Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code is a wonderful book for making us think about who Jesus was
- it is a page-turning detective story delving into the origins and nature of the church
- I won't ruin it by telling you the end of the story, but I'll tell you what ruins it for me
- the Preface: it says the characters are fictional but the history is factual
- this made readers excited and made historians livid – well, mildly annoyed
- historians are usually mild-mannered academics with a narrow emotional range
- to historians, this is as accurate as Indiana Jones' movie Raiders of the Lost Ark
- and I think the story should be enjoyed in this way, or it should be seen as a hoax
- on the line of the Hitler Diaries, or the multitude of rival Gnostic Gospels
I know that ye are Abraham's seed: yet ye seek to kill me, because my word hath not free course in you. I speak the things which I have seen with my Father: and ye also do the things which ye heard from your father. They answered and said unto him, Our father is Abraham. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham. But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I heard from God: this did not Abraham. Ye do the works of your father. They said unto him, We were not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God. Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I came forth and am come from God; for neither have I come of myself, but he sent me. (John 8:37-42 ASB)
Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my word, he shall never see death. The Jews said unto him, Now we know that thou hast a demon. Abraham died, and the prophets; and thou sayest, If a man keep my word, he shall never taste of death. Art thou greater than our father Abraham, who died? and the prophets died: whom makest thou thyself? Jesus answered, If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing: it is my Father that glorifieth me; of whom ye say, that he is your God; and ye have not known him: but I know him; and if I should say,know him not, I shall be like unto you, a liar: but I know him, and keep his word.
Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it, and was glad. The Jews therefore said unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was born, I am. They took up stones therefore to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple. (John 8:51-59 ASB)
The Trinity & Da Vinci Code- The truth and the light, and questions to be answered and told.
The Gnostic Gospels are important for Dan Brown, who appeals to them often
- he says they bear witness to the truth about Jesus, that he was just a man
- and that he had a sexual relationship with Mary Magdalene
- and that the church did not finally make Jesus God till the 4th C.
- and that the New Testament Gospels were a church cover-up to hide the truth
- they taught, instead, that that Jesus was God and Mary Magdalene was a prostitute
The DaVinci Code and the Raiders of the Lost Ark are good yarns
- they are full of historical inaccuracies, but who cares when they are such fun
- but I do care when people disparage Jesus in this way, making him a mere man
- and as an ancient historian (an increasingly accurate title) I'm mildly irritated by bad history
- I don't want to bore you with a long long list of bad history, because it's only fiction, whatever the claims of the author who wants to sell more copies
- but I do want to look at the issue of Jesus, because that's important to me
First, we need to know something about the ancient Gnostic groups
- this was a series of sects who had different ideas about Jesus
- just like the church has lots of sects nowadays, with different views on Jesus
- Jehovah's Witnesses, who reject spirits like angels, demons and divine Jesus
- Christian Scientists, who say that illness is an illusion and we are all part of Adam's dream (because Genesis never says that he woke up when God took his rib)
- Mormons, who follow the writings hidden by a descendant of the 10 tribes who went to America – the original tablets were taken to heaven after being translated
- New Age believers, a hugely disparate group who appear to believe anything 'nice' about crystals, Arthur, ley lines, sexual energy, and of course that nice man Jesus
- etc – lots of them thrive in this is a pick-n-mix society where religion is a matter of choice and convenience rather than inheritance or rational thought
In the second century there were even more religions than now
- founding a religion was one way to make money, or get respect as a teacher
- when the persecution of Christians started to lighten up, many sects flourished
- we clump lots of them together under the title "Gnostic", but this is too vague
- it is rather like the term "New Age" – it refers to lots of very different groups
- we have lots of writings from them, including the newly-found Gospel of Judas
- different teachers taught different things, for example:
Menander claimed that anyone who followed him would never die
(OK, so they died, but that didn't put off others teachers with a new idea)
Saturninius said Christ didn't became really human and that sex & marriage are evil
Cerinthus said the Christ came as a dove on a human called Jesus at his baptism, and inhabited his body till just before his crucifixion
Basilides said the god of the Jews was an oppressive angel. Simon of Cyrene was crucified instead of Jesus, while the invisible Christ stood by laughing
Marcion said the god of the OT was bad, unlike the god of the NT, and that Jesus was a phantom who merely appeared to be human.
