Posted on 04/13/2006 8:12:35 AM PDT by Mr. Silverback
Welcome to Holy Week, American style. Just as millions of Christians are preparing to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, the media is once again out to debunk historical Christianity.
Just last weekend I was in an airport bookstore and saw the new book counter filled with numerous editions of The Da Vinci Code. Then I picked up the New York Times, and there I was greeted with the headline on the front page that read, In Ancient Document, Judas, Minus the Betrayal.
You probably have seen the hype, including a one-hour National Geographic TV spectacular: After seventeen hundred years, the story goes, the long-lost text of the so-called Gospel of Judas has re-surfaced. It claims that Jesus secretly told Judas to betray Him; so Judas is really a good disciple.
Well, its not a new discovery. This new gospel and the heresy it espousesGnosticismwere rejected as fiction by Christian leaders and the Church as early as 180 A.D.
Gnosticism was an attempt to add to Christianity an essentially Eastern worldview dressed up with Christian language. It was presented to the Roman world as the true Gospelcomplete with endless mysteries that only those with secret knowledge could unravel. Many unsuspecting people were enthralled with Gnostic writings, particularly their sometimes gory and salacious initiation ceremonies. Christian pastors and theologians repeatedly rejected all forms of Gnosticism, until, by the middle of the third century, it had all but disappeared.
But now it is back with a vengeance, with supposed discoveries and works like Dan Browns The Da Vinci Code. It provides the means for Christianitys detractors to debunk the historical Jesus, and it certainly sells books. Seven million copies of The Da Vinci Code is testimony to that. Gnosticism has particular appeal today because of the postmodern age, which has rejected historical truth. So you can find God any way you wish, through your own group. This, of course, is the belief that is at the root of the spreading New Age movement.
The danger is that we have a biblically illiterate population. People today dont knowmaybe dont carewhether there is a difference between the Gospel of Judas and the Gospel of John. They are unfamiliar with the work of the ancient canonical councils of the Church (which rejected the Gnostic gospels time and again) or even of the basic creeds or confessions of the Christian Church. Sadly, people are as gullible today as ever.
Now it is tempting to get angry at National Geographic and the liberal press for unleashing this fraudulent gospel at the beginning of the holiest week of the year. But dont. Instead, lets use the media attention to debunk the debunkers, to point out to friends that this regurgitated Gnosticismthe Da Vinci Code and the gospel of Judas includedis nothing more than historically unsupportable fantasy.
Then we can point them to the knowledge that is accessible to all people that has been accessible to Christians for two thousand years and proven historically accurate. Its called the Bible.
But whatever you do, get informed first. Come to our website (see further reading below) or call us here at BreakPoint (1-877-322-5527) and find some of the resources that we are offering. And get busy because millions can be suckered inunless you and I set the record straight.
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BreakPoint/Chuck Colson Ping!
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Oh, geez. Brown's book is FICTION. Mother Goose is more factual.
I've accidently flipped to the Judas show a few times, but never can get through a few minutes before flipping channels again.
Uh, dude, The Da Vinci Code is fiction. To get mad over that is like the Muslims getting mad over The Satanic Verses, minus the death threat.
Ping!
John 15:
18 If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you.
19 If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.
i saw that show ... judas said that Jesus appeared as a kid during the last supper, told him that only judas was worthy of the eternal secrets among other oddities ... sounded like the DemUnderground existed around the year 200ad
Mr. Colson hit the nail on the head. This "gospel" of Judas is a hoax and heresy. Any true Christian can see right through this ridiculous claim.
If any Christian believes this garbage, then they need to get into a good bible study.
That's my 2 cents.
Gnosticism was an attempt to add to Christianity an essentially Eastern worldview dressed up with Christian language. It was presented to the Roman world as the true Gospelcomplete with endless mysteries that only those with secret knowledge could unravel. Many unsuspecting people were enthralled with Gnostic writings, particularly their sometimes gory and salacious initiation ceremonies. Christian pastors and theologians repeatedly rejected all forms of Gnosticism, until, by the middle of the third century, it had all but disappeared.
This is all I need to know.
The endless TV programs about the "Bermuda Triangle", "UFOs" and "Bigfoot", remind me of both the gullibility and persistence of moonbat subjects, and the large following that they enjoy.
My personal conviction is that we can't even unravel what happened, exactly, 100 years ago in our own culture and country and, yet, some are obsessed with finding "hidden" meaning or fact in long lost myths and fabrications.
Most of us are busy enough with our daily lives that we have no time for mischief. Others, obviously, have a lot more time than knowledge and good sense, and are forever digging up myths to "re-examine".
Contemporary Americans are mostly ignorant of the role that fabrications and negative propaganda played throughout history, primarily around the time of the Reformation. Just become familiar with the outrageously juvenile and primitive beliefs and gullibility of modern illiterate muslims, and you have a good grasp of what most of history has been like.
No longer are the creeds studied and dissected for the truth they hold.> We forget that the ancient creeds were written to refute ancient heresies. We think they are useless, but look at where we are now.
I have been a Christian all my life. But the more I read about the early and middle Christian eras the more I find that the bible as we know it has been rewritten how many times and how much has been lost in these rewritings??????
Garbage like this just makes my faith stronger.
True enough, but there is enough fact twisted and mixed into it to make it highly pernicious, and there are a good number of people (one of whom cornered me and nearly killed me with boredom at the feed store some time back) who believe that there is a str5ong factual basis for what the book presents as fiction.
So was Uncle Tom's Cabin. Many people, including Brown himself, believe the book is a form of historical fiction.
Fair enough given that they provide conservatives with yet another golden opportunity to plumb the depths of rabid barking moonbattyness in Old Media.
Jesus said it would have been better had Judas not even been born.........End of Story!
I have argued with people right here on FR who have stated flatly "The book is fiction, but the history in the book is fact."
Of course, all they had to back up the claim was the book itself.
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