A Call to Action

From Wallbuilders.com.

Grace and peace be multiplied to you through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!
(2 Peter 1:2)

In the latter months of 2007, there was a flurry of incidents attempting to censor America’s religious heritage (e.g., the capstone at the Washington Monument, the flag folding ceremony in the Veterans’ Department, the flag certificates from the Architect of the Capitol, etc.). In each case, citizens learned of the incidents and in large numbers made their feelings known; each policy was promptly reversed.

In response to those (and other) incidents, Congressman Randy Forbes of Virginia introduced a Congressional Resolution affirming America’s Godly heritage through dozens of documented historic examples.

That measure, H.Res.888, declares its two-fold purpose:

Affirming the rich spiritual and religious history of our Nation’s founding and subsequent history and expressing support for designation of the first week in May as “American Religious History Week” for the appreciation of and education on America’s history of religious faith.

The House has agreed to consider and debate this excellent resolution. There are three things you can do to help:

1. Call your Member of Congress and ask him or her to co-sponsor H.Res.888 (to identify your Member of Congress, click here, enter your zip code in the upper left hand portion of the page, and hit “GO.”)
2. Call Randy’s office (202.225.6365) and thank him for standing up for our religious heritage. (All folks appreciate encouragement, but especially those on the front lines of battle.)
3. Forward the resolution to others (it is downloadable). It will remind Americans what God has done for them and instruct the next generation about God’s hand in America’s history.

God bless!

‘Follow the Lord Jesus’: Black History Month

From Chuck Colson and Breakpoint.

It’s Black History Month—and in classrooms around the country, children have been learning about famous African-Americans and their contributions to our culture. That’s a good thing. But there is one thing most kids have not been learning about many of these famous men and women: that is, their Christian faith and how it motivated their lives and their work.

For instance, Sojourner Truth is often identified as a women’s rights advocate and abolitionist. Overlooked is the source of Sojourner’s fiery devotion to human rights: That was her commitment to Jesus Christ. “The Lord gave me the name Sojourner,” she declared, “because I was to travel up and down the land, showing people their sins, and being a sign unto them.” At age 88, her dying words were, “Follow the Lord Jesus.”

And then there is Rosa Parks. Many people know the story of the seamstress who helped ignite the modern civil-rights movement. But far fewer people know that Parks is a devout Christian and that it was her faith that gave her the strength to do what she did that day in 1955. “Since I have always been a strong believer in God,” she says, “I knew that He was with me, and only He could get me through that next step”—that is, refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man.

Our kids have also been hearing a lot about Jackie Robinson‘s quiet dignity in the face of racial bigotry on the ball field. But many do not realize the source of Robinson’s ability to turn the other cheek: It was his faith in Jesus Christ. During his 10 years with the Dodgers, he endured racist remarks, death threats, and unfair calls by umpires. But Robinson’s faith helped him keep his anger in check. Every night, he got on his knees and prayed for self-control.

Most people know that George Washington Carver was a chemist and agronomist. Born a slave in 1860, Carver rose to become director of agricultural research at Tuskegee University in Alabama. He is remembered for developing 118 derivative products from sweet potatoes and 300 from peanuts—including my favorite food, peanut butter. Thanks to his efforts, by 1940, peanuts were the second largest cash crop in the South. But go to his name in the encyclopedia, and you will find no reference to the most important aspect of his life: how his faith in God inspired his creativity.

“I didn’t make these discoveries,” Carver once said. “God has only worked through me to reveal to His children some of His wonderful providence.”

Stories like these are a reminder of what a central role the Christian faith has played in the lives of many great Americans. We Christians need to reclaim our cultural heritage from those who seem intent on deleting it from history books—and from Black History Month celebrations. So I urge you: Before the month ends, make sure your own kids learn about the abiding faith of Sojourner Truth, Rosa Parks, Jackie Robinson, George Washington Carver, and, of course, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. And consider donating some of the good biographies written about these people to local schools and libraries—biographies that tell the whole story.

Our kids deserve to know, not only of African-American contributions to science, politics, and culture, but also of those individuals’ commitments to Christ.

A Call to Action

From wallbuilders.com.

Grace and peace be multiplied to you through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!
(2 Peter 1:2)

In the latter months of 2007, there was a flurry of incidents attempting to censor America’s religious heritage (e.g., the capstone at the Washington Monument, the flag folding ceremony in the Veterans’ Department, the flag certificates from the Architect of the Capitol, etc.). In each case, citizens learned of the incidents and in large numbers made their feelings known; each policy was promptly reversed.

In response to those (and other) incidents, Congressman Randy Forbes of Virginia introduced a Congressional Resolution affirming America’s Godly heritage through dozens of documented historic examples.

That measure, H.Res.888, declares its two-fold purpose:

Affirming the rich spiritual and religious history of our Nation’s founding and subsequent history and expressing support for designation of the first week in May as “American Religious History Week” for the appreciation of and education on America’s history of religious faith.
The House has agreed to consider and debate this excellent resolution. There are three things you can do to help:

Call your Member of Congress and ask him or her to co-sponsor H.Res.888 (to identify your Member of Congress, click here, enter your zip code in the upper left hand portion of the page, and hit “GO.”)

Call Randy’s office (202.225.6365) and thank him for standing up for our religious heritage. (All folks appreciate encouragement, but especially those on the front lines of battle.)
Forward the resolution to others (it is downloadable). It will remind Americans what God has done for them and instruct the next generation about God’s hand in America’s history.

God bless!

Rediscovering the Historical Jesus: The Evidence for Jesus

From Dr. William Lane Craig and his website Reasonablefaith.org.

William Lane Craig

“Five reasons are presented for thinking that critics who accept the historical credibility of the gospel accounts of Jesus do not bear a special burden of proof relative to more skeptical critics. Then the historicity of a few specific aspects of Jesus’ life are addressed, including his radical self-concept as the divine Son of God, his role as a miracle-worker, his trial and crucifixion, and his resurrection from the dead.

“Rediscovering the Historical Jesus: The Evidence for Jesus.” Faith and Mission 15 (1998): 16-26.

 

Last time we saw that the New Testament documents are the most important historical sources for Jesus of Nazareth. The so-called apocryphal gospels are forgeries which came much later and are for the most part elaborations of the four New Testament gospels.

