Blog: Come to Think About It by Dr. Jerry Newcombe

10/15/2009

In the summer of 2009, a multitude of Christians, mostly families, including a lot of homeschoolers, came together in Boston for a unique celebration. Doug Phillips, founder and director of VISION FORUM, the group that organized this celebration, called Reformation 500. We interviewed him for Coral Ridge Ministries-TV. He noted: “This year marks the 500^th anniversary of one of the great men of Christendom, Mr. John Calvin. It’s from John Calvin that we have become the beneficiaries of a legacy of freedom, including republican representative government….This weekend for the anniversary of John Calvin’s birth, we have more than 1,000 people gathered here from more than 25 states around the United States of America, hundreds of home educators, children involved in different forms of education, but all here because of one common denominator—they love the Lord Jesus Christ and they want to honor their fathers, in this case, the fathers of the Reformation.”

John Calvin was born in France in 1509. As a young man, he studied law, but conversion to Christ changed his life’s direction. Because of Protestant activity, he had to flee France. He ended up in Geneva, Switzerland, and for virtually the rest of his life, he preached here, at St. Pierre’s Cathedral. His pulpit and writing ministries ended up having a huge impact on theology, on economics, on education, on civil government, and on law. Martin Luther initiated the Protestant Reformation, but John Calvin following a couple of decades later systematized it, theologically. He is regarded as one of the greatest theologians in the history of the Church. In the two centuries following his death, many of Calvin’s most ardent followers fled persecution in Europe and came to America. They played key roles in the settling and founding of America. So much so that one scholar noted that 2-3rds of the colonists at the time of America’s independence had been “trained in the school of John Calvin.”

Pastor and speaker Dr. Joseph Morecraft III from the Atlanta area was one of the speakers at the Reformation 500 celebration. “There wouldn’t be an America without John Calvin. Most of the people that were in the colonies in the 1700s were people of Calvinistic background from Scotland, Scots-Irish, England, Germany, France, Switzerland, Holland, and these people brought with them the faith that they were persecuted for in the Protestant Reformation.”

Author John Eidsmoe is a retired law school professor and a walking encyclopedia on America’s Christian roots. He was one of the experts delivering lectures and providing field tours for the Reformation 500 event. Eidsmoe noted this: “George Bancroft, who is considered to be the leading American historian from the early part of the 1800s, simply calls [Calvin] the Father of America.”

Eidsmoe points out that Calvin’s theology, based on the witness of the Bible, postulated a low view of human nature--- believing in the sinfulness of man. Experts find this to be a view generally held by the founding fathers. Therefore, they worked toward creating a limited government---trying to prevent any individual or small group of people from seizing absolute power. He notes: “Calvinism came to emphasize limits on government power, and those limits are very well expressed, not only in the colonial governments, in those 13 American colonies, but also in the United States Constitution, which puts together a form of government based on that view of human nature about as well as is ever been done in the history of the world.”

Dr. Paul Jehle, the president of Plymouth Rock Foundation, also spoke at Reformation 500. He stated: “As Americans reflect on what to give thanks for, there is a whole load, or we might say, a boatload of blessings that came over on every immigration beginning with the Pilgrims.”

For example, the Pilgrims who settled Plymouth in 1620 were devout Christians following in the tradition of Calvin---who stressed covenant theology. Before they disembarked, the Pilgrims wrote up an agreement for self-government, the Mayflower Compact. This was the first step toward the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, agreements for self-government nearly 150 years later. The Mayflower Compact was based on the Biblical concept of covenant. Jehle points out, “That concept of covenant came over to the colonies and that’s why we have so many written charters, written constitutions every time you… you turn around in studying American History, somebody else is writing a covenant for a town, for a colony, for a state, because this idea of covenant keeping is an idea throughout the Bible, of course, but it was uh... articulated and became very influential through the writings of John Calvin.”

Contributions from Calvinism to the American experience includes a heavy emphasis on education…where the Bible was the chief textbook for centuries. This includes education at all levels. Harvard, Yale, Princeton were all Calvinistic in their founding. Also, the push for American independence was heavily influenced by Calvinism and Calvin’s disciple, John Knox, the father of the Presbyterian Church.

Morecraft observed, “Why did we declare our independence from King George III? The Declaration of Independence in good Knoxian and Calvinistic fashion said, he broke his covenant with us, and we’re no longer obligated to keep our covenant with him, and so we declare ourselves a free and independent nation….So, we wouldn’t have the Declaration of Independence without John Calvin.”

Also, many scholars believe that the free enterprise system and capitalism itself arose from Calvin’s teachings of the Scriptures. Perhaps, Calvin’s greatest contribution to America and to the world was the concept that the Bible had something to say about all aspects of life.

Yet another speaker was Marshall Foster, speaker on the recent DVD series, From Terror to Triumph. Dr. Fosters notes: “The century of Calvin has been the greatest century for the Church of Jesus Christ since the 1^st century AD. It was the century of the most massive transformation of the world… that the world had ever known, except for the coming of Christ, for now the Word of God was unleashed into the hands of the individual. Now, for the first time, the doctrines of the faith made their way into the home and into the family, and into every institution.”

In modern America, where Columbus is no longer a hero, where the founding fathers are viewed by too many as “just a bunch of dead white guys,” it’s time that we begin to reclaim our rich heritage and give credit where credit is due.

Doug Phillips has the final word: “In the same way that we remember George Washington, the great founder of America and we thank God for the way he was used, we do the same thing for John Calvin. So, this is a time to celebrate, it’s a time to say thank you, it’s a time to honor our fathers. And here’s what the Bible says: “If we honor our fathers, it will be well with us and we will live long in the land which God has given to us.”

| Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0) | Published: 10/15/2009 10:23 AM

7/21/2009

New Years Resolution in July—Some Reflections on Losing Weight

Every year around January 1, most of us go through the ritual of setting New Years resolutions. For many people there is a perpetual goal to lose weight. I know I have struggled with that for years.

Since the year is half over, and since most of us still struggle with that goal, I want to pour out some thoughts on this issue. I have experienced some success in this area, as well as setbacks. But I’m reminded of what Chuck Swindoll talks about concerning accomplishments in general: 3 steps forward, 2 steps backwards. If it’s true that virtually any habit can be made by doing it 21 days in a row, then why not get going now—to start a new lifestyle.

If you’re overweight, please don’t take offense at any of this. Who knows? I may inspire someone to work toward taking off unwanted weight. Who knows? I may be able to add years to someone’s life—and quality to those years.

I have noticed that it is easy to use food as a means of therapy—as a pick-me- up, when dealing with life’s difficulties. But when you eat to feel better, then you get fatter, and then you feel worse because of your girth. As a result, you eat more to soothe your bad feelings, and the vicious cycle repeats. Some people feel discouraged because they have worked hard (but not smart) at losing weight, and their lack of results has discouraged them to the point of giving up.

In the winter of 2002-2003, I did two things that helped me in this area. First, at the gym I go to, I hired a trainer (as part of a group rate). (It’s nowhere near as expensive as I thought it would be—or as it could be, I suppose, in other contexts). Second, I began to participate in runs, .e.g., 5k’s, 10k’s, 5 milers, etc. A friend who works free- lance for Coral Ridge Ministries got me into the serious running—not that I’m fast, but I do it. That friend used to always say of running: “It sure beats the doctor’s bills.”

I know that people who are overweight constantly deal with the fat jokes, which they hate. I remember one time that there was a rather large fellow high up in the air on a cherry-picker type of lift. He was examining something up there, and he kept saying, “It’s a mystery. It’s a mystery.” And someone below (not me) quipped, “What? How so much fat can cling to the human frame?” Slow burn.

I used to joke all the time, “I’m in shape---round is a shape.” But I have been able to lose many pounds and keep them off. However, it is an ongoing struggle. It is not easy.

