The Attack On Jesus

After I just did the piece on the South Park episode, it occurred to me that this has been quite a couple of weeks for attacks upon Jesus. I have a special blog devoted to spiritual issues, but with all of the items in the news related to Jesus, I felt I wanted to draw your attention to these and briefly discuss them in order to inform.

First, is the so-called "Lost" Gospel of Judas, which supposedly gives an account of what his role in the Crucifixion was. Of course it is a different account from that found in the traditional Gospels, and he (Judas) is a "good guy" in this gospel, only following the wishes of Jesus in order to fulfull will of the Father.

The truth is that this so-called gospel was found about 30 years ago, in the 70s, in Egypt, not just now, and has been dealt with by biblical scholars in the same manner as other extra biblical texts, such as the Gospel of Thomas. While the 4 accepted Gospels were writte within 30 years of the death of Jesus, and many people still lived who witnessed the events, this one was written no earlier than 150 years later by those who had not witnessed anything.

This text is one of many writings from the Gnostic movement. The Gnostics, whose name is a derivative of the Greek word Gnosis meaning knowledge, were a cult that developed at the end of the first century. Gnostics believes that they had a special and secret inner knowledge of God. They were a secret society and thought themselves superior to common christians. The Apostle Paul spoke of them in his first letter to the Corintians.

In essence the Gnostics perveted the gospel into an eastern mystical message that God lies within each of us and must be discovered and released. Today's Unity religion, which also considers itself Christian, would be one of the descendant of Gnosticism.

These writings we known to and rejected by the early church. Many of these texts were hidden because of the fact that they were heretical, and usually destroyed if discovered by the early church leaders. To compare this work to the four gospels is dishonest at worst and poor scholarship at best.

Next we have the Florida State University professor who seems to have discovered that Jesus did not walk on water, but rather may have walked on ice. According to Professor Nof, at that time northern Palestine experienced a cold climate and the lakes would have had ice formations. As I wrote to the university questioning this mans right to a professorship, an 8th grader with a basic bible knowledge could have dealt with this. It was pretty clear that Professor Nof, had not read the bible's account. He says that "it may have appeared to those on shore at a distance," that Jesus walked on water when it was most likely ice. The problem with that is that the biblical account states that the disciples had rowed about 3 1/2 miles into the lake when Jesus walked out to them. Secondly, the account states that as Jesus approached them, he bid Peter to come out to Him. Which Peter did. This presents 2 problems. It debunks the idea that the disciples saw this at a distance, and also that if peter got out and walked then he must have been on a second piece of ice. That does not even deal with the question of what were the disciples doing out on the ice, in a boat, in the first place.

Then we have the soon to be released Da Vinci Code film. The book initially released as non-fiction, tries to make the case that Jesus had a sexual relationship with Mary Magdeline and that they had a child, who was the true Holy Grial. The book goes further in saying that this line of Jesus carried on and remains today. While this book and the film are great fiction, they are just that. Unfortunately it will catch many unsupecting people off guard and caus ethe weak to question their faith.

If we put all of this and other items together we see a pattern. The American media and entertainment industry is trying help turn America into a secular humanist society, like that of modern Europe. To understand what this means and the danger we face I want to recommend and urge you to read the book The Cube And The Cathedral. It gives a picture of where Europe is, and where we will be if, we do not stop the secular humanist advance. I will just give you a hint, it is not in a good place.