This doesn’t mean that there aren’t sources outside the Bible which refer to Jesus. There are. He’s referred to in pagan, Jewish, and Christian writings outside the New Testament. The Jewish historian Josephus is especially interesting. In the pages of his works you can read about New Testament people like the high priests Annas and Caiaphas, the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, King Herod, John the Baptist, even Jesus himself and his brother James. There have also been interesting archaeological discoveries as well bearing on the gospels. For example, in 1961 the first archaeological evidence concerning Pilate was unearthed in the town of Caesarea; it was an inscription of a dedication bearing Pilate’s name and title. Even more recently, in 1990 the actual tomb of Caiaphas, the high priest who presided over Jesus’s trial, was discovered south of Jerusalem. Indeed, the tomb beneath the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem is in all probability the tomb in which Jesus himself was laid by Joseph of Arimathea following the crucifixion. According to Luke Johnson, a New Testament scholar at Emory University,

Even the most critical historian can confidently assert that a Jew named Jesus worked as a teacher and wonder-worker in Palestine during the reign of Tiberius, was executed by crucifixion under the prefect Pontius Pilate and continued to have followers after his death.1

Still, if we want any details about Jesus’s life and teachings, we must turn to the New Testament. Extra-biblical sources confirm what we read in the gospels, but they don’t really tell us anything new. The question then must be: how historically reliable are the New Testament documents?

Burden of Proof

Here we confront the very crucial question of the burden of proof. Should we assume that the gospels are reliable unless they are proven to be unreliable? Or should we assume the gospels are unreliable unless they are proven to be reliable? Are they innocent until proven guilty or guilty until proven innocent? Sceptical scholars almost always assume that the gospels are guilty until proven innocent, that is, they assume that the gospels are unreliable unless and until they are proven to be correct concerning some particular fact. I’m not exaggerating here: this really is the procedure of sceptical critics.

But I want to list five reasons why I think we ought to assume that the gospels are reliable until proven wrong:

1. There was insufficient time for legendary influences to expunge the historical facts. The interval of time between the events themselves and recording of them in the gospels is too short to have allowed the memory of what had or had not actually happened to be erased.

2. The gospels are not analogous to folk tales or contemporary “urban legends.” Tales like those of Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill or contemporary urban legends like the “vanishing hitchhiker” rarely concern actual historical individuals and are thus not analogous to the gospel narratives.

3. The Jewish transmission of sacred traditions was highly developed and reliable. In an oral culture like that of first century Palestine the ability to memorize and retain large tracts of oral tradition was a highly prized and highly developed skill. From the earliest age children in the home, elementary school, and the synagogue were taught to memorize faithfully sacred tradition. The disciples would have exercised similar care with the teachings of Jesus.

4. There were significant restraints on the embellishment of traditions about Jesus, such as the presence of eyewitnesses and the apostles’ supervision. Since those who had seen and heard Jesus continued to live and the tradition about Jesus remained under the supervision of the apostles, these factors would act as a natural check on tendencies to elaborate the facts in a direction contrary to that preserved by those who had known Jesus.

5. The Gospel writers have a proven track record of historical reliability.

I don’t have enough time to talk about all of these. So let me say something about the first and the last points.

1. There was insufficient time for legendary influences to expunge the historical facts. No modern scholar thinks of the gospels as bald-faced lies, the result of a massive conspiracy. The only place you find such conspiracy theories of history is in sensationalist, popular literature or former propaganda from behind the Iron Curtain. When you read the pages of the New Testament, there’s no doubt that these people sincerely believed in the truth of what they proclaimed. Rather ever since the time of D. F. Strauss, sceptical scholars have explained away the gospels as legends. Like the child’s game of telephone, as the stories about Jesus were passed on over the decades, they got muddled and exaggerated and mythologized until the original facts were all but lost. The Jewish peasant sage was transformed into the divine Son of God.

One of the major problems with the legend hypothesis, however, which is almost never addressed by sceptical critics, is that the time between Jesus’s death and the writing of the gospels is just too short for this to happen. This point has been well-explained by A. N. Sherwin-White in his book Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament.2 Professor Sherwin-White is not a theologian; he is a professional historian of times prior to and contemporaneous with Jesus. According to Sherwin-White, the sources for Roman and Greek history are usually biased and removed one or two generations or even centuries from the events they record. Yet, he says, historians reconstruct with confidence the course of Roman and Greek history. For example, the two earliest biographies of Alexander the Great were written by Arrian and Plutarch more than 400 years after Alexander’s death, and yet classical historians still consider them to be trustworthy. The fabulous legends about Alexander the Great did not develop until during the centuries after these two writers. According to Sherwin-White, the writings of Herodotus enable us to determine the rate at which legend accumulates, and the tests show that even two generations is too short a time span to allow legendary tendencies to wipe out the hard core of historical facts. When Professor Sherwin-White turns to the gospels, he states that for the gospels to be legends, the rate of legendary accumulation would have to be “unbelievable.” More generations would be needed.

In fact, adding a time gap of two generations to Jesus’s death lands you in the second century, just when the apocryphal gospels begin to appear. These do contain all sorts of fabulous stories about Jesus, trying to fill in the years between his boyhood and his starting his ministry, for example. These are the obvious legends sought by the critics, not the biblical gospels.

This point becomes even more devastating for skepticism when we recall that the gospels themselves use sources that go back even closer to the events of Jesus’s life. For example, the story of Jesus’s suffering and death, commonly called the Passion Story, was probably not originally written by Mark. Rather Mark used a source for this narrative. Since Mark is the earliest gospel, his source must be even earlier. In fact, Rudolf Pesch, a German expert on Mark, says the Passion source must go back to at least AD 37, just seven years after Jesus’s death.3

Or again, Paul in his letters hands on information concerning Jesus about his teaching, his Last Supper, his betrayal, crucifixion, burial, and resurrection appearances. Paul’s letters were written even before the gospels, and some of his information, for example, what he passes on in his first letter to the Corinthian church about the resurrection appearances, has been dated to within five years after Jesus’s death. It just becomes irresponsible to speak of legends in such cases.

5. The Gospel writers have a proven track record of historical reliability. Again I only have time to look at one example: Luke. Luke was the author of a two-part work: the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. These are really one work and are separated in our Bibles only because the church grouped the gospels together in the New Testament. Luke is the gospel writer who writes most self-consciously as an historian. In the preface to this work he writes:

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed. (Lk. 1.1-4)

This preface is written in classical Greek terminology such as was used by Greek historians; after this Luke switches to a more common Greek. But he has put his reader on alert that he can write, should he wish to, like the learned historian. He speaks of his lengthy investigation of the story he’s about to tell and assures us that it is based on eyewitness information and is accordingly the truth.

