As a writer and a voracious reader, I am always on the lookout for great books for my children. Typically, I will go through the aisles of the bookstore, skip-reading those books that look interesting. I can usually tell by short readings in the beginning, middle and end whether it is a book worthy of my children. Thus, I had encountered The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman several years ago.  I cannot say I’ve actually read the stories, as in, I sat down and read them for pleasure as I did The Chronicles of Narnia or A Wrinkle in Time.  I will be perfectly honest; I don’t have time to read bad writing and I don’t want my children filling their heads with nonsense, especially propaganda.

The Golden Compass starring Nicole Kidman will be coming out December 7 amid the usual media hype for a Christmas movie.  Obviously I haven’t seen it. However, I have some passing familiarity with the books the movie is based upon.  His Dark Materials which is the series the movie is drawn from could be called “Gnosticism for children.”  Call it the anti-Narnia.  In it, children go on a grand adventure that culminates not with helping the central godlike character overcome the ultimate evil, but when they kill the creator of the world – an angelic being who, not unlike Satan, lost the war for control of heaven and is depicted as quite evil. In effect, the heroes of the story kill God as Pullman, and many Gnostics before him, envision Him.

Gnostics believed that the creator of this world is evil and that “salvation” comes from embracing “secret knowledge” about the good force behind the evil. This good force has nothing to do with human beings, who are themselves evil, but if we can become released from this life (suicide would be fine), we will be redeemed from evil.

The author Phillip Pullman is an avowed atheist and member of several humanist societies.  He has voiced his intense distain for the C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia.  Pullman said the Narnia books contained "a peevish blend of racist, misogynistic and reactionary prejudice" and "not a trace" of Christian charity.  That makes me wonder if he’s ever actually read the Narnia series.  "It's not the presence of Christian doctrine I object to so much as the absence of Christian virtue," he added.  "The highest virtue - we have on the authority of the New Testament itself - is love, and yet you find not a trace of that in the books."

Having read his comments on a website, I honestly thought he could not have read the Narnia books. Anyone who has can testify that love is the message of the series – the love of Aslan for those who don’t embrace evil (he’s willing to die for them) and the (eventual) love of the Pevenses children for one another (though sometimes characters must learn love before they can express it). This, in turn, brings love to the love-starved nation of Narnia. Moreover, I wouldn’t think, based upon the above-referenced quote that Pullman has read the New Testament, for the highest virtue listed in the New Testament is to love God, which includes obeying Him and coming to Him, as Jesus required, through faith. From this love of God comes love for your fellow human. Both these virtues illuminate the Narnia series.  I admit I haven’t sat down to read Pullman’s books to the fullest, but in my scans, I did not find within them the love that permeates the Narnia series or, for an additional example, Madeleine L’ Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time.

The series His Dark Material, rather than featuring a battle between good and evil where good overcomes evil against all odds, features a battle against the church and a fight to overthrow God. Adults who resist sin rather than embrace it are depicted as evil or rubes, sometimes both. In an excellent analysis of the books for Touchstone Magazine, Leonie Caldecott contrasted Pullman's works to those of Tolkien, Lewis, and those who "sought to enchant the imagination with new fairy tales built firmly on the foundations of the old stories." She described Pullman as "the anti-Inkling." (This refers to the group of Oxford writers who were the seedbed for the great literary talents of Tolkien and Lewis, as well as other greater thinkers and writers of the 20^th Century. It should be noted that Pullman, over against these noted scholars, admits to earning extremely low grades in English, particularly writing, while he was in school.  His antipathy for written English is notable throughout the series.) Caldecott wrote, “What Pullman cannot seem to abide in Lewis is the hopeful picture of what happens after death: That is to say, the Christian take on life, which, while valuing its beauty and power, nonetheless places it firmly in the context of the next life, the life after death, which is viewed as fuller, more perfect, and thus more important in the final order of things. For Pullman, this is an empty promise—a monumental hoax, almost. For him, death is the end of conscious life.

"And yet the fact of mortality is almost an obsession with Pullman, and death plays a prominent role in his books," Caldecott noted. "He kills off a number of important characters in his books (and not only in this trilogy), including Lyra’s friend and protector Lee Scoresby and Will’s father in The Subtle Knife, and both of Lyra’s parents in The Amber Spyglass.”

As a writer, I personally have no problem with killing off important characters for the sake of the story (think of how effective the “death” of Gandolf was in the Lord of the Rings), but I must admit that I found the “killings” in His Dark Materials to be manipulative and in some cases, unnecessary. I tend to agree with Caldecott that Pullman kills the characters almost as if for obsessive reasons.

“Finally, he fulfils the Nietzschean dream by killing off God, a senile deity who makes a brief appearance before being blown away on a puff of wind when his protective crystal chamber is breached,” Caldecott wrote.  “This God, incidentally, is not the creator of the world, but merely the first angel, who deceived the others into thinking he was the origin of their being. The beneficent and all-powerful deity of the Judeo-Christian tradition is yet another hoax.”

With the "anti-Narnia" about to hit theaters, it seemed important to take a look at it.  I scanned the series last night at Barnes and Noble and I didn’t find anything different from my previous opinion. Rumor in the film industry has it that The Golden Compass will be treated exactly opposite of the Narnia films. The film studio for Narnia perceived a need to downplay elements of the series’ Christian undertones in order to appeal to a wider audience, where as New Line Entertainment asked the director of The Golden Compass to tone down or eliminate the book’s negative references to God.

Typical of many Gnostics, Pullman apparently doesn’t see his writing as anti-God, just anti-organized religion. (I guess he’d like to take a seat next to Dan Brown at the next Academy Awards ceremony). However, the books contain little that would support the idea that faith in God is anything other than a hoax perpetrated on idiots. The whole “God is a con man” theme smacks of anti-God overtones from my point of view.

In some ways, I prefer the filmmakers not  remove the religious references – parents would have forewarning before filling their children’s minds with anti-God propaganda. Most movies are forgettable, but that which we read tends to stay in our minds for a lifetime. I hope parents will use their judgment on this one. Take my advice; scan the series by the fire at Barnes and Noble before you buy it for your children.

Challenge #4 – Christianities beliefs about Jesus were copied from pagan religions.

I stand with Strobel as a journalist who was taught (back in the days when that profession still cared about ethics) that plagiarism cannot be tolerated by professional reporters. So, as a Christian, being accused of plagiarism should bother me.  However, I don’t think we’ve got a case of plagiarism here, but rather a case of libel and the defense of libel is always the truth.

Dan Brown made many of the plagiarism claims popular in The Di Vinci Code and most of America watched the subsequent movie.  So, it’s a salient question – how much of Christianity was borrowed, reinvented or just plain ripped off from pagan religions? Are the libelers smearing Christianity with the truth or are they just liars?

Was paganism historically rife with dying and resurrecting god-men, virgin births, gods dying for the sins of humanity, gods born on December 25, baptisms and communions?  Strobel interviewed Licona briefly on the subject, and then turned to a world-renowned expert on mystery religions for more in-depth discussion.  Edwin M. Yamauchi holds a doctorate in Mediterranean studies from Brandeis University and has taught at Miami University of Ohio for more than 35 years.  He has studied 22 languages, including Akkadian, Aramaic, Greek, Hebrew, Chinese, Comanche, Coptic, Egyptian, Mandaic, Syriac, and Ugaritic.  He has delivered 88 papers on Mithraism, Gnosticism and other topics at scholarly societies, published nearly 200 articles and reviews in professional journals, lectured at more than 100 colleges and universities and participated in archeological expeditions, including the first excavation of the Herodian temple in Jerusalem. He’s written 17 books and in 1975 he was invited to deliver a paper at the Second International Conference of Mithraic Studies in Tehran, Iran. Born into a Japanese Buddhist family, he has been a Christian since 1952. He has a sterling reputation in the academic world.

Mystery religions were a variety of religious movements from the eastern Mediterranean that flourished in the early Roman Empire. “They offered salvation in a tight-knit committee,” Yamauchi explained. Called mystery religions because initiates were sworn to secrecy, they usually revolved around sacred rites, often a common meal, and a special sanctuary. The oldest of them was the Eleusinian cult of Demeter (operating in Greece about 800 to 500 BC). The latest and most popular was Mithraism, which was closely associated with the mysteries of Cybele and Attis. All three were restricted to non-Roman areas until the middle or late first century. Many of the mystery religions were tied to the vegetation cycle. Their gods were fertility gods.

In the early 20^th Century Richard Reitzenstein of the “History of Religions School” in Germany published his theory that the sacrifice of Christ came from the killing of a bull by Mithras.  Sir James Frazer, writing his massive collection The Golden Bough in 1906 saw a common thread of rising and dying fertility gods from Osiris in Egypt, Adonis in Syria, Attis in Asia Minor and Tammuz of Mesopotamia. The popularity of his work helped to introduce these ideas to the general public, but his scholarship was misleading.  In response, Albert Schweitzer said that popular writers made the mistake of taking various fragments of information and manufacturing ‘a kind of universal Mystery-religion which never actually existed, least of all in Paul’s day.’

Yamauchi agreed that while early 20^th century scholars considered all the mystery religions to have common themes, more recent scholarship has shown these cults held quite divergent beliefs. The scholarly community has pretty much agreed that the supposed parallels to Jesus are not based on fact, but there has been a revival among popular writers in recent years.

Yamauchi’s particular area of interest is Mithraism, which was a popular religion among late Roman soldiers and merchants. It became a chief rival of Christianity in the second century and later. All initiates were men (though one of Yamauchi’s former students claims there were some women); they met in a cave-like structure which featured a statue of Mithras stabbing a bull. Information on the cult is sketchy, but it started in Iran in the 14^th Century BC and did not become a Western mystery religion until very late – too late to have influenced the beginnings of Christianity. Rome’s first public recognition of Mithras was during a state visit of the King of Armenia in AD 66, but it doesn’t appear to have developed into a mystery religion until around AD 90. Yamauchi noted there were no Mithraic temples found in Pompeii which was destroy in AD 79. The earliest Mithraic inscription in the West is from AD 101, most of the Mithraic texts date after AD 140.  It is reasonable to argue, as scholars in the field do, that Western Mithraism did not exist prior to mid-second century. Mithraism might have influenced Christianity in the third and fourth centuries, but it simply was not developed in the West until after the close of the New Testament Canon, so was too late to have influenced the development of first-century Christianity.

