This is all part of the determined revival of the Gnostic heresy, represented by The Da Vinci Code, The Gospel of Judas, etc. And the above quote fits in exactly with the central heresy that marks the movement as evil, pure and simple.
"Christ left the Earth, His followeres were debating what His life and death really meant..."
Not "life, death and resurrection." They deny that happened because they insist He was not divine, merely a "good man" or a "rabbi." This is also a central tenet of Islam. Jesus is not God, is not His Son and forget about that whole Holy Spirit nonsense.
These works exist not to bring salvation or enlightment but to try and steal salvation and deny enlightenment by obscuring the truth with lies. As ever, their goal is unreachable, but they can bring pain, dissension, fear and doubt. I wonder who might enjoy inspiring that sort of mission? Certainly not God.
Simon Magus, Marcion, Valentinus, Carpocrates led the Gnostic heresies in scurrying behind the footsteps of the Apostles after the Christian faith began to spread. But Gnosticism predates Christ and goes back easily to the era of Cyrus in Babylon and perhaps beyond. It is most definitely not a monotheistic religion and rejects the God of Abraham and the Prophets virtually in their entirity. And it has continued to survive through the Christian era by hiding as some form of "secret society" avialable only to the "initiates" guarding some great knowledge.
The evil motives and tactics ascribed by Brown to Catholics in The Da Vinci Code are better seen as descriptions of the Gnostic views and practices, yet the Gnostics are the "worthy heros" struggling against their "evil oppressors" throughout history.
The basic threads of Gnosticism are also closely interwoven with Islam and illuminate that cults actions and aims. And again, they share the central and overwhelming insistence that Jesus was not divine. Both Islam and the so called "Christian" Gnostic heresies, particularly those represented in the Da Vinci Code, insist that Christ did not die on the Cross but "tricked" everyone and escaped. The Da Vinci Gnostics add the twist of a royal blood line descended from Jesus. And it is a variation on this theme that the NAZIs embraced in their particular occult system of beliefs.
My big question is "why now?" Why does the Gnostic heresy raise it's ugly head again, just in time for the resurgence of Jihadi militants? Whose interests are served?
"And you will know them by their fruits."
See here... http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1626986/posts?page=15#15
And...
Hobbes' Leviathan: Part III. Of a Christian Commonwealth. [12] And first, for the tormentors, we have their nature and properties exactly and properly delivered by the names of the Enemy (or Satan), the Accuser (or Diabolus), the Destroyer (or Abaddon). Which significant names (Satan, Devil, Abaddon) set not forth to us any individual person, as proper names do, but only an office or quality, and are therefore appellatives, which ought not to have been left untranslated (as they are in the Latin and modern Bibles), because thereby they seem to be the proper names of demons, and men are the more easily seduced to believe the doctrine of devils, which at that time was the religion of the Gentiles, and contrary to that of Moses, and of Christ.
Chap. xxxviii. Of Eternal Life, Hell, Salvation, and Redemption.
[13] And because by the Enemy, the Accuser, and Destroyer, is meant the enemy of them that shall be in the kingdom of God, therefore if the kingdom of God after the resurrection be upon the earth (as in the former Chapter I have shewn by Scripture it seems to be), the Enemy and his kingdom must be on earth also. For so also was it in the time before the Jews had deposed God. For God's kingdom was in [Israel], and the nations round about were the kingdoms of the Enemy; and consequently, by Satan is meant any earthly enemy of the Church. Part IV. Of the Kingdom of Darkness
Chap. xlvii. Of the Benefit that proceedeth from such Darkness
[1] Besides these sovereign powers, divine and human, of which I have hitherto discoursed, there is mention in Scripture of another power, namely, that of "the rulers of the darkness of this world," [Ephesians, 6. 12] "the kingdom of Satan," [Matthew, 12. 26] and "the principality of Beelzebub over demons," [Ibid., 9. 34] that is to say, over phantasms that appear in the air: for which cause Satan is also called "the prince of the power of the air"; [Ephesians, 2. 2] and, because he ruleth in the darkness of this world, "the prince of this world" [John, 16. 11] and in consequence hereunto, they who are under his dominion, in opposition to the faithful, who are the "children of the light," are called the "children of darkness." For seeing Beelzebub is prince of phantasms, inhabitants of his dominion of air and darkness, the children of darkness, and these demons, phantasms, or spirits of illusion, signify allegorically the same thing. This considered, the kingdom of darkness, as it is set forth in these and other places of the Scripture, is nothing else but a confederacy of deceivers that, to obtain dominion over men in this present world, endeavour, by dark and erroneous doctrines, to extinguish in them the light, both of nature and of the gospel; and so to disprepare them for the kingdom of God to come.
Your points are all worth repeating.
I would also note, in amplification of your post, that the version of the Gospel available to Mohammed, and cited in the Koran, was plainly a heretical Gnostic text: the anti-materialist Gnostics usually denied the reality of the Crucifixion with at least as much vigor as they denied the Resurrection. And it is that version of the events of the first Great and Holy Week that found its way into the Koran.