Now who was this author we call Luke? He was clearly not an eyewitness to Jesus’s life. But we discover an important fact about him from the book of Acts. Beginning in the sixteenth chapter of Acts, when Paul reaches Troas in modern-day Turkey, the author suddenly starts using the first-person plural: “we set sail from Troas to Samothrace,” “we remained in Philippi some days,” “as we were going to the place of prayer,” etc. The most obvious explanation is that the author had joined Paul on his evangelistic tour of the Mediterranean cities. In chapter 21 he accompanies Paul back to Palestine and finally to Jerusalem. What this means is that the author of Luke-Acts was in fact in first hand contact with the eyewitnesses of Jesus’s life and ministry in Jerusalem. Sceptical critics have done back-flips to try to avoid this conclusion. They say that the use of the first-person plural in Acts should not be taken literally; it’s just a literary device which is common in ancient sea voyage stories. Never mind that many of the passages in Acts are not about Paul’s sea voyage, but take place on land! The more important point is that this theory, when you check it out, turns out to be sheer fantasy.4 There just was no literary device of sea voyages in the first person plural—the whole thing has been shown to be a scholarly fiction! There is no avoiding the conclusion that Luke-Acts was written by a traveling companion of Paul who had the opportunity to interview eyewitnesses to Jesus’s life while in Jerusalem. Who were some of these eyewitnesses? Perhaps we can get some clue by subtracting from the Gospel of Luke everything found in the other gospels and seeing what is peculiar to Luke. What you discover is that many of Luke’s peculiar narratives are connected to women who followed Jesus: people like Joanna and Susanna, and significantly, Mary, Jesus’s mother.

Was the author reliable in getting the facts straight? The book of Acts enables us to answer that question decisively. The book of Acts overlaps significantly with secular history of the ancient world, and the historical accuracy of Acts is indisputable. This has recently been demonstrated anew by Colin Hemer, a classical scholar who turned to New Testament studies, in his book The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History. 5Hemer goes through the book of Acts with a fine-toothed comb, pulling out a wealth of historical knowledge, ranging from what would have been common knowledge down to details which only a local person would know. Again and again Luke’s accuracy is demonstrated: from the sailings of the Alexandrian corn fleet to the coastal terrain of the Mediterranean islands to the peculiar titles of local officials, Luke gets it right. According to Professor Sherwin-White, “For Acts the confirmation of historicity is overwhelming. Any attempt to reject its basic historicity even in matters of detail must now appear absurd.”6 The judgement of Sir William Ramsay, the world-famous archaeologist, still stands: “Luke is a historian of the first rank . . . . This author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians.”7 Given Luke’s care and demonstrated reliability as well as his contact with eyewitnesses within the first generation after the events, this author is trustworthy.

On the basis of the five reasons I listed, we are justified in accepting the historical reliability of what the gospels say about Jesus unless they are proven to be wrong. At the very least, we cannot assume they are wrong until proven right. The person who denies the gospels’ reliability must bear the burden of proof.

Specific Aspects of Jesus’s Life

Now by the very nature of the case, it will be impossible to say a whole lot more beyond this to prove that certain stories in the gospels are historically true. How could you prove, for example, the story of Jesus’s visiting Mary and Martha? You just have here a story told by a reliable author in a position to know and no reason to doubt the historicity of the story. There’s not much more to say.

Nevertheless, for many of the key events in the gospels, a great deal more can be said. What I’d like to do now is take a few of the important aspects of Jesus in the gospels and say a word about their historical credibility.

1. Jesus’s Radical Self-Concept as the Divine Son of God. Radical critics deny that the historical Jesus thought of himself as the divine Son of God. They say that after Jesus’s death, the early church claimed that he had said these things, even though he hadn’t.

The big problem with this hypothesis is that it is inexplicable how monotheistic Jews could have attributed divinity to a man they had known, if he never claimed any such things himself. Monotheism is the heart of the Jewish religion, and it would have been blasphemous to say that a human being was God. Yet this is precisely what the earliest Christians did proclaim and believe about Jesus. Such a claim must have been rooted in Jesus’s own teaching.

And in fact, the majority of scholars do believe that among the historically authentic words of Jesus—these are the words in the gospels which the Jesus Seminar would print in red—among the historically authentic words of Jesus are claims that reveal his divine self-understanding. One could give a whole lecture on this point alone; but let me focus on Jesus’s self-concept of being the unique, divine Son of God.

Jesus’s radical self-understanding is revealed, for example, in his parable of the wicked tenants of the vineyard. Even sceptical scholars admit the authenticity of this parable, since it is also found in the Gospel of Thomas, one of their favorite sources. In this parable, the owner of the vineyard sent servants to the tenants of the vineyard to collect its fruit. The vineyard symbolizes Israel, the owner is God, the tenants are the Jewish religious leaders, and the servants are prophets send by God. The tenants beat and reject the owner’s servants. Finally, the owner says, “I will send my only, beloved son. They will listen to my son.” But instead, the tenants kill the son because he is the heir to the vineyard. Now what does this parable tell us about Jesus’s self-understanding? He thought of himself as God’s special son, distinct from all the prophets, God’s final messenger, and even the heir to Israel. This is no mere Jewish peasant!

Jesus’s self-concept as God’s son comes to explicit expression in Matthew 11.27: “All things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.” Again there is good reason to regard this as an authentic saying of the historical Jesus. It is drawn from an old source which was shared by Matthew and Luke, which scholars call the Q document. Moreover, it is unlikely the Church invented this saying because it says that the Son is unknowable—”no one knows the Son except the Father”—, but for the post-Easter church we can know the Son. So this saying is not the product of later Church theology. What does this saying tell us about Jesus’s self-concept? He thought of himself as the exclusive and absolute Son of God and the only revelation of God to mankind! Make no mistake: if Jesus wasn’t who he said he was, he was crazier than David Koresh and Jim Jones put together!

Finally, I want to consider one more saying: Jesus’s saying on the date of his second coming in Mark 13.32: “But of that day or that hour no man knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” This is an authentic saying of the historical Jesus because the later Church, which regarded Jesus as divine, would never have invented a saying ascribing limited knowledge or ignorance to Jesus. But here Jesus says he doesn’t know the time of his return. So what do we learn from this saying? It not only reveals Jesus’s consciousness of being the one Son of God, but it presents us with an ascending scale from men to the angels to the Son to the Father, a scale on which Jesus transcends any human being or angelic being. This is really incredible stuff! Yet it is what the historical Jesus believed. And this is only one facet of Jesus’s self-understanding. C. S. Lewis was right when he said,

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was and is the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us.8

2. Jesus’s Miracles.Even the most sceptical critics cannot deny that the historical Jesus carried out a ministry of miracle-working and exorcism. Rudolf Bultmann, one of the most sceptical scholars this century has seen, wrote back in 1926:

Most of the miracle stories contained in the gospels are legendary or at least are dressed up with legends. But there can be no doubt that Jesus did such deeds, which were, in his and his contemporaries’ understanding, miracles, that is, deeds that were the result of supernatural, divine causality. Doubtless he healed the sick and cast out demons.9

Back in Bultmann’s day the miracle stories were thought to be influenced by stories of mythological heroes and, hence, at least in part legendary. But today it is recognized that the hypothesis of mythological influence was historically incorrect. Craig Evans, a well-known Jesus scholar, says that “the older notion” that the miracle stories were the product of mythological divine man ideas “has been largely abandoned.”10 He says, “It is no longer seriously contested” “that miracles played a role in Jesus’s ministry.” The only reason left for denying that Jesus performed literal miracles is the presupposition of anti-supernaturalism, which is simply unjustified.