Valentinus also said Jesus wasn't human, but his followers split over whether he was a soul or a spirit.
Lots of variety, but there are some common features:
- they don't like the physical world, because matter is bad and spirit is good
- this means that Christ couldn't have been really human in a physical way
- so either he inhabited someone else's human body, or he was just an apparition
- and sex is bad, because it's physical and it brings more people into the world
- the human body traps your spirit in this world, and your task is to escape
- but you have to know the special passwords and names of angels to help you
- those secrets are called the 'gnosis' (Greek for 'knowledge') – hence 'Gnostic'
We have lots of documents from them, including several 'Gospels'
- they convey this secret knowledge using characters from mainstream Gospels
- like the Gospel of Judas, which would make no sense without the NT Gospels
-it isn't an account from Judas' point of view, but a series of discussion between Jesus and Judas, in which Jesus tells Judas the secret names of angels etc
- it mentions things like the twelve, the betrayal of Judas, his replacement etc
- but they are all mentioned without explanation, as if the reader already knew them
- that is, it is written to people who have already read the NT Gospels
We have lots of similar Gospels which were inspired by the NT gospels
- the big Four became famous and everyone was using the title 'gospel'
- like when Lord of the Rings inspired a whole host of imitations
- but imitations are usually easy to spot, and the early church had no disputes about any of these later Gospels – no one seriously thought they were genuine
- they are less believable than the Life of Brian, and no-body cared
- they weren't written to be historical records, but as vehicles for other teaching
- the Gospel of Judas which was published in April 2006 is a good example
In the Gospel of Judas, the disciples declare that Jesus is the Son of God
- but Judas shows even more insight, saying "you have come from the immortal realm of Barbelo and I am not worthy to utter the name of the one who has sent you"
- Jesus says: "Step aside and I will tell you the mysteries of the kingdom. It is possible for you to reach it, but you will grieve a great deal. For someone else will replace you."
- and Jesus tells Judas secret names and mysteries to help him access the kingdom
- then tells him what he has to do: "you will sacrifice the man that clothes me"
- ie he arranges the death not of Christ, but of the human he has been borrowing
Weird and weirder, and perhaps we regard the followers as dumb and dumber
- but they were trying to deal with a great mystery: how can Jesus be God and man?
- the NT Gospels appear to say both, but how can both be true?
Before I try (and probably fail) to answer that, lets peep again at the DaVinci Code
- Dan Brown uses Gnostic writings to argue that the church made Jesus into God
- countering Gnostics who (he says) taught Jesus was merely human, and married to Mary Magdelene
- but this is topsy-turvy – the opposite of what we read in Gnostic writings
. The Gnostics thought matter was evil, so they said Christ couldn’t be human
- that's why they had him possess someone's body, or appear as a phantom
- and they taught sex and marriage were evil, so their Christ was completely non-sexual
- Brown based this on one Gnostic scrap which (when you fill in some gaps) appears to say that Jesus kissed Mary
- in Gnostic terms this would mean that he shared secret knowledge with her
- but I can understand that this could be misconstrued as sexual by someone who didn’t understand Gnosticism
OK, who cares about these long-dead sects with their weird ideas?
