Village Shepherd

The hypnotist Paul McKenna is a man of extraordinary capabilities. "The Times" has named him as one of the world's leading modern gurus. He has worked with Olympic gold medalists and world champion sports people, top business achievers, rock stars, Hollywood movie stars, and even royalty, enabling them to fulfill their own potential and reach their goals. At the beginning of the year, after the usual excess of Christmas eating for the nation, he started a televised programme entitled, "I can make you thin" which was followed by thousands of people in the UK. Whether or not there will be a marked and sustained reduction in the collective weight of the nation remains to be seen!

Self-help is the name of the game at the moment in the UK. There is intense interest in a healthy diet and a healthy life-style, and even intense interest in a healthy spirituality, although this may be less overt. There are also a number of gurus to help us all along the way in different but allied fields of self-help. As well as Paul McKenna, Scott Peck, Deepak Chopra and Neale Walsch have all been gurus in their day, and most still are. All wrote best-selling books on how to change your life, all became extremely wealthy and all started foundations with various courses to help people on life's journey. All have ardent and faithful followers, as well as many millions more who have dipped in and out of their suggestions.

All these gurus have been immensely popular and have made a real difference to people's lives. But none of them have really said anything new. They have presented the old truths in a new and exciting way from a new and unexpected angle and they have spoken in language which people today are able to hear and understand.

Was Jesus just a guru for his day like our own modern gurus, who simply presented the ancient truths in new and exciting ways, or was he something different?

From the time of Moses around 1500 BC, the Chosen People had been promised a special Prophet. Clearly God spoke to Moses on frequent occasions and Moses continued to live, but that was neither the norm nor the expected result of a face-to-face encounter with God. Even Moses was not allowed to actually see God, for anyone who gazed upon the Almighty would surely die. On one occasion God gently lifted Moses and placed him in a crevice in the rock face, then shielded Moses' face as God passed by, in order to protect Moses from the "glory" of God (Exodus 33:22).

With such danger from close proximity to God, the people needed an intermediary. Moses was the perfect intermediary, meeting with God on the mountain and relaying God's words to the people, but what would happen when Moses died? God is aware of the people's predicament. God promises to help the people to remain in communication with him by raising up another prophet like Moses. God will speak through this prophet, who will then relay God's words to the people, just as Moses has done.

But God offers a word of warning. Anyone who fails to obey God's commands which have been relayed through the prophet, will be held accountable to God himself. This is a terrifying prediction, but the warning to would-be prophets is even worse. God says, "any prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, or who presumes to speak in my name a word that I have not commanded the prophet to speak--that prophet shall die."

This passage promising a new prophet to succeed Moses, may have initiated the prophetic movement in Israel. The prophetic movement had two strands; one strand was wandering bands of charismatic prophets, the other strand was those single prophets who were specifically called by God to a particular situation at a particular time. These latter became the twelve minor prophets and the four major prophets, so called simply because of the lengths of their books.

But the idea of "The Prophet", a specific and special figure following directly in Moses' footsteps and having similar authority to Moses, remained in the national psyche for a very long time. Indeed, when John the Baptist appeared, priests and Levites came from Jerusalem to ask him whether he was the expected Messiah. When John denied this, they continued to press him saying, "Are you The Prophet?" (John 1:21).

People had similar queries about Jesus. After Jesus fed the five thousand, the people said about him "'This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world'" (John 6:14).

So was Jesus a prophet like Moses or like our modern gurus, or something different? Although Moses had a very close relationship with God and was able to interpret God's words for the people - just as our modern gurus do today in a very different form - Jesus was something else. Jesus was so close to the God within him that God's thoughts were his thoughts, God's words were his words, his actions were God's actions. Moses and the prophets tell us about God, but if we want to actually see God we need to look at Jesus. Jesus is God in humanity and shows us exactly how amazing our lives could be if God was at the very centre, filling us just as God filled Jesus.

God didn't just send "The Prophet". God went way over the top in his gift to us and sent God himself, in the person of Jesus. Gurus and prophets are great for interpreting God's words in new and exciting ways, but there is no comparison between Jesus and the greatest prophet or guru the world could produce, because Jesus is God.