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Grace Emmanuel Church
Pastor Sam Chess
(Cracking The Code Part
3)
The Da Vinci Code
Jesus, was definitely not God, and didn’t even claim to be God.
For the first 300 years people simply believed Jesus to be a
good man with wise sayings that if followed would help them to live
a good life.
Jesus life was tragically cut off when he was crucified at age
33 in the presence of his pregnant wife Mary Magdalene. Jesus did
not rise from the dead… that story was made up to make Jesus seem
like more than just a good man.
Jesus was not viewed as God until he was deified by the Emperor
Constantine in the fourth century.
The true early Christian Bible was not Matthew, Mark, Luke,
John, and Paul’s Epistles. The real story of the early church was
written in the lost Document Q which, if found, will clear up the
whole misunderstanding.
Today’s version of the Bible was put together by the pagan Roman
Emperor Constantine at, a meeting he hosted called, the council of
Nicea.
Most…All of us are appalled that anyone would believe this
nonsense. Many of us, here, lived lives of sinfulness, bound up in
chains of wrong behavior and one day somebody presented us with the
claims that Jesus Christ, God become man, came to this earth to take
our sins on himself. He died, in our place, and then conquered the
hold sin and death has on us by rising from the dead and offering us
eternal life.
We get excited when we read something like this:
1 Peter 1: 3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living
hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and
into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in
heaven for you,
8 Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though
you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an
inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 for you are receiving the goal of
your faith, the salvation of your souls.
For many here, this is not just a passage from the Bible; this
expresses our personal relationship with our risen Savior and Lord
Jesus Christ! Vern, Jake, Cyndi Long, __________ aren’t trying to
figure out if Jesus is really the risen Lord… They know him
personally; he has transformed their lives from darkness to light.
What about the poor kid sitting in a theater somewhere, today.
He’s never been to Sunday School. He’s heard Christian’s constantly
made fun of on TV as right wing, fundamentalist’s who are weak and
spineless people. People who can’t make it, in life, without a crutch
of faith to lean on. This book, and movie, reinforce the idea that
people, like you, who believe in a personal relationship with a
personal Savior, are a couple French fries short of a happy meal. Let
me quote the book:
Sir Teabing (historian) Nobody is saying Christ was a fraud or
denying that he walked the earth and inspired millions to better
lives. All we are saying is that Constantine took advantage of
Christ’s influence…and in doing so; he shaped the face of
Christianity as we know it today. (I find it fascinating that Brown
call Jesus “Christ” which is not his name but his title of
“Messiah”)
Because Constantine upgraded Jesus status (to a God) almost four
centuries after Jesus death, thousands of documents already existed
chronicling His life as a mortal man….Constantine
commissioned and financed a new Bible, which omitted those gospels
which spoke of Christ’s human traits and embellished those gospels
that made him godlike. The earlier gospels were outlawed, gathered
up and burned.
Fortunately, for historians, Teabing said, some of the gospels
that Constantine attempted to eradicate managed to survive. The
Dead Sea Scrolls found in the 50’s, hidden in a cave, near Qumran
in the Judean desert, and of course, the Coptic Scrolls in 1945 in
Nag Hammadi.
If you know anything of the true history of Christianity you can
immediately see that what I just read is riddled with provable
errors. For instance:
Fortunately, for historians, Teabing said, some of the gospels
that Constantine attempted to eradicate managed to survive. The
Dead Sea Scrolls found in the 50’s, hidden in a cave, near Qumran
in the Judean desert…
Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1947 and 1949
Not in “a cave” but in multiple caves
They had nothing to do with Christianity; they were Jewish
writings that predated Christianity.
I hit AOL search, punched in the words Dead Sea Scrolls and had
all that information on the screen in 12 seconds. (You wonder why
Brown didn’t at least attempt to get some of his, professed,
research right.)
The Gnostic Nag Hammadi scrolls were all provably written
100 to 200 years after Jesus death and resurrection. Why
is there nothing earlier than that that disproves that gospel
account? Could it actually be that all the thousands of
writings that said something different than what the Gospels
agree happened were all gathered up and burned?
..Back to the poor kid sitting in a theater in Little Rock,
Arkansas today. He doesn’t know any different. More importantly for
our study here today…do you?
If your neighbor comes across the yard tomorrow and says to you:
The true early Christian Bible was not Matthew, Mark, Luke,
John, and Paul’s Epistles.
Today’s version of the Bible was put together by the pagan Roman
Emperor Constantine at, a meeting he hosted called, the council of
Nicea.
What’s going to be your response to that? Nu-uhh! Nu-uhhhh!
