gospels, and theological plot holes.

On this journey, I recognized two major plot holes in Christianity’s salvation theology.

The first salvation plot hole is blood sacrifice superstition—or what I called “blood atonement theology” when I was a Christian.

Mainstream Christian theology posits that “God so loved the world” that it created a world in which humans “deserve” infinite punishment in hell for finite sins.

God required the human sacrifice of an innocent person to “make up for” the sins of guilty people. (Christians consider this a form of cosmic love and justice, when it’s actually the opposite of love and justice.)

Through Jesus’ violent death and bloodshed, Christianity insists, humans can enjoy a heavenly afterlife if we believe and confess that Jesus died for our sins.

When I dove into researching Jesus’ life and teachings, I was relieved to learn he didn’t teach such concepts.

In fact, he likely repudiated blood sacrifice ideology!

In Jesus Rewritten, I dive into the numerous historical reasons Jesus likely rejected this ideology.

This includes Jesus’ likely Essene connection (the Essenes were a group of Jews who rejected Jewish sacrifice ideology, and called it a “holocaust.”)

This historical attestation also includes the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, which is different than our Biblical Gospel of Matthew—and likely written earlier than our modern gospel of Matthew.

The Hebrew Gospel of Matthew recounts Jesus as saying,

“I have come to abolish sacrifices. “I have come to abolish sacrifices, and if you do not cease sacrificing, the wrath will not cease from you.”

(Learn more in Jesus Rewritten.)

The second salvation “plot hole” in Christianity is the concept of hell.

The Christian idea of salvation hinges on the reality of a heavenly and hellish afterlife.

But did Jesus even discuss such concepts?

Christians often assume this to be the case, yet according to the Biblical gospels, Jesus never said the word “hell.”

Instead, these gospels recount Jesus saying “Gehenna,” “Hades,” and a Greek word for Purification.

These words were mistranslated into the English word “hell,” and then merged with Greek afterlife mythology to create the Christian concept of a dualistic heaven/hell.

The Old Testament (the Torah) makes no mention of a hellish afterlife. Instead, it only discusses “Sheol,” a place of soul-sleep.

Historically, we don’t know what Jesus’ Jewish followers believed about the afterlife, because there were diverse afterlife beliefs among different Jewish sects.

Further, how could a region of infinite punishment for finite human sins ever originate from a loving creator?

Such a concept is the opposite of love and cosmic justice.

I posit that the Christian concept of hell arose from Biblical mistranslations, missing historical context, Greek mythology, and a handful of vengeance-oriented theologians.

Rather than strictly deriving from the Bible, the concept of hell is read into the Bible.

DIVE DEEPER IN “JESUS REWRITTEN”

Jesus Rewritten: How Christianity Changed His Life, Death, and Message is for anyone hurt or confused by Christianity, but curious about Jesus.

Discover how doctrines like hell, blood sacrifice, scriptural inerrancy, female subservience, and the Trinity contradict Jesus’ original teachings.

Explore the questions Christians aren’t supposed to ask, and the history they’re supposed to ignore… a history you’ll never learn sitting in a church pew.

You’ll get a roadmap for spiritual wellbeing beyond religious doctrine.

Grab your copy here!

LAUREN GEERTSEN is the author of numerous books on psychology, health, and spirituality. Her online publications have reached over 40 million readers. When a mystical awakening shattered her devout Christian beliefs, she set out to illuminate the hidden history of the Christian religion.

This Substack publication is produced without AI content

I do not use AI for any content, books, video scripts, or captions.

I value the heart, soul, and authenticity present in real human writing.

Share

Note: This is an excerpt from my book, Jesus Rewritten: How Christianity Changed His Life, Death, and Message.

What if you didn’t have to fear the “end times”… because they already happened?

The complicated metaphors and violent descriptions in the book have prompted Christians to report the “end times” for thousands of years.

My grandfather saw the invention of the credit card, and sincerely believed it was a precursor to The Mark of The Beast required for commerce.

Many people believe the push for government-issued digital currency and digital surveillance similarly paves the way for some form of bio-technology, such as a brain chip, required for commerce.

They think, “We’re being funneled and groomed towards the End Times described in Revelation.” I’m all for recognizing an agenda towards digital dictatorship, and reclaiming our personal freedom.

Once we understand the context in which Revelation was written, however, we realize that we’re dealing with two very distinct issues here.

Revelation in Historical Context

The Book of Revelation likely comes from John of Patmos, a persecuted Christian in the late first century. In Revelation 1:9, John writes that he was sentenced to the island prison of Patmos “because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.”

To modern readers, this apocalyptic book reads as if John took a handful of psychedelic mushrooms, and then put quill to scroll. (Instead, John explains that he was in a spiritual state when Jesus appeared to him and conveyed a prophetic message.)

The strange imagery, metaphors, and violence in this book leave many readers rightly puzzled about the intended interpretation.

Jesus is described as a wrathful lamb of God, wearing a robe dipped in blood, with a sword to strike down nations. In one notable section, chapter 14, John explains how 144,000 virgin men (“those who did not defile themselves with women”) are redeemed from the earth, while an angel enacts God’s vengeance on the earth’s population.

Humans are gathered into a great “wine press of God’s wrath,” and rivers of blood flow through the street. If anyone received the Mark of the Beast, they are tormented in Jesus’ presence.

John wrote that he was given this revelation to share “what must soon take place,” and, “blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.”

John likely meant what he wrote; he felt these events would happen within his foreseeable future, and not thousands of years in the future. In fact, some of the most notorious events, such as the Mark of the Beast, did happen in his lifetime!

When we understand John’s cultural context and references to Old Testament Jewish prophecy, his strange imagery makes sense. If John authored the book during the reign of the Roman Emperor Domitian (81–96 C.E.), as most scholars believe, the metaphors can apply to a conflict between Christians and the Roman Empire, specifically the cruel emperor Nero and the imperial pagan religion of the empire.

In John’s lifetime, Rome had besieged Jerusalem with 60,000 troops. The Empire defeated the Jews and destroyed their temple in 70, C.E. John likely fled his hometown of Judea, which had been ravaged by war, and found solace on the isle of Patmos.

John likely considered the Roman Empire to be a demonic force. After all, he watched the Empire wage a genocide on Jews, and persecute the burgeoning group of Christians.

Biblical scholar Elaine Pagels describes this in her book, Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation.

Pagels suggests that John was influenced by Jesus’ promised coming of the “Son of Man.” Jesus said that before the Son of Man came in the clouds, the world would see catastrophic events.

