9780768423891_ch1

JESUS for

ADULTS The Search for Meaning and Purpose

JESUS for

ADULTS The Search for Meaning and Purpose

LINDA RIOS BROOK

© Copyright 2006 – Linda Rios Brook All rights reserved. This book is protected by the copyright laws of the United States of America. This book may not be copied or reprinted for commercial gain or profit.

The use of short quotations or occasional page copying for personal or group study is permitted and encouraged. Permission will be granted upon request. Unless otherwise identified, Scripture quotations are from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society.

Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved. Please note that Destiny Image’s publishing style capitalizes certain pronouns in Scripture that refer to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and may differ from some publishers’ styles.

Take note that the name satan and related names are not capitalized. We choose not to acknowledge him, even to the point of violating grammatical rules.

DESTINY IMAGE® PUBLISHERS, INC. P.O. Box 310, Shippensburg, PA 17257-0310 “Speaking to the Purposes of God for this Generation and for the Generations to Come.”

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ISBN 10: 0-7684-2389-9 ISBN 13: 978-0-7684-2389-1 For Worldwide Distribution, Printed in the U.S.A. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 / 09 08 07 06

Dedication

This book is dedicated to Dr. Morris Vaagenes, pastor emeritus North Heights Lutheran Church, Arden Hills, Minnesota; Dr. Bob Cottingham, senior pastor North Heights Lutheran Church, Arden Hills, Minnesota; and Dr. Norman Benz, senior pastor Covenant Centre International, Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. I am deeply grateful to these men of God for allowing me to teach in their churches about issues the people in the pews want to talk about, but are afraid to bring up.

Dedicated also to Dr. Alan Langstaff who ordained me and was among the early church leaders to shift the paradigm of ordination to include women.

Acknowledgment

I wish to acknowledge with gratitude the pioneering work of Dr. Don Bierle, whose book, Surprised by Faith, is lavishly drawn from in several chapters of Jesus for Adults. While I have attempted to annotate his material adequately, I have often quoted from his book “word for word� in the first chapter. After several attempts to rewrite his material, I found I could not communicate it better than he did and for the sake of the reader, abandoned the attempt to do so.

Endorsements

Once again, Linda Rios Brook has written a dangerous book, dangerous to the status quo which exists in the Body of Christ that is. Far from parroting standardized, and often lame, irrelevant Christian verbiage, Linda asks tough questions that demand honest answers, which she also provides. She is one of satan’s worst nightmares—an out-of-the-box, thinking Christian.

Dutch Sheets Senior Pastor, Freedom Church Colorado Springs, Colorado Linda Rios Brook is one of the most no-nonsense individuals I know. Jesus for Adults will strike you as a 21st century no-nonsense practical theology about Jesus, God, the Church, His Kingdom, the workplace, and everything Christians are supposed to be doing.

Linda will take you outside the traditional religious box that most of

us have been cooped up in, and let you taste some of the refreshing new wine of the Holy Spirit.

C. Peter Wagner, Chancellor Wagner Leadership Institute Linda has aptly named her latest book. The conversations she has with the reader are adult conversations about work, life, faith, and how all of that might really be covered in the Bible and in particular, in the life of Jesus. The probing questions that she ponders, (my personal favorite: Why did Judas do it?) are the kinds of questions you don’t often get from the pulpit. Not because pastors don’t wonder about such things, but because they probably assume that we, even as adults, just can’t handle them. As a businessman, the bottom line is something I get right away; and the bottom line is: how real is all of this to my angst-filled life as a person, desperately in need of a touch from God. Linda opens the door that allows that incredible awe-filled moment, when you and God can meet and really talk—as adults.

God has gifted Linda with a wonderful ability to convey—right out there in the open, in front of God and everybody—what so many of us really feel. In that gift she allows each of us to journey into ourselves and into the heart of God. Jim Garvin, President International Christian Chamber of Commerce—USA Linda Rios Brook’s book ably reflects her passion for truth; her courage and insight in the quest for reality rather than mere “religion”; and an unusual down-to-earth practicality in the process.

This book is a wonderfully enticing entrance to deeper thinking for

Christian’s who actively enjoy having both feet solidly planted on God’s earth.