Through a lot of directed training, I was able to really get a handle on my weight loss. And I think it has improved the quality of my life. If anyone considers getting into exercise, be sure to seek out a physician’s advice before you start—especially if you are over 30. Furthermore, if you choose running as your method of losing weight, make sure you don’t skimp out on getting good shoes. And keep in mind, those good shoes don’t last forever either. If you skimp on this, you may end up hurting your knees, and then you can’t exercise. It defeats the whole purpose.

One of the great keys to weight loss is counter-intuitive: eat often. Don’t be like a camel and eat a large meal and store it.

Dieting includes the factor of input vs. output. Which is greater? When the input is greater than the output—day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year—is it any wonder we are becoming a nation of overweight people??

One statement in a non-Christian book really bothered me. Sam Harris in his Letter to a Christian Nation, says that Christians are fat. Well, I know many Christians who are disciplined in many ways, but they have let themselves go as far as being overweight. I discussed this once with a friend—about all the fat we find in the body of Christ. He said, “What other sin is left?” We can’t smoke, etc. But we can eat. And do we ever! We often build many functions around food.

In the ancient Church, gluttony was viewed as one of the seven deadly sins. In its own way, it is still deadly, and not only to the body. In modern evangelicalism, it seems that many don’t care about the issue. We just let ourselves go—and go and go and go. We need to remember that self-control is one of the fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5).

What a tragedy that so many Christians let themselves go. By the grace of God, we can live longer, and with better quality of life, if we keep in shape.

This problem, of course, is not restricted to ministers, theologians, seminary professors, laypeople. Think of the famous newsman, Tim Russert, who was a terrific interviewer. He was an equal-opportunity journalistic bulldog. But he collapsed and died, though only in his late 50s. I remember when I first heard of his death, one of my first thoughts was: Get thee to the gym, before it’s too late. It was too late for him, but not necessarily too late for you or me.

I know that God is sovereign and He determines our days. But I also know that He who ordains the ends ordains the means. The research that is out there about the deleterious effects of being overweight is so abundant. We don’t need more studies, more research. We need more discipline. We need to live like January 1 on July 1 and August 1, and throughout the year. And whatever we do, we should do it to God’s glory.

Some people have glandular problems; therefore, they are overweight. I have sympathy for them. But this is relatively rare. Most people who are overweight are overweight because of their behavior. One of the main points I want to make about dieting is just this—-stick with it, no matter what. Don’t let yourself go.

Think of every time you over-consume, one day you’ll have to work that off.

Every bite you take may require lots of exercise some day. …or at least some exercise.

I think this is a lifetime struggle.

I have learned to try and keep the weight off because it’s so hard to run when carrying so much weight. Imagine running with a five pound bag of sugar in your arms. That’s what it is like having five extra pounds. Put a five pound bag in a knapsack and put it on your back and run with that too. Then add five more pounds, making it ten. Add 3 more bags and that is fifteen pounds. Imagine what a strain that would be, trying to walk or run around with such weight. Yet many of us seem to think nothing of carrying around 20, 25, or 30 pounds.

It seems as if once you get into the right zone, your body will burn fat for you. But you can’t just eat and eat and eat and never exercise and expect good results.

One thing I would recommend as well is to build up to some great goal. When I first started running races in 2003—and again, I’m slow—I learned that I was competing against me, not my neighbor. But my neighbor made me go faster than I would alone. I began with a 5 k (5,000 kilometers—about 3 miles), then built up to a 5-miler, then a 10-k, then eventually a half-marathon, and about two years later, all the way to a full marathon. The training for the marathon was so helpful in my weight loss.

Later, I hurt my left knee in overtraining, so I listened to my body and cut back. Then I discovered spinning classes at the gym. I use earplugs because I can’t vouch for all the music they play, and they play it too loudly.

So which is the best exercise for you? The one you actually do. My wife walks vigorously and keeps off the pounds. At this point, I try to do a half-marathon about two times a year, plus many spinning classes. To keep up with the half-marathons, I usually run 10 miles on a weekend morning at least once a month.

Despite all the running and despite all the spinning, I still struggle with my weight, but nowhere near the level I used to. My friend who got me into all the running points out that when we get back into the season (the Florida winter) when there are so many races, I will start to get a better handle on my weight control.

I hope you’ll join me in striving for your annual New Year’s resolution, only this time in July and throughout the year….as a lifestyle change. But I believe we will never have victory in this area until we see gluttony as a sin. Food is one of God’s greatest gifts, but like all of His gifts, it can be abused.

So it’s time to get out those running shoes, and get thee to the gym.

| Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0) | Published: 7/21/2009 9:00 AM

6/18/2009

"The DaVinci Code" myths resurface again

Christianity is based on a firm foundation. But you wouldn’t necessarily know that today with some of the TV specials out these days. Recently, Hollywood released what I understand is an anti-Christian movie, Angels and Demons. I would see it myself, but I don’t want to give a penny to support them. Every time you see a movie, you vote with your feet. You say, “Yes, Hollywood, make more movies like that!” (Ted Baehr, publisher of Movieguide, saw it and pans it from a Christian perspective, so that will suffice for me for now, until there were some way I could see it without supporting it.)

Anyway, the movie is based on the book by Dan Brown, author of the blockbuster, The DaVinci Code. I read that book a few years ago (but never supported the movie), nor did I buy the book. Someone gave it to me. I read it because I was assigned as the lead producer of a Coral Ridge Ministries-TV special on the subject. Plus, I wrote a book with the late Dr. Kennedy on the subject, to come out in time for the movie. The book was called The DaVinci Myth Vs. the Gospel Truth (Crossway, 2006). Because of the movie coming out, some of the documentary-type channels (History Channel, etc.) have shown specials (since Angels and Demons came out) that have promoted many of the lies found in The DaVinci Code. The book is a novel. If you take it as a 100% novel, fine. But the bad thing is that the author claims that his alleged background information is true. If it were true, and it’s not, then Christianity would be bogus.

Since these myths keep resurfacing, let me address some of the main ones. (This is adapted in part from the aforementioned book I wrote with Dr. Kennedy) as well as the television documentary John Rabe and I produced for Coral Ridge Ministries---The Da Vinci Delusion.

We are all entitled to our own opinions, but we are not entitled to our own facts.

Upon examination, The Da Vinci Code is chock full of errors. Some are unimportant; others, if true, would spell the end of Christianity. If they were true, by the way, we would be the first to abandon the faith. We do not seek to perpetuate something which is untrue. We do not seek to worship the Jesus Christ who never really was. As Paul said, if Jesus were not raised from the dead—if His body did not come out of that tomb—then our faith is vain and we are most pitied of all men (1 Corinthians 15:19).

There are three big questions about Jesus that The Da Vinci Code raises that need to be addressed:

∙Was Jesus married?

∙Were there other gospels and writings that were excluded from the New Testament? Were these the original writings about Jesus?

∙Was Jesus’ divinity something not believed by the early church but only added later, in the 4^th century?

First issue: Was Jesus married? Note what Darrell Bock said in our TV special, The DaVinci Delusion (Coral Ridge Ministries, 2006) on this issue. “The most glitzy error is the idea that Jesus Christ was married. That’s probably what has grabbed a lot of people’s attention. We don’t have any evidence anywhere in any kind of document of any sort that Jesus was married. In fact, John Dominic Crossan, a liberal Christian of the Jesus Seminar, and I, were both asked to write pieces for beliefnet.com on whether Jesus was married, and we both agreed that He wasn’t that there was no evidence for that. And I tell my classes that when you get a conservative and a liberal Jesus scholar agreeing on something about Jesus, it’s probably true.”

