The L-rd G-d of Israel, the Eternal whom devout Jews worshiped and served for thousands of years, warned the whole Jewish nation in His Torah to watch out for and purge from its midst any false prophet who would lead people to worship gods they have not known. Israel was told to be always on guard, careful that their hearts were not lured away from the Only G-d they knew intimately and One who rescued them from slavery (Deuteronomy 30:17).
The false prophets, we are warned in G-d’s Word, though they may look like holy pious men after G-d’s own heart, though they may appear to us righteous and pure on the outside, though they may say all the “right” things and even set themselves as defenders of the downtrodden, actually hide a dark secret which is fully revealed only after they have already gained their victim’s full confidence.
To gain that confidence and to get a foothold into the heart of a person, the Hebrew Bible tells us, the false prophets have a whole arsenal at their disposal. To mimic the true prophets of G-d these impostors may even produce “proofs” of their supposedly G-d given authority – miracles, wonders and even prophecies, all designed to seduce and lead their victims astray. G-d, however, told us in the Torah that it is precisely through the agency of a false prophet is how He would test us to see if we really love Him and Him alone, if we are truly willing to follow and obey only Him, rejecting any other pretender to His throne.
If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams, appears among you and announces to you a sign or wonder, and if the sign or wonder spoken of takes place, and the prophet says, “Let us follow other gods” (gods you have not known) “and let us worship them,” you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. The L-rd your G-d is testing you to find out whether you love him with all your heart and with all your soul. It is the L-rd your G-d you must follow, and him you must revere. Keep his commands and obey him; serve him and hold fast to him. That prophet or dreamer must be put to death for inciting rebellion against the L-rd your G-d, who brought you out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery. That prophet or dreamer tried to turn you from the way the L-rd your G-d commanded you to follow. You must purge the evil from among you. (Deuteronomy 13:1-5)
Jesus is known in Christianity, a religion named after and centered on him, as the “Second Person of the Trinity” or “G-d the Son” (per Athanasian Creed). Although born a Jewish man, shortly after his death he became in the eyes of his followers a god clothed in a human body, fully equal to the G-d of Israel and deserving of the same worship, loyalty, affection and obedience. As a god in the flesh, Jesus has been worshiped by literally billions of Christians over the last two thousand years. At the same time, Jesus’ own faith and people became despised and oppressed by his followers. Although in the Christian scriptures Jesus referred to himself as one of the Israelite prophets sent by G-d (Mark 6:4), the seeds of his ultimate deification and exaltation to equality with G-d were already planted across New Testament’s pages by the scribes of the fast growing Church.
In a short amount of time, a new religion based around his persona developed. It quickly left the Jewish fold to be spread far and wide across the Roman world by Paul and his disciples, readily attracting millions of Gentile worshipers, some of whom were already familiar with Judaism and its messianic ideas. For many of these “pagans” bowing down to deified human emperors and demigods of the Greek mythology was already an everyday reality. This new divine-man “emperor”, soon known as Jesus Christ, would not only soon displace the old gods of the Greek and Roman pantheon, but would also imbue the budding new religion with the ancient spiritual and scriptural legacy of Judaism, all while declaring the latter obsolete. After an initial slow start, the new religion became very popular among the masses, and a few centuries later, mandatory for all Roman subjects.
In this way Jesus, a Jewish man who was one of the many failed messianic wannabes in the first century Judea, became the “other god” that Israel knew not and a false prophet who came to lead people astray. As befitting his new role as a deity, the image of Jesus in the Christian scriptures demanded that people follow him at all cost and love him above everything they hold dear:
Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me… (Matthew 10:37)
Jesus required of all those who believed in him total submission and love for himself, referring to himself as the only person worthy to be called their “Master” (Matthew 23:10) and even calling his followers “servants” and “slaves”. However, at other times he also presented himself as a selfless servant who only wanted to glorify G-d and not himself. But the true nature of his mission came out in the end, when this same man Jesus, or at least the picture of him that the writers of the New Testament had painted for us, became the lure that drew millions of hearts away from worshiping only the G-d of Israel and to worshiping himself, though he was only a human being like you and me.
It matters not if the New Testament persona of Jesus was based on some actual Jewish person who once walked the land of Israel. It also does not matter if he, as some propose, was just a devout Jew who didn’t even imagine himself becoming an object of worship or having a new religion created around him. What truly matters is what he and his followers did and taught that lead to this diversion from the G-d of Israel that enveloped the world when a human being had become the object of people’s devotion and affection. For the last two thousand years and today Jesus remains a false idol created by men and adored by billions, taking away from the glory of the only True G-d, the L-rd G-d of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Although the New Testament ascribes to Jesus (I John 1:3 and Colossians 1:16-17) the very creation of the world, the G-d of Israel disagrees:
Tell them this: ‘These gods, who did not make the heavens and the earth, will perish from the earth and from under the heavens. But G-d made the earth by his power; he founded the world by his wisdom and stretched out the heavens by his understanding. (Jeremiah 10:11-12)
Daily Minyan 
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