Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Did Jesus Die On A Cross?


 

At this time of year when many persons in the Christian world are thinking about Easter and the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ we are going to see numerous portrayals of Jesus hanging on a cross in the print, broadcast, and on-line media.

The cross according to some writers has almost become more important in the minds of some of "the faithful" than Jesus himself according to some researchers. The Catholic archaeologist Adolphe Napolean Didron says that this cross he is portrayed as dying on has, in some cases, received more veneration than Jesus himself. "This sacred wood is adored almost equally with God himself," he claims.

But did Jesus really die on a cross? According to the Bible writers Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John the Romans put Jesus to death on a stau-ros or single upright stake -- not a two-piece cross. Moreover J.D. Parsons, the author of The Non-Christian Cross wrote that there is no support in the Christian Greek Scriptures or New Testament for the idea that Jesus died on a cross, but other Bible writers do support the words of the Gospel writers. At Acts 5:30, for instance, the Apostle Paul wrote that Jesus was put to death on a stake. This was a common Roman practice at the time –executing criminals others the Romans considered to be terrorists or insurgents – on stakes – not crosses.

It wasn't until some 30 years after the death of Jesus that Christians sliding away to Babylonian ideas and apostasy introduced the idea of the two-piece cross into the Christian congregation.

Long before the time of the Jesus Christ and the Romans the ancient Babylonians used this two-piece cross in their worship of the fertility goddess Tammuz. From them this use of the cross spread like a plague in the ancient world.

Many nations in the early Middle-Eastern world were influenced by the culture and religious practices of the Babylonians and gradually the use of this cross was accepted into the rituals of the ancient Egyptians, Indians, Chinese, Syrians – and the Israelites who time and gain forgot God's hatred for image worship or the use of images in supposed worship of him.

Some persons claimed that whether or not Jesus died on a stake or cross is moot or unimportant, but that is not true. Scriptures like Ezekiel 8: 13, 14 make it very clear that such things are not acceptable to God. It is something that he warned the Israelites about on numerous occasions. And using images in their worship cost them dearly when he allowed pagan nations surrounding them to overrun them because of this disobedience. It is a pagan concept used by pagan religions that were disgusting to God.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Legend Makers or Factual Reporters?


 

With Easter on the horizon with its focus on the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ the authenticity of the Gospel accounts will undoubtedly come in for another round of scrutiny – similar to what happened after the release of The Passions of Christ.

Some experts in the past, such as Robert Funk, have gone so far as to claim the accounts about Jesus' life in the Gospels by Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John are nothing more than thinly disguised attempts by early Christians to promote the New Christian religion by making Jesus fit the mould of the promised Messiah.

Funk, the founder of the Jesus Seminar, claimed that the Gospels are really nothing more than a marketing ploy of early Christian propagandists anxious to make the promised Messiah conform to Christian doctrines which evolved after Jesus' death. To him the Gospel writers were nothing more than legend makers.

But are they really nothing more than legend makers? A careful check reveals that such inventiveness alleged by Funk did not appear until well into the Second Century C.E.

At that time fictitious ideas did start to creep into the teachings of some of the Christians communities which had become isolated from the governing body in Jerusalem. Apostasy, featuring unscriptural narratives about Christ did begin to infect the minds of many. But this was long after all of the New Testament was completed and the Gospel writers as well as the original apostles and disciples of Jesus were all dead.

So their ideas did not contaminate the Gospel accounts of Jesus" life, ministry and death on a stake, as shown by the comments of other historians such as C. S. Lewis, H. G. Wells, and E. M. Blaiklock . Lewis, for instance, said, that he found it difficult to believe that the Gospels are legends because of a lack of artistry in the accounts. Moreover he said that "....Most of the life of Jesus is unknown to us and people building up a legend would not allow that to be so."

Wells and Blailock were even more vocal in their defence of the Gospel writers. Wells said: "All four [Gospel writers] agree in giving us a picture of a very definite personality; they carry the conviction of reality." And Blaiklock, a professor of classics at Auckland University in Australia explained: " I claim to be an historian. My approach to the classics is historical. And I tell you that the evidence for the life, the death, and the resurrection of Christ is better authenticated than most of the facts of ancient history."