3. Jesus’s Trial and Crucifixion. According to the gospels Jesus was condemned by the Jewish high court on the charge of blasphemy and then delivered to the Romans for execution for the treasonous act of setting himself up as King of the Jews. Not only are these facts confirmed by independent biblical sources like Paul and the Acts of the Apostles, but they are also confirmed by extra-biblical sources. From Josephus and Tacitus, we learn that Jesus was crucified by Roman authority under the sentence of Pontius Pilate. From Josephus and Mara bar Serapion we learn that the Jewish leaders made a formal accusation against Jesus and participated in events leading up to his crucifixion. And from the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 43a, we learn that Jewish involvement in the trial was explained as a proper undertaking against a heretic. According to Johnson, “The support for the mode of his death, its agents, and perhaps its coagents, is overwhelming: Jesus faced a trial before his death, was condemned and executed by crucifixion.”11 The crucifixion of Jesus is recognized even by the Jesus Seminar as “one indisputable fact.” 12

But that raises the very puzzling question: Why was Jesus crucified? As we have seen, the evidence indicates that his crucifixion was instigated by his blasphemous claims, which to the Romans would come across as treasonous. That’s why he was crucified, in the words of the plaque that was nailed to the cross above his head, as “The King of the Jews.” But if Jesus was just a peasant, cynic philosopher, just a liberal social gadfly, as the Jesus Seminar claims, then his crucifixion becomes inexplicable. As Professor Leander Keck of Yale University has said, “The idea that this Jewish cynic (and his dozen hippies) with his demeanor and aphorisms was a serious threat to society sounds more like a conceit of alienated academics than sound historical judgement.”13 New Testament scholar John Meier is equally direct. He says that a bland Jesus who just went about spinning out parables and telling people to look at the lilies of the field– “such a Jesus,” he says, “would threaten no one, just as the university professors who create him threaten no one.”14 The Jesus Seminar has created Jesus who is incompatible with the one indisputable fact of his crucifixion.

4. The resurrection of Jesus. It seems to me that there are four established facts which constitute inductive evidence for the resurrection of Jesus:

Fact #1: After his crucifixion, Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimathea in the tomb. This fact is highly significant because it means that the location of Jesus’s tomb was known to Jew and Christian alike. In that case it becomes inexplicable how belief in his resurrection could arise and flourish in the face of a tomb containing his corpse. According to the late John A. T. Robinson of Cambridge University, the honorable burial of Jesus is one of “the earliest and best-attested facts about Jesus.”15

Fact #2: On the Sunday morning following the crucifixion, the tomb of Jesus was found empty by a group of his women followers. According to Jakob Kremer, an Austrian specialist on the resurrection, “By far most exegetes hold firmly to the reliability of the biblical statements concerning the empty tomb.”16 As D. H. van Daalen points out, “It is extremely difficult to object to the empty tomb on historical grounds; those who deny it do so on the basis of theological or philosophical assumptions.”17

Fact #3: On multiple occasions and under various circumstances, different individuals and groups of people experienced appearances of Jesus alive from the dead. This is a fact that is almost universally acknowledged among New Testament scholars today. Even Gert Lüdemann, perhaps the most prominent current critic of the resurrection, admits, “It may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus’s death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ.”18

Finally, fact #4: The original disciples believed that Jesus was risen from the dead despite their having every reason not to. Despite having every predisposition to the contrary, it is an undeniable fact of history that the original disciples believed in, proclaimed, and were willing to go to their deaths for the fact of Jesus’s resurrection. C. F. D. Moule of Cambridge University concludes that we have here a belief which nothing in terms of prior historical influences can account for—apart from the resurrection itself.19

Any responsible historian, then, who seeks to give an account of the matter, must deal with these four independently established facts: the honorable burial of Jesus, the discovery of his empty tomb, his appearances alive after his death, and the very origin of the disciples’ belief in his resurrection and, hence, of Christianity itself. I want to emphasize that these four facts represent, not the conclusions of conservative scholars, nor have I quoted conservative scholars, but represent rather the majority view of New Testament scholarship today. The question is: how do you best explain these facts?

Now this puts the sceptical critic in a somewhat desperate situation. For example, some time ago I had a debate with a professor at the University of California, Irvine, on the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus. He had written his doctoral dissertation on the subject and was thoroughly familiar with the evidence. He could not deny the facts of Jesus’s honorable burial, his empty tomb, his post-mortem appearances, and the origin of the disciples’ belief in his resurrection. Therefore, his only recourse was to come up with some alternative explanation of these facts. And so he argued that Jesus had an unknown identical twin brother who was separated from him at birth, came back to Jerusalem just at the time of the crucifixion, stole Jesus’s body out of the grave, and presented himself to the disciples, who mistakenly inferred that Jesus was risen from the dead! Now I won’t go into how I went about refuting his theory, but I think that this theory is instructive because it shows to what desperate lengths skepticism must go in order to deny the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus. In fact, the evidence is so powerful that one of today’s leading Jewish theologians Pinchas Lapide has declared himself convinced on the basis of the evidence that the God of Israel raised Jesus from the dead!20

Conclusion

In summary, the gospels are not only trustworthy documents in general, but as we look at some of the most important aspects of Jesus in the gospels, like his radical personal claims, his miracles, his trial and crucifixion, and his resurrection, their historical veracity shines through. God has acted in history, and we can know it.”
 

Endnotes

1 Luke Timothy Johnson, The Real Jesus (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1996), p. 123.

2 A. N. Sherwin-White, Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), pp. 188-91.

3 Rudolf Pesch, Das Markusevangelium, 2 vols., Herders Theologischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament 2 (Freiburg: Herder, 1976-77), 2: 519-20.

4 See discussion in Colin J. Hemer, The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History, ed. Conrad H. Gempf, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 49 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1989), chap. 8.

5 Ibid., chaps. 4-5.

6 Sherwin-White, Roman Society, p. 189.

7 William M. Ramsay, The Bearing of Recent Discovery on the Trustworthiness of the New Testament (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1915), p. 222.

8 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1952), p. 56.

9 Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus (Berlin: Deutsche Bibliothek, 1926), p. 159.

