Once a Christian

About the Book

“You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:22–24). Jesus spoke these words to a Samaritan woman, but the author believes that they should be directed to Christians of all denominations. Jesus preceded these words by stating that “the hour is coming when you will, neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father.” Central to the prophecies is a return to Jerusalem from where the Father will be worshipped forever. Why would Jesus contradict the Father? Contradictions such as these were largely responsible for the author doubting the authenticity of the texts, or if the texts are authentic, then one must doubt the claims of Jesus being the prophesied Messiah. There were two key issues that the author sought to resolve separately: (1) Does Christianity truly follow the footsteps of Jesus of Nazareth, or did Rome invent its own Jesus, a man who never was? and (2) Was Jesus the prophesied Jewish mashiach of the kingly line of David? Other contentious issues would resolve from those two. Resulting from wide-ranging research, the author concluded that neither Christian precept was true. Believing in God and walking away from Christianity was his only choice.

About the Author

The author, Wayne Talbot, was once a Christian. Raised in the Catholic faith, and finding some doctrines having no basis in the bible, his studies directed him away from Catholicism to non-denomination Protestantism; from there to Evangelical Christianity; from there to Messianic Judaism; and from there to where he is today - a theist believing in the God of the Hebrew Scriptures, but aligned with no identified religion. Putting aside all theological presuppositions, and using his experience as a former commercial analyst, he sought to objectively evaluate the various claims and counter-claims concerning the man, Jesus of Nazareth: who was he really? Was he as Christianity claimed, the Messiah sent to save us from our sins; was he an apocalyptic prophet; or was he somebody who saw himself as someone other than he was, and eventually fell afoul of the Roman rulers? His journey has taken him through the theologies of the Catholic, Protestant, Messianic Jewish, and Orthodox Jewish religions, the apologetics of the corresponding religious scholars, and the works of secular historians. Seeking biblical truth, he compared some 30 bible translations from the Hebrew, Greek, Syriac, and Latin, disappointed and saddened to find that the truth was more elusive than he had anticipated. At best, he has only managed to uncover untruth. Though a late starter in the literary field, Wayne Talbot has published a novel, Finding the Shepherd, a pseudo-biographical account which alludes to his own theological wanderings against a background of places he has been, but entirely fictional people and events. He has published a refutation of Richard Dawkins’ Greatest Show on Earth, entitled The Dawkins Deficiency, and an entirely original treatise, Information, Knowledge, Evolution, and Self, which contends that the posited mechanisms of evolution are insufficient to account for the cognitive information and knowledge in humans. In his series, From the Back Pew, he has written 16 bible studies, most self-published on Amazon Kindle, and others to be self-published in paperback in the near future. This volume, the 16th, is the second to be published professionally.