Grace Emmanuel Church

Pastor Sam Chess

(Cracking The Code Part 1)

On May 19^{th, a week from Friday, a movie will be released called, The DaVinci code. I am doing something I have never done before… I’m devoting three Sunday messages and two Wednesday evenings to correcting the distortions found in the book and exposing us all to the real truths of history and the Bible. I’m asking you to take these invitations and pass them out freely to anyone who has questions about the truthfulness of the Bible. (In the foyer)}

Dan Brown, who wrote the book, paints a picture of Christianity, the story of Jesus life, death and resurrection, and the Bible, itself, as a web of deceit and lies. He says that the real truth, behind the Bible is very different than what we’ve been led, for centuries to believe.

Many are going to stand up and say…Chess get a grip; it’s just a work of fiction!

My response would be…..Really?... How sure are you of that?

The underlying theme of this book is that Jesus, who was definitely not God, and didn’t even claim to be God, became lovers with… then married Mary Magdalene, Mary was pregnant with their baby when Jesus life was tragically cut off by his crucifixion. Mary fled to Gaul (France) where she gave birth to a baby girl named Sarah. Jesus, and Mary Magdalene both from Royal bloodlines produced a group of descendants who are now scattered across the earth (one could be your neighbor) The Church has used every means necessary, including murder, to try to cover up this truth that would shatter the very basis on which our faith rests. The Gnostics (heretics) of the 2nd and 3rd centuries and a secret society called the Priory of Sion have held on to the real truth and now are ready to expose that truth to the world. Toss in the Knights Templar and a search for the Holy Grail and it becomes quite exciting stuff.

Pastor….it’s just fiction!!! Not quite true!….. here’s fiction:

Play “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” Chapter 34: ( 1:49:13 to 1: 52: 22)

How many of you when you watch that, say: I wonder if that really happened? Nobody!

In a recent poll in Canada, 1/3 of all Canadians now believe that there are descendants of Jesus and Mary Magdalene now living in France. It won’t take me 10 minutes, this Wednesday evening, to completely debunk that as myth, but 1/3 of Canadians believe it to be truth, along with millions of other people. Gnosticism completely died out as a heresy in the 4th century but in the 21st century it has re-emerged and is sweeping the globe. One person who openly admitted, in an interview with ABC, that he is a Gnostic, is Dan Brown, the man who wrote this book.

I was on a conference call with Lee Strobel and 600 other Pastors on Thursday, and they are all agreeing that this is a critical time for Christianity. Lee Strobel told of an Indian man he had been witnessing to who was on the verge of accepting Christ who, after reading the book said: “This book has confirmed every suspicion I’ve ever had about Christianity… I will never be a Christian!”… and it is expected that more people will see the movie next weekend than the total of all who have read the book so far. The Passion of the Christ movie turned people’s attention, positively toward Jesus and this, perhaps, as the evil one’s response; is creating a negative “open season on Jesus” Let me explain:

After the Passion movie everyone wanted to jump on the pro-Jesus train. I checked the New York Times best-seller list and as of today, there are nine titles that are Anti Christianity….anti-Jesus-as-God books! That’s the most bought books in the U.S. right now! There are only about 40 titles total, and 9 of them are anti-Christ:

The DaVinci Code

The Templar Library

The Secret Supper

The Gospel of Judas

The Jesus Papers

The Lost Gospel

Misquoting Jesus

Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)

Deception Point

All of these designed to point out to you that your Bible is a myth and Jesus was not who you think he was! … Nine of the most purchased books in the U.S.!

But…don’t get too worried. The consensus of Christian leaders all across the U.S. is that the book, and hopefully the movie, is already having unexpected consequences. For as many people who are turning away from Christianity, others are coming to the church saying, “Here’s your chance…tell us the truth!

This last Wednesday, here in this room I had people say, “Tell us how the Bible really was transmitted to us.” In the past, if a Pastor did a Wednesday series on “The inspiration and transmission of Scripture”… not too many people were interested…. Not any more.

It seems to be having a Joseph effect:

As of this week, 80-90% of evangelical churches are teaching the truth about this deception, in one form or another. What Dan Brown meant to cripple Christianity (and I will show you evidence of that) may actually strengthen it. It certainly gives a whole new meaning to the phrase:

What can Brown do for you?

I’ve heard a lot of people say, I’m not going to read the book…I’m not going to see the movie… I’m not putting that trash in my mind. Here’s the problem: Many of your neighbors and co-worker are putting this trash in their mind. It is the belief of many Christian leaders that Brown has inadvertently created a tremendous opportunity for evangelism. Some churches attendance jumped 25 % when they started on this subject. In order for you to refute the deception, you’ve got to know something of what they have seen or read.

We will be giving everyone a free copy of an easy reading novel by Josh McDowell next Sunday that refutes the Code…we will make additional copies available for you to give away to friend with questions.

Now let me get to the heart of this message:

One of the most powerful questions in all of history… Your answer to this question determines whether you can simply ignore Jesus as a nice guy or whether you have to deal with his claims; that he came to pay for, and forgive your sins.

Is Jesus God?