Sandra Miesel, Co-author of The Da Vinci Hoax, said this on our program: “Dan Brown is not the first person to think this. This is, in Holy Blood, Holy Grail and Templar Revelation and lots of other places. Possibly the seed of the interest of the American public in the marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene was started by Martin Scorsese’s film 20 years ago The Last Temptation of Christ, in which Mary Magdalene has a romantic interest in Jesus and that’s also true in Jesus Christ, Superstar. So that’s down in the bedrock of the society we’re living in. And sex is so overblown today. People are titillated by the idea of a sexually active Jesus.”

While the idea of Jesus being married may be gaining some traction in the popular culture, it’s important to underscore it has absolutely no documentation from antiquity whatsoever. Here is another observation of Darrell Bock: “I have a collection in my library of 38 volumes, several hundred pages each, small font, single spaced, double columned, and out of all that material, both orthodox and unorthodox, none of those documents, not a single sentence anywhere says Jesus Christ was married.”

Finally, Dr. Paul Maier, Professor of Ancient History, Western Michigan University, notes:

We can prove that Jesus did not get married. 1 Corinthians 9, verse 5, where Paul, St. Paul says, “Don’t I have the right to have a wife accompanying me, like the brothers of the Lord and like the apostles?” Now, if Jesus would’ve been married, he would use a subordinate generation. He would’ve said, “Don’t I have a right to have a wife like our Lord and Master did?” He doesn’t say that, ‘cause Jesus wasn’t married.

So much for the “Was Jesus married?” question. Next, we consider this:

∙Were there other gospels and writings that were excluded from the New Testament? Were these the original writings about Jesus?

The Da Vinci Code claims that Constantine created the Bible. Rebuttal: Constantine had nothing to do with the canon of the New Testament. The book also claims that the early Church destroyed the gospels that challenged the four canonical ones. Rebuttal: Not true. The only destruction of “Scriptures” related to Christianity (either biblical ones or extra-biblical ones) was done by Roman emperors in persecutions, e.g., Diocletian did that a couple years before Constantine took the throne.

In 1945, near Nag Hammadi Egypt, some ancient writings were found. These were writings of the ancient Gnostics, a Christian New Age-type of sect. Some authors, like Dan Brown, like to trumpet these writings as if they are just as important or more reliable than Matthew, Mark, Luke or John---which is a totally false charge.

The Da Vinci Code claims there were eighty Gnostic gospels. Rebuttal: By any criterion, that number is grossly exaggerated. One liberal scholar, Dr. Bart D. Ehrman of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, says there may have been 17 (5 of which are the 5 gospels found in the Nag Hammadi texts). Even if we accept that figure, 17, it is far less than 80. Perhaps the most respected recent Bible scholar, who died a few years ago, was the Catholic Raymond Brown, editor of the massive The Jerome Biblical Commentator. He was respected by liberals and moderates alike (but not necessarily by all conservatives, because he was too liberal for them). Brown says of the Gnostic writings, such as the 52 Gnostic texts (including five “gospels”) found at Nag Hammadi: They were rubbish then (in the second, third, and fourth centuries). They are rubbish now.

The Da Vinci Code claims that there are thousands of documents besides the New Testament documents. One of the characters in the novel states about Jesus: “…his life was recorded by thousands of followers across the land.” Rebuttal: Try 52—at least that is the number of the Gnostic documents found at Nag Hammadi in 1945. There are other Gnostic writings beyond the Nag Hammadi texts, but no reputable scholar would agree that there were thousands (or even hundreds) of such texts.

Try reading some of these Gnostic texts sometimes. They are often full of gibberish. For example, here is a portion of The Gospel of Philip (c. 250 AD)—Brown’s only early source on the alleged union between Jesus and Mary Magdalene:

The lord went into the dye works of Levi. He took seventy-two different colors and threw them into the vat. He took them all out white. And he said, “Even so has the son of man come [as] a dyer.”

Erwin Lutzer says of The Gospel of Philip: “Read this gospel and you will find it to be a rambling and disjointed work…”

Returning to the idea that Christ’s life and words were recorded by “thousands of followers,” Dr. Gary Habermas points out that 90 percent of the population at that time in Israel was illiterate, and not all of those who were literate could write. Brown offers no evidence for these thousands of documents.

The clear implication in the novel is that the Church suppressed equally, or even more, valid gospels that didn’t tell the story the way the Church wanted it to be told.

Furthermore, Dr. Gary Habermas, author of The Historical Jesus, says of the whole idea in general that there were other Gospels out there, but these were suppressed by the Church:

The major problem with that kind of approach can be stated in one word: evidence. You’ve got the four First Century Gospels. They are the only four First Century Gospels. And you say, “Well, that’s because they squashed these other things.” I want evidence. I want somebody to tell me what the books are, what’s the competition, and what got squashed in this process. I’m saying there’s nothing like that. Where’s the data that there were competing Gospels decades after Jesus that got kicked out and only these four remained? Frankly, there are no written Gospels from the same time frame that are even in the picture. We don’t have Gospels. We don’t have stories of Jesus that are even competing. [emphasis mine]

The final question to explore here is this: “Was Jesus’ divinity something not believed by the early church but only added later, in the 4^th century?”

Unfortunately, millions have been told the lie through The Da Vinci Code that the doctrine that Jesus was divine was created by a pagan emperor in the fourth century, Constantine, for the purposes of manipulation: “It was all about power.” Rebuttal: After the Resurrection, Christians worshiped Jesus because He was divine. They called Him Kurios, the Greek word for “Lord.” In the Septuagint—the Greek translation of the Old Testament that Jesus and the apostles had (translated roughly 150 B.C.), the word used for Yahweh is Kurios. For a Jew to say that a human was Kurios was absolutely forbidden. The idea that Jesus was claiming Himself divine put Him repeatedly at odds with the temple authorities:

Jesus answered,….” I and the Father are one.” Again the Jews picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus said to them, “I have shown you many great miracles from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?” “We are not stoning you for any of these,” replied the Jews, “but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God” (John 10:25, 30-33, NIV).

These words come from a first century document, the Gospel of John. Most scholars think it was written near the end of the first century. Some scholars think—with good cause—that it was written before A.D. 70, when Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed. There was no mention of these cataclysmic events (an argument from silence), but more importantly, there is reference to things as if they were still there. For example, in John 5:2, it says, “Now there is in Jerusalem…” (emphasis ours). How could this be if Jerusalem had already been devastated?

Furthermore, we are told that the vote at the Council of Nicea, supposedly determining that Jesus was divine. No one believed that prior to Nicea. Rebuttal: That is errant nonsense. Again, in the Gospels, written in the first century, we see that Jesus was divine. This is why He was delivered up to be crucified. The Jews accused Him of blasphemy, which is why the Jews arrested Jesus and had a “trial” among themselves:

Again, the high priest asked Him, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?”

Jesus said, “I am,” “And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.”

Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, “What further need do we have of witnesses? You have heard the blasphemy! What do you think?”

And they all condemned Him to be deserving of death. (Mark 14:61-64).

Note that in the Greek, when Jesus said, “I am,” it is emphatic. We could translate it, “I AM!” (which to His hearers was a veiled reference to Exodus 3:14, when God identifies Himself to Moses as the great “I AM.”)

Even Arius, the heretic (and catalyst for the Nicene Council), is closer to the truth than Dan Brown. Arius believed that Jesus was a god, a created being, who then co-created the universe with the Father. But there was a time when He was not, declared Arius. To resolve the conflict between Arianism and orthodox views, Constantine called the Council. The orthodox formalized the traditional view of the Trinity in the Nicene Creed (325), but it was hotly contested. Yet, when the vote was finally cast, 316 bishops voted against Arius’ views—only two voted with him.

Dan Brown’s view that the early Christians believed Jesus was only a mortal rests on historical quicksand. From the very beginning, Christians worshiped Jesus as the Son of God. Jim Garlow and Peter Jones have compiled a list of several Church Fathers—all of whom wrote before the Council of Nicea in 325—affirming this most basic Christian doctrine that Jesus was divine. Those Fathers include: Ignatius (writing in 105 A.D.), Clement (150), Justin Martyr (160), Irenaeus (180), Tertullian (200), Origen (225), Novatian (235), Cyprian (250), Methodius (290), Lactantius (304), Arnobius (305). Furthermore, one of the earliest Christian creeds was “Jesus is the Lord” (Kurios) (1 Corinthians 12:3).

