WHAT THEY'RE HIDING FROM US

It's become fashionable in academic and popular circles to castigate Christianity as the cause of multitudinous evils in history. Author after author, professor after professor come forward with hammer and tongs to beat up on Christianity, calling it a force for evil in the world and calling down anathemas upon the faithful.

Gore Vidal (1925-2012), a writer, an intellectual for the people, wrote, "The malice of a true Christian attempting to destroy an opponent is something unique in the world. No other religion ever considered it necessary to destroy others because they did not share the same beliefs. . . No evil ever entered the world quite so vividly or on such a vast scale as Christianity did.” [Strange, he overlooked Islam.]

Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011), author, columnist, essayist, orator, religious literary and social critic, as well as a journalist, wrote a best-selling book called, "God is Not Good." He wrote: "We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid.”[By the way, Christopher's brother, Peter, is an author in his own right, a committed believer and defender of Christianity, although he has received far less publicity than his brother. What else is new?]

Christopher and Gore (why did his parents name a baby, "Gore?") are only two; there are many others who blame Christianity for innumerable ills loosed upon the world, but those will suffice.

WHOA! WAIT A MINUTE!

Let's examine this charge in depth. Those two and others of their atheistic stripe blame Christianity for the brutality of the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, pogroms, wars, and witch hunts, but let's delve deeper.

The Crusades, who instigated those? The Roman Catholic Church did so when Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont called on the princes of Christendom for an armed “pilgrimage” to recover Jerusalem from the Muslims.

From 1000-1500 A. D., "The [Roman Catholic] church's response to loss and decline under Islam was mixed: the cross in one and the sword in the other. The early church had generally condemned war. But the western medieval Roman Church said, "God wills it!"(Don Fanning, Liberty University)

Who was in charge of the Spanish Inquisition? The Roman Catholic Church. Of all things that monstrous institution headquartered in Rome is not, it is not Christian. Martin Luther (1483-1546) referred to the Pope as an anti-Christ because he believed that term appropriate for anyone blocking people from Christ or working against Scripture’s teachings.

OK, BUT WHAT ABOUT CALVIN'S GENEVA?

But what about those witch hunts perpetrated by the New England Puritans? What about Calvin's Geneva burning Michael Servetus at the stake for the heresy of Pelagianism (the denial of original sin), Modalism (an anti-Trinitarian heresy), and Pantheism (a rejection of the fundamental distinction between Creator and creation) in August 1553?

Yes, those tragic events happened, but what's overlooked by Christianity's critics is that not one of them can cite a single New Testament verse that endorses such perversions of the faith. They parade the perversions, not the protocol, of Christianity. 

SPEAKING OF OVERLOOKING

Speaking of overlooking the facts of history, let's go a bit deeper where we see that much about those early day Christians and Christianity has disappeared down the Memory Hole. George Orwell's vision of a totalitarian society in which facts disappeared from public knowledge strikes close to home.

For example, not many know that the pagans who converted to Christianity back in the early days of the church:

1. shared their wealth freely with widows, orphans, the elderly, the unemployed, and the sick.
2. cared for the victims of plagues and other natural disasters while their pagan neighbors fled.
3. ransomed one another from barbarian captors.
4. distributed bread during famines.
5. visited prisoners and miners (the lowest of the low).
6. sometimes sold themselves into slavery to raise money to ransom their brothers in Christ out of prison. (A group of Roman Christians did this.)
7. provided for the burial of the poor.
8. extended hospitality to travelers so they wouldn't have to stay in the dangerous inns of their day.
(Cited by Dr. Carl J. Richard, professor of history at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette)
9. rescued babies from infant abandonment, which was widespread in the first century. Christians looked after these babies, left to die, and changed the culture from a culture of death to a culture of life. (Cf. The Rise of Christianity, Stark, 1996)

I wonder if, in the interest of fairness, Mr. Vidal and Mr. Hitchens included those magnificent deeds anywhere in their books, speeches, and articles. Have you read of such in history books or seen just one of the above nine portrayed in film?

