WHO WAS JESUS EXACTLY?
In truth Jesus, whose true Hebrew name was Yeshua, was more of a political activist than any spiritaully-enlightened "Messiah". Jesus was an anti-Roman / pro-Hebrew nationalist whose primary aim was to destroy the ever-expanding Roman Empire who at the time controlled everything from world economics, taxes, trade, law, literature, religion, art and politics. The only way of doing this was by political infiltration, as Israel was not militarily strong enough to challenge Rome on the battlefield, as campaigns against other stronger nations proved, including the Babylonians, the Egyptians and the Seleucids (descendants of Alexander the Great's Macedonian Empire). As well as using political means of bringing down the Roman Empire, Jesus set up anti-Roman political indoctrination centres throughout Israel thinly disguised as churches. He saw the need for a new Hebrew religion (political party) to unite them under one banner.
What is most difficult for modern Christians to come to terms with is that Jesus was only one of many Hebrew "prophets" who were believed to be the son of God (Jehovah, Yahweh, etc). The historian Josephus mentions several of them, including a man named Jesus, in his writings. He regarded them all as charlatans or political agitators. Roman-loving Christians later changed the Historian's texts which described Jesus as "a small, hunched backed middle-aged man with a half-bald head" to read, "late twenties, six feet tall, well grown, handsome...curly hair the colour of unripe hazel nuts...", and various other details transforming a small, middle-aged, bald man into their own image of what the son of God should look like. Because of this all writings, in particular those by Romans and Roman-sympathisers, must be treated with extreme caution.
So what can be established is that Jesus was most likely not the Messiah, a word which originally implied a "military commander", although he could be observed as a political agitator and a Jewish nationalist. So if Jesus was not the son of God, or even had no spiritual powers what so ever, how did he gain such notoriety. For two simple reasons, number one, Jesus announced that the end of the world was about to take place, and that it would happen "within the lifetime of people then alive". The second reason was that when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, fulfilling the words of the prophet Isaiah, and threw the money changers (tax collectors) out of the temples, the Jewish leaders became alarmed. It is important to understand that it was the Jewish political leaders that disliked Jesus and his teachings, and not the Romans. In fact, Jesus was not known outside the Israelite borders and could hardly be the victim of a Roman Empire conspiracy, who at that time had the majority of our planet to run. You see, the leaders of Israel were heavily indebted to the Roman leaders and conquerors for securing their political positions. The Jewish leaders would give large portions of their taxes they collected from the people of Israel to Rome, and in return the Emperor would give them estates within the vast Roman Empire and quickly eliminate any uprising against the tyrannical, Roman-sympathises that ran Israel. This was a fact Jesus was well aware of and sought the favour of the Hebrew people to help overthrow them. So when Jesus did ride into Jerusalem, the Jewish leaders had him promptly arrested, in a garden, at night to avoid causing any trouble.
When Jesus is taken before the high priest Caiaphas, he was asked about his teachings and his spreading of anti-Roman propaganda, according to the Gospel of John (the only Gospel to have even known Jesus!), Jesus replied by telling the high priest to ask those people who have heard him. This was answered by a slap across the face by the high priest's servant. This does not sound like the enlightened answer of the son of a God. In John's account, Jesus is asked whether he is the king of the Jews, to which Jesus replies that his kingdom is not of this world - meaning, in effect, that the high priest should not imagine he is claiming any political leadership. After being found guilty of "crimes against the State", the Israelite leaders then arranged Jesus's hasty execution, declining to allow him to be pardoned (under Jewish law), in honour of Jewish Passover. And so Jesus died, like so many other political agitators, by crucifixion. How, then, did this polictically motivated "religion" known as Christianity go on to conquer the world, I hear you say? After Jesus's death, word spread of Jesus's teachings (and his arrogance at his trial) and his name became synonamous with "the unyielding Hebrew spirit that could not be broken". His number of followers quickly increased dramatically.
One follower of Jesus, named Paul, was in fact a citizen of Rome and a Roman-sympathiser. Paul did not know Jesus first hand but that did not stop him from being a real trouble maker for the Israelite nationalist sect. Paul was not an initiate into the sect and was ignorant of most of the symbology and rituals used by the sect, but this does not stop the vast majority of modern Christian churches following his "Gospel". Soon after Jesus's death, Paul grasped the moment to take control of his followers and to win back their support for Rome. He quickly produced a new and revised version of Jesus's teachings that had very little to do with the actual teachings of Jesus. Paul declared that Jesus was the son of God, who had been sent to redeem Man from sin, and that anyone who believed in Paul's new-and-improved "Gospel" was "saved" and would go to "heaven". In fact, Jesus had actually preached salvation through the efforts of the individual (such as renouncing Roman rule and contributing to Jesus's nationalist political party), and insisted that the "Kingdom of God" could be found within all of us (by once again renouncing Roman rule, etc...), but since their was still a widespread belief in Jesus's apocalyptic prophecy of the End of the World, Paul's new mystical (and pro-Roman!) version was a powerful incentive to believe.
By the year AD 100 it was obvious that the world was not going to end, and that Jesus was wrong. But by that time, Paul's revised edition of Roman-sympathetic "Christianity" was too powerful to die out. It was now a political force, backed by the Roman Empire Juggernaut and it's treasury, and would later go on to dominate every aspect of the world today; religion, politics, banking, status quo, immigration, censorship, wars, finance, the law, literature, art, natural resources, class status, land ownership, human rights...the list is endless!