When you watch these TV specials these days that attack the Christian faith, please keep in mind that there are Christian answers.

| Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0) | Published: 6/18/2009 7:08 AM

6/3/2009

A Christian Response to Bart Ehrman, Part 2: The Reliability of the New Testament

By Jerry Newcombe

In my most recent posting, I spoke about an unbelieving Bible scholar of our time, who has a wide audience in our time, thanks to the anti-Christian nature of the media. His name is Bart Ehrman, and he is a former evangelical.

For those not familiar with him, Dr. Bart Ehrman lost his faith as evangelical when he attended Princeton Theological Seminary. The doubts began when he was confronted with the possibility that there was an error in Mark 2. This opened the floodgates of doubts. Today he is an agnostic and proclaims that the Bible is unreliable. He teaches religion at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

I saw Bart Ehrman in a debate with James White about five months ago in Fort Lauderdale. The gist of the debate was this: Are the New Testament documents reliable? Ehrman said no---all we have are copies or maybe copies of copies, etc. And there are discrepancies (albeit, generally minor ones) in those copies. White said yes. He even quoted from Ehrman’s own book wherein Ehrman points out that the vast majority of the minor variations in the Greek texts we do have never get translated out of Greek into any other language. They are variant spellings. I thought White really brought the whole thing home when he said that if you take Bart Erhman’s logic to its conclusion, then God---if there were a God---could not have given us an divinely-inspired Bible until 1949---when the photocopy machine was invented---because then each copy would be perfect.

Conservative scholars and even liberal scholars agree that only about 1% of the Greek New Testament is not textually certain. That means about 99% is totally certain, while 1% is questionable from a textual standpoint. None of the questionable passages have anything significant that is not stated elsewhere in the New Testament (often in many places). Virtually every modern Bible highlights these points. “Most early, reliable manuscripts do not contain this verse (or this passage)…” None of those questionable portions affect any major doctrines. It seems to me that what Ehrman is doing is throwing out the certain 99% because of the uncertain 1%.

Furthermore, the rigorous standard that Ehrman and his types (i.e., unbelieving Bible scholars) apply to the New Testament, they generally do not apply to pagan writings of antiquity. If they did, they would have to cast those documents off. In fact, we have far less copies of those manuscripts and the time gap between when they were written and the earliest extant copies is a much greater gap than what we have in the New Testament.

It’s really tragic when I consider the unbelief of Bart Ehrman, in particular because he is a former self-professed evangelical. He and I have something in common. Wheaton College. He went there for his undergraduate degree; I went there to grad school and met my wife-to-be there. By the grace of God, we’ve been happily married for 28 years, 10 months, and four weeks. But who’s counting? Also, I got to meet and interview someone that Bart Ehrman knew and even collaborated with---the late, great Dr. Bruce Metzger of Princeton, his former teacher. I interviewed Dr. Metzger for Coral Ridge Ministries’ Who Is This Jesus. There’s a huge gap between Dr. Metzger and Dr. Ehrman, though. The former believed in Jesus; the latter does not. Dr. Metzger believed Jesus died for his sins. He said in our video: “Certainly, I believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.” The belief that Jesus rose from the dead is something that Bart Ehrman now publically repudiates.

In a recent article in CNN about Bart Ehrman, he made the astounding claim that 19 of the 27 books of the NT are forgeries. I sent an email to my friend, Christian apologist, Dr. Mike Licona, who has publically debated Bart Ehrman on two occasions. He said of the forgeries claim: “It's an overstatement for effect. Ehrman claims that the original manuscripts of the NT did not contain the authorship title (Gospel according to Matthew), and that these [not the Gospels but the authorship titles] weren't introduced until the second century. Therefore, they were pseudonymous much like some regard the Pastoral letters. "Forgeries" carry a similar meaning and Ehrman is obviously using it for its shock value because it sells well with the media.”

The amazing thing about the New Testament is that it’s in a league of its own in terms of ancient writings. As I said earlier, if it is not reliable, then no writings of antiquity are reliable. Dr. Metzger even pointed out that apart from the strong manuscript evidence for the New Testament are all the quotations of it to be found in the writings of the Church Fathers: “And there are really so many quotations in these patristic writings that if we didn’t have any Greek manuscripts, if we didn’t have any translations into these other languages, we could reconstruct practically the entire New Testament from the quotations made by the Church Fathers.”

What Bart Erhman does in promoting his unbelief reminds me of the sober words of Jesus to the Pharisees and religious leaders of his day. He said, Woe to you for you shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves won’t go in, but you prevent others from going in. We should join Bart’s mother in praying for his salvation.

| Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0) | Published: 6/3/2009 10:25 AM

5/27/2009

A Christian Response to Bart Ehrman, Part 1: The Resurrection of Jesus

By Jerry Newcombe

From time to time I see advertisements for an audio series on the historicity of Jesus and the Gospels. One gets the impression from the ad that the speaker will be presenting historical information on Christianity, and I am sure he does. It is not clear, though, that the speaker on this series is a man who does not believe in Jesus any more. Dr. Bart Ehrman is an agnostic who lost his faith while studying at Princeton Theological Seminary. He’s entitled to his agnostic views, of course, but the ads for the audio series should not leave one with the impression that this is going to essentially promote Unbelief 101. Maybe the audio series doesn’t do that, but if his real views were known, they would.

For those who don’t know, Dr. Bart Ehrman is a former evangelical who went to Moody Bible Institute, then Wheaton College, and then Princeton Theological Seminary, where he began to have serious doubts that the Bible was indeed the Word of God. Today, he calls himself “a happy agnostic,” as he teaches religion at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Bart Erhman is an Apostle of Unbelief, and modern unbelievers, many with a nominal Christian background, eat him up. He says there is no evidence for the resurrection of Jesus.

No evidence? There would be no Christianity, no Christian church, no Christian movement, no New Testament if Jesus had not risen from the dead, bodily. Even the early disciples did not expect Him to rise. They were surprised by joy, to use C. S. Lewis’ phrase, out of context.

I’ve had the privilege of interviewing many scholars, including Dr. Edwin Yamauchi, professor or ancient history at Miami University (Ohio). He said there is no way, as an historian, to explain the birth and growth of the Christian movement, apart from the actual resurrection of Jesus from the dead. He said, in reference to Jesus dying a shameful death on the cross: “many Christians were embarrassed by this fact, because in art we don’t have Jesus represented on the Cross until the Byzantine Period. Now, how can you explain the expansion of this religion that exalted a Man who suffered the ignominious death, the worst possible death reserved for criminals and slaves, crucifixion, how can you explain the growth and expansion of this religion without the Resurrection? You cannot. Now, some scholars have tried to do that, but they do not offer any convincing explanation.”

The New Testament was sealed with the apostles’ blood. They put their money where their mouth is. The Greek word for “witness”—as in the idea of witnessing to the truth about Jesus is “martyro,” from whence we get the word martyr. Why? Because so many witnesses to Jesus, e.g., the apostles, were killed for testifying about what they themselves saw.

As Paul said, if Jesus were not raised from the dead—if His body did not come out of that tomb—then our faith is vain and we are most pitied of all men (1 Corinthians 15:19).