Watching the destruction of the Jewish temple, John likely considered this the cataclysmic precursor to the Messiah’s return. After all, if the words in the gospels are accurate, Jesus led his followers to believe that God’s kingdom would be established before that generation passed away. Pagels writes,

John [. . .] waited for Jesus to return and for his kingdom to ‘come with power.’ But by the time John began to write his Revelation, nearly thirty more years had passed. Now two generations had come and gone—and John, along with Jesus’ other followers, must have wondered how the prophecy had failed.

For when John traveled through Asia Minor, he could see evidence everywhere that the kingdom that actually had “come with power” was not God’s—it was Rome’s.

Rome marked its conquest by building pagan temples, such as the great temple of Zeus near Ephesus. John may have considered this to be proof that Satan’s power had peaked—this was the worst it could get, so Jesus had to be returning within the immediate future.

John speaks to a Jewish audience familiar with Old Testament imagery. So, he draws on the heavenly visions depicted in the books of Ezekiel and Isaiah.

For example, John sees God on the throne surrounded by blazing fire and flashing lightning, closely matching Ezekiel’s description. Later, John describes a beast arising from the sea. This harkens back to Judaic creation myths, involving the sea monster Leviathan. John knew that The Book of Isaiah predicted that, at the end of times, God would kill that sea monster.

Isaiah compares the nation of Israel to a woman writhing in labor pains. Later, Zion is likened to a mother easily giving birth, suggesting God will fulfill his promise to restore the nation of Israel.

John continues Isaiah’s metaphor of Israel as a woman in childbirth, and Jesus as her child. He describes a dragon stalking this woman, seeking to destroy her child as soon as he’s born.

Pagels writes in her book Revelations, “Thus John characterizes the Roman forces that killed Jesus.”

The Jewish-Christian sects during John’s lifetime would have recognized John’s anti-Roman propaganda, cloaked in Jewish scriptural metaphor.

The Hidden Meaning of 666

How do we interpret the infamous “Mark of the Beast,” the number 666? Revelation instructs us to “calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666.”

Gematria was the common practice of assigning numerical values to letters, and John’s peers would have likely seen this as an instruction to use gematria to find a secret name.

Although historians suggest different meanings for 666, one common way to decode it spells Emperor Nero’s imperial name. This leads some scholars to interpret John’s “Beast” as the Roman Empire itself.

Some individuals notice this number sequence highlighted in popular culture, such as in company logos, and perceive an ominous meaning.

While Luciferian or Satanic groups may have later adopted the number 666 for their own symbolic purposes, John was using the number to incriminate the Roman Empire.

The Mark of The Beast on Ancient Roman Coins

Let’s also look at the Mark of the Beast, which John says will be required for commerce.

When John writes about the woman “Babylon,” he is indicating the Roman Empire.

First, John says the woman “Babylon” sits on seven hills—a descriptor of ancient Rome’s territory.

Second, Babylon was enemy that destroyed the Jewish temple in 586 B.C.E, and Rome was the enemy that destroyed the second Jewish temple in 70 C.E.

Even without a “seven hills” descriptor, his Jewish audience may have recognized that John speaks of the Roman Empire—his “Beast”—when he speaks of “the woman Babylon.”

Asian coins from 70 C.E. show the goddess Roma sitting on seven hills on the shores of the Tiber River.² In John’s lifetime, one form of currency indeed bore the Mark of the Beast.

John’s Personal Idea of Jesus

Put in historical context, The Book of Revelation describes anti-Empire propaganda, designed to elude Roman authorities and be understood by those with a Jewish background. John presented his own version of Jesus, a seemingly bloodthirsty figure who would enact upon the Roman Empire the vengeance John so desperately wanted.

For example, Revelation 14 describes Jesus (“one who was like the son of man”) swinging his sickle over the earth, and “the earth was harvested.” The passage then illustrates a massacre of humans, with their blood flowing like wine out of a wine press (14:14-20).

Revelation 19 describes Christ with a sword coming from his mouth, and treading “the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God” (19:15). Then, Christ kills the Beast and its armies “with the sword coming out of [his] mouth” (19:21).

This raises questions for readers interested in critical thinking and applying their personal spiritual discernment:

Does this depiction of Jesus match the gospel accounts of Jesus?

Do people claim visions or messages from Jesus that may not be accurate? Have these visions become integrated into Christian theology? (See my chapters “What Role does Paul Play in Christianity?” and “Does God have an Old and New Covenant” in Jesus Rewritten.)

John depicted Jesus enacting bloody violence upon the Roman Empire—the empire that had crucified Jesus. Was John offering hope of retribution to the Jewish-Christians who were persecuted by the Empire?

DIVE DEEPER IN “JESUS REWRITTEN”

Jesus Rewritten: How Christianity Changed His Life, Death, and Message is for anyone hurt or confused by Christianity, but curious about Jesus.

Discover how doctrines like hell, blood sacrifice, scriptural inerrancy, female subservience, and the Trinity contradict Jesus’ original teachings.

Explore the questions Christians aren’t supposed to ask, and the history they’re supposed to ignore… a history you’ll never learn sitting in a church pew.

You’ll get a roadmap for spiritual wellbeing beyond religious doctrine.

Grab your copy here!

LAUREN GEERTSEN is the author of numerous books on psychology, health, and spirituality. Her online publications have reached over 40 million readers. When a mystical awakening shattered her devout Christian beliefs, she set out to illuminate the hidden history of the Christian religion.

This Substack publication is produced without AI content

I do not use AI for any content, books, video scripts, or captions.

I value the heart, soul, and authenticity present in real human writing.

Share

This is a chapter excerpt from my book, Jesus Rewritten: How Christianity Changed His Life, Death, and Message.

In the 13^th century, famed Christian theologian Thomas Aquinas began a theological treatise called Summa Theologica, in which he presented his philosophical reasoning behind Catholic theology and offered his proof for the existence of God.

Before he could complete the book, he had a mystical experience so profound that he left the book unfinished.

Aquinas purportedly said to his secretary, “The end of my labors has come. All that I have written appears to be as so much straw after the things that have been revealed to me. I can write no more.”¹

This echoes the sentiments of mystics from around the world and throughout history: words, logic, and arguments for belief in God become meaningless when one touches the Source itself.

This parallels my own sudden mystical awakening at age 21, in which I entered a realm beyond time, and in which love was a state of being connected to everything.

