Introduction
I did not set out to question the Jesus I inherited. Yet as I listened more deeply, a quiet tension began to surface—one I could no longer ignore: Jesus the evangelist and Jesus the mystic.
This book is my journey into that tension.
For years I have been drawn to the writings of mystics—voices spanning cultures and centuries. When I encounter the mystical genre, I recognize it instantly. Certain sayings attributed to Jesus bear that unmistakable quality. They read like something only a mystic would say.
Other passages, however, seem to speak with a different voice. On one hand, Jesus appears as the mystic, pointing directly to God’s presence within. On the other, he sounds like the evangelist, urging belief in himself as the exclusive way to God.
This contrast has long puzzled me. Was Jesus a mystic or an evangelist? And if both, which voice carries the deeper truth?
When I read, “The kingdom of God is within you,” or “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” I hear the clear resonance of the mystic—words of direct experience, inviting us to turn inward and discover the Divine for ourselves.
Mystics throughout history—from Madame Guyon and Meister Eckhart to Teresa of Ávila and Lao Tzu—speak in this same tone. Their message is not about belief or allegiance but awakening: the discovery of God as immediate presence.
It is this resonance that has always drawn me back to Jesus—not the insistence on doctrines about him.
At the same time, there are sayings that sound less like mystical insight and more like proclamation: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me.” Here the focus shifts from direct experience to belief, from discovery to devotion.
Through centuries of Christian tradition, the evangelist’s voice has grown loud—building churches, creeds, and institutions. Yet the voice of the mystic still lingers, like a whisper beneath the hymn of orthodoxy.
From early on, I sensed that the Gospels held more than one voice. Sometimes they invited me to believe in Jesus; at other times, to know God for myself. Which invitation was I to follow?
I returned to this question again and again—not as an academic puzzle but as a matter of spiritual survival. For the voice I chose to follow would shape my entire relationship with God.
In time, I realized that it was the mystic’s whisper that would not let me go. It spoke with an authority deeper than doctrine. It was as if Jesus himself were saying: Don’t stop at the words about me. Listen for what I heard. Experience what I experienced.
This whisper did not silence the evangelist’s voice, but it pointed beyond it. It suggested that Jesus’s greatest gift was not a system of belief but a doorway into the living presence of God.
That realization became the seed of the journey you now hold in your hands. It is not the path of a scholar assembling evidence, nor of a preacher defending faith. It is the path of a seeker—one drawn to the mystic’s way while still rooted in the soil of Christian tradition.
As I continued along this path, Jesus became for me not only a figure of history but a presence whispering still—an inner guide urging me to listen, not merely to what has been said about him, but to what he himself truly revealed.
J Douglas Bottorff 