Instead, the Christian faith rests on a very secure foundation. How firm? So firm that the apostles—the ones Jesus picked to send out into all the world—sealed their testimony with their own blood. All but John (and Judas the traitor) died a martyr’s death. A terrific Bible scholar of our time is ancient historian, Dr. Paul Maier of Western Michigan University. I have had the privilege of interviewing him many times. Dr. Maier pointed out about the Resurrection in our award-winning television special, Who Is This Jesus:

Myths do not make martyrs, and if this story had been invented, they would not have gone to death for it. If Peter had invented the account, as he’s ready to be hoisted up on a cross in Rome, he would’ve blown the whistle and said, “Hold it! I’ll plea bargain with you. I’ll tell you how we did it if I can come off with my life.”

I also appreciate what Dr. Sam Lamerson of Knox Theological Seminary said about the resurrection of Jesus and about how eyewitnesses to the risen Jesus sealed their testimony in their blood (in contrast with the views of modern day skeptics):

Those people who died, they did so knowing that is was going to be painful, knowing that it was going to be embarrassing, knowing that it was going to be terror-filled, and yet they did it anyway as a direct result of the fact that they believed that Jesus Christ was God. And they lived in the first century, and we live in the twenty-first century. And it seems to me that it is the height of arrogance for us to say in the twenty-first century, “You, all you people who died, you were just foolish, you just didn’t know any better. And, we scholars, we know a lot better than you do.”

Matthew knew what he had seen---Jesus risen from the dead. So did no-longer-doubting Thomas. Andrew could not deny what he saw with his own eyes, even upon pains of death. To think that each of these, but John, went to a martyr’s grave, is significant. And John was willing to go to a martyr’s grave.

Of course, it is chic these days for some modern scholars to reject the resurrection of Christ. Why do they do that? Because of their underlying presuppositions. They accuse us of bias, but in reality their biases are greater. They “know” the Resurrection could not have happened, because people don’t rise from the dead; therefore, Jesus did not rise from the dead. In other words, the disbelief stems from a pre-commitment to the idea that such a thing simply cannot happen. In this view, because physical resurrection from the dead is pre-judged as impossible, the physical resurrection of Christ could not have happened.

I have more to say about Bart Ehrman, modern day apostle of unbelief in my next posting.

| Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0) | Published: 5/27/2009 7:51 AM

5/5/2009

The Death of "Christian America"?

Recently President Barack Obama, during an official overseas trip, declared that the United States is not a Christian nation. To my knowledge, this is the first time in our nation’s history that a president made such a statement. Meanwhile, numerous presidents throughout our history have said the opposite. Most importantly, our founders declared that our rights come from God. That is the essence of the American experience.

The same week President Obama made his declaration, Newsweek magazine had a cover story---just in time for Holy Week 2009---on the decline and fall of “Christian America.” In fact, on the first page of the article itself, they have a large sidebar with large words: “The End of Christian America.”[1] The article quoted one of my modern heroes, Dr. Albert Mohler, Jr., the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who said: “The so-called Judeo-Christian consensus of the last millennium has given way to a post-modern, post-Western cultural crisis which threatens the very heart of our culture.”[2] Jon Meachem of Newsweek adds this comment to Mohler’s insight: “There it was, an old term with new urgency: post-Christian. That is not to say that the Christian God is dead, but that he is less of a force in American politics and culture than at any other time in recent memory.”[3] The reason Newsweek sees the demise of “Christian America” is the growing numbers of non-religious Americans, at the expense of a shrinking Christian population. Yet still about three-quarters of Americans claim to be Christians, but many profess faith, while not possessing it.

There is an irony to the statistics this magazine cites. John Rabe, my colleague at Coral Ridge Ministries-TV, who serves as the host for the “Learn 2 Discern” commentaries, points out: “The Newsweek cover story, entitled ‘The Decline and Fall of Christian America,’ noted that the percentage of professing Christians in America had fallen to 76%. If we had a basketball game where the final score was 76-24, somehow I doubt that we’d describe the team with 76 as having ‘declined’ or ‘fallen.’”[4]

Well, is “Christian America” dead? Sean Hannity had a round-table discussion on this on his Fox News program, and guest Steven Mansfield observed, “We’re living on a borrowed legacy.”[5] I agree, but the legacy is still there. Just because President Obama or Newsweek declare we are no longer a Christian nation does not change our origins. We are still one nation under God because of our roots---despite what some liberal politicians, activist judges, or the secular media may say. Until the Declaration of Independence is no longer our nation’s birth certificate, America will always be one nation under God.

Anybody familiar with the true facts of American history has no other reasonable conclusion than that we began as a Christian nation. But if you say that America is or was a Christian nation, you will have quite a controversy on your hands.

· Our nation’s birth certificate, the Declaration of Independence, mentions God four times---and not in any minor way. God is the source of our rights, according to this document. The Declaration also argues that the British king is guilty of trying to take away something that God has given us; therefore, King George III ought not to be obeyed. If the ACLU interpretation of strict “separation of church and state” (really, the separation of God and state) were correct, then the Declaration would be unconstitutional (even though the founders said the Constitution is predicated on the Declaration as its foundation). Children would not be allowed to read it in school.

· The very same men who gave us the First Amendment also wrote the Northwest Ordinance in 1787 (and in 1789). This was one of our nation’s four most important founding documents---along with the Declaration (which mentions God four times), the Constitution (which was signed “in the Year of our Lord,”[6] ie., Jesus), and the Articles of Confederation (which mentions God this way: “whereas it has pleased the Great Governor of the World…”[7]). In the Northwest Ordinance, the founders’ goal was that they would retain a certain degree of uniformity as new states were being added to the new nation. Article III of the Northwest Ordinance states: “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall be forever encouraged.”[8] Religion and morality, according to our founders, were to be driving forces in school; they were not to be systematically censored as they are so often today.

· The Treaty of Paris of 1783, negotiated by Ben Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay, acknowledged the Trinity as it made official our separation from Great Britain. This was the peace treaty that formally ended the Revolutionary War, which had ended unofficially at the Battle of Yorktown two years earlier. How does it begin? “In the name of the most holy and undivided Trinity.”[9] I suppose this too would be unconstitutional. Does that mean we will have to go back to being British subjects? That is absurd, but so also is the driving out of anything Christian from the public arena from a nation with such thorough Christian roots.

· Chaplains have been in the public payroll from the very beginning. This is true for both the Congress and the military. They would have to go. (In fact, the ACLU has unsuccessfully challenged chaplains.) Before we were even a nation, our government allocated public funding for congressional and military chaplains. The entire chaplain system absolutely violates the current, popular, and totally wrong view of strict “separation of church and state.” If the ACLU interpretation were correct, then the founding fathers were grossly violating “church and state” on this matter, as in many others.

· The Constitutions of all fifty states mention God in one way or other. Every single one of them, usually in the preamble. We pointed this out earlier with a few examples; here are a few more instances:

· “We, the people of Alaska, grateful to God…”[10]

· “The People of Connecticut acknowledging with gratitude, the good providence of God, in having permitted them to enjoy a free government…”[11]

· “We, the people of the State of Florida, grateful to Almighty God for our constitutional liberty…”[12]

· “We, the people of Missouri, with profound reverence for the Supreme Ruler of the Universe, and grateful for His goodness…”[13]

Each of these constitutions would be unconstitutional according to the ACLU’s logic. So would the other forty six.

We could go on and on. In fact, this a short portion of my new book coming out in July of this year: The Book That Made America: The Role of the Bible in the Founding of America (Ventura, CA: Nordskog Publishing, 2009).

[1] Jon Meacham, “The Decline and Fall of Christian America,” Newsweek, April 13, 2009, 34.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Email from John Rabe to Jerry Newcombe, April 13, 2009.

[5] Steven Mansfield, guest, on Hannity’s America, Fox News Channel, April 10, 2009.

[6] Bruce Frohnen, ed., The American Republic: Primary Sources (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2002), 239.

[7] Articles of Confederation, 1778, in Bruce Frohnen, ed., The American Republic: Primary Sources (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2002), 204.

[8] Northwest Ordinance, Article III in The Annals of America, Vol. 3, 194-195.