I. The Real, Un-altered History of the World (quiz)
#1) In the weeks following Jesus death were the majority of
people around Jerusalem mourning the death of the nice prophet
Jesus or were they celebrating the resurrection of the
Messiah?_____________________
You know what the Bible says:
1 Corinthians 15:3 ... Christ died for our sins, just as the
Scriptures said. 4 He was buried, and he was raised from the dead
on the third day, as the Scriptures said. 5 He was seen by Peter
and then by the twelve apostles. 6 After that, he was seen by more
than five hundred of his followers at one time….
Let me read from Flavius Josephus; Roman historian, not a disciple.
not even a Christian:
Now. There was, about this time, a wise man, for he was a doer
of wonderful works- a teacher of such men as receive truth with
pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the
Gentiles. He was Christ (Messiah); and when Pilate, ….had condemned
him to the cross, those who loved him, at first, did not forsake
him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day as the
divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful
things concerning him.
Josephus isn’t quoting what others are saying, he’s writing
historical facts about Jesus resurrection and he never became a
follower of Christ.
#2) During the next 300 years which of the following is true to
history:
a) The dead Jesus crucifixion fades from view but his wise
saying were often quoted as a guide for living. (Just like today
some will say; Confucius says….. but how many of you know the story
of his life…and death.
or
b) Followers of Jesus strongly declared the Gospel of the risen
Christ, were told to recant, and when they wouldn’t deny their
Lord; they were murdered for their faith by the thousands.
#3) During the next 300 years which of the following is true to
history:
a) While many followers of Jesus remembered his wise sayings,
their actual lifestyle was no different than the pagans around
them. They embraced the pagan gods as well and included pagan
sexual rituals in their worship.
or
b) The Christians lifestyle became so dramatically different
than the pagans around them that they became a threat to the
pagan’s way of life.
In historian Will Durant’s “History of Roman Civilization” he says:
… the percentage of Christian was relatively small, about 5% but the
little community was troubling the pleasure-mad pagan world with their
piety and decency. The morals of the early Christians were a reproving
example to the pagan world.
#4) During the next 300 years which of the following is true to
history:
The early Christian had no Scriptures to follow. The true
early scriptures described Jesus as a mere man and had nothing to
say about a resurrection. There was no actual Bible until
Constantine invented it in 325 AD.
or
As early writings were distributed, like Paul’s epistles and
the Gospels, among other apocryphal writings, the church quickly,
in unity, determined which writings were inspired by God and
embraced them as Holy Scripture.
This is the part that modern day believers often do not have a grip
on. You accept the Bible on your lap, in blind faith that whoever came
up with which Writings would be part of it did a reasonably good job.
The idea that there were no Scriptures at the time of Christ is
absurd. Throughout the New Testament you find hundreds of quotes, often
by Jesus himself, from the Old Testament. If there was no Bible until
after Constantine what was Jesus quoting from?
When Jesus, himself stood up in the temple and read from scrolls;
were those something he got in the mail from his “scroll-a-month” club?
Did he have to choose from a list of hundreds… or were the 39 books of
the Old Testament already determined Scripture?
This is important: What you have in your Bible was never decided by
a Council. Hundreds of books were written during both Old and New
Testament times. Just a few of those grabbed hold, in one
community after another as something more than just the words of men.
When one book, like the book of Joshua was received by community after
community, across culture after culture, across generation after
generation, as Words from God himself it started to rise to the top as
being accepted by everybody as being the words of God rather than the
words of men.
Do you understand what I am saying: If Scripture were being
written today, and hundreds of books came out vying for a place in
the Canon of Scripture and they were distributed across the US and
across the world and over generations, centuries, one after another
were rejected until you were left with only the purest writings,
rising like crème to the top, that everyone agreed were inspired
words of God himself….. that’s how the books of the Bible came to
be accepted. Council were places where the church stamped there
finality on what had already been decided by the masses.
Centuries before Jesus was born, the 39 books of the Old
Testament had already been decided… so much so that 150 years
before Jesus was born, all 39 books were translated from Hebrew
into Greek in a version we call the Septuagint. Some of the quotes
in Paul’s Epistles are directly from the Septuagint.
To say that no Bible existed until 300 years after Jesus, is
just….insane!
II. What about the New Testament
The true early Christian Bible was not Matthew, Mark, Luke, John,
and Paul’s Epistles. The real story of the early Church was written
in the lost Document Q which, if found, will clear up the whole
misunderstanding.
Today’s version of the Bible was put together by the pagan Roman
Emperor Constantine at, a meeting he hosted called, the council of
Nicea.
Is that how real history unfolded? The real, early Scriptures told
of Jesus as a good man, but not as the resurrected Savior of the
world. After 300 years Emperor Constantine gathered up all those
early writing, all over the Roman Empire, and burned them, and he did
the job so thoroughly that not one single copy survived and he
replaced the real Bible with a group of Gospels and Epistles from Paul
that he invented to make Jesus look like a God instead of just a good
man.