After that mystical taste of connection, I looked at my old concept of God the same way Aquinas looked at his writings for Summa Theologica. “This is straw,” I thought to myself.

I heard Christians discussing a God who, it seemed to me, had been made in man’s image. This God featured the emotions, judgments, hypocrisy, and follies of humans.

Nothing could be further from the loving Oneness I had experienced.

God is what connects a brain cell to a liver cell in a person’s body, and what connects one human to every other human in the body of Earth.

It’s what connects an acorn to its potential future as an oak tree.

It’s what connects Earth to every planet in its solar system, and what connects our solar system to the rest of the universe.

It’s what connects actions to consequences, thoughts to emotions, pain to healing, and desires to fulfillment.

St. Catherine of Siena, an Italian mystic living in the fourteenth century, described God as being closer to us than water to a fish. Sufi master Rumi said, “Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing, there is a field. I will meet you there.”

While Christianity often presents God as a being, it’s more accurate to consider God as Beingness itself; far more a what than a who.

Recent discoveries in science reveal a quantum connection, an energetic fabric that weaves everything together on the level of consciousness and energy. Many scientists now suggest that the human brain is a receiving station of consciousness, rather than a generator of consciousness.

Compare this to a radio, which receives and transmits existing frequencies, rather than generating those frequencies. Those frequencies exist whether or not a radio broadcasts them. Scientific analysis of thousands of near-death experiences suggests that consciousness continues even when one’s brain function ceases.⁴

Could this indicate that consciousness comes from a source of Being beyond the human body?

After his ecstatic revelation of God, Aquinas considered his intellectual and philosophical attempts to prove God to be as flimsy as straw.

In fact, many people give up attempts to rationalize or prove God’s existence after profound mystical experiences.

I posit that the more a person intellectually defends the existence of God, the less they have directly experienced God.

Attempts to convert others to your religious belief can be an unconscious mechanism to convince yourself of that belief.

When a person has a direct experience of the Divine, they often know something they can’t intellectually defend.

That’s why the more a person believes something, the more they can get triggered, offended, angry, or defensive.

Many people turn their beliefs into their identity. Then, when factual information challenges their beliefs, they respond as if attacked. They do not know that their being and their beliefs are different.

Much of Christian theology rests on belief; on holding a mental construct in one’s head, without necessarily experiencing that mental construct in tangible reality.

Christians are taught to believe many things:

Believe in heaven and hell.

Believe Jesus died for your sins.

Believe the Bible is the word of God.

Believe that baptism confers spiritual consequences.

This raises some questions:

Is it ethical to require a person to believe a series of historical events that cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt or debate?

Is it possible for someone to truly believe something they’ve never experienced, and therefore do not actually understand?

What if it’s more accurate to describe God as an experience of infinite connection?

Could religion be more helpful if it assisted people in experiencing greater connection, and didn’t seek to enforce a set of beliefs?

If you’ve ever sat in a church pew, attended Sunday school, or watched a Christian apologist speak, you’ll hear God described much like a human being—a man with a heart that breaks, a man who loves and envies, who desires and hates.

Christians typically conceive of God as sharing their human experiences, mind, and feelings.

No wonder so many people “lose faith” and reject the concept of God entirely when they question the nature of suffering!

If God is a loving being, why doesn’t “He” answer more prayers? Why do innocent children suffer from starvation? Why doesn’t “He” fix the world’s problems?

Many people find that Christian explanations for suffering fail miserably under rational analysis.

So, they reject the concept of God completely.

But there’s another option: a possibility of a consistent framework to understand God as a universal connecting power, and to call that power love.

This concept can be rationally reconciled with the vast suffering in the world, if we reframe pain as a tool that serves to reveal our connection to everything. In Part 4 of Jesus Rewritten, I offer a spiritual framework to rationally understand suffering.

For now, I’ve offered an alternative to the humanized concept of God, because Jesus’ message cannot be understood without a more rational, consistent, and mature understanding of Divinity.

DIVE DEEPER IN “JESUS REWRITTEN”

Jesus Rewritten: How Christianity Changed His Life, Death, and Message is for anyone hurt or confused by Christianity, but curious about Jesus.

Discover how doctrines like hell, blood sacrifice, scriptural inerrancy, female subservience, and the Trinity contradict Jesus’ original teachings.

Explore the questions Christians aren’t supposed to ask, and the history they’re supposed to ignore… a history you’ll never learn sitting in a church pew.

You’ll get a roadmap for spiritual wellbeing beyond religious doctrine.

Get your copy here!

LAUREN GEERTSEN is the author of numerous books on psychology, health, and spirituality. Her online publications have reached over 40 million readers. When a mystical awakening shattered her devout Christian beliefs, she set out to illuminate the hidden history of the Christian religion.

This Substack publication is produced without AI content

I do not use AI for any content, books, video scripts, or captions.

I value the heart, soul, and authenticity present in real human writing.

Share

At age 21, a sudden mystical awakening shattered my devout Christian beliefs.

I embarked a decade-long journey through hidden history, lost gospels, and theological plot twists.

This culminated in my book, Jesus Rewritten: How Christianity Changed His Life, Death, and Message.

Prior to this book, I’ve written extensively about the hidden history and corruption of various industries, and the little-known alternatives to their false paradigms.

This includes the pharmaceutical industry, cancer industry, fertility industry, vaccine industry, and Botox industry… to name a few.

As you might imagine, I’ve received extensive pushback and insults over the years for my work.

That’s the only way some people know how to respond, when the historical information I present challenges their deeply-held beliefs.

Yet the cruelest comments and emails I’ve ever received have come from self-described Christians.

As I began to illuminate Christianity’s theological plot-holes, I received emails from Christians who said I would “go to hell”— in other words, suffer infinite punishment for what they perceived as my sinfulness.

While I had received wishes of my harm—or even death—for some of my previous work, only Christians wished infinite torture upon my soul.

This was their desired outcome for me, when I published information with which they disagreed.

Hell is a state of being disconnected from love.

It’s not a Biblical concept. In the Old Testament we find discussion of Sheol, a place of soul-sleep.

In the New Testament, Jesus references Gehenna, Hades, and Purification… not eternal torture.

When someone condemns me to an afterlife region of eternal torture tells me that they’re trapped there now.

To wish eternal disconnection upon me can only come from a state of disconnection within them.

This is what I hear when people tell me “you’re going to hell!”

“I’m already living in hell, and I’m scared and lonely here, in my state of separation from God.

