Yes well, that was true, but life certainly changes when Sri Sathya Sai Baba comes into your life and manages to take the place of Jesus. Very difficult for westerners, you see, we grow up with an exclusive idea/image of the one TRUE God; not so your average Hindu or Buddhist, I would dare to say. Easy for you to accept different names and forms of God as one and the same. Christians as a whole are brought up to believe there is only the ONE God, their version, and the rest are fakes. I am NOT being belligerant here, this is true and how we are brought up as a whole.
I dont know if this is relevant to the inner quality of being a Christian. A Christian receives the holy spirit at baptism, and this is one of main characteristics of being called "christian". This is a dogmatic minefield, littered with wars and massacres, and inquistions. You see, Christianity has this exclusive, universalistic characteristic, something Cardinal Ratzinger and the Pope recently ratified. This Universal dogma states that outside the church there can be no salvation. That is to say, those who are outside the Church of Rome will not merit Heaven or any other heavenly reward.
The other problem with this question is it is not really helpful to have read the whole bible, because it is the scriptural record of TWO religious systems, neither of which accept the other. That is to say, what we call the bible is in fact composed of
The first four books belong to the Jewish Religion. The last one belongs to the Christian religion. This might sound simplistic, but the first four books alone are called Talmud Torah. They are used by Jews as their religious document along with something else called Midrash. All five books bound together are called the Bible. This is used by the major Christian religions of humanity.
Doctrine can be loosely defined as belief requiring intellectual assent; doctrine is generally formulated and pointed toward a group or groups of persons who are told to believe and that tends to cause clashes of values and generally wars and the like.
An excellent question which highlights a fundamental problem. Everyone interprets the bible and tells everyone else they are wrong, and their brand of the one TRUE church has got it, bible interpretation, right. This forcing of biblical interpretation can cause massive problems also. It is also a form of fundamentalist counselling, and can veer off into minor cult-sect splintering. Traditional dogma is not even accepted among the masses of Christians. We had something resolved at the council of Nicea, in 383, which said "I believe in the one true, holy, catholic and apostolic church"; there was really only one church at that time, right up to the reformation, and really only one dogma. Since then, traditional dogma has been the object of disbelief, derison, scorn and the like, particularly among the fundamentalists of the "bible belt". As I said earlier, its a bit of a minefield, and not even all Christians agree with one another, now. I suppose its a bit like those brahmins who refuse to sing "Govinda Krishna Jai", as Swami once told.
I am afraid, looking for "proofs" of Swami in the bible will only lead to intellectual battles over the meaning of scripture. Swami has already corrected the errors in the gospels that speak of Jesus's return, and the mistakes over sheep and ba-ba.
I feel these are questions that lead to division, not unity in diversity. I don't even think it matters if you belong to any particular faith when you come to Swami, it only matters if you learn the message of love, do seva, and embody the 5 human values in your everyday life. These, I suspect, along with educare, are the most critical points of being a Sai Devotee. Black and white issues of biblical truth and proofs for Swami's coming only have one party feeling victorious and right and vindicated, a win-lose situation. What we need is win-win, everyone is a devotee (Read Indulal Shah, I, We, HE) and everyone seeks God, and everyone is on the path to liberation. Win-lose, I'm right and you're wrong, gets people killed, particularly where religion is concerned. Right now, I can think of one situation that illustrates this on the world stage.
However, from an important doctrinal point of view, it would be useful to look into the exclusive/universalist claims of the Christians so as to understand, understanding will bring love, and then be able to love.