Ah, but what about the parallels? Aren’t these evidence that Jesus is just Mithras warmed over?

Mithras was not born of a virgin unless somehow a rock could be a virgin. Mithras emerged fully grown and naked (except for a cap and a dagger) from a rock.  He wasn’t born in a cave (for that matter, the stable Jesus was born in has never been definitely proven to be a cave). Early Christians celebrated Jesus’ birth on January 6, not December 25. That date so close to the winter solstice was associated with Sol Invictus, who Mithras was associated with. There was a major celebration at that time. Christians may simply have started using the date in the 4^th Century to celebrate Christ’s birth because they wouldn’t seem out of place (thus cutting down on persecution) or it may be that Constantine appropriated the date since he was a Sol worshipper prior to his conversion. We know that Christian emperors and popes suggested the aligning of Christian ceremonies with pagan holidays so as to ease the transition of pagans into the Church. Mithras did not sacrifice himself for world peace. He killed a bull, which has no parallel to the Christ story. Nothing is known about Mithras’ death, let alone whether he died and came back in three days. Anyone claiming that Mithras was known as the Good Shepherd, the Way, the Truth, etc., is reading Christian theology into pagan myth, not the other way around, according to Yamauchi.  

Mithraism did have a common meal (these were normative in many religions of the day). Justin Martyr and Tertullian noted similarities between Mithraic common meals and the Lord’s Supper, claiming the Mithraic meal were a satanic imitation, but they were writing in the second century, long after the Lord’s Supper was instituted in Christianity. Scholarship has proven their claim wrong as well. The Mithraic common meal existed from early in the religion’s institution. Neither the Mithraic meal nor the Lord’s Supper is drawn from the other. The Christian meal is based upon the Passover, not Mithraism.

Some scholars have asserted that a Mithraic rite involving the killing of a bull is the basis for the Christian belief that people are saved “through the blood” of Jesus as written in Romans 6. These scholars presented evidence that Mithraism believed the same thing. Yamauchi noted that the Mithraic practice of bathing in the blood of a bull didn’t develop until the fourth century. Bruce Metzger has suggested this may be a case of Christianity influencing Mithraism.

Yamauchi, speaking as a foremost expert on Mithraism, saw few parallels between Christianity and Mithraism. They existed at the same time, often with temples right next to one another in Rome, but Christianity had already started by the time Mithraism got there.

“There’s no evidence of Mithraism influencing first-century Christianity,” Yamauchi said. “Far from assimilating Mithraism, the church fathers – from Justin Marty to Tertullian – denounced Mithraism as a satanic imitation. Some scholars have suggested that Christianity may have consciously or unconsciously borrowed minor practices much later, which could be true. This has no impact on Christianity’s foundational beliefs, however.”

So what about the other gods Dan Brown and his merry band of naysayers point to as the prototype for Jesus?

Marduk and Dionysus were never resurrected. Tammuz was a fertility god who died and rose every winter. Adonis’ resurrection stories (believed only by women back in those days) date from the second to fourth centuries AD, long after Jesus. The “resurrection” of Attis didn’t appear until after AD 150, more than a century later than Jesus, and he was also a fertility god tied to the vegetation cycle. Osiris wasn’t resurrected, but was brought back to live as god of the underworld.

“All of these myths are repetitive, symbolic representations of the death and rebirth of vegetation,” Yamauchi said. “These are not historical figures, and none of their deaths were intended to provide salvation. In the case of Jesus, even non-Christian authorities, like Josephus and Tacitus, report that he died under Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. The reports of His resurrection were quite early and are rooted in eyewitness accounts. They have the ring of reality, not the ethereal qualities of myth.”

Okay, so a rock isn’t a virgin.  What about the other virgin births?  Let’s be clear from the beginning that a pagan god coming down to have physical coitus with a human woman is not a virgin birth. A virgin hasn’t had sex. The physical union of god and girl eliminates virginity. Zeus was an anthropomorphic god who got a lot of human women pregnant. He was very human. Yahweh, on the other hand, could sometimes be described in human ways, but He was utterly unlike humans and the Bible was always clear about that.  There is, therefore, no parallel between Jesus and Zeus’ many demi-god children. Alexander the Great was supposedly born of a virgin, but his mother Olympias recanted that story on several occasions, usually in response to Alexander’s demands for worship as the son of the gods.  Buddha had no written biography until five centuries after his death. According to legend, his mother dreamed he entered her on a white elephant, fully formed, but she had been married many years prior to his birth, so she was no virgin. Krishna’s mother already had seven sons when Krishna was born. Zoroaster lived before 1000 BC, but the story of his mother’s impregnation by drinking sacred juice appeared in the 9^th Century AD, long after Jesus.

Yamauchi admitted to disgust at the writers who lean upon these theories because they employ very sloppy research.  “They don’t have the languages, they don’t have the sources, they don’t pay attention to the dates, and they frequently quote ideas that were popular in the 19^th and 20^th centuries that have already been refuted,” Yamauchi said. “Reputable and careful scholars like Carsten Colpe of Germany, Gunter Wagner of Switzerland, and Bruce Metzger of the United States have pointed out that, number one, the evidence for these supposed parallels is often very late, and number two, there are too many generalizations being made.”

Yamauchi felt that some people see parallels and jump to conclusions that one religion influenced another, but fail to recognize the differences.

“Christianity is quite distinct in that it rose from a Jewish background, which is monotheistic, and it centers around a historical figure who was put to death in a barbaric manner, which is attested in non-Christian sources,” Yamauchi said. “Jesus’ followers were eyewitnesses …. Paul was converted by encountering the risen Christ and had access to eyewitnesses such as Peter and James. Christianity flourished and expanded in spite of persecution from the Roman authorities. It was a new message of love and God’s intervention in the world, and it incorporated all people, including slaves and women, the educated and non-educated – unlike Mithraism, which was confined mainly to soldiers …. This new message was universal, yet it was rooted in an ancient tradition, fulfilling prophesies that had been foretold for many centuries.  … it was exclusivistic … [not] comfortable, as were the polytheistic pagan religions, in being eclectic or syncretistic …. The mystery religions were inclusive – you could worship the emperor and … adhere to more than one of these at the same time.”

Yamauchi warned that we need to be careful of the free-wheeling, unrestricted “information” on the Internet. Anyone can write anything there and it’s easy to get less than reputation information. Check the credentials of the authors, paying particular attention to their training and accomplishments. Watch for the dates of sources being quoted. Be aware of scholars with biases who may have axes to grind.

There will always be writers who will make irresponsible and sweeping claims in a desire to stir up controversy or win an argument.  There’s nothing new about this. Peter faced the same sort of nonsense in the first century and he answered them in 2 Peter 1:16:

“We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,” he declared, “but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.”

Challenge #3 – New explanations have refuted Jesus’ resurrection

Part 2 – the Challengers

Having built his case for the resurrection being historically plausible, Licona turned his attention to the challenges to this hypothesis.  Strobel chose to present these as a rebuttal, which technique Licona used in one of his books. I’m going to just present the facts as laid out in Strobel’s book.

Muslims claim that Jesus, whom they consider to be a prophet but not God, never died on the cross, but that God only made it seem that way.

“That they said (in boast) ‘We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah’: -- but they did not kill him, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they did not kill him; -- Nay, Allah raised him up until Himself; and Allah is Exalted in Power, Wise ….”  Surah 4, Verse 157-58.

Strobel, playing Devil’s advocate, suggested that either someone was made to look like Jesus and the Romans executed that imposter or Jesus was on the cross, but Allah made it appear that he died when he didn’t. Once in the tomb, Allah healed Jesus and took him to heaven.

Yes, God could have done that. However, the Quran isn’t a very reliable source of information about Jesus. Let’s not get into esoteric tests concerning the beauty of the language in the Quran. I don’t speak Arabic and neither do 80 percent of Muslims. A subjective test doesn’t prove much.

Remember that the Gospel accounts were written in the first century, at the latest 40-70 years after Jesus’ death, still in the lifetime of some witnesses.  The Quran was, generously, written in the 7^th Century. It’s fifth-hand testimony at best, transmitted from heaven via an angel, to Muhammad, then to those who recorded what Muhammad told them, then what was selected by Uthman.  Also, if Jesus didn’t die a violent death, as He prophesied He would, then He is a false prophet. The Quran says Jesus was a great prophet, so either Jesus died a violent death or the Quran is wrong. On the other hand, if Jesus did die a violent death, He is a great prophet, but that would contradict the Quran, which says He didn’t die on the cross. Either way, the Quran is discredited.  Historically speaking, the Quranic account is not reliable.

If we look at it metaphysically, if Allah substituted Jesus for someone else, then Allah deceived the whole world. Now, maybe we could understand it if Allah deceived his enemies about Jesus, but Jesus’ disciples sincerely believed that Jesus died on the cross. The Quran refers to those early believers as Muslims, so if Allah lied to them, why would any Muslim feel confident that Allah wouldn’t like to him?

Michael Baigent claimed in The Jesus Papers that Jewish Zealots wanted Jesus dead, but Pontius Pilate liked Jesus because He supported Jews paying taxes to Rome. Therefore, he arranged for Jesus to survive the crucifixion.  Baigent makes some critical errors in using Greek words to support his case (he doesn’t read Greek) and he ignores the gospel evidence of the admixture of heart fluid and blood coming from Jesus’ side – a sure sign of death used by the Roman soldiers, who knew their jobs.

Richard Carrier, an avowed atheist, tried to psychoanalyze Paul’s encounter with the risen Christ by saying he felt guilty for persecuting Christians and experienced some sort of delusion. He ignores that Paul wasn’t alone on that road; others heard the voice and saw the light, even though they didn’t understand it. Licona acknowledged that the accounts written by Luke somewhat differ, but each telling of Paul’s conversion serves a different purpose in Acts, with a different emphasis on the details, not major divergence on the facts.

There are some skeptics who want to argue that Paul and some of the other apostles didn’t believe that Jesus was resurrected bodily.  The section of the book goes into great detail, but I’ll refer only to 1 Corinthians 15-53-54, where Paul plainly states that in resurrection our mortal bodies will “put on” an imperishable and immortal covering. “It’s not an abandonment of the body,” Licona said, “but a further clothing that completely swallows up and transforms.” Paul believed that Jesus had been physically raised, but what Paul believed is largely immaterial, because the Jews of Jerusalem were pretty well convinced that Jesus had risen from the dead. They couldn’t find His body!