Dennis Peacocke Strategic Christian Services For 2,000 years people have asked the question: “Who is this Jesus?” and in turn many people have tried to answer this question. Linda Rios Brook, in her new book Jesus for Adults, tackles it head on with a thought-provoking, challenging, and fresh answer to this all important question. Her motive is simply stated, “to raise the bar a notch stretching the congregants just an inch above their comfort zone to provoke them to Berean status.” Actually I think she raises the bar more than an inch. I am delighted to recommend this book to people who want to go beyond Jesus 101 and take a fresh new look at who Jesus is.

Alan Langstaff Kairos Ministries, Inc.

Table of Contents

Foreword ................................................15 Preface....................................................19 Introduction ..........................................29 Chapter One

Is That All There Is?................................45

Chapter Two

Is Jesus Really God? ................................65

Chapter Three

What Did Jesus Come to Do? ................81

Chapter Four

Was Jesus Really Tempted? ......................97

Chapter Five

Jesus and Women, or “Was Martha Framed?” ..................................111

Chapter Six

Who Wanted Jesus Dead? ......................129

Chapter Seven

Why Did Judas Do It? ..........................141

Chapter Eight

The Truth About Peter..........................161

Chapter Nine

Is Pilate to Blame? ................................181

Chapter Ten

Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead? ......195

Chapter Eleven

Is Jesus Coming Back? ..........................207

Foreword

When I first met my husband Peter 20 years ago, he asked me a question that disturbed me deeply. His question still plagues me to this day. He asked, “Why is there no Gospel for the rich?” It’s a good question. Yet two decades of pondering it has failed to produce a single satisfactory answer for me.

Most Christians, including ministers, are often too intimidated by successful people to share their faith. They think, “This person has their act together better than I do. Why would they listen to me?” If they do manage to overcome their own insecurities long enough to speak up, their “gospel” typically sounds something like: “Right now you are on top of the world. Your business is going well, you are making lots of money and you think you don’t need God. But one day you’ll run into problems that you can’t handle.

Your business will go belly up. Your children will get hooked on drugs. Your marriage will fall apart, or you will get cancer…Then 15

you’ll remember our conversation and recognize your need for God.” This is not the Good News of the Gospel! It’s bad news!

Consider this: 77 percent of Christians are born again before the age of 22. You do the math. The church is dreadfully ineffective at reaching adults. It is essential that we have a Gospel for both the rich and the poor; the young and the old. Jesus did. It wasn’t just the prostitutes and drunkards that embraced His message.

Many of Christ’s closest friends were influential business leaders.

James and John were prominent businessmen who owned a fishing enterprise successful enough to provide them with an affluent lifestyle that included servants.

Peter was also a prosperous fisherman, as evidenced by his lakefront estate home that archeologists calculate was approximately 10,000 square feet—a lavishly large house even by modern standards.

Matthew was a wealthy tax collector.

Rich women who followed Christ financed his ministry.

A rich friend used his own tomb to bury Jesus (temporarily, as it turned out).

Jesus had a Gospel for adults—and well-to-do adults at that.

The same Good News that enriched lives when Christ ministered in the marketplace is still effective in the world of commerce today. I am not postulating—I have firsthand experience.

I was saved out of the drug culture. From the time I was 10 until I was born again at the age of 17, I was a drug addict and dealer. When I became a Christian, I immediately sensed the call of God on my life for ministry. Because I had dropped out of school at 14, I had to get a G.E.D. in order to get into seminary.

I expected to spend my life helping drug addicts, prostitutes, and homeless people—the down and outers. Instead—in one of the 16

most stunning surprises of my life—God called me to work with the up and outers. I have had the honor of working face-to-face with superstar athletes, Hollywood celebrities, four United States Presidents, countless heads of state, astronauts, entertainers, CEOs and some of the most famous people of our time.

It has been my genuine privilege to lead a great many of these leaders to Christ. I have seen the most powerful men on earth weep like little children as they humbly received Jesus as Savior and Lord. Here’s what I know for a fact: the rich desperately want to know God. All they are waiting for is a powerful Gospel that challenges them spiritually, respects their intelligence, and speaks clearly to the issues of their life. They want a relevant Gospel that gives them purpose, peace, and joy. In this regard, the rich are no different from everyone else.