10 Craig Evans, “Life-of-Jesus Research and the Eclipse of Mythology,” Theological Studies 54 (1993): 18, 34.

11 Johnson, Real Jesus, p. 125.

12 Robert Funk, Jesus Seminar videotape.

13 Leander Keck, “The Second Coming of the Liberal Jesus?” Christian Century (August, 1994), p. 786.

14 John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew, vol. 1: The Roots of the Problem and the Person, Anchor Bible Reference Library (New York: Doubleday, 1991), p. 177.

15 John A. T. Robinson, The Human Face of God (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1973), p. 131.

16 Jakob Kremer, Die Osterevangelien–Geschichten um Geschichte (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1977), pp. 49-50.

17 D. H. Van Daalen, The Real Resurrection (London: Collins, 1972), p. 41.

18 Gerd Lüdemann, What Really Happened to Jesus?, trans. John Bowden (Louisville, Kent.: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), p. 80.

19 C. F. D. Moule and Don Cupitt, “The Resurrection: a Disagreement,” Theology 75 (1972): 507-19.

20 Pinchas Lapide, The Resurrection of Jesus, trans. Wilhelm C. Linss (London: SPCK, 1983).

Proving the Resurrection of Jesus Christ with Minimal Facts

From epologetics.org.

The minimal facts approach is a method of proving the resurrection of Christ using only the minimal historical facts. These minimal facts must meet two criteria:

1. They are well evidenced
2. Nearly every scholar accepts them (even the skeptical ones)

The idea is to build a case without having to argue from the inerrancy of Scripture. After all, it would be foolish to expect unbelievers to accept the Bible as inspired and inerrant. Though there is much more evidence available, the minimal facts approach uses only what is accepted by even the skeptical scholars, thus moving the argument away from the evidence itself and onto forming the conclusion that best fits the agreed upon data. These minimal, agreed upon data are:

1. Jesus died by crucifixion
2. Jesus’ disciples believed that He rose and appeared to them
3. Paul the persecutor was suddenly changed
4. James, the skeptical brother of Jesus, was suddenly changed
5. The tomb was empty¹

It should be noted that the Bible is a collection of historical documents. Thus, it can be examined and scrutinized just as any other historical document, and its claims can be evaluated. Some sections of Scripture can be referred to on the grounds of the historical merit as accepted by nearly all scholars.

Jesus Died by Crucifixion

The crucifixion is recorded in all four gospels. Non-Christian sources report the fact, as well.

When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing amongst us, had condemned him to be crucified….Josephus, Antiquities 18.64 (, 49)

Nero fastened the guilt [of the burning of Rome] and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate.Tacitus, Annals 15.44 (, 49)

The Christians, you know, worship a man to this day–the distinguished personage who introduced their novel rites, and was crucified on that account.Lucian of Samosata, The Death of Peregrine 11-13 (, 49)

Or [what advantage came to] the Jews by the murder of their Wise King, seeing that from that very time their kingdom was driven away from them?Mara Bar-Serapion, letter to son from prison (, 49)

On the eve of the Passover Yeshu was hanged.²Talmud, Sanhedrin 43a (, 49)

Even a highly critical scholar from the Jesus Seminar said:

That he was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be.John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, 145 (see also 154, 196, 201) (, 49)

1 The empty tomb does not meet the second criteria for being a “minimal fact” (that nearly all scholars accept it). However, Gary Habermas has discovered that about 75 percent of scholars do accept the empty tomb (Habermas and Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus, p70). For this reason, the empty tomb will be included in this discussion, though I will not argue with a skeptic who chooses to discard the evidence for the purpose of examining only the absolute minimal historical facts.

2 Crucifixion was referred to as being hung on a tree, as in Luke 23:39 and Galatians 3:13.

Jesus’ disciples believed that He rose and appeared to them

This fact is recorded outside the Gospels in other historical sources.

The disciples claimed that Jesus appeared to them

Paul records that, more than his own experiences (addressed later), the apostles agreed with his teaching that Christ rose, having appeared to them and to others.

Oral traditions tie the resurrection and appearances back to the early church. Written documents had to be made and copied by hand, which was tedious and could only reach a few people (since most people could not read), so oral traditions were passed down to teach others. When an oral tradition is recorded, it proves that the oral tradition existed before they were written down. Keep this in mind.

One type of oral tradition is a creed. Creeds were meant to pass along important information in a manner that would make the information easy to memorize. One of the earliest and most important Christian creeds is recorded in a letter Paul wrote around AD 55:

3 For I passed on to you as of first importance what I also received – that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, 4 and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.1 Corinthians 15:3-5

The phrase, “I passed on to you…what I also received” was a way of indicating oral tradition. Since the first Christians were Jews, we would expect to find creeds to appear in their primary spoken language of Aramaic. The four-fold use of the Greek word hoti (“that”) was common in Aramaic narration, and the name Cephas is Aramaic for “Peter”. The text uses parallelism. Lastly, the creed includes non-Pauline terms, indicating that it did indeed originate from someone else, as Paul claimed (Habermas and Licona, 259-260). Most scholars believe that Paul received the creed from the disciples Peter and James no more than 3 years after his conversion, putting the origin of this creed at no more than 5 years after the death of Christ.

Another type of oral tradition is sermon summaries. Most scholars believe that the sermons recorded in Acts are short summaries of the actual sermons given. They also believe that, at minimum, the sermons were preached during the time of the apostles, attributed to the apostles, and in agreement with the teachings of the apostles. That the apostles believed the resurrected Christ appeared to them is recorded in the Gospels and Acts (the sequel to Luke’s gospel). Even critical scholars agree that these works were completed by the end of the first century, dating the records at no more than 70 years after the death of Christ.

The testimony of the early church fathers agrees that the apostles claimed to have seen the resurrected Christ. In many cases, these early church fathers knew the apostles themselves, or knew someone close to the apostles. In Philippians 4:3, Paul refers to a Christian named Clement. This may be Clement, bishop of Rome. Around AD 95, Clement wrote a letter to the church in Corinth.

Clement was allotted the bishopric. This man, as he had seen the blessed apostles, and had been conversant with them, might be said to have the preaching of the apostles still echoing, and their traditions before his eyes. Nor was he alone, for there were many still remaining who had received instructions frmo the apostles. In the time of this Clement, no small dissension having occurred among theb rothers at Corinth, the Church in Rome dispatched a most powerful letter to the Corinthians.Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3.3.3 ~AD 185 (, 54)

For this is the manner in which the apostolic churches transmit their registers: as the church of Smyrna, which records that Polycarp was placed therein by John; as also the church of Rome, which makes Clement to have been ordained in like manner by Peter.Tertullian, The Prescription Against Heretics 32 (, 54)

Therefore, having received orders and complete certainty caused by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ and believing in the Word of God, they went with the Holy Spirit’s certainty, preaching the good news that the kingdom of God is about to come.First Clement, 42:3 (, 54)

So Clement knew the apostles, especially Peter, and was in a great position to pass on their teachings. He tells us that the apostles did indeed believe in the resurrection.