Maybe, some skeptics – particularly Carrier – assert that the apostles were delusional and having hallucinations. I work for community mental health and I side with Licona in saying that I’ve never seen a group hallucination and neither have any of my coworkers.  We have clients experiencing hallucinations all the time. They don’t share them, they aren’t contagious. There are at least three group appearances recorded in the gospels, so the hallucinatory theory doesn’t fly. Nor does it account for the empty tomb. It doesn’t explain Paul’s experience with the risen Christ because he was not in a frame of mind to hallucinate something he didn’t believe.

Hallucinations are not the same as delusions. A hallucination is a false perception of something that’s not there.  A delusion is when someone persists in a belief after receiving conclusive evidence to the contrary. It is possible for a delusional person to convince others to join him in his delusion. However, Peter being delusional wouldn’t account for an empty tomb or Paul’s conversion (Paul had not yet met Peter) or James’ conversion. It could explain why some of the disciples believed, but not all of them.

So, why was the tomb empty?  There are some explanations other than Jesus rose from the dead. Are these better hypotheses than the resurrection?

Jeffery Jay Lowder suggested that Jesus’ body was stored in Joseph’s tomb through the Passover, but moved Saturday night to the graveyard of the dishonorably condemned.  James Tabor suggested that Jesus’ own family moved His body and asserted that the post-resurrection appearances were invented to compensate for the original end of Mark’s gospel. Licona brought it back once more to the apostles.  What accounts for the conversions of Paul and James, both of whom were martyred for their faith. When James announced that Jesus had appeared to him, doesn’t it seem reasonable that someone in his family would have set him straight? Hey, Jimmy, he’s buried right here. Tabor also asserted that he knew where Jesus’ body really was buried, but he based his theory on a 16^th Century Jewish mystic. Not a very credible eyewitness, but Tabor took his word over that of the first-century Paul.

Ultimately the issue of the resurrection rises and falls on the whereabouts of Jesus’ body. James Cameron tried to prove it was buried in Galilee.  I think he embarrassed himself on film. Other skeptics keep tripping over the empty tomb.  Time and time again, they will assert that it simply is not rational in this day of science to believe in the resurrection.

Francis Collins was the head of the Human Genome Project, which successfully decoded the three billion genes of human DNA. As a young man, he was an atheist, but the demonstrated faith of some of his most desperately ill patients (he started as a medical doctor) prompted him to investigate spiritual issues.  This is what he had to say in his 2006 best-seller The Language of God:

“My desire to draw close to God was blocked by my own pride and sinfulness, which in turn was an inevitable consequence of my own selfish desire to be in control. Now the crucifixion and resurrection emerged as the compelling solution to the gap that yawned between God and myself, a gap that could now be bridged by the person of Jesus Christ.”

Challenge #3 – New explanations have refuted Jesus’ resurrection.  Part 1

“Only one conclusion is justified by the evidence: Jesus is dead.” Atheist Richard C. Carrier

Christianity makes the remarkable claim that our God became a human being, died for the sins of all mankind, and rose to life again three days later.  This claim is THE central pillar of Christianity and it is the most unbelievable claim we make.  So it is important that we look at whether the evidence supports our claim.

For decades, atheists have asserted there is no god; therefore, the question of the resurrection doesn’t really need to be considered. Human beings don’t come back from the dead after three days. Argument closed. Muslims, who believe Jesus was a prophet, claim that He never died on the cross, that God substituted Him and only made it look like Jesus died.  Religious studies scholars have asserted that Jesus’ body was moved, that the women who found the empty tomb were confused, that Jesus was buried in another location.

A number of Christian Biblical scholars have also produced evidence supporting the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  N.T. Wright, Gary Habermas, and William Craig Lane are among the Christian apologists who have faced atheists in public debates and provided strong historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus.

“If Christ has not been raised,” the Apostle Paul wrote, “your faith is futile.” (1 Corinthians 15:17)

Everything Christians believe rests on the question of the resurrection. If the resurrection can not be historically supported, believers for 2000 years have been deluded and bamboozled.  The cross either unmasks Jesus as a madman or con artist or it proves Him the Son of God and savior of the world.

I’ve met Mike Licona personally when he spoke at a youth conference in Anchorage, Alaska, two years ago and then a couple of weeks ago when he spoke again in Fairbanks. He is considered one of the emerging authorities on the resurrection of Jesus. He’s written some provocative books on the subject and has even answered the Muslim challenge.  A student of Gary Habermas, he holds a BA in History, he wrote his master’s thesis in religious studies on the resurrection and his doctoral dissertation in New Testament studies on the historical methodologies to assess the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection. He is the current director of apologetics and interfaith evangelism for the North American Mission Board (NAMB) of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), which is what brought him to Alaska. Although my own conversation with him was not nearly as probing as Strobels, I found him highly intelligent and very knowledgeable on the subject of the resurrection. He’s also an extremely personable and approachable scholar who knows how to put his arguments into layman’s terms. I don’t need that sort of help, but I appreciate his approachability.

“Isn’t it true that a miracle like the resurrection is actually outside the purview of historians to investigate?” Strobel began his interview with Licona.  Strobel quoted Bart Ehrman, who said ‘because historians can only establish what probably happened, and a miracle of this nature is highly improbable, the historian cannot say it probably occurred.’ Licona totally disagreed with Ehrman’s statement. Historians are not evaluating the likelihood of a natural occurrence when investigating Jesus’ resurrection. They are evaluating the claims for a miracle. Citing Bayes’ Theorem for determining mathematical probability, Licona said “Ehrman has no grounds to claim that the resurrection is ‘highly improbable’.”  Licona felt that Ehrman’s take on the situation is due to his worldview and not in any way based upon historical analysis.

The Gospels fit into the genre of ancient historical biographies. They are early accounts that can’t be explained away by legendary development, there are multiple independent sources, multiple eye witnesses, some corroboration by outsiders and enemy attestation.

Historians can never give us 100 percent of the past. They can use ancient texts and artifacts to give us a fairly good picture of the past, but some gaps will probably always exist. All historical hypotheses are provisional. New evidence might overthrow a theory. However, historians rely on some standards of their profession to determine the probable events in history:  relevant sources, responsible method and restrained results.

The relevant sources for the resurrection of Jesus are the New Testament writings, a few secular sources who mention Jesus (Josephus, Tacitus, and Pliny the Younger), the early apologists, the early Church fathers, and even the Gnostic writings.  Clement of Rome, for example, was a disciple of Peter and Polycarp was a disciple of John. Their writings give us a glimpse into what these two apostles taught. This makes them very relevant resources.

Restrained results prevent honest historians from claiming more than the evidence warrants. Licona cited John Dominic Cross and Elaine Pagels as writers whose imaginations are very good (he said he means this in a positive way), but that their methods are “sometimes questionable” and their results are “unrestrained”.  In the end, “they may experience some embarrassment because their views are founded upon an early dating of the Gospel of Thomas … [which] now appears may very well have been written after AD 170.”

Licona relies on the use of “minimal facts” to in supporting the provisional hypothesis that the resurrection occurred as the Bible claims.  Even skeptical scholars in the field of religious studies accept many of the facts surrounding the resurrection because the evidence is so good as to convince them of its authenticity.

Fact #1 – Jesus was killed by crucifixion.

All four canonical gospels report Jesus’ crucifixion.  Forgetting for a moment that Christians consider these documents to be the inspired, inerrant Scripture of God, they are also a set of ancient documents that can be historically scrutinized, just like any other set of ancient documents. In addition to the gospels, there are a number of non-Christian sources that corroborate the crucifixion. Even the Jewish Talmud reports that “Yeshua was hanged.” Crucifixion was not very survivable. Josephus reported that he begged for the lives of three friends who were crucified. They were taken down from the crosses and given the best Roman medical care; only one survived. The admixture of blood and water that spewed from Jesus’ side when he was stabbed by a spear after his apparent death makes it highly unlikely Jesus was still alive when taken down from the cross. This was a symptom of a burst pericardial membrane, which is invariably fatal. To deny that Christ died on the cross is considered insane within the scholarly community.

Fact #2 – Jesus’ disciples believed that He rose and appeared to them.

Licona cited three strands of testimony to this fact:  Paul’s testimony about the disciples; oral tradition passed through the early church; and the written record of the early church.   Paul is important for a variety of reasons, but especially since he was not an eye witness to Christ’s death, but knew the apostles personally, thus he was in a position to know what they believed.  Scholars have identified several places where oral traditions were recorded into the New Testament in the form of creeds, hymns and sermons.  For example, 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 is a creed that Paul claimed he learned from Peter and the other apostles shortly after his own conversion and within five years of Jesus’ death. In it, we find the claim that the resurrected Christ appeared before Peter, the apostles, His skeptical brother James and a crowd of about 500 (most of whom, Paul claimed, were still alive as he wrote 20-odd years later). Eye witnesses gave this creed to Paul very early, before legendary development could affect what they believed. It was written more than 30 years prior to the Gospel of Mark.

The four gospels represent biographies written within 70 years of Jesus’ death that unambiguously report Jesus’ resurrection. Caesar Augustus, considered Rome’s greatest emperor, has five chief sources used by historians to write a history of his adulthood and they date from 100 to 200 years after his death. Thus, the Bible can be considered more historically reliable than the source documents for Caesar Augustus.

The apostolic fathers clearly believed the apostles’ report of Jesus’ resurrection. Although they weren’t eye witnesses themselves, their interaction with the apostles convinced them that their mentors believed in the resurrection. This is very important because it shows the apostles believed this to the very core of their being. They were willing to face martyrdom rather than recant the resurrection. If they didn’t believe the resurrection had happened, it’s highly unlikely they’d be willing to die for something they knew wasn’t true.