- they help us to understand why the Trinity was such a big deal for the church
- the NT says almost nothing about the Trinity, and never uses the word
- it simply says that Jesus was the Son of God and is to be worshiped like God
("the Word was God", Jn.1.1; "let all the angels worship him" Heb.1.6;
"we stone you for blaspheme because you … make yourself God" Jn.10.33)
- while at the same time it says that Jesus was fully human, and remains human
("there is one mediator between man and God, the man Jesus Christ – 1Tim.2.5)
- and also saying that there is only one God ("there is no other god but one" 1Cor.8.4)
-how do you put all this together? The Gnostics tried, and came up a simple answer:
- Jesus was in-between. He only pretended to be a man, and was divine but not God
- this caught on, along with the silliness which came with this (matter and sex are evil, our bodies are a prison, and you need secret knowledge to escape to heaven)
- so the church needed an equally simple statement to summarise Christian teaching
- during a few centuries of debate they developed the Trinitarian formula
- God is three "persons but one essence" in Nicene and Athanasian creeds
- Jesus is "one essence with the Father" but also "made man.. and suffered death"
This Trinitarian formula has much more to do with diplomacy than the Bible
- it doesn't really say anything, except how to identify a heretic
- a heretic either says that Jesus isn't fully God, or he isn't fully human
- that is, a heretic tries to make sense of something we can't express in language
- it is a bit like defining a real physicist as someone who believes that an electron is both fully a particle and fully a wave
- this kind of concept is very exciting to physicists, but leaves most of us cold
- and only theologians manage to get excited about the trinity nowadays
- though it used to be all the rage to discuss it even in the marketplace
What IS important is that Jesus was God before he came to earth
- if we don't get this, we don't understand how much Jesus loves us
- Jesus took part in creating the universe, and was one with the Father and Spirit
- and yet he was willing to come down and become a tiny human baby
- and then live as someone who was despised, rejected, spat on, beaten, and killed
- all this, even though he could at any time have called: Stop. And then stepped out.
His poverty was the least of his shame. His biggest shame came from his birth
- being born to a virgin meant being born as seemingly illegitimate
- everyone knew, because they could count less than 9 months after the wedding
- though he wasn't officially an illegitimate because there weren't any witnesses
- no good Jewish family would let their daughter marry an illegitimate man
- an illegitimate could only marry another person branded as illegitimate
- but Jesus couldn't even do that because he wasn't officially illegitimate
- so he couldn't marry anyone, illegitimate or not, and this was a great stigma
- every Jewish male married, in order to fulfil the first commandment from God in the Bible: Go forth and multiply.
- and the fact that Jesus was single was a constant reminder of his shameful birth
- so the crowds can taunt Jesus: "At least we weren't born in fornication" (Jn.8.41)
- no wonder Matthew and Luke spend so much time explaining his birth
The DaVinci Code suggests that Jesus was secretly married
- so the church invented Jesus' singleness as a cover-up, and to discourage marriage
- a strange cover-up. It creates far more problems than it solves
- Jesus did teach that it was OK to stay unmarried and "be a eunuch for the sake of the kingdom" (Matt.19.12)
- though Paul emphasised this didn't mean marriage was wrong (1Cor.7.7-9, 28), even if it was unwise during the "present distress" (1Cor.7.26)
I'm glad that the DaVinci Code has brought up the issue of women again
- of course it has done so in the most sensational way which will sell more copies
- but at least the subject is being discussed in terms of early church practice
- though I don't like the way it implies that the NT church was down on women
It's true that the church did initially discourage women from being leaders
- in that society it was scandalous for women to talk to even one strange man
- both women and slaves were asked to submit, as society expected, "so that the Gospel is not scandalised" (Titus 2.5, 10; 1Tim.6.1)
- this didn't mean they endorsed society's views on women or slaves, but they regarded spreading the Gospel as much more important than their own rights
- but soon society loosened up, and the early church had women leaders
There is a sea of sceptical faces in front of me.
- some of you are thinking: The earliest church didn't really teach Jesus was God
- others of you are thinking: The earliest church didn't really allow women leaders
- and I can't prove anything to you from the Bible
- you will say: Ah, but the later church changed the text. It was a big conspiracy
- so what can I do?