But Polycarp also was not only instructed by apostles, and conversed with many who had seen Christ, but was also, by apostles in Asia, appointed bishop of the Church in Smyrna, whom I also saw in my early youth, for he tarried [on earth] a very long time, and, when a very old man, gloriously and most nobly suffering mrtyrdom, departed this life, having always taught the things which he had learned from the apostles.Iranaeus, Against Heresies, 3.3.4 (, 54)

When I was still a boy I saw you in Lower Asia with Polycarp, when you had high status at the imperial court and wanted to gain his favor. I remember events from those days more clearly than those that happened recently…so that I can even picture the place where the blessed Polycarp sat and conversed, his comings and goings, his character, his personal appearance, his discourses to the crowds, and how he reported his discussions with John and others who had seen the Lord. He recalled their very words, what they reported about the Loard and his miracles and his teaching–things that Polycarp had heard directly from eyewitnesses of the Word of life and reported in full harmony with Scripture.Irenaeus, To Florinus (, 54-55)

So Polycarp, appointed by the apostle John (according to Tertullian), affirms the apostles’ belief in the resurrection as well.

The disciples believed so strongly that Christ had appeared to them alive that they were instantly changed from cowards who ran from death, and men who doubted Christ, to men completely sold out for Christ, willing to live, suffer, and die for the Gospel of the Christ who they believed appeared to them after His death.

Paul the persecutor was converted suddenly

Paul was a powerful and infamous persecutor of the very early church. Yet, he was suddenly converted to Christianity. In fact, within 3 years of his conversion, even those Paul had never met had heard of his amazing conversion:

22 But I was personally unknown to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. 23 They were only hearing, “The one who once persecuted us is now proclaiming the good news of the faith he once tried to destroy.”Galatians 1:22-23

Paul was converted not as a neutral observer, but as an enemy of Christ. What’s more, his conversion was not the result of his friends trying their best to convince him of Christianity, but of what he believed to be a personal encounter with the risen Christ.

James, Jesus’ skeptical brother, was converted suddenly

Josephus mentions “the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ, whose name was James” (Antiquities 20:200). Skeptics often argue that Josephus’ writings have been proven to be fraudulent. While some of his supposed writings (especially Testimonium Flavianum) have been shown to be altered texts, this particular writing is considered by nearly all scholars to be authentic, and thus is included in the list of minimal facts. Needless to say, there is much other evidence, both from secular and Christian sources, telling us about James the brother of Christ.

James, the brother of the Lord, succeeded to the government of the Church in conjunction with the apostles. He has been called the Just by all from the time of our Savior to the present day; for there were many that bore the name of James. He was holy from his mother’s womb; and he drank no wine nor strong drink, nor did he eat flesh. No razor came upon his head; he did not anoint himself with oil, and he did not use the [public] bath. He alone was permitted to enter into the holy place; for he wore not woolen but linen garments. And he was in the habit of entering alone into the temple, and was frequently found upon his knees begging forgiveness for the people, so that his knees became hard like those of a camel, in consequence of his constantly bending them in his worship of God, and asking forgiveness for the people. Because of his exceeding great justice he was called the Just, and Oblias, which signifies the Greek, “Bulwark of the people” and “Justice,” in accordance with what the prophets declare concerning him.Hegesippus (, 67-68)

James was a pious Jew, skeptical of Christ, along with Jesus’ other brothers. He is listed in the ancient creed in 1 Corinthians 15:2-7 as having witnessed the resurrected Christ, and it is after the resurrection event is supposed to have happened that James is found to be a leader at the church in Jerusalem. He was so convinced of his experience that he was willing to die as a martyr, a fact which is noted by even secular historians, recorded by Josephus, Clement, and Hegesippus (through Eusebius). Reginald Fuller noted in The Formation of the Resurrection Narratives that, even had we no historical records of James’ encounter with the risen Christ, “we should have to invent” one in order to explain both his conversion and his rise to such a position in the Jerusalem church.

The tomb was empty

As noted previously, this fact does not fall under the “minimal facts,” because not “nearly all” scholars agree with it. However, the majority of scholars do (roughly 75%) and it is well evidenced.

Enemy attestation

That the tomb was empty is admitted even by enemies of Christianity. Matthew records that the Jews paid some to say that the disciples had stolen the body (28:12-13). Justin Martyr and Tertullian record the same claim. If the tomb were not empty, this would be needless. However, in their attempts to disprove the resurrection, the enemies of Christianity actually argued for the empty tomb.

Location in Jerusalem

Jerusalem is the place where Jesus was publicly executed on the Roman cross. It is there that He was buried, and there that His resurrection was first proclaimed. If the resurrection were false, surely there would be some evidence for this–the body being presented, perhaps, and records of this being done. The early church exploded to life in Jerusalem. If someone wanted to see if Christ were really resurrected, they could simply visit the tomb which was supposed to be empty. Yet there is no evidence that anyone found reason to doubt the resurrection of Jesus.

The fact that the Christian fellowship, founded on belief in Jesus’ resurrection, could come into existence and flourish in the very city where he was executed and buried seems to be compelling evidence for the historicity of the empty tomb.

It would have been impossible for the disciples to proclaim the resurrection in Jerusalem had the tomb not been empty.William Lane Craig

Testimony of women

The first witnesses of the empty tomb were women, as recorded in all four Gospels (the men are only mentioned in two). Were the resurrection a hoax, it is unlikely the made-up testimony would have included women, and certainly not as the primary witnesses to the empty tomb, since women were looked down upon in the cultures of that time.

Sooner let the words of the Law be burnt than delivered to women.Talmud, Sotah 19a (, 72)

The world cannot exist without males and without females–happy is he whose children are males, and woe to him whose children are females.Talmud, Kiddushin 82b (, 72)

Any evidence which a woman [gives] is not valid (to offer), also they are not valid to offer. This is equivalent to saying that one who is Rabbinically accounted a robber is qualified to give the same evidence as a woman.Talmud, Rosh Hashannah 1.8 (, 72)

But let not the testimony of women be admitted, on account of the levity and boldness of their sex, nor let servants be admitted to give testimony on account of the ignobility of their soul; since it is probably that they may not speak truth, either out of hope of gain, or fear of punishment.Josephus, Antiquities 4.8.15 (, 72)

Even the disciples didn’t believe the women:

But these words seemed like pure nonsense to them, and they did not believe them.Luke 24:11

Notice that even the Christian writer Luke did not try to make the disciples look good, as he would be expected to do were the resurrection narrative a hoax. He faithfully recorded that even the disciples did not believe the resurrection at first. He also did not appeal to Joseph of Arimathea or any other more respected person to make the account more credible. There seems to be no reason to invent an account involving women as witnesses. Rather, the testimony of the women argues in favor of a true, historical account.