Fact #3 – The conversion of the church persecutor Paul

Multiple sources tell us that Paul hated the early church. Yet, he converted to a follower of Jesus because, Paul reported, he personally encountered the resurrected Jesus. None of Paul’s pre-conversion behavior indicates sympathy for Jesus or His followers. Paul hated them with a passion; yet he changed after that faithful event on the way to Damascus.  There are some who would like to claim that the apostles believed Jesus had been resurrected because they had been primed to believe it by Jesus Himself. Okay, that’s reasonable. It isn’t reasonable to expect Paul the enemy of Christians to be subject to such a delusion. He believed Jesus was a charlatan and His followers were heretics. He never met Jesus in the flesh, therefore he wasn’t amendable to hypnotism on this subject. Paul saw the risen Christ. It’s the only explanation for him believing that he saw Him to the point of being willing to give up everything to become an itinerate and persecuted preacher of the gospel he’d been trying to stamp out.

Fact #4 – The conversion of the skeptical half-brother of Jesus, James

Scripture records that Jesus had at least four half-siblings (brothers) and an uncounted number of sisters. Josephus referred to ‘the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ, whose name is James.’ There really is little historical question that Jesus had brothers. The Gospels record that they were skeptics to the point of taunting Jesus to prove Himself the Messiah. From an early church perspective, if James really was in a position of leadership in the Jerusalem church, it must have been extremely embarrassing for him to have the gospel writers reporting that he’d been such a jerk little brother. Yet, there you have it, in black and white.  What would cause a skeptic like James to embrace Jesus to the point of martyrdom?  Well, seeing Him in resurrected form seems a likely inducement and Paul records that James was among those who taught him that creed. That makes his conversion a very significant fact for supporting the resurrection.

Fact #5 – Jesus’ tomb was empty.

About 75 percent of religious studies scholars accept that Jesus’ tomb was empty.  There are three strands of evidence supporting this: the Jerusalem factor, enemy attestation and the testimony of women.

Jerusalem was a small city by modern standards. Nothing of major import could happen there without the general population knowing about it. Jesus was publically executed. Several weeks after His death, Peter publically announced that He had risen and invited someone to go look for the body (Acts 2). Why didn’t anyone object to this claim? Why did thousands join the church at this point if it could be proven that Jesus was indeed dead and still rotting in his grave? The priests couldn’t produce the body, that’s why they claimed the disciples stole it. The disciples’ behavior disqualifies that theory. People rarely are willing to die for something they know is a lie. If they’d stolen the body, they wouldn’t have faced martyrdom for a lie. There’s also the embarrassment factor present in the gospel accounts. Women found the tomb empty. From a historical standpoint, this made the claim of resurrection weaker, because women in the first century were generally held as unreliable witnesses. If someone was going to invent testimony to finding an empty tomb, Peter or John would have found the tomb, not women. These three strands present a good argument that Jesus’ tomb was in fact empty.

N.T. Wright, author of the 741-page Jesus and the Victory of God wrote “It’s no good falling back on ‘science’ having disproved the possibility of resurrection. Any real scientist will tell you that science observes what normally happens; the Christian case is precisely that what happened to Jesus is not what normally happens. As a historian, I prefer the elegant, essentially simple solution rather than the one that fails to include all the data: to say that the early Christians believed that Jesus had been bodily raised from the dead, and to account for this believe by saying they were telling the truth.”

You can jump through all sorts of semantic hoops trying to explain it away, but the resurrection meets the qualifications for a historical hypothesis of events. Clearly, the people of that day and age believed it and were willing to die for what they believed. The best explanation for their behavior following Jesus’ death is that they had really seen the risen Christ.

Nobody volunteers to die in painful ways for something they know is a lie.

Challenge #2 “The Bible’s portrait of Jesus can’t be trusted because the Church has tampered with the text!”

“The more I studied the manuscript tradition of the New Testament, the more I realized just how radically the text had been altered over the years at the hands of scribes …. In some instances, the very meaning of the text is at stake.”  Bart D. Ehrman from “Misquoting Jesus” page 207-208

“There is … an endless record of persistent ideological doctoring of the canonical texts from the earliest dates.”  Atheist Richard C. Carrier from “Did Jesus Exist?” www.infidels/org/library (November 23, 2006)

“When a comparison of the variant readings of the New Testament is made with those of other books which have survived from antiquity, the results are little short of astounding…. The evidence for the integrity of the New Testament is beyond question.” Biblical expert Normal Geisler

We have no original copies of the Bible!

That comes as a surprise to some people and as wonderful news to many others. It seems so much easier to discount a document when no originals still exist. In fact, for some people, that seems a bit suspicious. Why don’t any originals exist? Did somebody destroy them? How do you know that the copies we have are not filled with errors? In fact, haven’t we heard that there are between 200,000 and 400,000 errors in the Bible?  So, how can anyone say that what we have today is the inspired, inerrant word of God?

That is the argument of men like Bart Ehrman, head of the department of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and others who agree with him. In “Misquoting Jesus”, which really doesn’t deal with Jesus so much as these variant texts, he wrote “We have only error-ridden copies … centuries removed from the originals … and different from them, evidently, in thousands of ways.”

Strobel interviewed Daniel B. Wallace, Ph.D., a professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary (alamater of two of my research partners) and one of the world’s foremost authorities on textual criticism. Dr. Wallace has done post-doctorate study at Tyndale House, Cambridge and Turbingen University in Germany.  At the writing of The Case for the Real Jesus he was executive director of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, whose objective is to digitally preserve the New Testament manuscripts so scholars and others can examine them via enhancement software on the Internet. By 2006, the center had taken more than 35,000 high-resolution digital photographs of Greek New Testament manuscripts, including several recently discovered texts.  Widely traveled and well-known as a first-rate New Testament translator, more than 150 essays of his can be found on the Biblical Studies Foundation website. He also co-authored the book “Reinventing Jesus” which critiqued Ehrman’s book.  Seminarians know him best for his textbook “Greek Grammar beyond the Basics” which is used in more than two-thirds of the schools that teach intermediate Greek, including Yale Divinity School, Princeton Theological Seminary, and Cambridge University.

Textual criticism is a highly specialized field and it can be said that nobody dealing in this field is without bias. Wallace admits it. If Ehrman does not, he’s lying or in denial.  This does not make these experts bad at their job. It just means they have biases. A part of any science is the willingness to challenge our biases.

Wallace noted scholars across the theological spectrum say that in all the essentials – not in every particular – our New Testament manuscripts go back to the originals. Ehrman is a member of a tiny minority who, Wallace feels, has refused to challenge his biases and therefore has drawn minority conclusions.

Although it has been likened to the children’s game of “Telephone” textual criticism is not at all similar. In the game, there is one stream of oral transmission that comes out when the final person speaks the message aloud.  In textual criticism there are multiple streams of written transmission and the textual critic can refer back to earlier editions. Textual criticism is a science, not a child’s game.

So, where does that leave the textual critic in the 21^st Century, nearly 2000 years removed from the original texts? Wallace reported that we have an embarrassment of riches with regard to New Testament documents.

There are more than 5700 Greek copies of the New Testament. We also have another 10,000 copies in Latin. There are an additional 10,000 to 15,000 versions in other languages – Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Georgian, etc. That’s 25,000 to 30,000 handwritten copies of the New Testament. Only 60 Greek manuscripts have the entire New Testament, but most were never intended to be complete copies. Paul’s letters, for example, circulated in a bound codex, separate from the Gospels and those letters of other writers.

In addition, if we destroyed all copies of the New Testament, we could reconstruct almost the entire Bible from the writings of the early Church fathers. In all, there are one million quotations of the New Testament in their writings and they date to as early as the first century.

About 10 percent of these manuscripts date from the first millennium. We have nearly 50 manuscripts in Greek alone. When compared to later editions, additions to the text over 14 centuries of copying only amount to 2 percent of the total.

Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey have fewer than 2400 copies with more than 800 years of addition time for those copies to be created. Textual criticism of this or any other ancient document (please read the book if you want more details) relies on creative conjectures and imaginative guesses for reconstructing the wording of the original.  Then there’s the dating.

In 1844 F.C. Baur, the father of modern theological liberalism, argued that the Gospel of John was a synthesis of Peter and Paul’s Christianity and must be dated after AD 160.  This threw many scholars into turmoil until in 1934 a papyrologist named Colin H. Roberts discovered a papyri fragment in a Manchester University library. Though palm-sized, it contained John 18:31-33 and 18:37-38.  Papyrus is extremely fragile and very little has survived 2000 years, but this papyri dates from not later than AD 150 and maybe as early as AD 100 (10 years after John wrote the letter).  Other papyri have been discovered in recent years dating from the second century and amounting to about half of the New Testament. What we have of the ancient manuscripts really dates quite closely to the originals and compared to other ancient documents, it’s remarkable to have them for the Bible.

But what about all those variants – differences in the text? About 70 to 80 percent are difference in spelling of Greek words that have no direct translation into English and absolutely no impact on the meaning of the text. Of the remaining, many are due to the use of the Greek definite article with a proper name. In Greek, something might have been written the Jesus, but since other languages don’t do that, the scribe dropped the.  Again, no impact on meaning, but it’s counted as a variant. Greek is an inflected language, somewhat like Latin, that doesn’t require words to go in the same order each time. In English, of course, this is important – it changes the whole meaning of the sentence. In Greek, it wasn’t so important. All these variant ways of saying the same thing would be translated into English the same way, but they are still counted as variants. Only about one percent of variants are meaningful (affecting the meaning) and viable (meaning they go back to the original).

To be honest, there have been some intentional changes in the Bible. Some of them were done to make the oral reading of Scripture more sensible, as when the speaker isn’t identified at the beginning of a passage that was to be read in church, so the scribe denoted who the speaker was. There are also some harmonizations among the Gospels, which scholars claim are very easy to spot.  None of the variants affect essential doctrines, but may somewhat impact upon peripheral subjects, like the role of women in the church, or whether fasting is required to cast out demons. Does it really matter for salvation if the mark of the Beast is 666 or 616?

One of the most beloved passages of the Bible was probably added – the story of the woman caught in adultery from John 7-53-8:11.  . It is such a poignant story that we really want it to be in the Bible and it may have been written by Luke. It’s well-established that Luke didn’t use it in his Gospel, but it appears that someone, at a later date, thought it should be added. It should be noted that all modern translations of the Bible tell readers that the oldest manuscripts don’t have this section in them. Nobody is trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes.  Passages such as these, which includes the end of the Gospel of Mark, were a part of Bibles for a long time before textual critics discovered they weren’t authentic. They remain in modern Bibles, with appropriate footnotes so that people will not accuse translators of removing passages from the Bible. In or out, the questionable passages have no impact upon the essential doctrines of Christianity.

