The following is excerpted: Do You Like Jesus—Not the Church? Jesus: His True Message Not the Lie of Christianity
Knowledge is power. In addition, I believe that knowledge and experience result in wisdom and truth: “know the truth and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). Blindly believing, in my opinion, does not set you free but only imprisons you in a fortress of lies. Knowledge is freedom, choice, and movement, while ignorance is imprisonment and stagnation. Rev. Dr. J. Clifford profoundly put it this way: “It is not the truth that suffers from the most searching investigation; they suffer who will not undertake it; and who would hinder others from seeking it.” (Ignatius Singer, The Rival Philosophies of Jesus and of Paul, 14.)
The virgin birth of Jesus was one of the lies promoted by the church. This supposedly occurred at the time of the winter solstice (by the Julian calendar, December 25), which was the indigenous Roman celebration and rite of Saturnian. The Church of Rome not only wanted the people to spend money on their celebration and not on the pagan Saturnian, but also wanted to convert people to their “new religion.”
To this day a virgin birth, a birth not mythological or symbolic, still defies reason, logic, and the natural laws of creation. But the lie of the virgin birth of Jesus helped recruit new converts to the “one and only” true religion, promoting “Jesus as God.”
Jesus was born under a major heavenly configuration with the conjunction of two major planets that figured significantly in Judaism. These were the planets Jupiter and Venus—they were in close conjunction, and from the earth they looked like one bright star.
Jupiter was associated with the birth of kings and therefore called the king planet, and Venus was called Meleket ha-Shamayim, the queen of heaven, in Jeremiah 7:18 and was associated with fertility. In the Talmud Zedek refers to Jupiter, which also has the meaning of righteousness or justice. These two planets were known by astrologers as the Greater and the Lesser Good Fortunes of all the planets. Accordingly, the signs in heaven have presented to us the union of the king and queen, announcing the birth of the prince, the righteous one—Jesus.
Not only was Jesus born under the sacred marriage of the king and queen, but his descending-spirit vision was of the morning star (the dove of Venus). This is confirmed in the final verses of the New Testament in Revelations: “I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and Morning Star” (Rev. 22:16). Was Jesus virgin born? Yes. His mother was not a virgin, but Jesus was born under the sign of the virgin—the constellation Virgo. In other words, his sun was in Virgo, and he would be a son of the virgin—Virgo. Furthermore, he was born under a new moon—symbolic of the virgin. A new moon and Virgo: “Even today, astrologers recognize that the sign of Virgo is the one which has reference to a messianic world ruler to be born from a virgin.” (Ernest L. Martin, “Astronomy and the Birth of Jesus: Scripturally Connected by Mt. 24:30 and Rev. 12:1-2,” http://deeperwalk.lefora.com/2010/07/03/the-astronomical-sign-of-the-son-of-man/.)
“And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars…” (Revelations 12:1 [King James Version])
“The essential factor in interpreting the symbol of Revelation 12:1–5 is the identification of the woman…the woman in the first three verses is featured as being in heaven and both the Sun and the Moon are in association with her…the important factor is the birth of the man-child and the Woman’s relationship with the heavenly signs while she is symbolically in heaven. (The first three verses of Revelation 12 shows the Sun clothing her, the Moon under her feet and the Twelve Stars on her head)
“The ‘birth’ of the Messiah is associated with this heavenly spectacle… “Since the Sun and Moon are amidst or in line with the body of this woman, she could be, in a symbolic way, a constellation located within the normal paths of the Sun and Moon. The only sign of a woman which exists along the ecliptic (the track of the Sun in its journey through the stars) is that of Virgo the Virgin. She occupies, in body form, a space of about 50 degrees along the ecliptic. The head of the woman actually bridges some 10 degrees into the previous sign of Leo and her feet overlap about 10 degrees into the following sign of Libra, the Scales. In the period of Jesus’s birth, the Sun entered in its annual course through the heavens into the head position of the woman about August 13, and exited from her feet about October 2. But the apostle John saw the scene when the Sun was ‘clothing’ or ‘adorning’ the woman. This surely indicates that the position of the Sun in the vision was located somewhere mid-bodied to the woman, between the neck and the knees…
“The only time in the year that the Sun could be in a position to ‘clothe’ the celestial woman called Virgo (that is, to be mid-bodied to her, in the region where a pregnant woman carries a child) is when the Sun is located between about 150 and 170 degrees along the ecliptic. This ‘clothing’ of the woman by the Sun occurs for a 20-day period each year. This 20 degree spread could indicate the general time when Jesus was born. In 3 B.C.E., the Sun would have entered this celestial region about August 27 and exited from it about September 15…
“This heavenly woman called Virgo is normally depicted as a virgin holding in her right hand a green branch and in her left hand a sprig of grain. In the Hebrew Zodiac, she at first (in the time of David) denoted Ruth who was gleaning in the fields of Boaz. She then later became the Virgin when the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14 was given in the time of King Hezekiah and the prophet Isaiah. This Virgin held in her left hand a sprig of grain. This was precisely where the bright star called Spica is found. Indeed, the chief star of the constellation Virgo is Spica. “Bullinger, in his book The Witness of the Stars (29–34), said that the word ‘Spica’ has, through the Arabic, the meaning ‘the branch’ and that it symbolically refers to Jesus who was prophetically called ‘the Branch’ in Zechariah 3:8 and 6:12. And Bullinger (and Seiss in his book The Gospel in the Stars) maintains that this sign of Virgo designates the heavenly witness for the birth of the Messiah (Jesus).
“Jesus was born in early evening, and Revelation 12 shows it was a New Moon day.
“What New Moon could this have been? The answer is most amazing. It is almost too amazing! September 11, 3 B.C.E. was Tishri One on the Jewish calendar. To Jewish people this would have been a very profound occasion indeed. Tishri One is none other than the Jewish New Year’s Day (Rosh ha-Shanah, or as the Bible calls it, The Day of Trumpets Leviticus 23:23–26). It was an important annual holy day of the Jews (but not one of the three annual festivals that required all Palestinian Jews to be in Jerusalem).
“What a significant day for the appearance of the Messiah to arrive on earth from the Jewish point of view! And remarkably, no other day of the year could astronomically fit Revelation 12:1–3. The apostle John is certainly showing forth an astronomical sign which answers precisely with the Jewish New Year Day. John would have realized the significance of this astronomical scene that he was describing” (Ernest L. Martin, “Astronomy and the Birth of Jesus: Scripturally Connected by Mt. 24:30 and Rev. 12:1–2,” http://deeperwalk.lefora.com/2010/07/03/the-astronomical-sign-of-the-son-of-man/).