And what about everyone else? What about the struggling single mother, the defiant teenager, the frazzled middle manager, the confused college student, the forlorn senior, the suicidal, the addicted, the indifferent, the debt-drowning, and everyone else in the maddening masses? How are we going to reach them?

Religion, ritual, mock spirituality, pat answers, and cookie cutter clichés simply won’t do. Our musicals, pot lucks, passion plays, talking head televangelism, political activism and infrequent, poorly executed evangelistic outreaches are not reaching them. The world is not crashing our party. They are not congregating in our congregations to hear our monotone messages or our passionate preaching. Church, as we know it, is not working.

So what will?

Linda Rios Brook speaks to this subject more lucidly than anyone I know. She is refreshingly direct. She does not pander to our insecurities and pet doctrines. She makes hamburgers out of our sacred cows. Apostle Paul said, “If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ” (Gal. 1:10 NIV). Some may be 17

uncomfortable with the uncloaked truth—but see it we must.

Yes, the truth will set you free, but it will usually irritate you first!

I encourage you to allow Linda’s message to provoke you—and go beyond provocation to transformation. We need more than a challenge: we need to change.

Tamara Lowe Tamara Lowe Leadership Group Co-Founder & Executive Vice President Get Motivated Seminars, Inc.

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Preface

Before it was popular to have one, mine was a voice among others pleading for the local church to find a way to relate to what Dennis Peacocke has referred to affectionately as, “the people of the earth.� In other words, the real people who live in the real world coping with the real issues of life on the planet. These are the every day people in the every day world who find themselves struggling to thrive, or at a minimum survive, in the American marketplace, where unofficial surveys indicate that as much as 80 percent are unfulfilled or dissatisfied with their jobs. Six days a week they search for meaning and purpose at work—fail to find it, and on the seventh day, some of them go to a local church to see if they can find it there.

Why do they bother? Because they are desperate to find refreshment and purpose for their souls and spirits. They go hoping that someone will tell them that God loves them, that someone cares about how they are going to pay their mortgages, 19

and that someone is genuinely concerned about their kids. They go because life is much more complicated than they ever thought it would be. “Is that all there is, Alfie?” they ask themselves.

Burdened with problems that seem irresoluble, they recall that someone, somewhere once told them, “Jesus is the answer.” So they take their questions and go to church to find out if this might still be true. They want to know if the church can help them survive the other six days of the week without losing their mind or sanctification in the process. Or maybe not.

The “big tent churches,” also known as mega-churches, or what I like to refer to as “churches of many colors,” are doing a good job providing answers, hope, and Jesus 101. If this were not true, they would not be mega-churches—with thousands in attendance each week. Some of these churches are often criticized by their charismatic brethren for being more interested in technology and daycare than expositing the Scripture; having, therefore, a theology that is a mile wide but only an inch deep.

Or as others are prone to say, “a form of godliness without any power.” This criticism is one to which honest people should say “nonsense.” The mega-church format succeeds in getting harried men and women through the door of the Kingdom because it respects and appreciates the fact that working Americans’ most valued asset is discretionary time—they will only allow someone waste it once. The mega-church is the Wal-Mart of the faith.

Everybody can find something they need there.

Smaller “local” churches (if attendance is the criteria) may be struggling to gain or maintain a faithful flock because they are working from a wrong assumption about why people in the 21st century attend church. Busy and stressed out Americans no longer attend because they should—they go to have their needs met. Without necessarily knowing what Jesus has to say about the matter, the earth people intuitively think that, “the Sabbath was created for man and not man for the Sabbath.” Some 20

membership-decreasing churches continue to exhort from the pulpit on the seventh day that the other six days of the week are of little importance to the Kingdom, and are to be endured as punishment for being worldly-minded. Some leaders continue to insist that the redemptive purpose of man and woman is to help the local pastor achieve his personal call from the Lord; never mind that people in the pews might also have a call from God and need support and help to understand. People who have shaky marriages, high credit card debt, aging parents, and rebellious children, need to know that being in the church building at 10 A.M. on Sunday morning with a neighbor in tow is not the only reason Jesus died, or the highest calling of humanity.