Some skeptics point to 1 John 5:7-8 “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one” as inauthentic and affecting the doctrines of Christianity.  Atheist Frank Zindler claims that deleting this passage would leave Christians without Biblical support for the doctrine of the Trinity.

Wallace thought this was ridiculous. The passage dates from a homily in the 8^th Century, but the Council of Constantinople in AD381 and Chalcedon in AD 451 emerged with explicit statements affirming the Trinity. They obviously didn’t need this later, inauthentic passage to find Biblical evidence for the Trinity.

The Father is God. Jesus is God. The Holy Spirit is God. There is only one God. Those four truths reside in the Bible and that is Trinity!

The writers of Holy Blood, Holy Grail claimed that in AD 303 Emperor Diocletian destroyed all Christian writings he could find and this, they claim, explains why there are no New Testament manuscripts prior to the fourth century. According to these writers, Emperor Constantine commissioned new versions of these documents, allowing the “custodians of orthodoxy to revise, edit, and rewrite their material as they saw fit.” It was in this process that Jesus was deified, according to these writers.

Wallace was particularly amused and annoyed by this theory and noted that the authors are not trained in history. Diocletian did destroy several Christian manuscripts, mostly in the east and south, but more than four dozen Greek manuscripts exist from prior to the fourth century, so obviously he didn’t destroy them all.  All of these manuscripts include numerous passages that assert Jesus’ deity (John 1:1; John 1:18; John 20:28; Titus 2:13; Hebrews 1:8; 2 Peter 1:1). Moreover, the early Church fathers writing before Diocletian obviously saw Jesus as God.

Wallace completed his interview with Strobel urging pastors to lead their churches in proper historical research. He felt that Scripture is marginalized and treated with kid gloves. “We really need to wrestle with the issues, because our faith depends on it,” he said.

Wallace related that his many years of study have assured him that the Bible has changed very little over 2000 years and what changes there are have been minor. He believes, based upon his expertise, that God has preserved enough of the original Bible for us to know Him and His truth.

“The evidence for the integrity of the New Testament is beyond question,” Biblical expert Norman Geisler, author of more than 50 books explaining and defending Christianity, wrote.

Bart Ehrman dedicated Misquoting Jesus to Bruce M. Metzger, Ehrman’s mentor at Princeton and recognized as one of the greatest authorities on the New Testament in the 20^th Century.  Metzger told Strobel in a 1997 interview that “[Scholarship] has built [my faith]. I’ve asked questions all my life, I’ve dug into the text, I’ve studied it thoroughly, and today, I know with confidence that my trust in Jesus has been well-placed.”

What is remarkable is that how much the Bible has changed over two millennia, but how little it has changed. The basic doctrines of the Bible have not been touched in any substantial way. Wallace noted that Ehrman wrote an entire book that dealt at the changes in the Bible and hinted at how they have impacted important doctrines, but that he never produced any evidence of those changes impacting important doctrines. This is not to say we shouldn’t be concerned for the authenticity of the Biblical text, but that we can be assured that what we currently have has been thoroughly studied by experts and only a very few determined skeptics believe it to be unreliable and they cannot produce proof of that.

“An ounce of proof is worth a pound of presupposition,” as Wallace told Strobel.  Skeptics perhaps need to challenge their own presuppositions before insisting upon challenging anyone else’s.

I’m departing slightly from my usually Bible studies because I’ve felt the Lord leading me in this direction for a while.  A friend’s gifting of “The Case for the Real Jesus” encouraged me to follow that leading.

Lee Strobel is an award-winning journalist who was a spiritual skeptic until 1981 when his research into the claims for Christianity brought him to salvation.  He has since authored several books on Christian topics. He himself is not, nor does he claim to be, an expert in theology, apologetics, or science, but he uses his legal and journalistic backgrounds to tap the minds of theologians, apologists and scientists and then reports on what they have to say.  Coming from a journalism and political science background myself, I thoroughly enjoy his well-researched books. Like Lee, I do not put myself forward as an expert on many things, but I think my training and background makes me well-qualified to recognize when experts speak.

In previous books, Lee examined faith, the claims for the historical Jesus, and the creation of the universe.  In “The Case for the Real Jesus” Lee looks at six challenges to modern Biblical Christianity and asks the experts for their responses. His challenges resonate with me and they probably will resonate with others because we’ve all had these conversations.

Challenge #1 – “Scholars are uncovering a radically different Jesus in ancient documents just as credible as the four gospels.”

Challenge #2 – “The Biblical portrait of Jesus can’t be trusted because the Church tampered with the text.”

Challenge #3 – “New explanations have refuted Jesus’ resurrection.”

Challenge #4 – “Christianity’s beliefs about Jesus were copied from pagan religions.”

Challenge #5 – “Jesus was an imposter who failed to fulfill the Messianic prophesies.”

Challenge #6 – “People should be free to pick and choose what to believe about Jesus.”

“Jesus has been called as an intellectual who spouted pithy aphorisms; a Mediterranean cynic leading a wandering band of proto-hippies; an androgynous feminist and ambassador of Sophia, the female embodiment of divine wisdom; a clever messianic pretender; a gay magician; a peasant revolutionary; and a Jewish Zen master,” Strobel wrote. “People who have searched for Jesus through history have often discovered exactly who they wanted to find in the first place. Is it possible to find the real Jesus? That depends on how you answer a more fundamental question: Are you willing to set aside your preconceptions and let the evidence take you wherever it will?”

About 50 miles from my home there is a hot springs with a resort and pools for swimming and soaking. In the winter, our family goes there fairly often to unthaw.  The resort used to have a couple of large group cabins on a fresh water stream on the far side of the resort that we would rent for youth activities (the resort now houses employees in them). You’d think with a fresh water stream flowing just the other side of the path that drinking water would not be an issue, but the hot springs flows into that stream, so that the water never freezes, it smells like rotten eggs and it is tepid. Nobody wants to drink it. Chena Hot Spring Resort is a modern-day case study of Laodicea

“To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: “The Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the Originator (Col 1:18; Jn 1:1–5) of God’s creation says:   I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were cold or hot.    So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I am going to vomit (Or spit) you out of My mouth.” Revelation 3:14-16

Wealthy Laodicea (lay ahd ih cee’ uh) thrived on its textile and banking industry and was known for its medical school which produced a highly effective eye salve. Located on an ancient highway that linked Ephesus with Syria, the city had a problem with its water supply. The need for fresh water was satisfied by aqueducts that brought water from a hot springs near Hieropolis and by the time it arrived in Laodicea it was neither hot nor cold, but tepid, just like drinking water in my hot springs resort. Yuk!  Laodicea was indeed wealthy. When the city was destroyed by an earthquake in AD 60, the residents did not need or accept Roman help in rebuilding. Laodicea produced fine wool garments of raven-black and they had one of the best medical schools of the ancient world.

The Holy Spirit, which is more interested in our character than our comfort, viewed things very differently. Though possessed of great material wealth, the Laodicean church was, according to the Holy Spirit, were spiritually poor, blind and naked (verse 17).  Like the tepid water in the city’s cisterns, the Laodicean Christians were lukewarm, lacking the refreshment for the spiritually weary or the healing for the spiritually sick.  Jesus told them they needed to possess real riches, the pure gold of salvation, white (not black) garments, and eye salve that only Jesus can give. The Laodiceans were relying on their human effort when they really needed a spiritual foundation laid only on Christ.

“Because you say, ‘I’m rich; I have become wealthy, and need nothing,’ and you don’t know that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked, I advise you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire so that you may be rich, and white clothes so that you may be dressed and your shameful nakedness not be exposed, and ointment to spread on your eyes so that you may see.” Revelation 3:17-18

If faith is worth anything, it is worth everything! Jesus expects His people to be earnest. Yet, are we?  I look around at the modern Church, including my own church and my own self, and I see a lot of indifference to the gospel.  Like the Laodiceans, some modern Christians have very high opinions of themselves and their ministries, usually based upon wealth and numbers. Jesus is more concerned with our character than our comfort. His opinion of us can be quite different from our opinion ourselves.  We should be careful not to cheat our souls with self-delusion. The Bible warns that many will say “Lord, Lord,” we did this things in Your Name and He will say “Depart from Me, for I never knew you.”  Christian should never assume that material blessing is a sign that they or their church is doing well.  Wealth, comfort and ease can make people feel confident, satisfied and complacent, but all the money in the world won’t buy a soul.

“As many as I love, I rebuke and discipline. So be committed (Or be zealous) and repent. Listen! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and have dinner with him, and he with Me. The victor: I will give him the right to sit with Me on My throne, just as I also won the victory and sat down with My Father on His throne.”  Revelation 3:19-21

Jesus warned the Laodiceans that discipline would be in their near-future if they didn’t repent and renew their commitment to Him. Discipline has a bad connotation in our world today, but like a loving parent, Jesus doesn’t discipline as a means of punishment, so much as to bring people back to Him. Jesus might discipline lukewarm Christians to help them out of their wrong attitude. That is not a bad thing!

Rich and complacent, fat and lazy, the Laodicean Christians heard Jesus knocking the door of their hearts, but they were too busy with worldly pleasures to hear it and let Him in. The temporary satisfaction of this world’s good stuff can lull us into ignoring God. Jesus is knocking on our hearts’ door every time we sense we should turn to Him. He wants to have fellowship with us – to be our Friend. He lets us make the choice. He doesn’t force His way in. There are consequences if we continue to keep His life-changing presence on the outside.

“Anyone who has an ear should listen to what the Spirit says to the churches.” Revelation 3:22

This steady refrain of Revelation to the churches could just as well have been written to us. In any group of believers, I think, you will find someone representing at least one of the Asia Minor churches.  Examine yourselves!  It’s not for me to tell you where your heart is at. Answer your self-examination honestly and decide where you need to adjust to Jesus so that you may draw closer to Him.

Jesus is more interested in our character than our comfort.

My friend Martha, who is using her retirement years as a volunteer missionary since she retired from active, paid missionary work, recently met a young man who survived being a Christian in Malaysia.  He’s 15 now, but when he was 10, a mob of Muslims from a neighboring village stormed into the village he’d grown up in, demanding that the locals turn over all the Christians.  Those who refused were killed. Pretty soon, the Christians were rounded up and they were each given the chance to recant their faith and convert to Islam. One by one, with a few exceptions, the Christians refused and were killed.  When the boy was given the option, instead of just saying “No, I will not” he said “A Christian cannot give up their faith for our souls are held by God. I am not more powerful than God.”