I don’t know how to escape this acutely painful experience of loneliness, fear, and disconnection from love.

So, I’m condemning you to hell as a desperate attempt to have some company here.

While I use Christian creeds and theology to mentally reassure me of my connection to God, I don’t actually feel that connection in the depths of my being.

Those mental concepts don’t fulfill the deepest part of me longing for connection with God. So, I’m experiencing the deepest loneliness possible for humans: the loneliness of being separated from love.”

And here is the response I hold in my heart:

Dearest soul,

I’m sorry you’re experiencing such loneliness and disconnection from love.

Because I love you, I will not keep you company in your pain. That would require me to join you in your state of disconnection, and that would not be loving to me, or to you.

I will, however, show you what it looks like to make your little corner of the world beautiful — heavenly, even.

If you want company, you can join me here.

I’ve written the roadmap of how I got here; not because I desire to convert or change you, but because I wanted to commit this path to my memory.

It was my honor to take this journey: to climb out of hell myself, and enter a world of heavenly love and connection.

With the depths of my love,

Lauren

GET THE BOOK

Ready for a deeper dive into the hidden history and development of Christian theology? Are you curious why Christianity has distorted the concepts of love, justice, and God?

I explore all that and more in Jesus Rewritten: How Christianity Changed His Life, Death, and Message.

It’s for anyone who has been hurt or confused by Christianity, but curious about Jesus.

Discover how doctrines like hell, blood sacrifice, scriptural inerrancy, female subservience, and the Trinity contradict Jesus’ original teachings.

Explore the questions Christians aren’t supposed to ask, and the history they’re supposed to ignore… a history you’ll never learn sitting in a church pew.

You’ll get a roadmap for spiritual wellbeing beyond religious doctrine.

Grab your copy here!

LAUREN GEERTSEN is the author of numerous books on psychology, health, and spirituality. Her online publications have reached over 40 million readers. When a mystical awakening shattered her devout Christian beliefs, she set out to illuminate the hidden history of the Christian religion.

This Substack publication is produced without AI content

I do not use AI for any content, books, video scripts, or captions.

I value the heart, soul, and authenticity present in real human writing.

Share

When I was 21, a sudden mystical awakening shattered ​my devout Christian beliefs​.

I embarked on a decade-long journey through Christianity’s hidden history, lost gospels, and theological plot holes.

It may have been easier for me to just “throw the baby out with the bathwater,” rather than uncover this astonishing information.

But I couldn’t.

I felt compelled to learn who Jesus truly was, and what he actually taught.

Today, I’m releasing my new book, Jesus Rewritten: How Christianity Changed His Life, Death, and Message.

If you’ve been hurt or confused by Christianity, but you’re curious about Jesus, this book is for you.

I share the questions I asked on my journey of exploring Christianity, and I illuminate the hidden history I discovered along the way.

You’ll learn how ancient politics, financial influences, and human psychology rewrote Jesus’ life and message.

You’ll also discover how doctrines like hell, blood sacrifice, scriptural inerrancy, female subservience, and the Trinity contradict Jesus’ original teachings.

This book is a testament to this pivotal moment of global awakening.

Due to technological and archaeological advances, information that has been hidden for millennia is now surfacing.

As recently as the year 2000, archaeologists found an ancient Jewish text that may illuminate a provocative resurrection mythology.

Only in the last decade have translations of early texts been made easily available to laypeople online.

It is truly an incredible time to be alive, if you’re on a journey towards greater truth and love!

This book came out of my journey of truth-seeking, identity-shedding, and spiritual development.

If you’re on a similar journey, I offer it as a roadmap for spiritual wellbeing beyond religious doctrine.

Grab your copy of the book today!

LAUREN GEERTSEN is the author of numerous books on health and spirituality. Her online publications have reached over 40 million readers. When a mystical awakening shattered her devout Christian beliefs, she set out to illuminate the hidden history of the Christian religion.

This Substack publication is produced without AI content

I do not use AI for any content, books, video scripts, or captions.

I value the heart, soul, and authenticity present in real human writing.

Share

Two days after moving to a new town, I drove past a small brick church and started crying.

A feeling somewhere between nostalgia, relief, and longing brought the tears to the surface.

At the same time, I heard the clear but inaudible voice rise up from the deepest part of me, and give me inexplicable instructions, as it had many times before.

“Go here,” the voice said.

Go to a church service in a new town… alone? Further, it had been over a decade since I attended church.

I felt wracked with nerves at the prospect of walking into the service.

Having learned to obey that inner voice, however, I showed up to the worship service next Sunday.

As I walked in, the small congregation welcomed me with smiles and handshakes, ushering me to a seat next to the pastor’s wife. I sang hymns, listened to the mild sermon, and was invited to the Sunday School group, which met before each service.

This church provided me with an instant community in a town where I knew no one.

Is this the reason I was intuitively drawn to this church? I wondered.

Or, I asked myself, am I being drawn back to the Christian religion of my youth?

I found that latter prospect unlikely, though far more unlikely events have occurred in my life. I had come to adopt the mantra, “The best thing I ever was was wrong,” as a way to encourage my own growth.

Possibly, I had much more to learn about Christianity.

I had walked away from church after a sudden mystical awakening at age 21.

In that awakening, I experienced God not as a being, but as a state of loving Oneness with all.

I also gained an irrevocable experience of past lives in that event—a concept my ego found highly inconvenient to my religious and scientific values. Yet the concept was now as real to me as the hand I held in front of my face.

Suddenly, I could no longer accept Christianity’s concepts of blood sacrifice, eternal hell, and scriptural inerrancy — along with many other aspects of Christian theology.

This awakening catalyzed my decade-long journey through hidden history, lost gospels, and theological plot holes.

In that time, I never disavowed Christianity.

I just moved away from the religious certainty with which I was raised, and shifted into curiosity.

After that mystical awakening, I permitted myself to trust my own reasoning and intuition, no matter where it took me.

I developed a comfort with having questions, rather than rigid answers.

At the same time, I felt more grounded in my own spiritual experiences.

I had no rational explanation for that mystical experience, and felt no need for one. Because it was my lived experience, other people’s perspectives or interpretations of my spiritual life became, simply, irrelevant.

My newfound spirit of inquiry, detachment, and self-trust dislodged deep anxiety from my mind. I became happier, peaceful, and more relaxed.

Fast forward about a decade, when I felt called to visit that church.

I attended Sunday School, Sunday service, and church events, well, religiously for a couple of months.