I call into the witness box Pliny the Younger, an impartial Roman official
- it was his job in the early 2nd C to find and punish Christians in Bithinia
- he reported his findings in 111 AD to the Emperor Trajan:
"I found out the truth, by means of torture, from two servant girls (ancillis) who were called Ministers (ministrae). I could find nothing more than a disgusting fanatical superstition. … They used to gather on a stated day before dawn and sing to Christ as if he were a god, and they took an oath not to involve themselves in villainy, but rather to commit no theft, no fraud, no adultery, not to break faith, nor to deny money placed with them in trust. Once these things were done, it was their custom to part and return later to eat a meal together, innocently, although they stopped this after my edict, which forbade all secret societies, as you ordered." (Epistle X.96)
There we are: the disgusting truth, as Pliny calls it. The church was small, run by the lowest of society, sometimes women (as Pliny found) and they worshiped Christ as God.
A sermon on the Trinity isn't complete without a mention of the Holy Spirit
- it seems rather disparaging to mention so briefly that the Spirit is equal to God
- but that is how it happens in the creeds which have long sections on the Father and the Son and then add "…And the Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son".
- the Holy Spirit was not physical, so Gnostics didn’t have the same problems
- and once you allow that God is more than one person, adding a third is no big deal
- and so, unfortunately, it was not till the 20th century that the church really realised the importance of the Holy Spirit
Books like the DaVinci Code remind us that such things are in the mists of history
- but history is not as misty as some suppose, though I agree that there is lots of mist
- it is like living in Los Angeles, which is covered by a permanent smog
- a friend said months after moving there, he saw something amazing one morning
-snow covered mountains just a few miles away which dwarf the city
- the mountains are always there, but only visible when a rare easterly wind blows the smog into the sea
- the Trinity is always present in the New Testament, but the whole glory of it is rarely seen
- like when Jesus tells his disciples to "make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit" (Matt.28.19)
- or the closing blessing at the end of 2 Corinthians (13.13): "May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all".
Amen.
Home
Dear Heavenly Father, Please help this church, we are all here to worship You and give You praise. Lord many things are happening to us and we need Your comfort we need Your love and Your blessings. We need You to help us through all our troubles. We want to get close to You and love You for You are our God. We can’t explain the many things that are happening all around us, people are getting hurt and people are suffering, please be with us, please hold us in Your loving arms. Please have the Holy Spirit visit us Lord, please we need the anointing of peace upon us all. Please Father, have our Jesus join us in Spirit, please grant the church a way of truth and a way of prosperity and let us all grow together this day. Please help us to all produce good and wonderful fruit within us all. We all need You Lord, we need Your presence, please bring us all to victory, please carry us to life and happiness, In Jesus name, Amen
Prayers that move mountains are prayers of fruitfulness of Gods Kingdom. Jesus says the illustration to prove something impossible can be done because God can do anything. You must be a believer that holds no grudges, we should not be selfish in any of our prayers and our prayers should benefit the Kingdom of God. To pray the righteous way, you must need faith in God, not for the faith of the thing you are praying for. Think if all your energy is focused on requests, you will end up with nothing if you do not get an answer. I guess we must pray for Gods will to be done, we have to analyze ourselves, and we want the Kingdom to advance, not just for us. Most of my prayers are for healing of others and of course which way do I go to set up the new church office? I can continue to pray for so many more, I do pray for peace for myself so I can write the prayers which if I am under confusion and stress how can I write a good hearted warming prayer? In the first place, the devil wants me to loose my faith so the prayer ministry in the first place does not function and how we have branched out to the world missions to become even larger, we are fighting against evil and at the same time trying to do a blessing for the Kingdom.
About
Need Prayer ?