Citing his age, the leaders of the mob allowed him to live, though he watched his parents and three siblings die torturous deaths that day.  He was left orphaned and alone. No family in the village would take him in because they were afraid. A few days later, a sailboat came to his village’s dock for supplies and one of the elders of the village asked them to take the boy to a Christian church in a larger town.  The owners of the sailboat happened to be born-again Christians themselves and they sponsored the boy as a servant to the mission Martha was visiting in India.

“To the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: “The Holy One, the True One, the One who has the key of David, who opens and no one will close, and closes and no one opens (Isaiah 22:22) says:  “I know your works. Because you have limited strength, have kept My word, and have not denied My name, look, I have placed before you an open door that no one is able to close.

“Take note! I will make those from the synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews and are not, but are lying—note this—I will make them come and bow down at your feet, and they will know that I have loved you. (Isaiah 45:14; 60:14). Because you have kept My command to endure, I will also keep you from the hour of testing that is going to come over the whole world to test those who live on the earth. I am coming quickly. Hold on to what you have, (Rv 2:25) so that no one takes your crown.”  Revelation 3:7-11

Philadelphia (which means love of brother) was a Hellenistic city built in a frontier area by citizens of Perganum.  Essentially a gateway community, the citizens of Philadelphia kept barbarians (probably some of my Celtic ancestors) out of the region and brought in Greek culture and language. Destroyed by an earthquake in AD17, aftershocks kept people nervous enough that they actually lived outside of the city walls.

In the Gospel of John, written by the same apostle who scribed the Revelation, Jesus called Himself the “door”.  We now see the same imagery here. Jesus controls the door.  There are two ways to take this. The first interpretation is the door of the individual believer’s heart. Salvation is assured (reference – my father’s hand). Once we’ve opened the door of our heart to Jesus, that door can never be barred to Him again. Although the words don’t appear anywhere in Scripture, this is where the concept of “once saved always saved” comes from.  Conversely, when the door is closed, there will come a time when it cannot be opened. Judgment becomes certain. We all face the consequences of our choices. Christians face the consequence of serving God in this lifetime by worshipping Him forever in eternity. Non-Christians face the consequence of ignoring God in this lifetime by spending eternity without Him and without the good that comes only from Him. As the young Malaysian demonstrated, Christians are not more powerful than God. Once the door is opened to Jesus, it remains open.

The second way to interpret this passage is communally. It was, after all, written to a church, not to individuals.  Jesus holds the key to government just as He held the key of David’s kingdom, but He also has authority over the Church and the individual churches within the Church. Jesus opens the door of opportunity to His churches. He puts the gospel in the mouths of His ministers. He prepares hearts willing to hear the gospel when it comes their way.

Philadelphia’s church was commended. Though they lacked the strength that Smyrna had, they were clinging to what they believed.  Because of their resolute loyalty, Jesus promised that their enemies would someday bow at their feet. I think of the millions of Christians around the world in the 21st Century who struggle under trial, suffering and sometimes dying at the hands of godless (or idol-worshipping) tyrants. Although I could discuss the symbolic imagery of this passage and how it might apply to the end times, in this particular instance what struck me was the present application. For Christians around the world, the tribulation time prophesied in the Bible has already begun. Jesus never promised Christians a rose garden. We will face hard times because our faith is an insult to some. Wherever Christians suffer for His sake, Jesus promises protection of their eternal salvation (Luke 21:17-19).

The Philadelphian Christians weren’t strong. Many Christian communities around the world are similar. Living in difficult times, then as now, these Christians here the Lord’s command to Gideon (threshing wheat in a wine press for fear of enemies) “Go in the strength that you have.”  The Philadelphian Christians continued to obey and hold tight to the strength they had.

“The victor: I will make him a pillar in the sanctuary of My God, and he will never go out again. I will write on him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God—the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God—and My new name.

“Anyone who has an ear should listen to what the Spirit says to the churches.” Revelation 3:12-13

Christ promises a glorious reward to the victorious believer. We gain victory not by the sword, but upon our knees in prayer and in carrying out acts of service on His behalf. Our willingness to obey God no matter what our circumstances will be rewarded by the mark of Jesus upon our souls for all eternity.

 “Go in the strength you have and deliver Israel from the power of Midian. Am I not sending you?” the Lord’s words to Gideon in Judges 6:14.

A minister friend of mine trained to be a funeral director when he was in high school. His childless uncle wanted to give him the family business. Jeff changed his mind one dark and stormy night when he was cleaning the mortuary, which backed up to a local cemetery. His uncle had just stepped out from the embalming room to get some supper when the lights went out. Jeff heard a sound in the embalming room and, thinking that his uncle had returned, stepped in with the flashlight to help his employer out. What he found instead was that the corpse Uncle had been working on was sitting straight up and looking at him.  Jeff screamed and immediately beat feet for the parking lot before his overheated imagination reminded him that there was a cemetery out there that could produce way more zombies than the one in the embalming room. His uncle found him huddled in the barricaded bathroom dripping in sweat.

It turns out that this is a common problem with the embalming process. Sometimes the embalming fluid causes the corpse to act in unusual ways, like sitting up. Jeff decided right then and there that mortuary science was NOT his career of choice. Another cousin now owns the funeral home and Jeff is an associate pastor at a large church where he deals with the living rather than the dead.

Back when Jeff, my husband and I were the adult sponsors for a Baptist Student Union, Jeff introduced the following passage with this story and the statement “Sometimes there’s still a little life left in dead things.”

“To the angel of the church in Sardis write: “The One who has the seven spirits of God (Rv 1:4; 4:5; 5:6) and the seven stars says: I know your works; you have a reputation for being alive, but you are dead.”  Revelation 3:1

Sardis, situated in the Hermus River valley northeast of Ephesus, was a wealthy city that actually had two locations. Originally built on a mountain plateau, when the city ran out of room, a new section was built in the valley.  An impressive acropolis overlooked the lower city and it was known for its temple to Artemis.

Sardis was not troubled by heresy. Heresy springs from a Christian base. It is usually formulated by people who want to be Christians in their own way.  You have to be basically Christian in order to be a heretic. The church at Sardis was not infected with heresy because it was dead.

Like Jeff’s corpse, it was still moving. In fact, the church at Sardis had a reputation for being quite alive. The Holy Spirit, Who judges the innermost parts of our soul rather than our outward appearance, knew this was a fallacy. The corpse might be moving, but it was quite dead.

“Be alert and strengthen what remains, which is about to die, for I have not found your works complete before My God. Remember therefore what you have received and heard; keep it, and repent. But if you are not alert, I will come upon you like a thief, and you have no idea at what hour I will come against you.  But you have a few people in Sardis who have not defiled (or soiled) their clothes, and they will walk with Me in white, because they are worthy.”  Revelation 3:2-4

There was still a remnant left alive in Sardis, but God was not pleased with them. He had not found their works “complete”.  You could interpret this in any number of ways. I’m going to follow Jeff’s interpretation, not because he’s a scholar (he’s not), but because I like it. It speaks to me as it spoke to me many years ago.

Wake up! Become aware of your condition and do something about it! Gather what remains and remember the gospel. Repent and obey!

What were the Sardisian Christians supposed to remember?  The gospel. Contrary to what some people believe, the gospel isn’t that difficult to understand. It’s not about creeds (or what my 8-year-old calls “magic words”) or rituals. It’s about understanding and seeking relationship.

1.    Jesus is God. The Bible says God the Father exists.  Jesus said “I and My Father are One” (John 10:30).  The Holy Spirit is said to be God (John 16:5-11, Romans 1:1-4, 1 Cor 12:4-6, Ephesians 4:4).  Genesis 1 shows God and the Holy Spirit together in the creation of the world. John 1:1-2 puts God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit together in the creation of the world.  The reality of the Trinitarian God can be found throughout the scripture. To be a Christian, one must believe that Jesus is God because what He accomplished on Calvary would not be possible if He were not God.

2.    We human beings are not God.  I don’t think that requires any more explanation. Look at what mess human beings make of the world, even with the best of intentions, and my statement is self-evident.

3.    We human beings can never be good enough to earn spiritual life. We’re born sinners, we remain sinners, and we die as sinners. We can seek perfection, but we’ll never attain it. As long as we sin, on our own, we can only earn spiritual death, the state we were originally born into.

4.    Jesus died to pardon (forgive, erase, utterly destroy) our sin. Because of God’s grace (unearned love), Jesus’ sacrifice at Calvary declares us “good enough” for God’s salvation. It isn’t that we haven’t sinned. It’s that our sins have been forgiven.

5.    If we believe the above, we have faith in Jesus, resulting in righteousness (to be made right with God) – Romans 10:9-10

6.    When we confess (admit) that belief before others we become saved by God’s grace (Romans 10:9-10)

The wealth and comfort of Sardis had lulled the church into sleep. Most of the church had died in its coma. They weren’t producing new Christians. They had wandered from the apostles’ teachings and were no longer growing in faith or evangelism. They lacked compassion for others and had no unity or love.

One of the major problems I see with nominal Christians is that they don’t self-assess. This is often a problem with true Christians as well, which normally leads to their children being nominal Christians. Are we watchful and alert? Are we honest with ourselves about where we stand in the Lord? Do we even know where to start in that process?

God has given every Christian a place of responsibility within the church – to teach, to lead, or to serve. We don’t all have the same job, but all are of equal importance. The pastor can’t do his job if the maintenance man doesn’t keep the furnace going.  Whatever our God-assigned position in the church, we should use it to encourage those around us to be spiritually awake and morally prepared.

Recognize that you are on a mission field! The place where I work is a mission field. My children are a mission field. The school my daughter goes to is a mission field.

One thing we can learn from Sardis is that often our numbers are small in the larger arena of life, but there was a remnant of Christians in Sardis and there is probably a remnant where ever you are. Find other Christians, pray for renewal and for boldness.  You might be the only Christian someone else will ever meet, so don’t miss the opportunity to tell them about Jesus. Their eternity rides on it.

“In the same way, the victor will be dressed in white clothes, and I will never erase his name from the book of life, but will acknowledge his name before My Father and before His angels.