CHANGE—DON’T DIE My voice has been one of many to say that the local church (distinct from the mega-church) must change or risk continued self-marginalization. While I meant what I said, I have recently realized that some frustrated marketplace people who have read my book, Frontline Christians in a Bottom Line World, or have heard me (and others) speak at conferences, have interpreted our concern for the way we do church to mean we think there is no future for the local church and we all ought to drop out of the failed model of organized religion, and instead meet in small groups or home churches, pray at work, and let the local church cave in on itself. Absolutely nothing could be further from what I (we) intended to express.

I am frankly alarmed that working Christians would interpret the marketplace message to be one advocating that what the Lord is doing in the workplace is intended to circumvent or replace the local church assembly on Sunday morning. No, no, no, absolutely not; never in a million years should that happen. Sadly, in some cases it could happen; but never do we suggest that it should happen.

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Some of my friends have dropped out of local church assembly and defended their choice to leave in favor of a home fellowship by claiming there is often more depth and spirituality in the home group. That may or may not be so, but even if it is true, it is a disaster to think the home group is intended to replace the Kingdom purpose unique to an organized local church. If for no other reason, when non-Christians begin to search for God, they look in the Yellow Pages for the address of a church—they can’t call information to find the nearest home church. Even if they found the phone number for a neighborhood cell group, it is unlikely they would dial it. Home fellowship groups are intensely intimate groups made up of people of the same spiritual color; who generally see things the same way and have likely been in the faith for quite some time.

A seeker is not looking for that level of intimacy. When truly unchurched people first begin to think about finding a local congregation, they proceed with great caution, fear and trembling.

They first want to sit in the back row and sniff out the territory.

They don’t want to give a testimony or hear anybody else’s. They don’t want to have hands laid on them or speak in tongues. They want the safety of the “come and see” environment available in a traditional church without the pressure of making a decision about anything.

Contrary to what traditional church people may think, today’s unchurched Americans are not all that concerned about their eternal souls. They do not think about dying and are far more worried about the problems of this life than the consequences of the next. They come to church for a different reason. If they stay long enough, they will learn about salvation by the grace of Jesus, and that the peace they seek can be found in a personal relationship with Him. Getting them to stay long enough to hear and receive the message is the challenge. Giving them time, space, and reasons “why” is a necessary component for lasting 22

evangelism to a generation with no predisposition to believe any institution has a grasp on absolute truth. After all, this is what the mainstream media has told them for decades through movies, TV, magazines, and even the “objective” newspapers and TV news programs.

For many of the 60 percent of Americans who do not attend church of any kind, the question of personal salvation is a meaningless one. If there is a God, surely He must be a good one and would not allow anyone to go to hell, if there is such a place. If we want to do more than inoculate unbelievers against false faith, we must be prepared to answer a few tough questions before we bring out the sinner’s prayer. Far too often our evangelism technique provides answers before we hear the questions. In-yourface-repent-or-go-to-hell evangelism is simply not very successful. If it were, wouldn’t there be more evidence of it in church growth surveys? The idea that the completely unchurched need time and reason before following Jesus is a concept particularly hard for “reds” to grasp.

I explained the phenomena of “reds” in Frontline Christians in a Bottom Line World. “Reds” are spirit-filled believers who at one time were indistinguishable from many other Christians.

They experienced the faith in harmony and conformity with the church body of which they were a part, distressing no one and causing no trouble. Then one day, something happened to them.

In my observation there was a triggering event, such as a conference or retreat, which can be pointed to as the day they changed.

Whatever the trigger, it flipped a switch in their spirits and they became quite different.

While people with similarly flipped switches rejoice at the transformation, others become disturbed. What was once predictable suburban Christian behavior morphs into something that concerned friends regard as a strange obsession. Well-balanced 23

Christians change into ones who are fixated on the things of God. When the switch flips, it is not subtle. Language changes; interests change; and eyesight changes, as they claim an ability to see into the spiritual realm with the same ease that most can see across the street.

It is not uncommon for “reds” to drastically change their routines, and if one asks why, the answer will almost always be because he or she is “on assignment.” This is a term all “reds” use.