BUT NO

But no, what do we hear instead of the above eight? The press finds a small group of 40 Baptists in Topeka, Kansas, who, in violation of the entire ethic of the New Testament, stages obnoxious, disruptive protests at military funerals (an egregious violation of I Thess. 4:11), and the media, pouncing with glee, placards those pathetic few as representatives of Christianity. All the while, our history books give Paul's legacy which includes the above nine, the abolition of slavery, and the American Revolution (Cf. Twelve Greeks and Romans Who Changed the World) less ink than a classified ad. Let' s call it, "Satanic Censorship."

THE WAY OF THE WORLD

No surprise there. Back in the early days of the church, the powers that be tried to censor the message of the faith (Acts 4:17-18). That's the way of the world, the kosmos, which John says, "Lies cradled in the arms of the wicked one." (I John 5)

LINCOLN'S POCKETS

John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln point blank at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. In Lincoln’s pockets were two pairs of spectacles, a lens polisher, a pocketknife, a watch fob, a linen handkerchief, a brown leather wallet containing a five-dollar Confederate note and nine newspaper clippings, including several favorable to the president.

They gave those items to his son, Robert Todd, and they became like relics, staying in the Lincoln family for more than seventy years.

HAIL CAESAR!

March 15, 44 B. C.: Julius Caesar suffered 23 stab wounds at the hands of some of the senators of Rome. As he collapsed and died, having pulled his toga over his face, he had in his hand a scroll handed to him on his way to the meeting of the Senate, a scroll he had tried several times to unroll, but was interrupted every time.

Too bad. A man who was privy to the assassination plot had thrust the scroll into Caesar’s hand. Inside was a warning of the coming assassination.

CHILLING STORY

There’s a chilling and dramatic account in the New Testament about a man whose desire is to get a warning to those closest to him. The man can’t do it, but he thinks there’s someone who can, and, in desperation, he pleads his case.  He has turned into something he was not-- a concerned evangelist.

His warning is all about being separated from God forever. The problem is that he already is, and eternally so. But the ones he wants to warn aren’t in his place or condition.

He sees Abraham and Lazarus “afar off,” in a place of bliss and fellowship with God. His suggestion is dramatically desperate: Please, send Lazarus back from the dead to warn my brothers so they don’t end up where I am, in a place that’s real, terrible, and final." He reasons that if a person would be allowed to return from the dead with an important warning about the reality of a place of eternal separation, his brothers would be compelled to listen and would accept the Messiah and escape his fate. 

SOUNDS REASONABLE

To us, that makes sense. We love the dramatic and we know that would have an impact for the good. But would it? History says otherwise. One did come back from the dead and what did the religious leaders do? Did they accept Jesus as their long-awaited Messiah?

No. What did they do? John 10:12 tells us. Take a look at it.

WHY NOT?

But the question remains, why wasn’t the request granted? It was because the man’s loved ones had already been warned by the scrolls which were able to “make them wise unto salvation.” (II Tim. 3:15) They have access to a Bible; they’re literate, as were most back in that day, and Lazarus back from the dead would only say the same thing the Bible says. If they don’t believe the scrolls, they won’t believe him because he and the Bible would deliver the same message of faith alone for salvation.

TWO POCKETS

We might call what we’ve looked at “A Tale of Two Pockets.” In Lincoln’s pockets that dark night at Ford’s Theater were the temporary trivial tidbits of the world. In Caesar’s pocket was a dire warning of doom, but distracted, he never read the scroll. 

Did you know that 90% of the world’s literate population, thanks to dedicated missionaries, now has at least a portion of the Book that’s able to make them wise unto salvation? In America, we’ve had the Bible in our pockets for generations, dating back to colonial days.