[9] Treaty of Paris, 1783, quoted in Gary DeMar, America's Christian History: The Untold Story (Atlanta, American Vision, Publishers, 1993), 83.

[10] Charles E. Rice, The Supreme Court and Public Prayer: The Need for Restraint (New York: Fordham University Press, 1964), 167.

[11] Ibid., 168.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid., 172.

| Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0) | Published: 5/5/2009 7:12 AM

4/14/2009

He is Risen, Indeed!

In the early Church, when one Christian would greet another, often he would say: “He is risen.”

And the other would respond, “He is risen indeed!”

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the greatest fact in human history. Yet throughout the centuries to our present time, skeptics have argued against the historical reliability of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Recently, well-known atheist Richard Dawkins said, “Accounts of Jesus’s resurrection and ascension are about as well-documented as Jack and the Beanstalk.”

Recently, I had the privilege of interviewing Rene Lopez, author of the new book The Jesus Family Tomb Examined: Did Jesus Rise Physically? I was surprised when Rene told me about his background. His life used to be like an episode of Miami Vice. Back in the 1980s, he could well have been one of the bad guys on that show---selling drugs, using violence, robbing people, etc. Today, he is a Ph.D. candidate, pastor, and author. When I interviewed him about the resurrection of Jesus, he mentioned that part of the reason he believes in the resurrection is because the power of the resurrected Christ in his own life. If Jesus could change someone like himself with his 30+ arrests and make him a new man from the inside out than He could walk out of the tomb. Rene tells his story in his scriptureunlocked.com website and is currently working on a book about his conversion. When I first met him, I had no idea about his criminal background, nor would I have known had he not told me.

Rene says this about Dawkins’ notion that the resurrection of Jesus is about as historical as Jack and the Beanstalk: “The fact that somebody can say that the Resurrection is unfounded is totally unwarranted….the gospels are more reliable accounts in ancient history than any other document we have, before and after.”

Dr. Sam Lamerson of Knox Theological Seminary says this: “There are so many pieces of evidence for the truth of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ that if we reject the truth of the Resurrection, I believe, we must then become total historical agnostics and reject virtually everything that we know about ancient history, because it is my belief after studying these accounts for years that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the most certain event in the history of mankind; that there is no ancient historical event that is more certainly testified to both by number of witnesses and by evidence than the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

Before we explore evidence related to the resurrection, we first have to begin with our sources of information about Jesus. Some super-skeptics today even question if He lived. Author Dr. Gary Habermas, Liberty University, notes: “once we assess how many sources we have for Jesus, Christian and non-Christian and archeological, inside the New Testament, outside the New Testament, once we ask the question: how many sources do we have for Jesus? I think it’s clear that Jesus is one of the most mentioned figures in ancient history.” Amazingly, the historical evidence for Jesus of Nazareth is just as well-founded as the same for Caesar Tiberius (the ruler of Roman when Jesus performed His ministry). This is astounding---that the same level of historicity would be found for an itinerant rabbi traversing about the hillside of subjugated Israel versus the empirical leader of the entire Roman Empire. It is only anti-Christian bias that would lead anyone to doubt the historicity of Jesus.

Back to the resurrection. Suppose the resurrection of Jesus were examined in a court of law. Suppose the resurrection were put on trial? Is the historical, bodily resurrection of Christ----fact or fiction? Sam Lamerson says, “I have no reason in the world to doubt that if the Resurrection of Christ were put on trial, it would win beyond any reasonable doubt …any non-biased judge would say, ‘The evidence is clear, the… the witnesses are clear, this is a historically clear fact, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ actually did happen and was seen by eyewitnesses, and those eyewitnesses are telling the truth when they say that they saw Jesus Christ raised from the dead.’”

Let’s consider some of the evidence for the resurrection of Christ. We begin with the empty tomb. Dr. Paul Maier, Western Michigan University: “Now, we often overlook the empty tomb. But I think the empty tomb is very important. Because that is something that an ancient historian can get at.” As Dr. Habermas points out, “Most scholars seem to think, I would say, that the fact that women reported the empty tomb is the best reason to believe it, 'cause it’s not a scenario anybody would make up.” The empty tomb was a fact of history.

Another piece of evidence for the bodily resurrection of Christ deals with the first eye-witnesses and the first to testify they had seen Him risen from the dead. Rene Lopez observes, “if the resurrection was to be a hoax, you would never use women to validate something like the resurrection if you wanted to lie about it, because in the 1^st century, according to the rabbinic writings, a woman’s testimony was as valid as a thief’s.”

Furthermore, the apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15 that Jesus appeared to 500 people at one time after his resurrection. Many of these were still alive at the time Paul wrote that. He basically encourages his readers to go talk with them.

Another reasons Christians believe Jesus rose from the dead is that the whole movement began in Jerusalem. Dr. Maier points out: “Where did Christianity first begin in terms of the organized proclamation that Jesus rose from the dead? Only one place on earth, Jerusalem. There, least of all, could Christianity ever have gotten started if the moldering body of Jesus of Nazareth were available any time after Sunday morning. That would have been a wooden stake through the heart of Christianity. There wouldn’t have been a Christian church ever organized.”

Perhaps THE most compelling evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is the change of the disciples. Just as Rene was changed, so also were changed. He points out: “In the gospels, you have the disciples running scared. They were all hiding, and overnight you have them then making a radical turnaround and then going before the authorities and proclaiming the very Resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

Dr. Lamerson points out: “According to early church history, those 12 disciples all met horrible deaths except for John. Judas, of course, went out and committed suicide. But of the remaining 11, every one of them, except for John, met a martyr’s death. That is, they were killed because of the fact that they continued to preach the Resurrection of Jesus Christ….They died because they knew that Jesus really had risen from the dead in history.”

We close with Rene Lopez’s observation that Christianity itself would have died, along with its founder, if it all ended at the cross:

Christianity would have died if Christ had not risen from the dead. There’s no possible way to explain the growth of the church, the overthrowing of Rome that no other power could’ve overthrown, but yet the blood of the martyrs actually overthrew Rome by the power of the Resurrection and adopted, actually, the faith above all other religions at the time the day espoused. That in itself must be answered by the critics today.

| Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0) | Published: 4/14/2009 9:45 AM

4/2/2009

The unFairness Doctrine

To paraphrase Shakespeare, “A rose by any other name is still a rose.” And many would say the “Fairness Doctrine” by any other name is still the “unFairness Doctrine,” if you will.

The Fairness Doctrine went into effect from 1949 – 1987. It basically stipulated that if a broadcaster had a program on a controversial topic, then he was obligated by the FCC (the Federal Communications Commission, which oversees broadcasting) to provide the other side in a way that was roughly comparable. If you had a program on abortion presenting the pro-abortion side, then you had to (theoretically) present a program presenting the anti-abortion side. That’s how it was supposed to work. This went into effect at a time when the broadcast “spectrum” was very limited. By the 1980s, with cable-TV, and today with satellite radio and dish-networks, and even Internet broadcasting, the spectrum has widened considerably.

During the 1980s, the Reagan administration opposed the Fairness Doctrine because they felt it violated the first amendment. Mark Fowler, chairman of the FCC under Reagan, said that some conservatives at the time feared that if the Fairness Doctrine was overturned, then conservatives would never be heard in broadcasting. But the Reagan administration was determined to overturn it on principle---on the principle that it violated the spirit of free speech that the founders gave us in the first amendment. So in 1987-1988, broadcasters in America were freed from the burden of the Fairness Doctrine. Within a year or so, Rush Limbaugh’s program went national. Sometimes, when Rush Limbaugh was criticized for voicing only one side of an opinion and he was asked how come he never had the other side, his response was, “I am the other side.” For years, news and information broadcasting, radio and TV, has been dominated by the liberal side. Everyone knows that. Veteran TV-journalist, Bernie Goldberg, became “poison” (his word) at CBS-news when he wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, admitting the left-leaning bias of the mainstream media, including CBS. Within a few years, he left---after 28 years at CBS-TV News. He has since written some bestselling books on the bias of the media.

