This is another one addressing something I have seen several times over the last few years that is based on a misunderstanding of truth as a whole.
There have been several times I have seen posts saying that Jesus wasn't a Christian, Abraham wasn't a Jew, Muslim or Christian, Moses wasn't a Jew, Krishna wasn't Hindu, Enoch wasn't any of those and so forth. Let's take a step back and look at what it means to be a these things.
From my own limited observations, most of the world sees each belief system as something that started at some point in time by someone who lived on this earth after humans had already been living here. In the case of Jesus, many believe that Christianity really started with the mortal ministry of Christ. I remember one person telling me when I was serving my mission in Canada that they believed Jesus came to completely break down all religious traditions. This person thought that it truly didn't matter which church you belonged to as long as it was some sort of church that taught the divinity of Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the Savior and Redeemer of mankind. I know of another person who goes the complete opposite direction, refusing to step foot in any religious building but the Catholic church and has expressed the thought that anyone who isn't white and Catholic is going to hell. Yes, I know. Pretty horrible. It's pretty stunning to me, too, that anyone still thinks that way. I know of others who believe that as long as you just try to be a good person, that God will have mercy on you and you'll live in happiness with Him forever.
Something most people seem to be missing in the world today is that there is an absolute truth. I was listening to a podcast recently called The Ancient Tradition. In the first episode towards the end the host said that many seem to feel like we are living in a “post-truth” world and promptly responds to this sentiment with a very firm “I reject that.” Good for her! I haven't listened to more of her podcast yet, but I certainly intent to. Either way, something that most people in this world fail to understand is that truth is not something that was invented by man or was decided on by any one person or counsel of people. It was always been truth, even back into the eternities before this world was created and will continue to exist as the truth into the eternities endlessly from this point onward. As Tad Callister said in his book The Infinite Atonement, “There are certain laws of the universe that are immutable, that are without beginning of days or end of years... they are eternal, co-existent realities with the intelligences of the universe. These laws are immutable in that they cannot be altered or modified in any form. They unchangeable from eternity to eternity.”
In this quote Callister is referring to the eternal balance of justice and mercy and explains that the reason God is God is because He has mastered these laws. He lives by unchanging truth. He does not work around it or seek to violate these laws in any way, because He knows if He does all of the matter in His creation will no longer honor Him. He simply knows how to live and operate within the bounds of these eternal truths and does so for our well being. He taught this truth to all of us before we were born when we lived as spirits without the same physical bodies we have now and gave us the option to continue to live by these truths and thus become like Him and enjoy the perfect life He has or not. Up to that point we had enjoyed likely eons of time in the His presence, having immediate access to all truth and not knowing any other kind of reality of way of living. He knew that the only way to really understand why the truth matters is to live it because we choose to, not just because it's the only option available. We had to live in an environment for a time where we would be confronted with ALL options and learn to choose truth while being presented with everything that's not true as well. He knew that a sterile existence of living truth only because there is no other option would never cause the internal changes in us necessary to make us like Him and enjoy the life He enjoys. As the story of one farmer goes, the farmer said to his son, “everything I have I can willingly give you, but everything I am you must become yourself.” Thankfully, we have Jesus to help with that, which I will explain later.
God also knew that, in order to have us truly decide for ourselves, we would need to start from ground zero on the mortal plane. We would need to start with no memory of who we were, where we came from or why we are here, but, to stay within the balance of those laws of justice and mercy, He chose One, Jehovah, before any of us came to earth, to be our reminder of what the truth is. Jesus Christ, as He is known on this earth, would send other messengers and delegate the spreading of the truths we learned before this life, piece by piece, so it wouldn't overwhelm us all at once in our weakened mortal condition. These messengers are called prophets and today's prophet is Russell M Nelson (2024). Jesus sent them throughout the whole history of the world from ancient biblical times at the beginning of the world until today – excluding a period of about 1,400 years that was prophesied of in Isaiah 24, Amos 8, Matt 24 and 2 Timothy 4.
Now, what does this have to do with any of the aforementioned leaders?
Jesus has many names in the scriptures.
One of them is Truth. I'm going to briefly quote Jack Christianson's speech “The Mortal Christ” here to explain this. “What is one of
Jesus' names? The Truth. So whenever we talk about learning about the
truth, part of what we're talking about learning about is about who?