Summary

The minimal facts, as accepted by nearly all scholars, include the following facts and evidences:

1. Jesus died by crucifixion
   • Josephus
   • Tacitus
   • Lucian
   • Mara Bar-Serapion
   • Talmud
2. Jesus’ disciples believed that He rose and appeared to them
   • Paul’s accounts
   • Oral tradition (creeds and sermon summaries)
   • Written tradition (both Biblical and extra-Biblical)
   • Willingness to live, suffer, and die for their convictions regarding the risen Christ
3. Paul the persecutor was converted suddenly
   • His conversion records
   • His suffering and martyrdom (recorded in both Christian and non-Christian sources)
4. James, Jesus’ skeptical brother, was converted suddenly
   • His conversion (gospels, early creeds, Paul, and Acts)
   • His martyrdom (Josephus, Clement, and Hegesippus through Eusebius)
5. The tomb was empty
   • Enemy attestation
   • The Jerusalem location
   • Testimony of women

Though nearly 2000 years have passed, not a single naturalistic explanation has been given that can account for the minimal facts.

Who Is The Real Jesus: The Jesus Of The Bible Or The Jesus Of The Qur’An?

From Dr. William Lane Craig and reasonablefaith.org.

“Jesus of Nazareth is the most influential person who ever lived.  Twenty centuries after his death, he continues to exert his power of fascination over the minds of thinking men and women.  Peter Jennings’ television special “In Search of Jesus” attracted some 16 million viewers across the country.  Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” grossed   million dollars.  Dan Brown’s book The DaVinci Code has been a runaway best seller, exceeding the 100 million mark in some 40 languages.  People obviously continue to be fascinated by Jesus.

But who is Jesus really?  Is he, as the Bible says, the divine Son of God?  Or was he merely a human prophet, as Muslims have been taught to believe?  Who is the real Jesus?

I propose to answer that question as a historian.  I shall look at the New Testament and the Qur’an as the historian looks at any other sources for ancient history.  I shall not treat them as inspired or holy books.  Accordingly, I shall not require them to be inerrant or infallible in order to be valuable historical sources.  By taking this historical approach, we prevent the discussion from degenerating into arguments over Bible difficulties or Qur’anic inconsistencies.  The question is not whether the sources are inerrant but whether they allow us to discover who the historical Jesus really was.

Now in order to determine who the historical Jesus really was, we need to have some objective criteria for assessing our sources.  Prof. John Meier, an eminent New Testament historian, lists the following four criteria: 1

1. Multiple, independent sources.  Events which are reported by independent, and especially early, sources are likely to be historical.

2. Dissimilarity.  If a saying or event is different from prior Judaism and also from later Christianity, then it probably doesn’t derive from either one and so belongs to the historical Jesus.

3. Embarrassment.  Sayings or events that would have been embarrassing or difficult for the Christian church are unlikely to have been invented and so are likely historical.

4. Rejection and execution.  Jesus’ crucifixion is so indisputably established as an anchor point in history that words and deeds of Jesus must be assessed in terms of their likelihood of leading to his execution as “King of the Jews.”  A bland Jesus who just preached monotheism would never have provoked such opposition.”

To read more click here.

“What should be the focus of Christians on Thanksgiving?”

From gotquestions.org.

“Answer: First, a brief history of Thanksgiving – the original thanksgiving celebration was held by the Pilgrim settlers in Massachusetts during their second winter in America in December 1621. The first winter had killed 44 of the original 102 colonists. At one point their daily food ration was down to five kernels of corn apiece, but then an unexpected trading vessel arrived, swapping them beaver pelts for corn, providing for their severe need. The next summer’s crop brought hope, and Governor William Bradford decreed that December 13, 1621, be set aside as a day of feasting and prayer to show the gratitude of the colonists that they were still alive. These Pilgrims, seeking religious freedom and opportunity in America, gave thanks to God for His provision for them in helping them find 20 acres of cleared land, for the fact that there were no hostile Indians in that area, for their newfound religious freedom, and for God’s provision of an interpreter to the Indians in Squanto.

Along with the feasting and games involving the colonists and more than 80 friendly Indians (who added to the feast by bringing wild turkeys and venison), prayers, sermons, and songs of praise were important in the celebration. Three days were spent in feasting and prayer.

From that time forward, Thanksgiving has been celebrated as a day to give thanks to God for His gracious and sufficient provision. President Abraham Lincoln officially set aside the last Thursday of November, in 1863, “as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father.” In 1941, Congress ruled that after 1941, the fourth Thursday of November be observed as Thanksgiving Day and be a legal holiday.

Scripturally, you find things related to the issue of thanksgiving nearly from cover to cover. You find individuals offering up sacrifices out of gratitude in the book of Genesis. You find the Israelites singing a song of thanksgiving as they were delivered from Pharaoh’s army after the crossing of the Red Sea (Exodus 15). Later, the Mosaic Law set aside three times each year when the Israelites were to gather together. All three of these times [Unleavened Bread (also called the Feast of the Passover) (Exodus 12:15-20), Harvest or Pentecost (Leviticus 23:15-21), and the Feast of Ingathering or Tabernacles (Leviticus 23:33-36)] involved remembering God’s provision and grace. Harvest and Tabernacles took place specifically in relation to God’s provision in the harvest of various fruit trees and crops. The book of Psalms is packed full of songs of thanksgiving, both for God’s grace to the Israelite people as a whole through His mighty deeds, as well as for His individual graces to each of us.

In the New Testament, there are repeated admonitions to give thanks to God. Thanksgiving is to always be a part of our prayers. Some of the most remembered passages on the giving of thanks are the following:

“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18).

“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God” (Philippians 4:6).

“Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men” (1 Timothy 2:1).

It is also interesting to note that one of the charges brought against mankind universally is that, although we have an innate knowledge of God and of His provisions to us, we are unthankful (Romans 1:18-21). This is brought out in one pastor’s attempt in trying to illustrate the importance of sharing with those having less than we have. He had asked the children to come to the front and sit in the front pew on both sides of the church. Then he began to hand out a few M&M’s to the children on one side and none to the children on the other side. After doing so, he stood back and asked if they noticed anything wrong. One child, on the side having the candy, piped up, and indicating the child next to him, said, “Yeah, you gave him three, and you only gave me two!” So, too often, instead of noticing all that we have been given and being thankful for it and sharing it with others, we focus on what we don’t have instead.