But we find too many who are distracted, spending their lives filling their pockets with the temporary trivial tidbits of life. The distractions, innocuous and morally neutral in and of themselves, run the gamut of sports, travel, politics, elections, raising and providing for the kids, you name it, we can be distracted from the Book by it. And the evil half of the supernatural universe is constantly at work snatching away the gospel from them “lest they hear and believe.”

Speaking of pockets, like the commercial asks, “What’s in your pocket?”

WAIT A MINUTE ON THE MURDER OF KITTY GENOVESE

March 13, 1964: Kitty Genovese is walking home in the dark and early hours of the morning. She’s just ended her shift as a bartender in her hometown of Queens, New York. She’s a hundred feet from home when a man named Winston Moseley comes up to her and starts to stab her over and over again.  She carries no weapon to repel the man; it’s dark; she’s alone; soon, she’ll be dead.

Kitty begins to scream, and I mean really scream. She screams so loudly that her calls for help awaken 38 neighbors in her apartment building just across the street. The lights go on in bedroom after bedroom as 38 eyewitnesses rush to their windows to see what in the world is going on. Seeing the lights, Moseley flees as Kitty staggers  from the street into an apartment stairwell.

Minutes later, Moseley returns. He attacks. He stabs her again and again. He kills her. Kitty dies alone.

HOLD ON

Wait. What are the 38 doing? Are some yelling at the attacker? Are some rushing to help her? Are some calling the police?

What would have been a story buried way back in the pages of The New York Times becomes a worldwide sensation as its headlines a few days later announce: “37 WHO SAW MURDER DIDN’T CALL THE POLICE.” Over the years those headlines have triggered books, articles, sermons, sociological studies, and references in TV shows (“Perry Mason,” “SVU” et al.), as actors, one after another say what the ashamed witnesses said in 1964, “I didn’t want to get involved.” NY City and America became tarred with a broad brush as being callous, uncaring, and scared, because, “We didn’t want to get involved.”

WAIT A MINUTE!

Were there 37 or 38 eyewitnesses? First I wrote about the 38 neighbors, then there’s The New York Times' headline back then that reported, “37 WHO SAW A MURDER.”  Which is it?  38? 37?

What people don't know is that the number was changed from 37 to 38 and that change should have told us, “Something’s up.” That change should have caused us to ask, “What’s going on here?” We should have asked, “Wait. How in the world could anyone know what the number was in the first place?” Did some reporter count the windows on that side of the building? But even if someone did count the windows, how would he know how many woke up to come to their windows; how would he know how many were in their rooms at the time to become witnesses? Or maybe someone interviewed the 38 and that's how they knew the count. We would assume so.

NOW YOU TELL US

Something was up back then. We now know The Times’ story of the infamous 38 was fabricated as was their cold and callous indifference that night. It was all a lie. We learn 50 years later that one witness did start yelling at Moseley from his window as the attack was in progress and that was another reason Moseley momentarily fled. Another neighbor did call the police and the police told her, “We’ve received calls. We’re on the way.”  So some of the 38 (or 37) did call the police. Now you tell us.

And to cap it off, Kitty’s best friend in the building heard her screams and rushed down the stairs and out of the building, risking her life, but when she got to the scene, Moseley was gone. She held Kitty in her arms as Kitty bled to death. Yet, the reporter wrote for the world to read, “She died alone.” She didn’t. Now you tell us.

WAIT. WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?

Why didn’t the editor of the article, Abe Rosenthal, check the facts before tar and feathering the 38 (or 37) and the rest of New York City?  In his answer, decades later, he said, “It [checking the facts] would have ruined the story.” It would have ruined the story? Yes, that’s his answer, 50 years later.

But why didn’t someone else check out the facts and write the truth? CBS news correspondent Mike Wallace answered that question, 50 years too late: “Because it was The New York Times,” he said. One doesn’t check out The Times. Why not? Because it’s The Times.

Fifty years later, Wallace, was asked to comment on why he reported back then, “Why did 38 people fail to act? The answer to that question concerns every one of us who fears perhaps that apathy has become part of our way of life.”