Meanwhile, many Christian programs, both on radio and TV, were able to expand, after the “Fairness Doctrine” became history. There is truly an alternative media---through conservative talk radio and Christian broadcasts. But now it seems that some liberals want to shut down this alternative.

I spoke about this topic recently with Craig Parshall, Senior Vice President and General Counsel for the National Religious Broadcasters. He said about the Fairness Doctrine: “Rather than creating a large marketplace of ideas, it created a chilling effect, because there were so many complaints being filed against broadcasters saying they didn’t give me enough time, they didn’t pick the right representative to speak against this particular issue, the FCC couldn’t possibly control all the complaints. You know, in 1980, there were over 20,000 complaints filed with the FCC just on this one issue about alleged violations of the Fairness Doctrine.”

“The Fairness Doctrine became a political football for censorship. No question asked that what it would do [if it were applied again], it would crush talk radio. Talk commentary on television and certainly conservative and conservative Christian viewpoints would end up being censored.

Recently, the senate voted, in the DeMint amendment, against the “Fairness Doctrine” by that name. But at the same time, in the Durbin amendment, they voted in favor of measures that would essentially apply the Fairness Doctrine under other names! Other names include “localism” and “diversity of ownership,” and other nice-sounding phrases.

Craig Parshall tells what “localism” can mean: “The localism approach is this. They’re simply trying to tell broadcasters, large and small, that they must in their programming day meet a certain number of criteria in terms of meeting what the local community feels are important issues of public concern in their programming for that day. Now, you ask yourself, well, who makes the decision in terms of programming? One of the mandates that was being proposed last year by the FCC was the creation of advisory counsels, which means every segment, and I mean every segment of your local community must be represented in an advisory counsel that then comes in quarterly and tells Christian broadcasters, as well as general market broadcasters what they must put on the air and what they can’t put on the air. So, if you can imagine the local Planned Parenthood executive director coming into the Christian radio station saying, okay now, we don’t want anymore of the sanctity of life stuff. We want to talk about the Planned Parenthood proposals for public education. We want to talk about condom distribution and so forth. And if you don’t follow their recommendations, what’s the natural recourse? The natural recourse is that they’ll file complaints with the FCC and then you hire lawyers and then you’re tied up in litigation and possibly lose your license. That’s what localism is.”

Here’s what Craig Parshall says about “media diversity ownership:” “Now, they will say that it means equal opportunity for all people to be station managers, both radio and television. But in actuality, I believe what this is, is following up with a recommendation that was made about two years by a liberal think-tank. And here’s what this particular research institute found. They said that in a report on what they described as the imbalance on talk radio, they said, ‘There’s far too much conservative talk and not enough liberal talk.’ Well, the reason that’s true is because most people don’t want to listen to liberal talk, and the advertisers of those stations have decided they want to put their advertising dollars in conservative talk shows, because that’s where people tend to go with their dialing choices. But what they decided was they could really work a rather immediate and dramatic change in viewpoints across the country if they require that its large urban areas, for example, and they mention a number of them, if you have liberal female or liberal minority ownership of radio and television stations in these large urban markets, you could then sort of gerrymander an immediate change in viewpoint by simply preferring ownership in those areas in the hands of those whose viewpoints would be more liberal rather than conservative.”

Craig told our radio audience that when he and his wife Janet (host of Janet Parshall’s America, a nationally syndicated radio show) went to Canada as guests on a Christian broadcasting program, they were told what they could and could not say because of Canada’s strict broadcasting laws---the types of laws some want to see applied to American broadcasting.

Says Parshall, “And when we sat down in the studio, and this is a Christian broadcaster, we were given literally a laundry list of things we could not talk about. We were warned not to talk about homosexuality. We were talked told not to compare the gospel of Christ with other religious viewpoints. And there were at least a dozen different things we had to not say during the course of a broadcast in a Christian broadcasting facility.”

I asked him: “And that wasn’t because of the Christians wanting it to be that way, it was because the government was imposing that on the Christian broadcaster in Canada.”

Craig answered, “This is the broadcasting mandate up in Canada. And I’m trying not to overestimate the danger that we face, but I have to be honest with you, Jerry, and say that from our standpoint, the threats we are facing right now on Capitol Hill are some of the most dangerous threats of censorship against Christian broadcasting we have seen in over a half a century. And remember, NRB, our organization, was birthed in adversity, because evangelical broadcasters were taken off the air back in the heydays of early days of television and radio. So, that’s where we got our start. So, we have a long history and we’re very slow to sound the alarm. But I have to tell you that the mentality that we are hearing, and by the way, Christian broadcasting networks are being named by name in the cloakrooms up there on Capitol Hill by the liberals in terms of who they want to target for this new strategy.”

Please look soon for your opportunity, through Coral Ridge Ministries, to address this terrible threat to our freedoms, the so-called “Fairness Doctrine.” (Remember, the same idea is being promoted by other names.) I believe we should pray and act that Christian and conservative views will not be censored from the airwaves.

| Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0) | Published: 4/2/2009 2:49 PM

3/26/2009

The Problem with Hate Crime Laws

As a Christian, I am opposed to hate.

As a Christian, I believe in love.

As a Christian, I believe in the right kind of tolerance.

As a Christian, I oppose hate crimes.

As a Christian, I oppose hate crime laws, as well.

Why?

Because hate crime laws are essentially an attempt to muzzle the gospel. Talk radio host, Janet Parshall, notes: “Wherever Hate Crimes legislation has become the law of the land, without exception, the individuals in the crosshair of the application of that law are pastors and the pulpit.”

Hate crime laws----they may sound like they are needed. After all, who is for hate? But many Christian leaders are opposed to hate crime laws because they are unnecessary ---and because they are dangerous. Mat Staver, founder and director of Liberty Counsel, says: “Hate Crime Laws pose a serious threat to religious freedom and freedom of conscience, and it’s not hypothetical. In New Jersey, for example, where you have a sexual-orientations civil unions law---a church lost its property-tax exemption because it refused to allow a same-sex civil union to take place at their own church property.” That church in New Jersey was one of the few places where the late Dr. D. James Kennedy would speak (outside his church). Dr. Kennedy turned down about 95% of the speaking-engagement requests he would receive. But every year, he would speak at that church in New Jersey.

Hate crime laws have been operating for a while in other countries, such as Canada, Sweden, and Australia. Islamic groups and homosexual groups have been among the most active in accusing others of committing supposed hate crimes. What has been the result? Constitutional attorney Craig Parshall observes, “If we look at the pattern around the world about what has happened in each country that has passed hate crime laws, whether it’s in Europe, England, Australia, or up in Canada, very close to the United States, in every country, without exception, hate crimes have morphed into hate speech regulations, and more likely than not, the targets have been outspoken Christians, who are bold enough to preach and teach the whole counsel of God.”

For example, Steve Boisson, a youth minister in Canada, now may potentially go to jail for the “crime” of criticizing homosexual behavior in a letter to the editor. He has been ordered to no longer say anything on the subject---not even in private emails. This is outrageous. But so is the liberal mindset that would punish speech.

Think about the African-American pastor in jail in California right now for providing a pro-life witness out in front of an abortion clinic. As of this writing, he is in jail.

I can only imagine the conversations:

“What are you in for?” “Murder.”

“What are you in for?” “Armed robbery.”

“What are you in for?” “Standing on the public sidewalk in front of an abortion clinic, trying to provide a positive alternative to a mother killing her baby.”

Hate crime laws throughout the country would only give us many more unjust arrests and sentences like this one.