I kept my heart and mind open to seeing church culture and Christianity in a fresh light.

And after those two months, I had.

While I experienced the support of a small religious community, I also witnessed a degree of logical fallacies, historical inaccuracies, and spiritual inconsistencies that left my head spinning.

Christian theology, viewed after my time away from Christianity, left me flabbergasted.

I sat in that Bible study group with community leaders, respected elders, and loving parents, whom I considered intelligent and thoughtful individuals.

Yet when it came to discussing Biblical stories and teachings, these individuals simply reaffirmed their existing beliefs, rather than exploring historical facts, asking challenging questions, or examining theological inconsistencies.

As I sat quietly and observed the study group, I wondered,

How can intelligent people overlook the theological plot holes in Christianity?

Why is my experience of a Divine force so different than the vengeful, irrational God that Christianity describes?

Why do so many Christians hold onto their beliefs with certainty, rather than curiosity?

Compelled to answer these questions for myself, I dove into researching the hidden history and socio-cultural influences that shaped Christianity.

At this point in my life, I had developed a skillset for uncovering the skewed data and hidden history behind powerful industries and institutions.

I had already published books and articles exposing the buried data of the pharmaceutical industry, vaccine industry, fertility industry, cancer industry, and Botox industry.

Uncovering this big-picture corruption requires more than a Google search; one must dive deep to recognize funding bias, hidden history, and secret political ties of profitable industries.

I applied this truth-seeking skillset to Christianity.

Unsurprisingly, I found the same patterns of fear, fraud, and fabrication that shaped major industries also shaped the Christian religion.

I learned that Christian theology is completely different than what Jesus taught, and what his earliest followers believed.

And that’s when the voice inside me said, “I have a book to write.”

GET THE BOOK

Jesus Rewritten is a book for anyone who has been hurt or confused by Christianity, but is curious about Jesus.

Discover how doctrines like hell, blood sacrifice, scriptural inerrancy, female subservience, and the Trinity contradict Jesus’ original teachings.

Explore the questions Christians aren’t supposed to ask, and the history they’re supposed to ignore… a history you’ll never learn sitting in a church pew.

You’ll get a roadmap for spiritual wellbeing beyond religious doctrine.

BUY NOW: Jesus Rewritten

LAUREN GEERTSEN is the author of numerous books on psychology, health, and spirituality. Her online publications have reached over 40 million readers. When a mystical awakening shattered her devout Christian beliefs, she set out to illuminate the hidden history of the Christian religion.

This Substack publication is produced without AI content

I do not use AI for any content, books, video scripts, or captions.

I value the heart, soul, and authenticity present in real human writing.

Share

When I was a devout Christian, I thought the idea of “hell” derived from the Bible, and was in harmony with Jesus’ teachings.

Then, a sudden mystical awakening shattered my Christian beliefs.

I started a decade-long journey through hidden history, lost gospels, and theological plot twists.

I learned that the modern Christian concept of hell would be foreign to the earliest Jews, since the Torah presents a totally different concept of the afterlife.

Hell, as we think of it now, developed from evolving Jewish thought and Greek mythology.

Rather than strictly deriving from the Bible, the concept of hell is read into the Bible.

The Mistranslations of “Hell”

The gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke record Jesus using the terms Gehenna and Hades, two concepts distinct from eternal punishment.

When the gospel texts were later translated, from Greek to Latin to English, these words became “hell.”

Gehenna was a physical location outside of Jerusalem, a site that ancient Jews considered forsaken by God. It was where, according to 2 Kings 23:10, children had been sacrificed to the pagan god Molech.

Hades was a concept of an afterlife from Greek mythology; we don’t know exactly how ancient Jews conceived of this place. The Torah (Old Testament) makes no reference to heaven or hell. Instead, it discusses Sheol, an afterlife of forgetfulness and slumber for all souls.

Ancient Jewish Beliefs about the Afterlife

During Jesus’ lifetime, there existed three main sects of Judaism: Saducees, Pharisees, and Essenes.

These groups held vastly different views on the afterlife.

The Pharisees believed that righteous individuals would be physically resurrected from the dead on “Judgement Day.” These people would receive new, perfect bodies and continue their physical existence in these bodies.

Saducees believed that souls ceased to exist after death.

And the Essenes believed that souls endured forever, going to a heavenly region or a place of “unending retribution,”— as reported by 1st century historian Josephus. Josephus also noted that this Essene afterlife belief paralleled the Greek notion of the afterlife.

If Jesus did use the terms Gehenna and Hades, as recorded in the earliest Greek gospels, how would his ancient Jewish followers have interpreted these words? I don’t know… and I don’t know how anyone could know.

Eternal Punishment and Eternal Fire

Jesus also references “eternal punishment” and “eternal fire” in Matthew 25:41 and 25:46:

“Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire (in Greek: pyr to aiōnion) prepared for the devil and his angels . . . And these will go away into eternal punishment (in Greek: kolasin aiōnion), but the righteous into eternal life.”

Pyr to aiōnion can be translated to “an age of purification,” and kolasin aiōnion can translate to “an age of correction/discipline.”

If Jesus did say these words, imagine how they would have sounded to his Jewish audience, who may have believed in the traditional Sheol.

If Hell Disappears, So Does Christian Doctrine

Christian doctrine posits that humans are destined for hell because of their sinfulness.

The story goes like this:

No action or behavior on our part can make us right with God.

As a result, God needs some kind of payment for our sins, to create divine justice. Without such payment, God would send all his children to a place of infinite punishment for the finite sins we commit. To God, this is justice.

Here’s the good news! God so loved the world that he sacrificed his one and only son. Jesus was the ultimate blood sacrifice for God. Jesus’ sacrifice “paid God back” for all the human sins ever committed.

If you want a hall pass into heaven, you must “confess Jesus as your Lord and Savior.

This plotline raises questions, however:

• How is infinite punishment for finite sins a form of justice?

• How is it love to require a human sacrifice?

• If God is love, why does God need justice? If love is that which regrows the eye, then there’s no longer a need to take an eye for an eye.

• Why does God require repayment for sins? How do we create a debt with God by sinning, when God cannot be harmed or hurt?

GET THE BOOK

Ready for a deeper dive into the hidden history and development of Christian theology? Are you curious why Christianity has distorted the concepts of love, justice, and God?

Dive into my book Jesus Rewritten: How Christianity Changed His Life, Death, and Message.