Of all of God’s gifts, the greatest one He has given is the gift of His Son, Jesus Christ. On the cross of Calvary, Jesus paid our sin debt, so a holy and just Judge could forgive us our sins and give us eternal life as a free gift. This gift is available to those who will call on Christ to save them from their sin in simple but sincere faith (John 3:16; Romans 3:19-26; Romans 6:23; Romans 10:13; Ephesians 2:8-10). For this gift of His Son, meeting our greatest need, the Apostle Paul says, “Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!” (2 Corinthians 9:15).

We, like the Pilgrims, have a choice: in life there will always be those things that we can complain about (the Pilgrims had lost many loved ones), but there will also be much to be thankful for. As our society becomes increasingly secular, I am afraid that the actual “giving of thanks to God” during our annual Thanksgiving Holiday is being overlooked, leaving only the feasting. May God grant that He may find us grateful every day for all of His gifts, spiritual and material. God is good, and every good gift comes from Him (James 1:17). For those who know Christ, God also works everything together for good, even events we would not necessarily consider good (Romans 8:28-30). May He find us to be His grateful children.”

Getting the Facts Straight: Religion as Poison?

From Chuck Colson and Breakpoint.“The outstanding film Amazing Grace hits shelves this week in DVD form—and it comes at a time when Christianity is under blistering attack. In his new book, God Is Not Great, subtitled How Religion Poisons Everything, anti-theist Christopher Hitchens states, “religion makes people do wicked things they wouldn’t ordinarily do . . . the licenses for genocide, slavery, racism, are all right there in the holy text.”

It is a rather empty accusation when put alongside a man like William Wilberforce, who as the film Amazing Grace shows, attacked and abolished the slave trade because of his Christian convictions. As you can see, that raises a difficult question for people like Hitchens: If Christianity “licenses” slavery, then why was the abolition of slavery, both in antiquity and in modern times, driven by Christians?

In ancient times in the Roman Empire, slavery was a fact of life—one which the writings of the Scripture reflect. But acknowledging social reality is not the same thing as “licensing” it.

When the Apostle Paul wrote to Philemon and when he wrote that “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus,” he planted the seeds that would, one day, lead to the demise of the institution of slavery. Likewise, Paul included “slave traders” among those he identified as “lawbreakers.”

Sociologist Rodney Stark writes about the Church’s embrace around the third century of what he calls “a universalistic conception of humanity.” This conception “[liberated] social relations between the sexes and within the family” and “greatly modulated class differences . . . ” As Stark put it, “more than rhetoric was involved when slave and noble greeted one another as brothers in Christ.”

Given this liberating ideal, it was only a matter of time before Christians sought to eradicate slavery entirely.

It is true that Christians have not always lived up to the moral teachings of the faith: The record of the Church is not without blemish. But it is also true that when Christians kept and traded slaves, they were going against the teachings of their own religion. The theological question had long been settled.

Thus, when Spanish and Portuguese traders brought slavery to the New World, successive popes condemned the practice and even threatened to excommunicate slave traders and slave owners. And when in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, men like William Wilberforce in Britain and William Garrison in America led the fight against slavery and the slave trade, they led, like their early Church counterparts, motivated by Christian teaching on human dignity and equality.

Hitchens’s assertion that economic factors and not Christian abolitionists did away with slavery is, to put it mildly, absurd. Wilberforce and company succeeded despite the economic interests, not because of them.

When Christians obey their teachings, they are the greatest defenders of human rights in the world. Hitchens and company deny this, but the evidence belies them.

So here’s an idea: Buy a copy of the DVD Amazing Grace this week and host a viewing party in your home. What a great opportunity to talk with your neighbors about the real facts: how Christianity, far from poisoning everything, helped purify trans-Atlantic waters once filled with the sickening crime of human trafficking.”

Federal government strips “God” from the Washington Monument

From the American Family Association.

National monument no longer references God

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The National Park Service, a branch of the federal government, has joined the Veterans Administration in establishing anti-Christian bigotry as public policy. The NPS has censored “God” from a key display of America’s Christian heritage in Washington.

The reference is an engraving of “Laus Deo,” which is Latin for “Praise be to God,” on the east side of the 100-ounce aluminum cap atop of the Washington Monument.

Since the actual inscription on the cap is unviewable atop the 555-foot stone column, the NPS created a replica which is on display in the white-colored obelisk of marble, granite and sandstone.

Now “God” has been removed from the plaque containing information about the Washington Monument. In 2000 the plaque read:

APEX OF THE MONUMENT Reproduction The builders searched for an appropriate metal for the apex that would not tarnish and would act as a lightning rod. They chose one of the rarest metals of the time, aluminum. The casting was inscribed with the phrase, Laus Deo, (Praise be to God).

The NPS censored the last sentence from the latest plaque, which now reads:

CAP OF THE MONUMENT Reproduction The builders searched for appropriate metal for the cap that would not tarnish and would act as a lightning rod. They chose one of the rarest metals of the time – aluminum.

In addition, the replica of the cap which is in the monument has been positioned so close to the wall that the wording “Laus Deo” cannot be read. Prior to the censorship by the NPS, the replica wording could be read.

It was the third time in just the past few weeks that an agency of the federal government has banned the use of “God.” First was the Architect of the Capitol banning religious references when issuing flag certificates. That ruling was later rescinded. Next came the Veterans Administration censoring religious references in the script used to describe each fold of the flag at 125 national cemeteries. That censoring came after only one person complained.

Because of the NPS censorship, children and other visitors to the monument now have no way to know that the words, ‘Laus Deo,’ (‘Praise be to God’), are inscribed on the original cap atop the monument! This censoring of God will help establish anti-Christian bigotry into federal law.

Click Here for more information.

	Take Action Send President Bush an email asking that he rescind this anti-Christian censorship by the National Park Service. Your email will also go to the Secretary of the Interior and the NPS Director. Please forward this to your friends and family and urge them to take action. Click Here to Send Your Letter Now!

Now, God banished from Washington Monument: Historic cap engraving ‘Laus Deo’ out of sight

From Bob Unruh and Worldnetdaily.com.

“The National Park Service has banished God from a key display of America’s Christian heritage in Washington, and a California pastor who regularly leads teams of visitors to see markers of the nation’s religious history wants Him restored.

The reference is an engraving of “LAUS DEO,” which is Latin for “Praise be to God,” and is on the east side of the 100-ounce aluminum cap of the Washington Monument.

Since the actual inscription on the cap, which on the other three sides provides other information, is unviewable atop the 555-foot stone column, the National Park Service has created a replica, which is on display inside the white-colored obelisk of marble, granite and sandstone.”

To read more click here.