In fact, this is one sure way to identify a “red.” Ask them why they are going where they are going and they will tell you they are on assignment from God to do such and such a thing, no matter how bizarre it may seem to Christians of other colors.

They believe without a doubt that God has spoken to them.

They know exactly what they are to do about what God has said and much of the time they are right. When they are wrong in their interpretation, the outcome is generally big and public.

“Reds,” however, are not deterred by the possibility of public embarrassment, because a characteristic of “reds” is that they have lost their fear of consequences, which in and of itself causes church leadership to become very nervous and often annoyed.

“Reds” are fire fighters. If there is no fire to fight, they will start one. Fire in the church is like fire in a camp site: a good thing when contained, but a disaster if not. Unfortunately, very few of the “reds” have been trained to know that their true “assignment” is to change the world, so they decide to try to change the church instead. This is why “reds” are always in trouble.

Perhaps the most irksome characteristic of “reds” to Christians of other colors is that the “reds” think everybody is red; ought to be red; or deep inside really wants to be red. For this reason, it is my observation that true “reds” are not very good at personal evangelism for the genuinely uncommitted.

They may converge upon an un-needy unbeliever and actually persuade him or her to “trust Christ.” But many times the 24

conversion is out of self-defense because that seems to be the only way to make the spiritual hit squad go away. While there are certainly exceptions, most of the “reds” simply do not give the left-brained thinker/seeker the time he or she needs to process the idea of a life of faith.

Not all, but many home fellowships tend to be rife with “reds” if for no other reason than that “reds,” more than other spiritual colors, appear to have left the local church in frustration. The local church, on the other hand, is a body of many colors and is populated with people at all levels of spiritual maturity. It is into the local church that unreached or nominal Christians can come to find out what color they happen to be.

It is in the local or nuclear church where the basic message of the Gospel can be taught while the unrelenting needs of life are addressed. In an ideal arrangement, it would be from the nuclear church that home fellowships or micro-churches would be born; in partnership with one another to address the advancing spiritual growth of the believers. In the smaller venue there is room for specialization. People can be nourished and encouraged to grow into the fullness of the spiritual color that they are, because each color carries a different anointing and emphasis: teaching is a different color from evangelism, which is a different color from the prophetic, which is a different color from intercessory prayer, which is a different color from healing prayer, ad infinitum.

In the book, Storm Front—The Good News of God, the following observation is made regarding the early Christians: Diversity is scattered throughout the pages of the New Testament. Some Christians gave up their lives in martyrdom. Others opened wide the doors of their houses in hospitality to whole congregations. They poured themselves out in concern for the poor; they experimented with whole new patterns of relating to each 25

other—patterns that cut against the static hierarchies of the day. In countless ways, both great and small, they challenged with their lives the prevailing assumptions of the day, and like a prism they refracted the light of God’s grace into many colors.1 Diverse gifts should be nourished in home fellowships because they are important to the maturity of the Body, but to suppose that the home church or fellowship can somehow step in and replace the local church is simply wrong. It is in the local church where the trained marriage counselor can be found. It is where the food bank is and where mothers’ day out programs can serve the stressed new mom who has moved across the country away from family and friends. The local church is where the AA group meets; where the youth group congregates, and where corporate worship is expressed. The local church has a sign out front and a telephone number.

These things help ordinary people navigate the extraordinary challenges of life and simply do not exist in home fellowships on a consistent basis, if at all. And they certainly do not currently exist in the church that meets in the workplace.

While we who preach the Gospel of the marketplace may strongly believe that the transformation of culture and the restoration of righteousness and justice to the disenfranchised will come about through the marketplace church, it is incomprehensible to suppose that the church at work can replace the church on the corner. Not unless it is prepared to take the responsibility for all of the ministries found in the local church, which seems highly unlikely.

If the nuclear church can still be relevant to a “blogging” generation, why—with the exception of the mega-churches— are so many local churches experiencing declining numbers while others are closing? Must every church adopt the glitz and Gospel of the mega-church to survive? Not necessarily.

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Many people prefer a church of 200 or so, where an individual voice can be heard. They want meaningful worship (subject to local interpretation). They want present revelation to reveal original truth. They want an intelligent discussion as to whether science and technology displace ancient Scripture or whether they testify to the mind of the Creator. They want authenticity and not clichés. They do not want arbitrary rules but they do want foundation.