Christ... When Jesus stands before Pilate... Pilate asks Him, 'What
is truth? and Jesus won't respond, and then Pilate screams out 'don't
you know I could have you crucified?' and then Jesus decides to say
something and He says this: No you couldn't. In fact He says 'you
would have no power over me except it be given to you from above' and
I can almost hear Him whispering under His breath, which it isn't
recorded in any of the four gospels, 'You don't really understand, do
you Pilate? You really think you could have me crucified?' Gerald
Lund writes, 'All Jesus had to do was blink and the entire city of
Jerusalem would have been annihilated'... I can just see the Savior
just going 'oh, my boy, you silly child, you really think you could
do that to me?'... he wants to know what is truth. Jesus won't answer
him. Why? Because He had an audience that didn't care about what the
truth was; and then, in Doctrine and Covenants section 93... 'truth
is a knowledge of things as they are, as a they were and as they are
to come.' Now, that's what truth is. It's a knowledge of the
plan... Now I've gotta ask the second question that I've gotta ask.
Who is the truth? It's Christ. So when one comes to a knowledge of
the truth, they come to a knowledge of the Son of God and His plan of
happiness.”
When Christ accepted the role of our Savior and
Redeemer under God's plan, from that moment onward He had extended
His perfect oneness with the Father (in every way except
physical identity) into the eternities. He agreed to:
Be the perfect example of the truth by living it flawlessly and thus showing us how to do the same
Suffer the consequences of our failure to live the truth (sin) and, in doing so, pay an eternal debt to the law of justice that He didn't owe, our spiritual debt. According to the eternal laws of justice that God has to follow, even one tiny imperfect choice or act of disobedience to His commands (as a perfect being, our God), we would permanently, eternally stop us from ever returning to the presence of someone so eternally flawless as Him, so
Christ became our “creditor” with the laws of justice instead, our Mediator with the Father. He suffered for every ounce of departure from the truth we would commit or experience in mortality and intentionally imbalance (different from violate) the eternal scales of justice and mercy so He could have leverage to literally “purchase” us with His blood and suffering if we agreed to His terms instead.
So, overall, Jesus and the Father have been the arbiters of truth from the beginning. Real Christianity, a belief in objective, eternal, unchanging truth, or Truth, Christ Himself, began before this world was ever inhabited with people. He Himself was the very definition the belief system that we call Christianity today. You can also simply call Christianity in it's primal form the pure quintessence of all truth because Christ Himself is the embodiment of truth alongside His (and our) Father in Heaven.
To say that Christ wasn't Christian is also to say that Christ isn't based in truth, which is a completely satanic, evil, utterly false idea. Christianity as it is taught from Christ and His prophets and apostles is absolute truth. It is all of the truth we gained from the Father in our pre-mortal life. Christ IS Christianity, His very life, teachings, atoning sacrifice for us and position as our Mediator and Redeemer.
In regards to the others, I'll address each one briefly individually.
Moses and Abraham were indeed not Jewish. They were Christian. Judaism didn't become a religion until the Old Testament Israelite nation had strayed from the original intent of the Law of Moses (read these brief references here, here, and here) which was to point to the great eternal sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The reason Christ was constantly telling people in the New Testament to stop being like the Pharisees, Sadducees and Scribes was because those groups had become so pedantic about the law of Moses that they twisted it and perverted it to become something entirely different from it's original intended purpose. They had morphed the Law of Moses into something many of them believed would, of itself, be their salvation and adopted the false belief that their prophesied Messiah would come as a military leader to physically free them from Roman captivity. Boy did they have it wrong. Moses was trying to help the ancient Israelites understand the purpose of the Law of Moses in helping them come unto Christ as their Messiah in anticipation of His life, mission and atonement for their sins. Judaism is a tainted and, in our day, drastically strayed version of what Christ tried to teach them in His mortal ministry. Abraham was the father of the 12 tribes of Israel and taught all of his sons about the Truth, Christ Himself, and about what would be His future mission as their Messiah and Savior. Moses was called to do the same thing during his time.
Enoch was also absolutely a Christian. The reason he was able to build the city that rose to Heaven is because his people were willing to be successfully guided by him to live the eternal truths that Christ taught Him. They did it so well they became too holy for this earth and, in mercy, God moved them and their entire city off of the earth into His presence.
Krishna, Lao Tzu and Mohammed, as great leaders as they were, a) never claimed to be gods or prophets, b) never paid the eternal debt for anyone's sins c) do not have and never claimed to have authority to be arbiters of eternal truth. Same with Martin Luther. He never claimed to be a prophet or intended to start a sect of Christianity. As Neal A Maxwell once said, if in the end you have not chosen Christ, it will not matter what you have chosen. Meaning that no other life philosophy from anyone else, from Krishna, Lao Tzu, Mohammed and Buddha to the Pope, Confucius or any other philosopher or individual is 100% based in truth, and therefore cannot align you with the eternal truths that have existed from eternity to eternity.
Christ is the source, alongside God the Father, of all truth. It has been so since before the world was. That is why is a misrepresentation of truth to claim that He wasn't Christian. He IS Christianity, the very embodiment of Truth; you might as well call those two words synonymous because they are, and what God has given us so far of that truth can be found it it's entirety in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