“Anyone who has an ear should listen to what the Spirit says to the churches.”  Revelation 3:2-6

First and foremost, Christians are called to please God.  We do that by entering into relationship with Him. There are no rituals, no church ceremonies, no “magic words” that accomplish this. It is an acknowledgment that Jesus can save us and that we want to be saved. There are no “works” that accomplish this. Jesus did it all!  We are victors when we recognize that and live in that.  Until we get that right, there is nothing else that we do that matters one bit to God. We must allow Him to make us spiritually alive first. Anything before that has no value. All else after that does not move us one step closer to salvation. It merely says "Thank You, Jesus, for what You have done for me."

Anyone who has an ear should listen to what the Spirit says to the churches.

A friend of mine is dying of Hepatitis C.  He and his wife, who doesn’t have Hep C, have been married nearly 30 years and he’s been a Christian most of that time. He claims he’s been faithful to her and he insists he was never an IV drug user.  He was a wild young man before he met his wife, but that was 30 years ago. Now, his liver is being eaten by a virus normally transmitted by sexual contact. Hep C was not a listed STD 30 years ago, but my friend is still dying from it.

“To the angel of the church in Thyatira write: “The Son of God, the One whose eyes are like a fiery flame, and whose feet are like fine bronze says:
 I know your works—your love, faithfulness,  Or faith service, and endurance. Your last works are greater than the first.” Revelations 2:18-19
 

Thyatira, a working man’s city in the Lycus River valley, was never a magnificent city, but was the center of a number of trade guilds which used the natural resources of the area to make it a very profitable site. Thyatira had a Jewish contingent out of which grew a New Testament church. One of Paul’s first converts from the European continent, Lydia, was a native of Thyatira (Acts 16:14). She probably was a member of a guild there which dealt in purple dye.

The letter indicates that the Thyatiran Christians didn’t always serve the Lord to their fullest capacity. There had been improvement in their acts of love and service in recent years. The Holy Spirit commended them for their efforts as they had grown in the Lord.

Reading this, Thyatira reminded me a great deal of some churches in our modern day. They gather for great worship services, pay mega-bucks for a kickin’ sound system, and advertise on TV and the Internet to bring in people. There’s nothing wrong with any of this. I love kickin’ worship services myself! The problem is that many of these churches don’t really attempt to reach non-believers. Oh, they talk a lot about the “unchurched”, but what they really mean is Christians who either aren’t going to church or whom are looking for a church other than the one they are currently going to. I have several dearly loved friends who have in the last couple of years left smaller, ministry-oriented churches to attend larger worship-oriented churches. In all but one case, the person making the move is so excited that they no longer have to do anything but show up and be fed.

That’s wrong!

Worship services largely reach church-goers. Ministry is what reaches out to non-Christians. As a rule, non-Christians are allergic to worship services. It doesn’t matter how exciting you make it, that’s not what reaches non-Christians. Most non-Christians become interested in things spiritual due to a contact with a church through real ministry. The options are endless. Our local Lutheran church has seen a 20 percent increase in professions of faith in the last year due in large part to heading a community-wide ministry based on Saddleback’s Celebrate Recovery program. In most cases this program has accessed nominal Christians with addictions who were seeking a deist-based recovery program; in other words, non-Christians who had some previous Christian contact (usually, Mom or Grandmom when they were kids). My church has a multicultural face because of 50 years of English and citizenship education ministry. These Korean, Japanese and Hispanic (currently) folks were brought into the church by the ministry, where they accepted the Lord after they got to know about Jesus. Food bank, crisis pregnancy, parenting, youth and child ministries, even hosting an AA or NA group – all these are examples of ways churches can reach out to non-Christians. There are many, many more. But, it’s not just churches that should be involved in ministry. Two of the girls in my youth group have started posting Bible verses on their MySpaces. These teenagers are doing ministry in their social group, reaching out to the unsaved teens they know in a way that might work for their generation. Blogs are another avenue for individual ministry. Where you work is a ministry field. Most people will listen to someone who is a friend talk about something that is important to them. For Christians, there should be no topic more important to us than Jesus Christ crucified and risen for the remission of sins.

Great worship services rearrange the chairs, moving Christians from one venue to another. Ministry touches hearts and grows the Church! It would be great if we could do both, but we must always remember that we are called to do ministry first and foremost.

“But I have this against you: you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and teaches and deceives My slaves to commit sexual immorality (orcommit fornication and to eat meat sacrificed to idols.
I gave her time to repent, but she does not want to repent of her sexual immorality. Look! I will throw her into a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of her  practices.
I will kill her children with the plague.  Ezk 33:27 Then all the churches will know that I am the One who examines minds  and hearts, and I will give to each of you according to your works.”  Revelation 2:20-23

It’s a safe bet that “Jezebel” is not the same pagan queen of Israel who was considered one of the most evil women who ever lived. Centuries had passed since Ahab and Jezebel had lived and died. Whether this woman was named Jezebel or John used her name as a symbol, the implication is clear. Evil lives in this woman and it has infected the congregation at Thyatira.

Apparently, Jezebel was a member of the church, calling herself a prophetess, and she taught the congregation that sexual immorality and eating meat sacrificed to idols was Godly.  Sexual immorality is never countenanced anywhere in Scripture. Paul, holding to the concept that what goes in our bodies is not what makes us unclean, but what comes out is what harms us and others, wrote that eating meat sacrificed to idols was fine, so long as Christians were sensitive to the weaknesses of their fellows. If someone was going to be bothered by eating meat sacrificed to pagan idols, then Christians shouldn’t eat it. To put that in 21^st Century terms is actually fairly easy. Jesus turned water into wine, so drinking alcohol in moderation must not be a sin, but if your fellow Christian is an alcoholic or simply bothered by your imbibing, don’t do it. Don’t risk bringing someone else down for the sake of your pleasure. Yes, you have the freedom to do it, but you should consider others before yourself.

Understand that Jezebel was teaching heresy. She was standing in the church teaching something that God had not authorized. God had given her time to repent. She hadn’t. He had given the church time to lead her back to the path of right or remove her from the church. Now, He was being very clear. Judgment was coming. Those who didn’t want to get caught in the backlash of the discipline would get out of His way. He was done permitting heresy in His church and He would remove it if the Thyatirans did not.

In our modern day, the plague Jesus promised to bring upon Jezebel goes by several names -- AIDS, Hep B, Hep C, etc.  We don't like to talk about sexual immorality and pagan living within the churches, but it's there and every now and then, we see sin rear its ugly, secretive head. Don't for a minute believe that Jesus doesn't know what we're up to. He does! And, judgment is coming. 

 I say to the rest of you in Thyatira, who do not hold this teaching, who haven’t known the deep things  (or secret things) of Satan—as they say—I do not put any other burden on you.
 But hold on to what you have until I come. The victor and the one who keeps My works to the end: I will give him authority over the nations—
and He will shepherd them with an iron scepter; He will shatter them like pottery Ps 2:9 — just as I have received this from My Father. I will also give him the morning star. 

“Anyone who has an ear should listen to what the Spirit says to the churches.” Revelation 2:24-29

Not all of the Thyatiran Christians had followed Jezebel. The reference to “the deep things of Satan” is curious and after checking three commentaries, I couldn’t find an acceptable answer. A friend who is a New Testament scholar suggested it’s talking about Gnosticism. All Christians today should be familiar with gnosticism, because it has revived as a strong alternative to Christianity. It is the idea that only special people get the inside scoop on Jesus. Think Dan Brown, Elaine Pagels, Michael Baigent, etc.

Christians must always be on guard against “new” revelation. It’s so tempting to think that you’ve found something about God that nobody else has ever known, but the fact is the Bible’s been around for 2000 years. It’s been studied by many great minds. Those minds continue to refine what we know of the Bible message, but they don’t find anything new. The Reformers were the first to successfully promote the message of salvation by faith, but they weren’t the first to state that message. Many groups for centuries before that had said many of the same things, but they had been persecuted and killed by the Catholic Church in its zeal to keep its human-wrought religious system unchallenged. Anyone making the statement that the Reformation reestablished God’s Church after 1500 years of apostasy doesn’t understand the Bible, God’s Church or the history of the Church. True Christianity was around for all that time; it just wasn't acknowledged by those in power.

Jesus urged the Thyatirans to hold on to what they had been taught until He came. That’s all they had to do. Just don’t give up.  In our world today, we often think that we must do something grand for God and certainly, He would likely reward us for our efforts, but in reality there are only a few things required of Christians.

Muskeg really grab some people’s attention. We were hiking near a river this summer when we ran across one.  The visitor with us immediately was intrigued by how you could walk on top of this pillow of liquid mud without falling through.  She just had to stand in the middle in her bare feet dancing back and forth. Pretty soon my daughter joined in. Bri knows the secret of the muskeg. If you stand in one place when you jiggle it, eventually you start to sink.  The visitor didn’t know that, so soon found herself up over her ankles in sticky COLD mud.  The cold felt good on a hot day, until she realized she couldn’t get her feet free.  Pretty soon, she was panicking and my husband and daughter were holding her up and I was wriggling my hand down into the mud to release the suction.  We were all muddy by the time we got her free.  It’s hard to stand in the middle of a mudpie and not get dirty.

We call Las Vegas, Nevada, “Sin City” almost as a joke (which, having been there, I find very sad), but few people realize there were really truly sin cities in ancient times.  In some cities within the Greco-Roman sphere, as in cities like LV today, sin was a full-time occupation. Christians living within those cities (as in such modern cities) were under tremendous pressure with threats of persecution and temptation to comprise all around.

“To the angel of the church in Perganum write: “The One who has the sharp, two-edged sword  Rv 1:16 says: I know  where you live—where Satan’s throne is! And you are holding on to My name and did not deny your faith in Me,  even in the days of Antipas, My faithful witness, who was killed among you, where Satan lives.

"But I have a few things against you. You have some there who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to place a stumbling block  in front of the sons of Israel: to eat meat sacrificed to idols and to commit sexual immorality. In the same way, you also have those who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans.

"Therefore repent! Otherwise, I will come to you quickly and fight against them with the sword of My mouth. 
 