Many people, if not all, are looking for meaning and purpose and wonder if faith can mean more than a forced belief in something they think isn’t true. In the tempests of life, they want to be anchored to something upon which the wind and waves have no affect. They are looking for the Rock of Ages and have heard that He might be at church, so they are willing to go check it out—at least once.

But, it may be what they do not want that becomes the determining factor as to whether they will return for a second visit.

They do not want to have their intelligence insulted. They do not want to be told there is no place for logic, reason, and honest skepticism in the faith. And above all, they do not want to waste their time seeking answers from someone who does not have any.

Our defense of the Gospel is often not presented in a convincing way to thinkers. Why should people believe us when we insist that Jesus is the only way? The typical response follows these lines.

“Because the Bible says so.”

Really, why should I believe the Bible when other religious books of antiquity say something else?

“Believe because the disciples were willing to die for their faith.”

So are the Islamic militants.

“Believe because Christianity spread over the entire world.”

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No, actually it did not and even if that were the case, Islam is currently spreading all over the world, including some countries that were once primarily Christian, such as France and England.

If we are seriously suggesting that the reasons for our faith can be found in the Bible, and if we are further suggesting that people stake their lives that this claim is true, then we must be willing to listen to their questions and provide answers grounded in history as well as in faith.

Is the Bible authentic? Can we possibly know for sure? If it is authentic, is it also true? As Dr. Don Bierle has noted, authenticity and truth are not necessarily the same thing. If the Bible is true, why is it true? Are faith and logic irreconcilably opposed to one another? Why believe in God? Isn’t Allah just another name for God? Why believe that Jesus is any more important than Mohammed or Joseph Smith or even Moses? In fact, why believe in anything?

ENDNOTE 1. James V. Brownson, Inagrace T. Dietterich, Barry A. Harvey and Charles C. West. Storm Front—The Good News of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003), 64.

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Introduction

Over the 20 years I worked in the television industry, I knew five men, associates and peers, who successfully committed suicide. I add the qualifier “successfully� because I know of one other who made an unsuccessful attempt. Stunned at the news of each of these tragedies, those of us who knew them searched for the reason for such an irreversible response to life. What had gone so terribly wrong? Was there some one or some thing we could blame? When we could not find an acceptable reason to explain unexplainable actions, we looked for a refrain. Was there a common thread that prompted these men to take their own lives?

Perhaps not a refrain, but we found commonalities among the tragedies. Each man was at or near the pinnacle of success. We determined none was seriously ill; none had extraordinary family issues such as debt or divorce, wayward children, or drug abuse.

None manifested the symptoms of depression; none had ever spoken about the possibility of taking his own life; nor was there 29

any discoverable reason to suspect unbearable stress. Indeed, to the casual observer, each of these men was within reaching distance of attaining the lifelong goal of position and independent wealth, or so it seemed.

More recently, a dear friend of mine and an internationally applauded author, scholar, and minister, experienced a numbing passage of time, which he called the “dark night of the soul.” I am happy to report that he has come through that experience renewed and with a deep commitment to Jesus and to the purpose of his life. But while he was in the midst of his personal ordeal, he shared part of what had brought him to such a place of despair.

He said, “I came face to face with my greatest fear. I asked myself, ‘Does what I do really matter?’ And the answer was “No.’” As I prayed for my friend in ministry, I found myself thinking about my former friends who had not survived their own dark nights of the soul. I realized that if we are honest, every person, no matter their vocation, position or level of success, comes one day to the acute realization that this life we know will one day end. We struggle, plan, and plot, make do and do without. We choose toil over leisure and restraint over self-gratification, and why? Because we believe we are headed somewhere; toward some important purpose and our sacrifices must surely have something to do with getting there.

But to where and for what? To one day die the same as those who have sacrificed nothing; for a future no one can be certain of? The world will go on without us and history will not acknowledge most of us. The earth will not interrupt its spin for even a moment to commemorate that any of us were ever here.

The words of Solomon loom before us all: For the wise man, like the fool, will not be long remembered; in days to come both will be forgotten. Like the fool, the wise man too must die! (Ecclesiastes 2:16).

