Very good quesion. To answer, let me first explain that I am not a religious person, as I find all religions to be like rigid "rubber stamps", defining what one must believe and do, thereby severely limiting each person's ability to think, reason, and learn.
But Jesus was not like that at all. He was not willing to accept anyone's "rubber stamp". He was not a Christian as Christianity had not been invented yet. And the Jewish establishment viewed him as a dangerous rebel they needed to crush, because he wouldn't accept their "rubber stamp" either. Jesus was simply into the truth behind all things. Staring truth straight in the eye, he was always ready to share it openly and honestly with everyone.
"You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." - Jesus
Magically speaking, what made Jesus so special?
Many people continue to look up to Jesus -- even after all these years -- because the spiritual effects of what he accomplished long ago continue to be intensely felt and appreciated. He created a direct link between the lowest levels of human consciousness and the heavenly levels of all-knowing God consciousness. That was such an amazing feat, comparable to the science fiction concepts of creating a wormhole in space or a portal to another dimension, only Jesus did this for real. The standard descriptions of this accomplishment don't do it justice.
But then, every culture has its own set of concepts that it uses to explain events not understood. For example, the Hebrews had profound concepts of "sin" and "punishment" and so they applied those concepts to Jesus. Their explanation, passed on to the Christian churches, is that Jesus was hung on a wooden cross to cover the "sins" of all mankind, taking on himself the "punishment" required by God. But the magical viewpoint is a bit different and at least as amazing and life-changing, if not more so.
Jesus lived in an age when people's consciousness was hardly higher than that of the animals that lived around them. The lack of empathy or even sympathy for others was so great that men, women, and even children were put through the agonizing torture of being stoned to death for minor infractions of local laws. Few people had any strong feelings or thoughts about it, as such cruelty was simply the accepted norm. I believe much of their apathy toward others came from the hundreds of years of Roman rule in which soldiers horribly tortured their enemies when captured alive. Such callous numbness left people unable to open up to an awareness of anything truly spiritual or heavenly.
Surrounded by others who were also numb, the love, beauty, and joy of higher consciousness were literally impossible to imagine. And without even a glimmer of what such an experience would be like, they couldn't know what steps to take that would move them in a spiritual direction.
Meanwhile, ancient records have been found in various countries across the world that tell of Jesus visiting those lands. As a result of these discoveries, some teach that Jesus actually traveled around the world, learning new things and teaching spiritual values to the people of every region he passed through. Records found in England are pretty specific. They show that Jesus came to the British Isles and studied with the Druids. Later, Jesus's uncle Joseph (different from the Joseph who married his mother) returned to England and established a group of early believers there.
These original "Christians" flourished until the Romans came to rule over England. Naturally, these soldiers demanded such followers of Jesus submit to the Roman version of Christianity. But the local believers refused to do so on the grounds that their founders had been taught by Jesus himself, even before his uncle came to teach them more! They had no need for a distant, Romanized version of their religion, having practiced the original already.
So in the standard Roman fashion, every single Christian in that area was put to death—man, woman, and child—and all their sacred texts were burned. The only thing remaining was a wood altar that Jesus himself, being a carpenter, had built. This altar was revered for many, many decades until eventually a fire consumed the chapel it was in, destroying the altar along with the chapel.
Back in Jerusalem, after his forty years of travel, Jesus fully understood the problem of no one being able to even imagine what God's love was like, much less anything else about higher consciousness. He understood the barrier was too huge, with no one having a clue how to go around it nor a vision of the goal to guide their choice of paths to follow.
But Jesus understood how reality works. He knew the way to create a "portal," a "wormhole" connecting one side of the barrier straight through to the other. The answer was to become fully conscious of the worlds on both sides of the barrier at the same time: the all-knowing completeness of God in the heavenly realm on one side, and the most base levels of human depravity on the other.
I don't believe anyone else has ever accomplished that since, and they likely never will or even could. It's beyond mind-boggling. To be fully conscious in the heavenly realm had become his nature, but to become fully conscious of the lowest levels of human thought and feeling meant allowing the Romans to beat him, whip him, spit on him, crown him with thorns, and finally hang him on a wood cross meant for criminals. And he couldn't make it easy on himself by astral projecting to a safe distance away to watch his body or any other form of escape. Accomplishing the goal required actually being fully conscious of everything, existing in the center of what was happening, experiencing every detail of both the events and the thoughts of the perpetrators, even the most awful and painful parts at the lowest level of human consciousness. All of this, Jesus had to endure while staying fully conscious of the highest spiritual realities, the love, joy, and beauty centered in the all-knowingness we refer to as God.
He was the one person who actually managed to do this. There are no words to describe what this means for each of us.
As a result, anyone who really wants to know spiritual truth, the great magic of the universe, can now do so. No matter how low a level of consciousness one might have fallen to, they can still grasp the highest truths there are to know through the connection Jesus made. And that portal is still there, just as Jesus created it!
As physicists have recently been discovering and reporting, time and space are illusions, neither being "real" as we think of them. In fact, Albert Einstein wrote: "People like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." I love this quote from a story by Richard Bach that correctly states, ". . . overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the middle of Here and Now, don't you think that we might see each other once or twice?" Jesus is still standing there, because the gateway he created is timeless and everywhere. Even modern physics says so.
But how does one find this "portal," this "wormhole" that directly connects the dark side to the light? The portal is magically connected to the name "Jesus" as well as to other things that carry the same meaning. That's why you hear preachers say, "Believe in the name of Jesus, and you will be saved!" Anyone who really wants to find the "wormhole" can, and there are spirits (angels) ready to help in crossing through it.
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Never Forsaken
The Bibles in America quote Jesus as saying to God while on the cross, "My God, my God, Why have You forsaken me?" If he had actually said that, it would go against everything I have written above. But he did NOT say that, and Bibles printed for use in the Middle East have that statement corrected. The publishing houses corrected it for the Middle East because people there know the original language and would not accept such a serious misquote. Their Bibles correctly read, "My Father. It was for this purpose you set me aside and prepared me. This was your plan from the beginning!" Jesus knew God could never "forsake" Him, the exact opposite being true. So this powerful declaration was His Cry of Triumph over everything evil!
Rev. Victor Wierwille, Founder of The Way, discovered it was the SAME publishers who quote Jesus the first way to the western world and the second way to eastern countries. Obviously, both translations cannot be correct, so he talked directly with the publishiers, insisting they explain why they quote Jesus both ways.
What they told him (and I paraphrase) is this: "We know the version we send to the East is correct. Aramaic is their native tongue so they know Jesus didn't say he was abandoned. But your parents, your grandparents, and those around them were taught to believe God had to abandon Jesus on the cross. Also, every major denomination in the Western world teaches that Jesus was abandoned. So if we were to correct it now, just because it's wrong, we couldn't sell any more Bibles!
So Rev. Wierwille wrote an article to correct this issue titled The Cry of Triumph and then made it a chapter in his book, The Words Way. The below quote from that chapter explains the linguistical details of how the error in translation came about:
These Aramaic words ["Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani"] show up in this particular scripture [Matt. 27:46, KJV] because the translators were not absolutely certain about their meaning. They let the Aramaic words remain and then also added what they thought the English translation might be. However, there is no such Aramaic word as lama, but there is the word lmna. Lmna is a declaration "for this purpose" or "for this reason." The root of sabachthani is shbk or shbq. The root word shbk means "to spare, to leave, or to reserve, or to keep.
Therefore, Jesus – still very much in His father's presence and awareness -- was giving his Cry of Triumph, expressing His appreciation to God for guiding and aiding Him every step of the way in the fulfillment of this incredibly important role.