He answered, “Oh, I think to a certain degree it was a media creation. No one investigated the 38. No one followed up on it or anything of that nature.” Wait. A media creation? Can we say, "A media lie"?

Then came the follow-up question: “Do you have any feel for why [no one investigated the 38] which would have been normal with this case or any other case?

Wallace said, “Because it was taken seriously by The New York Times.”

Getting down to the basics, the real reason the editor invented the story is because the lie fit his worldview. In other words, he wanted it to be true. He concocted a story to fit his agenda. 

PAUL NAILED IT

Paul refers to this penchant in man to make the facts fit his agenda. The way he puts it is, ". . . men suppress the truth in unrighteousness." A recent case of suppression of the truth is a book by Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code.

In his work of fiction, Brown writes that the church, in a meeting of over 300 bishops, declared Jesus to be divine in the 4th century by a vote, "and a relatively close one at that." 

Unfortunately the average reader of fiction is as knowledgeable of church history as a fruit fly. The average reader doesn't know that the Council of Nicea (the meeting Brown's character in the book is talking about) was called because the deity of Christ, already established, was under attack by a heretic named Arius. 

This gathering in 325AD was for the purpose of condemning the Arians and did so by reaffirming what the Bible already taught: that Jesus had the very same nature as God.

The meeting wasn't to "vote in" the deity of Christ; it was to declare and reaffirm what was already established doctrine. At the conclusion of the meeting, the members of the council were asked to sign their agreement (not vote) with the biblical teaching that:

“I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made. Who, for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; he suffered and was buried; and the third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father; and he shall come again, with glory, to judge the living and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.”  

In the Da Vinci Code, Brown says the vote was "a relatively close one at that." Relatively close? Relatively close? Brown must have been using magic math to come to the conclusion that his so-called vote was close; those who signed that they agreed with the above statement declaring the deity of Christ numbered 316. Those who opposed it numbered 2. 

If the score of a football game was 316 to 2, who in the world would pronounce it, "A relatively close game"? 

IMPACT

In Britain, The Da Vinci Code is the number one best-seller ever, even beating Harry Potter. Over 40,000,000 people purchased Brown's book. It's been translated into over 40 languages. In 2006, Ron Howard made it into a movie with Tom Hanks. It made 758.2 million dollars.  

Let's call the book and the movie what they were: an attack on the gospel because part of the gospel is that Jesus of Nazareth is God, the 2nd Person of the Trinity.

To suppress the truth, Dan Brown fabricated a situation, a vote, and "a relatively close one at that." Like the reporter on the murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964, Brown invented a story to fit his agenda. 

The more things change, the more it's the same old same old.

 

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THE GREAT PLATO

Plato was a first class philosopher, a student of Socrates. Plato was there when a jury found his teacher guilty of corrupting the youth of Athens by a vote of 280-220 and he was there when they sentenced him to death by a vote of 360-140. This was back in 339 BC.

Plato was there when Socrates, according the dictate of the jury, committed suicide by drinking the hemlock; he left a written account of Socrates' self-execution as he and the other students gathered around his bed and conversed with him.

THE GREAT PLATO

Most people think of Plato as that gold medal philosopher, but before he was a philosopher, he was, of all things, a wrestler. It's difficult to associate wrestling with philosophy, but so be it.

Plato isn't just a philosopher, he's THE philosopher because, after he passed off the scene, every philosopher has had to reckon with him. They have to accept him, modify him, or reject him. But the one thing they can't do is ignore him. So wrote Dr. Carl Richard in his book, Twelve Greeks and Romans that Changed the World.

SAME THING

And this brings us to Jesus of Nazareth. When asked to give the number of books written about Jesus, one authority answered, "It's impossible to give the number; they run into the tens of thousands." It's in these books that the human race has been dealing with Him for over 2,000 years and counting.