Brown’s character Sir Leagh Teabing (supposed to be one of the smartest historians in the world says:

What he meant by that statement, and what we believe the Bible teaches are very different things.

If you never read the book let me give you a feel for Sir Teabing’s great wisdom:

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My dear, Teabing declared, until (Constantine 325 AD) Jesus was viewed by his followers as a mortal prophet, a great and powerful man, but a man, nonetheless. A mortal!

Not the Son of God?

Right, Teabing said, Jesus as the Son of God was officially proposed and voted on by the council of Nicea.

Hold on, you’re saying that Jesus divinity was the result of a vote?

A relatively close vote, at that…Teabing added….. By endorsing Jesus as the Son of God, Constantine turned Jesus into a diety who existed beyond the scope of the human world, an entity who’s power was unchallengeable.

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Could that be true? Could it be that the true early church regarded Jesus as only a good man.. a prophet.. and it was later Christian who hijacked the good man Jesus and turned him into a diety to be worshipped. Is it true that Jesus did not claim to be God and did not ever teach anything except good moral principles for living?

In a word…. NO!

The beauty about writing a novel is that you never have to include one shred of documentation. There’s not one footnote in the whole book….doesn’t need to be…it’s a novel. (The novel we will give you next week by Josh McDowell includes includes hundreds of footnotes disproving the Codes unproven statements.)

So what is truth. Who did Jesus think he was? Jace read this at the beginning of the service:

Does that sound to you like a group of disciples who didn’t believe Jesus was God and a Messiah who was denying that he was God? If you read the book you can now respond: But that’s the gospel of Matthew and Brown says that Matthew wasn’t an original Gospel, but that Constantine added it 300 years later to support his lie that Jesus was Divine. Again… a novel… no footnotes… he doesn’t have to prove a thing to make the statement. I can so easily prove to you that Matthew was written in the first century by the tax-collector disciple named Matthew…. In fact all four Gospels are unquestionable in the authenticity, dating and authorship…that’s for next Sunday when I unfold to you the authority of God’s Word as it now sits on your lap. Listen to this exchange:

Here comes the punch line…there wasn’t a person standing in the crowd that day that missed the significance of what he was going to say:

 58"I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!"

He was directly equating himself with the I AM (YAHWEH) of the Old Testament. Did the people in the crowd know what he was doing?? No question….

This sort of conversation fills the pages of the New Testament. Let me give you a couple more:

This goes on and on… did Jesus believe he was God? Yes… of course. The amazing miracles he performed were designed to prove his Diety. The fact that he, and he alone, fulfilled 1500 years of prophesy in the Old Testament of what the coming Messiah would be like is proof that he was who he said…God in human form come to the earth to pay for the sins of mankind!

That creates another issue. People like Brown, the Gnostics, the Muslims, the Hindus, the Buddhist, etc, all claim that Jesus was a great prophet… they just don’t believe that he was God.

Did you read what I just read? A great prophet doesn’t say those kind of things about himself.

C.S. Lewis who wrote the Chronicles of Narnia, still in the theaters, said:

Dan Brown tries to convince you that, not only did Jesus not claim to be God, but nobody in the first century believed that he was God’s Son sent to die for the sins of the world, who rose to bring eternal life to all…. All that was cooked up by Constantine 300 years later!.... Brown is hopelessly wrong!

The reality is Jesus predicted his death and resurrection, right down to how and when it would take place. ( We saw Wed. eve.) After his death, his disciples were despondent. All that changed after the third day. At least 514 people reported seeing, and spending time with, the Messiah who had risen from the dead! They took that message, in time, across the planet and all anyone would have had to do to stop the story was produce a dead body…. They didn’t… they couldn’t! In fact, many other’s, for the next three generations, could take you to somebody, they knew, who had seen the risen Messiah with their own eyes.

Now we know Paul’s epistles, in the New Testament, were written before 65 AD, just thirty years after Jesus death and resurrection. How can we be sure? History tells us that Paul was killed by Emporer Nero in Rome. Paul almost certainly wrote his letters before he died!!! And we know Nero killed him before his famed death. Because we can count on more than our fingers and toes, we know that Paul wrote 1st Corinthians well before he landed in prison in Rome. That puts the first letter to the Corinthians within, perhaps, 15-20 years of Jesus death and resurrection. Any thought that Emperor Constantine faked this letter, 270 years later, is not believed by any schools of theology, either conservative or liberal. Paul write a whole chapter about the reality that Jesus died for the sins of mankind, then rose from the dead, breaking the power of sin and providing eternal life for all who would believe. Here’s a part of it:

Inset in this letter he includes a quote… a creedal statement, that is much older than the letter itself. How do we know? The early church Fathers wrote volumes of history, which are still available, and they told us this fact, among thousands of others. The beauty of writing a novel, with no documentation, is that you can simply ignore all the real documentation that is out there. This creedal statement was being repeated by the early church as part of their worship services, perhaps, within 24 months of Jesus Resurrection. Here it is:

Within months of Jesus resurrection this was the creed of the early church. If you ignore the evidence you can make up anything you want and you never have to deal with the most important decision in the universe.

Some will never be willing to do that…. How about you?