The Candle that stays lit in prayer all week, for all our people, friends, members, officers, family, and the chosen ones of truth and hope. I have not called Craig and Linda and family for a long time, I need to call them always, I was going to call but you no how bad this computer has been messing with me I am lucky I finished this thing and was able to have the button work, and the new date even changed, I had to start all over again, you see I can’t take any more stress, stress after stress, things not working things breaking, I have had the both computers go out at the same time and that happened about a year ago, but when one works they both work fine. The devil does not want me to print or pray for anyone this has been a all out war for the last 6 months, that is when this Medicare started in April I have lost so much weight and have gone through day after day of torment, and the more stress the more pain, no body gets it, nobody understands what I have to go through. Scott and Eileen I wish a great prayer, Bishop Director Joaquim Kalala, who has been taking care of the prayer ministry for The Church, what a blessing from him, thank you my brother from Angola, Africa, and his loving wife, plus Bishop Director Paul Ciniraj and wonderful wife, from India, Bishop Director Jacob Chacko from the A&N Islands India, closer to Thailand and Burma and his affectionate wife, and Bishop Director Andru Vijay Kumar, central India and his kind wife, and add grace and peace to all their children and families, friends, and their congregations and ministries, I give you all a blessing to all of you, plus Joanna Cody and her family who is way out in Buffalo N.Y. and prayer partner Randy, we can’t forget Columbus Murphy from Chicago, and people like Susan Jones who I can not even thank her enough for saving my life with everything she has sent, out of Washington State, plus Janel and Jeff from SWPW in Australia . Plus a family out in Pretoria South Africa, Johan and Esther and their two girls and baby boy we are still praying for, and I hope he is feeling better, at the Deo Valente Mission. From UCFM we have Keith from Amarillo who his wife just died, please pray, Angel Juarez from Arizona, Hugh Kieth and family from California, and Darla Izzo and family the same from California. Bishop Shawn from N.Y. Fred and Shirl Nero, Fred is still fighting cancer, We can't forget my Doctor , Dr. Conner and the staff Mary and Allen please say a special prayer for my doctors mom Ethel, Plus we have Deborah Bates, SanDee, and Marcella from Living Waters prayer network, Plus we have all the troops and leaders, and all the governing body for the Presidential Prayer Team and our single obligation to Elizabeth Bradford from the U.S. Navy. Plus Dr. KP Yohannan from the Gospel for Asia, There are so many people that are praying for me and we are praying for them We have such a list we have Teresa and her three children who is local, and Lynne is Local, please grant these girls a special prayer they have been getting attacked by the evil one constantly, please help us all pray. Just writing this out with all these crashes and this computer this is like playing hand ball with a ball that has a hole in it. I know there are more people that I need to name off, Robert and Judith and all their kids, from Florida, Trevor Steele also from Sarasota. Plus Rebecca who took care of the cat and came through in the end, she needs prayer, who else? We can’t forget Elena Ramirez who has a special link on one of the main pages with poetry and music full of talent. I have not heard from Alexander he was taking a trip in the 10/40 window, please pray for him. Sis Shanna she needs prayer and she sends wonderful prayers. Plus we need to pray for Debby and Aaron out in Pennsylvania. We also need to pray for Desiree way out in the Netherlands. Plus Philip Hargreaves and his wife Mary, old ministry school friends and classmates. We can’t forget Cindy and Tina from the Pink Elephant, plus brother Larry then we have Barbara and we have to pray for her son Chad who is in the military and he just had his head slit open and she told me they don’t stitch it anymore some new technique of gluing his head together. We also have Mary and Jay from His Will Ministry and all their kids and family, we need to pray for all of them out of Wyoming. I have not heard from Kurt Showers and his daughter Courtney, please say an extra prayer for them. Pus Peter Daniel who is now in Manila, well forgive me if I forgotten you, I must pray for my mom and dad and half brother and children, plus the new family that my dad married into, and the family my mom married into, I send them all a blessing even though most of them don’t even know who I am, but forgive them Father they no not what they do. Everyone remain blessed and be blessed, Amen..
it isn't an account from Judas' point of view, but a series of discussion between Jesus and Judas, in which Jesus tells Judas the secret names of angels etc