Advocates of hate crime laws for America claim there is a great need for this type of legislation. But statistically that is not correct. For example, some 11 million crimes took place in 2006 but just 9,000 of those were classified as so-called hate crimes. That’s only .08 % of the total crime problem facing the nation. And almost half of those were merely verbal threats. Attorney Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel.

The tragedy of hate crime laws is that you can be hauled before a magistrate simply by offending someone. Truth can sometimes be offensive. Mark Steyn is a columnist from Canada, who wrote a best-selling book, America Alone (on the threat of radical Islam and its impact on Europe). McLean’s Magazine of Canada excerpted the book in a cover story, and Mark Steyn was charged with a hate crime. He quoted an Islamic imam in the article, and this was viewed as hate speech.

Kerby Anderson, host of the radio show Point of View, says this about the Mark Steyn case: “Now, interestingly enough, you have two issues going on here. Number one, they said that truth is no defense. But number two, it was simply saying that because you were quoting that, that alone was a hate crime, there was no action that was taken, there was no offense that was really brought about, but because he simply said words, that words themselves could be a crime. That’s gets us very easily into this idea of big brother, where all of a sudden even sighting certain words could be a crime. You can begin to see how that would stifle free speech.”

Janet Parshall, host of the radio show, Janet Parshall’s America, also thinks hate crime laws are dangerous: “When we look back at Hate Crimes, we have to understand that the way the courts have interpreted a Hate Crime. Assault does not necessarily mean you’ve been bodily harmed. Assault can mean you’ve been offended by an idea you disagree with. Well, if you go to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we’re told that the Gospel is a sword, it’s going to divide people. We never have the license to be offensive personally, but the message we proclaim will by its very nature be offensive. So what will happen to the proclamation of the Gospel if Hate Crimes legislation takes up residence? We will no longer be able to preach the whole counsel of God, because when we do, someone will say, “That’s Hate Speech.” And what will happen to our pulpits? What will happen to our pastors? And what will happen to our message?”

These kinds of laws are dangerous and counter productive---unless the goal is to stop the Christian witness.

In that, the other side can never win. Because Christianity was virtually born in the catacombs. All authority in heaven and earth has been given to Jesus. Therefore, we must go in His name to make disciples.

| Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0) | Published: 3/26/2009 1:18 PM

3/6/2009

A Reminder from an Ancient Source Not to Dabble in Sin

The Bible says that if you think you are strong and think you stand, watch out lest you fall (1 Corinthians 10:12). I found a fascinating story from ancient Rome from which we can learn a lot about dealing with temptation.

Here’s a little background on this subject.

I teach a Sunday school class on the subject of “Christ and Civilization.” This is a class for adults at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church. About 55-60 attend, for which I am most grateful. The “Christ and Civilization” theme is essentially an amalgamation of various points Dr. Kennedy and I made in the books, What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? (Nelson, 1994, 2001) and What If the Bible Had Never Been Written? (Nelson, 1998). You could re-title these books: BECAUSE Jesus was born, here is what happened; BECAUSE the Bible was written, here are some of the results….one of the chapters in What If Jesus deals with how Jesus increased the value of human life.

In one of the classes, I spoke for a few minutes about how the world into which Jesus was born was a very cruel world. Human beings were butchered for sport in the gladiator contests. These were slaves, forced against their will, to fight other slaves, so that the masses could be entertain. I suppose one could argue that we have the same type of blood lust today. For example, when Hollywood churns out movies where they advertise that "the body count is awesome!," you know there's something very wrong. People apparently enjoy seeing these scenes where one person mutilates another───complete with blood flowing and body parts flowing. Common sense tells you that there's something sick about all this. Worse yet, there’s often a link in some movies or in some pornography of sex and violence. Both appeal to our lust.

Thankfully, while Hollywood goes to great lengths to make their violent stunts look real, of course, it isn't. But, again, there was a time when it was real in the gladiatorial contests. Thankfully, it was Christianity that ended these contests. Church historian Kenneth Scott Latourette (of Yale from the early part of the 20^th century) writes:

Under the influence of his new faith, the Emperor Constantine forbade gladiatorial shows and abolished the legal penalties which required criminals to become gladiators. . . . We are told that the gladiatorial combats persisted in Rome until, in the fifth century, a monk, Telemachus, leaped into the arena to stop the combatants and the mob, presumably nominally Christian, stoned him to death for interfering with their pleasure. Thereupon the Emperor ordered that the spectacles be stopped and Telemachus enrolled among the martyrs. [Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of Christianity, vol. 1 (New York: Harper and Row, 1953, 1975), p. 245.]

Meanwhile, before the incident with Telemachus (c. 404), the bloody games were very much alive during the days St. Augustine wrote his classic book, The Confessions of St. Augustine. He describes an incident in the life of a friend, who thought he was so spiritual, he could resist sin. He could not.

If you’ve never read The Confessions, I highly recommend it. The whole book is a prayer. So the “you” referred to is God. Here is what St. Augustine writes about his friend, Alypius:

Since of course he did not plan to give up the worldly career that had been dinned into him by his parents, he had gone on ahead of me to Rome to study law, and there he was carried off in an unbelievable way by the unbelievable passion for gladiatorial shows. Although he would have opposed such shows and detested them, certain of his friends and fellow students whom he chanced to meet as they were returning from dinner, in spite of the fact that he strongly objected and resisted them, dragged him with friendly force into the amphitheater on a day for these cruel and deadly games. All the while he was saying: “Even if you drag my body into this place, can you fasten my mind and my eyes on such shows? I will be absent, though present, and thus I will overcome both you and them.”

When they heard this, they nevertheless brought him in with them, perhaps wanting to find out if he would be able to carry it off. When they had entered and taken whatever places they could, the whole scene was ablaze with the most savage passions. He closed his eyes and forbade his mind to have any part in such evil sights. Would that he had been able to close his ears as well! For when one man fell in the combat, a mighty roar went up from the entire crowd and struck him with such force that he was overcome by curiosity. As though he were well prepared to despise the sight and to overcome it, whatever it might be, he opened his eyes and was wounded more deeply in his soul than the man whom he desired to look at was in his body. He fell more miserably than did that gladiator at whose fall the shout was raised. The shout entered into him through his ears and opened up his eyes. The result was that there was wounded and struck down a spirit that was still bold rather than strong, and that was all the weaker because it presumed upon itself whereas it should have relied upon you [God].

As he saw that blood, he drank in savageness at the same time. He did not turn away, but fixed his sight on it, and drank in madness without knowing it. He took delight in that evil struggle, and he became drunk on blood and pleasure. He was no longer the man who entered there, but only one of the crowd that he had joined, and a true comrade of those who brought him there. What more shall I say? He looked, he shouted, he took fire, he bore away with himself a madness that should arouse him to return, not only with those who had drawn him there, but even before them, and dragging others as well.

From all that you rescued him with a hand that was most strong and yet most merciful, and you taught him to put his trust not in himself but in you. But that was long afterwards. [John K. Ryan, trans., Confessions of St. Augustine (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1960), Chapter 8 of Book 6, pp. 144-145.]

If you play with fire, you will get burned. How foolish of Alypius to think he could go into the auditorium, but not watch the spectacle. Many times when we succumb to lust, it’s because we’ve allowed ourselves to flirt with it. To conquer lust, some have to take drastic steps, like dropping cable TV or getting rid of the TV altogether. I know one man who won’t even go to the beach any more because he doesn’t want to be tempted to lust. This may sound extreme and I certainly don’t want to be legalistic. Let each reader decide for himself how to keep oneself free even from the temptation of lust, inasmuch as it is up to you.

I’m reminded of a couplet Dr. Kennedy used to love to quote. With Alexander Pope’s short poem, we close:

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien [appearance],

As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;

Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,

We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

[Alexander Pope, Essay on Man, quoted in Oscar Williams, ed., Immortal Poems of the English Language (New York: Washington Square Press, 1952, 1969), p. 162.]

| Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0) | Published: 3/6/2009 3:31 PM

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