It’s for anyone who has been hurt or confused by Christianity, but curious about Jesus.

Discover how doctrines like hell, blood sacrifice, scriptural inerrancy, female subservience, and the Trinity contradict Jesus’ original teachings.

Explore the questions Christians aren’t supposed to ask, and the history they’re supposed to ignore… a history you’ll never learn sitting in a church pew.

You’ll get a roadmap for spiritual wellbeing beyond religious doctrine.

BUY NOW: Jesus Rewritten

LAUREN GEERTSEN is the author of numerous books on health and spirituality. Her online publications have reached over 40 million readers. When a mystical awakening shattered her devout Christian beliefs, she set out to illuminate the hidden history of the Christian religion.

This Substack publication is produced without AI content

I do not use AI for any content, books, video scripts, or captions.

I value the heart, soul, and authenticity present in real human writing.

Share

Christianity is a blood sacrifice religion… why?

That’s a question I never asked while I was a devout Christian for the first 21 years of my life.

Then, at age 21, a sudden mystical awakening shattered my religious beliefs. I embarked on a decade-long journey through hidden history, lost gospels, and theological plot holes.

One of the topics that compelled me the most was the blood rituals and blood atonement in Christianity.

For God so loved the world… he needed blood?

With Easter around the corner, I want to dive into one of the foundational aspects of Christian theology: blood sacrifice ideology, or what Christians call blood atonement theology.

Here’s how this theological plotline goes:

As humans, our sins make us unworthy of entering heaven. No action or behavior on our part can make us right with God.

God needs some kind of payment for our sins, to create divine justice. Without such payment, God would send all his children to a place of infinite punishment for the finite sins we commit. To God, this is justice.

Here’s the good news! God so loved the world that he sacrificed his one and only son. Jesus was the ultimate blood sacrifice for God. Jesus’ sacrifice “paid God back” for all the human sins ever committed.

Jesus “put all of our sins on his shoulders” and had this gruesome, barbaric murder happen to him. And when Jesus’ blood was spilled, it conferred spiritual cleansing and protection upon people who call on Jesus.

When I was a Christian, this made sense to me. It made sense because I didn’t think about it, I just believed it.

But after my mystical awakening, I started asking the following questions:

• How is it love to require a human sacrifice?

• How is it justice to require the death of an innocent person to repay the sins of guilty people?

• Why does God require repayment for sins? How do we create a debt with God by sinning, when God cannot be harmed or hurt?

• If God is love, why does God need justice? If love is that which regrows the eye, then there’s no longer a need to take an eye for an eye.

• Doesn’t this God sound more like a hateful man, rather than the ultimate source of love?

Let’s explore where the blood sacrifice ideology in Christianity comes from—and why, based on historical evidence, this ideology didn’t come from Jesus.

1. Jesus staged a rebellion against the Jewish temple sacrifices

Blood sacrifice superstition ran deep in the ancient Jewish Palestinian culture in which Jesus lived, but Jesus openly repudiated blood sacrifice superstition.

When he threw over the tables in the temple, what were they selling? The answer is in the Bible: they were selling animals for blood sacrifice.

The Gospel of John, 2:14 says, “In the temple courts [Jesus] found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves.”

These were the animals prescribed for sacrifices, in the Book of Leviticus.

Arguably, the largest role of the priests in the Jewish temple was performing animal sacrifice, in staggering numbers. The historian Josephus, writing in the first century, reports that during passover, a quarter million animals (predominantly lambs) were slaughtered.¹

A rabbinic text from the second century, called the Mishnah, describes the drainage channels in the temple courtyard, designed to allow rivers of animal blood to flow out of the temple.²

Some Christians believe that the animal sacrifice prescriptions in the Old Testament really did come from God. They believe that, at one point in history, God really did need people to kill an animal in order to be righteous. This was the “Old Covanent” between God and people, before Jesus’ death allowed a “New Covenant.”

The way I see it, the Old Testament reflects an “old consciousness” — a false and limited way of understanding God. Jesus introduces a “new consciousness”— a more enlightened and accurate way of understanding God.

God can’t change its mind or its agreements with humans… but humans can change their mind about God.

Imagine telling your son you’ll forgive him for misbehaving if he goes out and kills an animal. —Youtube comment from @panqueque455

A turning point for me was realizing that walking into the temple would have looked and smelled like a slaughterhouse, not sweet fragrant flowers. —Youtube comment from @michele219

Isn’t it weird how we must commit a sin (shedding innocent blood) to be forgiven! —Youtube comment from @Naturesoothesme25

2. Jesus and his followers followed the Torah and didn’t consume blood

“But didn’t Jesus teach his disciples communion?”

The Biblical gospels were written at least 4 decades after Jesus’ life,³ and after Greco-Roman paganism deeply shaped some early “Jesus following” groups.

In fact, we see communion-like rituals first developed for worshipping Greco-Roman deities.⁴

Here’s where it gets interesting...

Jesus’ disciples were Torah-following Jews. So was Jesus—although he openly rebuffed some religious rules to teach a new consciousness (a new way of thinking) about God.

The Torah forbade Jews from consuming blood. Why would Jesus, a Torah-following Jew, offer his Jewish followers a blood-drinking ritual?

As if animal blood was bad enough to suggest to Torah-following Jews, imagine their reaction at a HUMAN blood-drinking ritual!

With all this talk of blood rituals etc. in the Christian bible, it seems that the similarities between the satanic rituals they despise and their own are a lot closer than they’d ever like to admit. —Youtube comment from @foxfire-chan

I’m Mexican, why is it easier for me to believe that my ancestors sacrificed and used blood magic to please their gods but it’s hard for Christian’s and Jews to accept their ancestors did the same for their god. —Youtube comment from @albertoflores-t1z2s

3. Jesus had at Least One Vegetarian Disciple

Putting it generously, the ritual of communion is cannibalistic role-play. Yet for Catholics who believe in transubstantiation (a doctrine where wine and bread literally turn into Jesus’ body), communion is a cannibalistic ritual.

Jesus’ brother and disciple James was a vegetarian.⁵ This indicates a connection to the Essene sect of Jews, who practiced vegetarianism.

The Essenes rejected the Jewish temple sacrifice system. The Dead Sea Scrolls, writings discovered from an Essene community, described such sacrifice as a “holocaust.”⁶ The Essenes believed that they could maintain purity not through bloodshed, but with strict dietary and sexual codes, and by practicing baptism.^7,8

Historians debate whether Jesus consumed animal flesh. Nevertheless, imagine how Jesus’ own vegetarian brother and disciple (who was appointed the leader of the earliest church) would have responded to a cannibalistic ritual!