That’s historical insanity!
Let me tell you the story of what history tells us really happened!
I don’t want this to sound like a college Bible class so I won’t
give lists and lists of proofs for what I say (there are plenty)…. but
I don’t want you leave this room and have someone state that the Bible
was just put together by men and you do not have an answer to why
you know the Bible on your lap is God’s inspired Word.
Unlike the Gnostic writings we have been looking at on Wed. eve.
that bear some bible persons name but were provably written 200 years
later. The writers of the New Testament all stated something very
important in there letters:
1 John 1:1The one who existed from the beginning is the one we
have heard and seen. We saw him with our own eyes and touched him
with our own hands. He is Jesus Christ, the Word of life.
2 Peter 1:16 We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we
told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but
we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
Luke 1:1 … Many people have written accounts about the events
that took place among us. 2 They used as their source material the
reports circulating among us from the early disciples and other
eyewitnesses of what God has done in fulfillment of his promises.
Corinthians 15:6-8 After that, he was seen by more than five
hundred of his followers at one time, most of whom are still alive,
though some have died by now. 7 Then he was seen by James and later
by all the apostles. 8 Last of all, I saw him, too, long after the
others, as though I had been born at the wrong time.
So what fact is the same about all of the Bible writers. Every one
of them had been a disciple of Jesus or was a disciple of one of his
disciples. In fact that became the first criteria after Jesus
resurrection for determining if any writing would make its way into
Scripture. The only books considered as possible addition to the
Canon had to be written by somebody directly taught by Jesus, himself,
or by a first generation disciple of that person.
Remember, the disciples didn’t die when Jesus was crucified, they
lived on for as much as 60 more years. When they began to write down
their memories it wasn’t hard to prove whether they were the authors or
not.
As these apostles began to write and the early church began to
understand that what they were reading had the fingerprints of God on
it just like their Old Testament did, they began to make copies of the
writings and those scrolls started to spread across the Middle East. As
persecution drove the Church farther away from Jerusalem they took the
writing with them and they would then make more copies which spread to
the Far East, and India, and Africa, and Asia, and Spain.
Dan Brown says these books in our Bible were all made up 300 years
later. You can go online, this afternoon, and read writings of the
early Church Fathers living in 120, 140, 150 AD……all over the civilized
world in Africa and India, and Asia….
….. you can read in their writings quotes from Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John’s Gospels and from Paul’s Epistles….. word for word
they quote whole passages. How could multiple people, just 100
years after Jesus resurrection, in far flung places on the globe be
quoting word for word from books that Dan Brown says weren’t
going to even be written for 200 more years.
By the second century, every single book in the New Testament
was quoted, by the early Church leaders, as being an
authoritative Word from God.
Did you ever notice what the Scripture writing apostles said about
each other?
2 Peter 3:16 He (Paul) writes the same way in all his letters…
His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which
ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other
Scriptures…
1 Timothy 5:18 For the Scripture says,…. "Those who work deserve
their pay!" (That’s a direct quote from Luke 10:7)
The early church determined that New Testament
Scripture added to the Old Testament had to be: 1) written by a
disciple or the disciple of a disciple… and 2) each book had to have
universal acceptance. Many writing were accepted one place in the
world and rejected in others. Only 27 books/letters passed the rigid
test of the entire church world in many countries over a 250 year
period….. universally accepting them as a part of God’s inspired Word!
Every New Testament book, except Revelation, had been
universally accepted (entire civilized world) before
Constantine was even born!
But didn’t Constantine call the council of Nicea to decide which
books were supposed to be in the New Testament. Nooooo…..! The
discussions of the Council of Nicea are available for you to read and
which NT books were going to be in the Bible wasn’t even on
the agenda.
Constantine, a political leader (not a spiritual leader) called 300
Bishops from across the world to settle one controversy. A guy named
Arius was teaching that Jesus was created by God, as the Son of God,
but was not God in the flesh!
They discussed it…. they voted… two people voted with Arius that
Jesus was created by God. The rest all voted that Jesus was God. They
spent the rest of their time writing and agreeing on the Creed of Nicea.
Conclusion:
We believe in one God the Father Almighty
Maker of heaven and earth, and all things visible and invisible
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God
Begotten of the Father before all worlds,
God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God
Begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father
By whom all things were made;
Who for us men (mankind) and for our salvation
Came down from heaven, was incarnate by the Holy Spirit
Of the Virgin Mary, and was made man
And was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate
He suffered and was buried, and on the third day he rose again!
According to the Scriptures, he ascended into heaven
And sits on the right hand of the Father;
And he shall come again, with glory…….
All who want to vote in favor of this confession: say Aye!
All heretics who are opposed say Nay!
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