And yet another historian, Will Durant, the author of Caesar and Christ said: "After two centuries of Higher Criticism the outlines of the life, character, and teaching of Christ, remain reasonably clear, and constitute the most fascinating feature in the history of Western man."


 


 

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

A Truly Unique Book


 

There is no other book like it – both in its printing and the influence it has had on mankind down through the centuries..

Back in 1975 according to the Guinness Book of World Records some 2,500,000,000 copies of it had been printed and published world-wide just between 1815 and 1975. By now the number of copies must be soaring well over the three billion mark.


 

Since The Apostle John wrote its last book during the latter part of the First Century B.C.E., although it has had many enemies from secular as well as religious leaders who have sought to destroy or discredit it, it has still had a powerful influence on human thinking and laws like no other publication in the Western and many other parts of the world. The Germany poet Heinrich Heine, for instance, said that he owed his enlightenment to it. Anti-slavery activist, William Seward claimed that human progress depended on people following its advice, and the British jurist Sir William Blackstone said that no law of man should ever contradict it. This book of course is the Bible.

And all of this still holds true today. It is still the most widely distributed Book in the world and its advice is just as valid today as it was back in 98 B.C.E. when John wrote its last chapter.

It is a manual for successful daily living – preserved down through the ages since Moses started writing it down to the present day.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010


Babylonian King Proves Bible Accuracy

 
An ancient Babylonian King that some sceptics claimed never existed has emerged to prove the accuracy of the Biblical account. This is King Belshazzar.



For a long time these sceptics claimed that he was just another example of mythical characters in the Bible – another story made up by early Biblical fictions writers such as Daniel -- but some clay cylinders have proven his historical account to be accurate.



These cylinders discovered in the early nineteenth century referred to one Belshazzar, the son of Nabonidus , the known king of Babylon at the time that Cyrus the Great and his army of Medes and Persians sacked the city as described in the Biblical account. So Belshazzar did exist as Daniel wrote.



Not only did he exist, but other tablets discovered that at the time that Babylon fell to Cyrus the Great Belshazzar's father had entrusted the day to day governing of the kingdom to him as a sub-king. He was the number two ruler under his father at the time – but he was still the king of Babylon as described in the Bible as his father was living in semi-retirement outside of Babylon at the time.



So once again science has illustrated the accuracy of the Biblical record

Tuesday, March 2, 2010


Where is Noah's Ark?

 
Has anybody ever really found the famous ark which carried Noah and his family as well as a selection of animals and other creatures safely through The Flood which wiped out the rest of land creatures that inhabited our planet until 2370 BCE?

 

Over the centuries since then there have been occasional reports of persons having seen it –usually entombed in icy somewhere high up on the side of Mount Arrarat. Such as the adventurers who related to the historian Josephus how they had come across the vessel locked into the ice high up in the mountain. In addition to that some other searchers have produced aerial photos that seemed to show the outline of an Ark shaped vessel in the ice at a high altitude on the side of the mountain and still others have come back with pieces of wood they insisted came from the Ark. And one Armenian explorer, George Hagopian claimed that he had actually climbed over the Ark in the early 1900's.

 

He died, however back in 1972, however, without ever taking anybody back to the Ark and the search continues periodically down to this day, but such a search might all be in vain. If the Ark had really landed somewhere near the top of the mountain then it is possible that is still lies encased in ice somewhere near the peak waiting to be discovered – but did it really land in that area?

 

The Biblical account of the flood seems to rule this out, putting in doubt claims that explorers had actually seen, photographed, and even climbed on the deck on the Ark centuries later.The Bible says that the Ark touched ground in the Mountains of Ararat – not necessarily at or near the top. And it is not likely that God would have navigated to such an area. If he had how would Noah's family and many of the animals been able to disembark. Mount Arrarat is not a rounded mountain but has a very rock, rugged peak. It is far more likely that the Ark's grounding point was actually well below freezing temperatures and the ice field which could have preserved it and disintegrated thousands of years before the time of Josephus and the explorers he quotes.
So, while you are likely to continue reading of the occasional effort to find the Ark or yet another claim that some explorers photographed or climbed over the remains of the Ark you should be more than a little sceptical. The Ark definitely did exist – not as the cute, double-bowed vessel pictured by many artists, but as a huge rectangular box-like vessel. But it is not likely that we are ever going to find it.