Imagine if you were to describe covering yourself with Blood or drinking blood in worship of an entity without naming it, immediately Christians would come to the conclusion and accuse one of satanic worship. [….] It all appears more to be pagan worship to me now. —Youtube comment from @onelife2live

The cannibalistic overtones of Christianity always weirded me out, even as a kid. My parents took me to church once and I remember the priest going on about drinking the blood and eating the flesh of Christ, and having a nightmare that evening of Jesus carving off pieces of his flesh and giving it to people to eat. Disgusting. —Youtube comment from @numinous123

4. Paul’s Personal Gospel Pre-Dated the Biblical Gospels

The apostle Paul contributed the earliest writings to the New Testament (pre-dating the authorship of the gospels) and provides the first reference to communion.

In my upcoming book Jesus Rewritten, I contrast Jesus’ teachings with Paul’s theological inventions. Paul was not among Jesus’ disciples, and took on the title “Apostle” himself. Paul describes his theological concepts as “my gospel” (Romans 2:16, Romans 16:25).

In Galatians 2, Paul references the leaders of the Church in Jerusalem—likely James and Peter, as those held in “high esteem.” Paul says, “whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not show favoritism—they added nothing to my message.”

The communion ritual likely came from Greco-Roman themes introduced into the early church.

Could Paul himself have introduced the ritual and theology of communion? Could that be more plausible than this anti-Jewish ritual originating from Jesus himself?

In Jesus Rewritten, I dive into the communion-like rituals in Greco-Roman culture, which pre-dated the Biblical gospels.

Here is the blood of Christ, drink it

Me as a kid: I’m sorry but what!?

—Youtube comment from @Aashka_The_Mystic

5. Jesus Didn’t Teach Blood Atonement

Is it possible that Jesus’ teachings about forgiveness contradict modern Christian theology?

Consider the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is reported as saying,

“Be merciful just as your Father is merciful. Do not judge and you will not be judged. Do not condemn and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven.”

Jesus also gives the following instruction to forgive seventy-seven times, in Matthew 18:21-22:

Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”

Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times."

Jesus teaches the Lord’s prayer, which says,

“Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.”

What could that mean?

It could mean that our ability to understand what love is, what God is, hinges on how much we forgive others. That’s how we open our consciousness to the understanding of love.

We block our experience of God’s forgiveness (but not God’s forgiveness itself) to the degree we don’t forgive others.

So... vampirism. I mean... “Drink my blood and live forever”, that is literally vampirism, right? —Youtube comment from @ertymexx

What finally ended my being able to be a Christian was the human sacrifice of Jesus. How could I serve a god who isn’t powerful enough or creative enough to “save my soul” in a more positively and lovingly than all the other pagan religions? If saying “you are forgiven” isn’t sufficient to get the job done he simply isn’t worth my devotion. —Youtube comment from @26beegee

GET THE BOOK

Want to learn more about these topics? Dive into my book, Jesus Rewritten: How Christianity Changed His Life, Death, and Message.

It’s for anyone who has been hurt or confused by Christianity, but curious about Jesus.

Discover how doctrines like hell, blood sacrifice, scriptural inerrancy, female subservience, and the Trinity contradict Jesus’ original teachings.

Explore the questions Christians aren’t supposed to ask, and the history they’re supposed to ignore… a history you’ll never learn sitting in a church pew.

You’ll get a roadmap for spiritual wellbeing beyond religious doctrine.

BUY NOW: Jesus Rewritten

LAUREN GEERTSEN is the author of numerous books on health and spirituality. Her online publications have reached over 40 million readers. When a mystical awakening shattered her devout Christian beliefs, she set out to illuminate the hidden history of the Christian religion in her book Jesus Rewritten.

Sources

1. Josephus, Flavius., Williamson, G. A., & Smallwood, E. M. (1981). The Jewish War (Rev. ed.). Penguin.

2. Danby, Herbert. (Trans.). (1933). The Mishnah. Oxford University Press.

3. Ehrman, Bart. Did Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John Actually Write Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? [Online Course.] Paths in Biblical Studies. https://www.bartehrman.com/courses/

4. Tabor, James. (2012). Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle transformed Christianity. Simon & Schuster.

5. Kirby, P. (Ed.). (n.d.). Fragments of Hegesippus (Roberts-Donaldson translation). In Early Christian Writings. Retrieved January 27, 2026, from http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/hegesippus.html

6. University of Pennsylvania, Department of Classical Studies. (n.d.). 1QS (Community Rule) — Dead Sea Scrolls text. CCAT: School of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved January 26, 2026, from https://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/gopher/other/courses/rels/225/Texts/1QS

7. Ginsburg, Christian D. (2022). The Essenes: Their history and doctrines. Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/69170/69170-h/69170-h.htm

This Substack Publication is Made Without AI Content

I do not use AI for any content, books, video scripts, or captions.

I value the heart, soul, and authenticity present in real human writing.

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1. The Original (Not) Sin

Adam and Eve held no pre-existing concept of right or wrong. According to the Biblical narrative, that understanding would only come from the knowledge of Good versus Evil — the knowledge said to be contained in the forbidden fruit. Why, then, would God punish Adam and Eve for eating the forbidden fruit, when they had no prior discernment of righteous or sinful behavior?

“This was the story that got me kicked out of my friend’s church after I asked, ‘Why did God put a tree he didn’t want touched where people could reach it when he KNEW they were going to? My mom keeps our cookies on top of the refrigerator’. . . . . I was 6 years old.”

— YouTube comment from username @klinnc8910

2. “Do As I Say, Not As I Do.”

In the 10 Commandments, the Judeo-Christian God prohibits murder. Yet in the Flood narrative, God kills most of humanity. In other parts of the Old Testament, God facilitates and condones the genocide of Israel’s enemies. So, is God’s moral law universal, or does it make exceptions for different circumstances and cultures?

“A perfect god creates imperfect people. Gets mad that they’re not perfect.”

— YouTube comment from username @dalelawrence85

3. The Lying Pens of the Scribes

How do we accept the Bible as the inerrant word of God, when the Bible itself says that the Old Testament Law has been mangled by the “lying pens of the scribes” (Jeremiah 8:8)? Similarly, according to Jeremiah 14:14, God said other prophets were telling lies in His name. How can the Bible be infallible, if it tells us there are lies within the Old Testament?