“Anyone who has an ear should listen to what the Spirit says to the churches. I will give the victor some of the hidden manna. (Ex 16:32–34) I will also give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name is inscribed that no one knows except the one who receives it.”  Revelation 2:12-17

Perganum was a citadel, a wealthy city in Asia Minor built on a hill about a 1000 feet above the surrounding countryside. I had my Sunday School students envision a city on a nearby dome mountain that is about 1000 feet above our town. We all agreed this would be an ideal location for a city in ancient times because it would create a natural fortress. Well-defended cities in ancient times were also wealthy cities because they were not often pillaged. Perganum was blessed with location. A sophisticated center of Greek culture and education, Perganum had a library with over 200,000 volumes. To a book-phile like me, that sounds wonderful! Unfortunately, Perganum rivaled Ephesus in idol worship as the home of four cults and temples to Zeus, Dionysus and Athena. The city’s primary god was Asclepius, a serpent god of healing. Like Lourdes, Perganum saw a lot of visitors come for miracles. Its nickname in the region was “the city where Satan has his throne.”

The Pergan Christians, surrounded by wealth and culture, faced persecution. When one of the leaders, Antipas refused to compromise his beliefs, he was killed. The Pergans held to the faith, refusing to deny their Christianity, even though they had clear evidence that it could lead to their deaths.  For this, Jesus praised them. However, the Pergans lived in a mud pit and they were bound to get dirty.

Balak was a king in the area near Israel who feared the wandering Israelites because of their great numbers. He bribed a prophet named Balaam to lead them astray. Balaam changed his mind about doing Balak’s dirty work, but he later led the Israelites into pagan worship all on his own. This was made possible because the Israelites allowed him to remain in their midst. Now, in the 1^st Century, the Pergan Christians were tolerating the Nicolaitans and their beliefs within the church. Like the Israelites with Balaam, they were compromising God’s law of the spirit with worldly ideas.

I’m sure they had practical reasons for what they were doing. Pragmatism makes sense, after all. I asked my students to define compromise and they focused on the benefits – reaching consensus. While I don’t disagree that there are benefits in some compromises, I know they were surprised to hear that compromise can lead to concession of principles.

I used an example torn from today’s headlines. As a Christian I believe that murder is always wrong. My friend believes needless suffering is always wrong. If the two of us try to compromise on our principles we end up with some form of euthanasia.  I would have to concede that some people should be killed (in a compassionate manner since my friend hates suffering) and my friend would probably have to concede that some people should be allowed to suffer pain, etc. We’d have to come up with “acceptable” reasons to kill people and “acceptable” levels of suffering.

What does that do to my principle that all killing is wrong? I asked. It blows it right out of the water, they answered. As a Christian, I would become a murderer. Where could it potentially lead? To indiscriminate killing for any number of reasons, not just for perceived compassion.

Compromise can be a good thing. Christians are told to cooperate with the secular government in so far as it does not ask us to violate the law of the spirit (Romans 13:1,6).  Yet Christians should avoid allegiances, partnerships or participation in organizations or events that could lead to immoral practices. We live in the world, but we are called to be different from the world, thus showing that we belong to Christ and not to the world. The Elks of my community do some fine charity work, but I cannot support their bar, so I would not be an Elk. I know Christians who are Elks. I don’t hold it against them, but I do pray for them. Verse 14 indicates that there is room for difference of opinion within the Church. However, we cannot tolerate immorality and we must always argue against heresy.  For a Christian to be an Elk is not a heretical practice (though I think what happens in their bar is immoral); for a Christian to teach that God is all right with euthanasia (or abortion) is.

The word of God is a sword, able to slay both sin and sinners. We are all sinners, yet the Christian has nothing to fear from this sword. The sword is not meant to slay us, but to correct and encourage us in obedience. Jesus notices all the advantages and opportunities we have for Christian works in our world and He also notes our temptations and discouragements. The Pergans had faced trials without denying the faith through open apostasy or giving way so as to avoid the cross. For this, they were commended, but a wrong view of the gospel and of Christian liberty was a root of evil practice in their congregation. We are little different in the 21^st Century. Many Christians oppose immorality in the larger society, but then compromise on it in their personal lives and in their home churches. We are just as wrong as the Pergans for doing so.

Repent, the Spirit told the church at Perganum. Repentance is the duty of individuals when we sin personally, but it is the duty of churches when we sin as a group. Those who sin together should repent together. There is a promise of favor for those that overcome.  The world may not understand the influences and comforts that the Holy Spirit gives Christians, but to Christians that relationship is of primary importance. We should do all that we do because Christ asks it of us. It doesn’t matter if what we are doing is for the church, our families, our employers or total strangers. We do what we do for Christ and He gives us our reward. Then we do not need the favor of human beings.

Don’t compromise on principle! There is much we can cooperate on, but where the Bible gives commands and God has spoken clearly, compromise with the world’s standards is not possible. It is not with hatred that we refuse to blend the world’s values in with our own. It is with the greatest of love that we say “This is God’s way; there is no other.”

Imagine the worst place on earth that you can think of. Nazi concentration camp? Darfur? An evening with Osama bin Laden and his closest associates. There’s not much good in places like that. Still, there is some good. The Bible says that all good comes from God. So the simplest gesture of giving a scrap of bread to a hungry child, the Bible says in motivated by God. You don’t have to believe in Him for Him to use you to promote good in the world around you.  Now, take a horribly place like Darfur and remove the tiny gestures of good you might find there. Remove them all. Remove the thoughts that lead us to good. Simply remove all good motivations and good deeds.  It’s hard to imagine, but if you could, you’d be imagining Hell. It’s not so much a place of fire and brimstone, but a place of torment. In a world utterly lacking in good, you would find Hell.

Smyrna was a large and important port city on the western side of Asia Minor about 25 miles north of Ephesus.  It was famous for its athletic games. Although several pagan cults were firmly established there, the official religion was worship of the Roman emperor. A large community of Jews lived there and it was probably from these people that the Christian church sprang; however, the current Jewish population was strongly opposed to Christianity. There may also have been Judaizers and Nicolaitans operating in the area.

 “To the angel of the church in Smyrna write: “The First and the Last, the One who was dead and came to life, says:  I know your  tribulation and poverty, yet you are rich. I know the slander of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. 

"Don’t be afraid of what you are about to suffer. Look, the Devil is about to throw some of you into prison to test you, and you will have tribulation for 10 days. Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown  of life.

 “Anyone who has an ear should listen to what the Spirit says to the churches. The victor will never be harmed by the second death.”  Revelation 2:8-11

Someone once observed that the problem with American Christians today is that nobody is trying to kill us. There’s some truth to that statement. Persecution is like exercising a muscle – unpleasant, but it makes us stronger. Satan thinks it will cause us to turn away from God, but to the true Christian, persecution only makes us more willing to turn to Him. For those of us who know our Bible know that evil does not come from the Lord, so why would we blame God for what Satan has visited upon us? I’ve heard that the Chinese Christians have been praying for American Christians to suffer persecution because they believe it will strengthen our faith. They may be right.

The Smyrnan Christians underwent persecution. God knew that. Nero was known for his megalomaniac cruelty to those groups whom he decided to eliminate or simply to torture for his amusement. God knew this as well. He knew the Smyrnan’s troubles and poverty; yet He reminded them of their wealth. Their wealth was not in material possession, but in their relationship to Him. Where there is spiritual plenty, outward poverty is a small matter. Often in this world God’s people are poor for the sake of Christ and a good conscience. For example, I could keep God’s tithe rather than give it to my church; I’d have more money to spend on things I want, but I would also neglect God’s work. Sometimes it is tempting to fear future hard times and hoard God’s money to oneself, but we are told not to fear the future. Don’t become a slave to fear, conquer it, wrapping your character in strength and courage. The Smyrnans would be facing hard times, but those hard times would be a test, not something that would destroy them. The Smyrnans who remained faithful even as they faced death would be given a victory crown. The Smyrnans, familiar with athletic competitions, would have understood the reference to the crown of laurel leaves a winning athlete received. Laurel is an evergreen. The leaves don’t dry even after they’re cut, not for a long time anyway.

We human beings always want to know what’s in it for us. Our belief or unbelief in God has consequences. No one gets out of this life alive. We will all die – once. But after we die, there is a second death. You see, because of Adam and Eve’s original sin, we’re all born dead in sin. We don’t know God as they knew God. For our earliest years, we all sin. Think of a two-year-old stomping his foot in defiance of Mom and, right there, she’s violated the commandment to honor her parents and has disobeyed God. Humans are born bent, from God’s perspective.  Fortunately, He doesn’t want us to remain like that. Except for God’s grace tugging on our lives, we all would remain spiritually dead because we can’t save ourselves from sin. God was willing to take on our sins so that we will not have to suffer the consequences. We don’t go to hell because we sin. We go to hell because we refuse to repent. The second death is the consequence of unrepentant sin.

There are folks who get angry that God would “send” people to Hell, but in reality, they chose it. They failed to repent of their sin – to admit they have disobeyed God, felt and said they were sorry, and stopped sinning. They refused to "debase" themselves in this manner. In their lifetimes, they chose to ignore God. They didn’t want His influence in their day-to-day lives. So, what makes anyone think they would want to live in God’s presence 24/7 and sing His praises without end? That’s heaven. To those of us who regularly meet with God in our daily lives, that’s not a frightening prospect, but to those humans who have ignored God for a lifetime, singing His praises probably sounds like Hell. Do we really think Richard Dawkins and Christian Hitchens would want to spent eternity that way? So, God gives them the dignity of their choices. They chose to ignore God for their lifetime. He lets them spend eternity without Him. That anywhere God isn’t is devoid of all good and all love is a sad consequence, but that’s the choice they made when they refused to submit to God in their lifetimes.  Be careful what you wish for.  If what you wish for is a world without God, well, don’t whine if you don’t like it when God gives you what you wished for.

Christians, on the other hand, choose to believe in God in their lifetimes and to submit to His commands. They spend time with Him while they are alive. Spending eternity with Him is something we want to do. We have nothing to fear from the second death. The consequence of spending time with God in this lifetime is we get to spend eternity with Him. He gives us the dignity of our choices as well. 

Alone among the seven, God had no rebuke for the church at Smyrna. They were suffering and struggling, but they remained faithful. Despite hard times, they were not giving up on their faith or relationship with Jesus. They were facing death standing in the dignity of their choices.

Be faithful, for there is nothing in this world or the next that we need fear. God is with us. Who can be against us?

Be faithful!