Along the way, tens of thousands of books and articles have been written agreeing with Him; tens of thousands have been written modifying Him; tens of thousands have been written rejecting Him. And all of these uncountable numbers demonstrate the fact that we can't just can't help ourselves; we can't ignore Him.

BACK THEN

It was ever thus. While on earth, crowds and crowds of people came to hear and see Him, some even came to touch Him. His words impacted them then and us today. What He said drove people to anger or adoration. His words and deeds led to shouts of, "We have found the Messiah!" "Hosanna!" or "Crucify Him!"

He broke up every funeral He ever attended; He performed miracles at a wedding, in homes, in a boat, on the road, and on the sea by calming it or walking on it. He created food to satisfy the hunger of thousands. What He did and what He said generated committees, cabals, and conclaves to kill Him or worshipers to fall at His feet, declaring, "My Lord and my God." He did so many miracles that, applying a song to their writing, we'd have to say,

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the [the miracles] of [Christ] above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.

Jesus' words and deeds so got into the core of Nicodemus, he couldn't rest until he'd made an appointment to talk to Him, even a night time meeting.

Even after His death, they couldn't leave Him alone--they sealed and set a guard on His tomb. After  they discovered it empty, they held more meetings to deal with that disturbing report, concocted a pathetic story to explain it, then paid money to disseminate it and buy the silence of the guards.

After He ascended into heaven, His followers started walking and riding all over the world to talk about what Jesus began to do and to teach. Their words about His words and deeds caused riots, revivals, lashings, courtroom violence, stonings, jailings, trials, churches, more missionaries, and continual meetings of worshipers in something new--churches.

In evangelism, there are many sure things and one of those is that whoever listens to the gospel, even if he rejects it, will reckon with Christ and Him crucified for the rest of their life. He's the burr under their saddle as they ride through life.

Even those convinced that the Christ described in the Bible never existed can't leave Him alone--they're obsessed with Him. They write books about Him and they start arguing about Him even when no one has has mentioned His name, so all-consuming is their obsession.

It's as if they're trying to convince themselves. Who else spends more time on what they don't believe than on what they do believe? Who else spends so much time insulting those with whom they disagree? Who else spends so much time trying to force people to agree with them and get angry when they don't? Who else spends so much of their lives being angry?

THE RADICAL BERKLEY BOY

Back in the 1960's and for much of his life, David Horowitz was as radical as they came. In his university days, he was one of the premier student leaders seeking to tear America apart and down. He got involved with the Black Panthers and the Free Speech Movement at Berkley. You name a radical cause and he was either inventing, participating, or propagating it. He came by it naturally--his parents were dedicated communists all their lives.

Then one day, David noticed something: those who left the cause suffered the most vicious attacks, slander, vilification, and physical harassment one could imagine from those still loyal to the cause, the friends they'd left behind. Those who had been their friends, turned on those who left the radical movement. Those who defected became the victims of outrageous lies and scathing denunciations in print and otherwise. Their former friends dug up all the dirt they could, invented dirt if they couldn't, and tried to wreck the lives, businesses, and reputations of the now enlightened who saw their radicalism for what it was, evil and dangerous.

But David noticed that when someone left the principles of the other side, their former friends engaged in no such tactics--they told no lies about them; they refused to ridicule them; they didn't insult them in print or on the air; they didn't demonstrate against them or harass them in any way, and they never tried to destroy or damage their livelihood. They just let them go their chosen way, sad to see them leave. But that was it.

It's the same way with biblical Christians; they don't harass, lie about, or seek to harm those who defect from Christianity. Biblical Christians are saddened by such defections,  but they realize that people have a right to be wrong. It's part of free will. Like the father in the story of the Prodigal Son, they just let them go, praying they'll one day return.

PLATO, ONE MORE TIME  

Every philosopher must reckon with Plato; but there's difference between the great Plato and the greater Jesus: every person, small or great, must reckon with Christ. The one thing that can't be done now or for all of eternity is ignore Him.

Why is that? That's because of who and what He is: the Son of God.