“God made his existence so clear that hundreds of different religions believe completely contradictory things about that god and other gods.”

— YouTube comment from username @FahadAyaz

4. “Divinely-Inspired” Edits?

The story of Jesus protecting the adulteress who was about to be stoned was not in the original gospel manuscripts, but rather, added later by scribes. There are numerous other significant changes in Biblical texts attributed to scribal errors and personal judgment. Was God inspiring the mistakes and alterations made by these scribes? If the Bible is the inerrant word of God, why didn’t God preserve the original and authentic gospel texts?

“People say often ‘As Jesus said,’ but now I say, ‘As the authors of the gospels say that Jesus said.’”

— YouTube comment from username @jorgecampos868

5. Injustice Creates Justice?

Christian theology says that Jesus, himself free of sin, “paid the price” for every sinful human. By believing in Jesus’ resurrection and divinity, we’ll go to heaven. Only through the death of an innocent person could God forgive humanity for their sins. Isn’t that a pinnacle of injustice, to require an innocent person suffer a violent death? How can an act of injustice create Divine justice?

“If saving everyone is the greatest act of love, then isn’t condemning everyone the greatest act of hate?”

— YouTube comment from username @Explodington

6. Blood Sacrifice Superstition

Christianity places eternal importance on Jesus’ bloodshed: singing hymns about it, invoking its protective power through prayer, and consuming it ritualistically. We see a similar belief in the metaphysical power of blood in occult practices such as Satanism, Voodoo, and Santeria. Christians claim spiritual distinction from these occult practices.

Yet Jesus himself rebuked blood sacrifice superstitions, and the Torah forbade Jews from consuming blood. Why does Christianity teach blood atonement, when Jesus openly repudiated this practice? How could a blood-drinking ritual arise from a Jewish community, when it was forbidden by Jewish law?

“With all this talk of blood rituals etc. in the Christian Bible, it seems that the similarities between the Satanic rituals they despise and their own are a lot closer than they’d ever like to admit.”

— YouTube comment from username @Foxfire-chan

7. Paul’s Personal Jesus

Paul never met the living Jesus, but he claimed a vision of the “living Christ.” Why have Paul’s letters become a foundational aspect of Christian theology, when Paul’s teachings conflicted with the disciples whom Jesus personally appointed to continue his teachings?

“I remember once my Dad made fun of Mormons for basing their entire faith on one guy’s word that he saw some gold plates no one else could see. I laughed along. But then I realized that we believed everything Paul says from one vision he had that no one else saw and I was like....huh. That’s interesting.”

— YouTube comment from username @jaclynlevy5644

8. Twisted Trinity

Christians believe God consists of three persons: Father, Son (Jesus), and Holy Spirit. Before his crucifixion, the gospels recount Jesus praying, “Not my will but Thy will be done.” If Jesus and God are the same, what are the different wills here? In the gospels of Matthew and Mark, Jesus is reported as saying, “Father, why hast thou forsaken me?” If Jesus is God, how could Jesus ever perceive himself as forsaken by God?

‘”Me, me, why hath I forsaken me?”

— YouTube comment from username @robweis9

9. The Earliest Followers

The earliest followers of Jesus, called the Ebionites, rejected common concepts we now hold as Christian theology, including the virgin birth and the belief that Jesus was God. Current Christian theology came about by suppressing the views of Jesus’ earliest followers. How could a theology that developed centuries after Jesus’ death offer a more accurate view of Jesus than that held by his earliest followers?

“‘My religion is the only true religion.’ Said by every member of every religion ever.”

— YouTube comment from username @tomsenior7405

Ready to answer these questions for yourself?

If you ask a Christian these questions, you may receive the following responses, as I once did:

“It doesn’t have to make sense, you just have to accept it. That’s what faith is.”

“Well, that’s a challenging question, but I believe in Christian doctrine.”

“You should just pray until it makes sense to you; the Holy Spirit will give you peace.”

But are these responses satisfactory answers?

I wasn’t satisfied. That’s why I went on a soul-searching journey through history, theology, and Biblical scholarship.

What I learned left me stunned — because I had never learned this history sitting in a church pew.

I discovered that Jesus’ life and teachings have been completely reshaped by political, financial, and socio-cultural influences. It turns out, Jesus’ earliest follower held beliefs that contradict most of modern Christian theology.

Arguably, Christianity has instigated the largest smear campaign against Jesus.

In my future Substack articles, I’ll dive into the hidden history, socio-economic influences, and human psychology that shaped the Christian religion.

GET THE BOOK

Jesus Rewritten is a book for anyone who has been hurt or confused by Christianity, but is curious about Jesus.

Discover how doctrines like hell, blood sacrifice, scriptural inerrancy, female subservience, and the Trinity contradict Jesus’ original teachings.

Explore the questions Christians aren’t supposed to ask, and the history they’re supposed to ignore… a history you’ll never learn sitting in a church pew.

You’ll get a roadmap for spiritual wellbeing beyond religious doctrine.

BUY NOW: Jesus Rewritten

LAUREN GEERTSEN is the author of numerous books on health and spirituality. Her online publications have reached over 40 million readers. When a mystical awakening shattered her devout Christian beliefs, she set out to illuminate the hidden history of the Christian religion.

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Hello and welcome to Jesus Rewritten!

Discover how Christianity rewrote Jesus… and totally lost the plot.

In this Substack publication, I dive into the hidden history that shaped the Christianity, and offer a spiritual roadmap beyond religious doctrine.

You’re in the right place if…

…you’ve been hurt or confused by Christianity,

…you’re asking soul-searching questions about Christian doctrine,

…you’re interested in religious history,

…or, you’ve never been religious, but you want to learn about the historical Jesus—minus religious dogma.

About Lauren

I’m LAUREN GEERTSEN, and I’ve written numerous books on psychology, health, and spirituality.

My health website, EmpoweredSustenance.com, has supported 40 million readers.

I also publish the TRUTH ACTIVIST Podcast on Substack, which explores hidden history, secret agendas, and global awakening.

I began my career as an independent health researcher, exposing corruption behind the pharmaceutical and psychiatric industries.

When I was 21, a sudden spiritual awakening rattled my devout Christian beliefs. I embarked on a 10-year journey to learn the hidden history behind the Christian religion, and understand what Jesus actually taught.

COMING LATE APRIL 2026

And stay tuned for the release of my book Jesus Rewritten: How Christianity Changed His Life, Death, and Message.