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With that sudden awareness, some conclude that life may, indeed, be futile. In desperation to find meaning before it’s too late, the soul demands an answer: “Does what I do really matter?” And if it does matter, why does it matter and to whom?

For each of my fallen comrades, the answer must have seemed to them to be “No, it does not matter.” Perhaps the sheer despair of such conviction led them to end their lives rather than pursue a futile and painful existence. My colleague in ministry felt the same desperation for a period of time, but recovered. What made the difference? I believe the answer, at least in part, is because, at the end of doubt, he held a deep-seated belief in something beyond himself that gave meaning to his human existence.

THE SEARCH FOR PURPOSE AND MEANING Every human being on planet Earth is on a quest to find meaning and purpose for his or her life. Scholars, philosophers, renegades, mechanics, plumbers, bankers, and yes, even Christians, all seek the answer to the same question of the pop culture: “Is that all there is?” Some never find out.

For some, depression, a silent killer, creeps in when we acknowledge the pointlessness of the temporal things we give our lives to attain. When we realize that some day, the good and the bad, the rich and the poor all end up in the same place: the grave.

George Bernard Shaw was right, “Death is the ultimate statistic.

One out of one die.”1 It is generally acknowledged that as many as 50 percent of Americans are medically treated for mild depression. If this is true, while there may be many reasons why it is true (including environmental and nutritional issues as well as the sheer stress of life at the speed of the Internet) it may also be true that many people see life the same way that Shakespeare’s Macbeth did: “It 31

[life] is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.”2 My friend and colleague, Dr. Don Bierle, explains this line of reasoning in his book, Surprised by Faith. He notes that every person will eventually ask the question: “For what purpose am I on this Earth?” Many will find no more satisfying answer than did Tolstoy: “What is life for? To die? To kill myself at once? No, I am afraid. To wait for death till it comes? I fear that even more.

Then I must live, but what for? In order to die? And I could not escape from that circle.”3 Dr. Bierle also notes that famous author Ernest Hemingway found a no more satisfying answer. Hemingway wrote, “Life is a dirty trick, a short journey from nothingness to nothingness”4—he committed suicide in 1961. Although many Christians are aghast at such a worldview and insist it isn’t true, few are prepared to respond to the logical next question: “If that is not true, what is?”

Does the church have the answer? Let’s consider recent history.

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, many American churches were filled to capacity with people who had not attended church in years. Why were they there? They came seeking refuge from insanity. They came looking for someone who could mediate the madness; someone who could answer the question, “Why?” And what did they find?

Within just a few weeks time, church attendance returned to its pre-9/11 numbers. Few churches retained the people who came seeking an answer. Why didn’t they stay? I believe that in many cases, at least part of the reason was the church’s determination to answer questions no one was asking and ignore the ones shouted from the pews. Where was God? Someone must be held accountable for what happened. Unfortunately, desperate people were quickly reminded about why they left the church in the first place. The clichés and unhelpful rhetoric, often centered 32

on forgiving one’s enemies, seemed painfully irrelevant in a world where the actions of 19 young men could alter the course of history in one day.

Is that statement unfair to the church? The CBS Evening News with Dan Rather broadcast the following story on August 24, 2004: “A University of Chicago research center study says the number of Americans who still identify themselves as Protestants is dropping to a historic low. They’re very close to falling below 50 percent which would be the first time American history that the majority of Americans are not Protestant, says Tom W. Smith of the National Opinion.”5 Dan Rather was merely bearing secular witness to what George Barna had warned the church about for years. “Christianity has become a burgeoning, syncretistic faith … (in which) fewer than 10 percent can cite one distinction between Christianity and other religions.”6 If the church has any hope of reversing the tide of perceived irrelevancy to the majority of Americans who do not attend church, but most of whom say they believe in some kind of God, what must be done? The church must acknowledge that it has often failed to answer the question, “Why believe in Jesus?” in a convincing way. Further, it has considered it unimportant to address a much more fundamental question in the minds of many people. “Why believe in anything?” If Carl Sagan was wrong when he said, “The cosmos is all there is, or was, or ever will be,”7 why was he wrong?

The church must face the fact that its audience has changed.

Thirty years ago, the congregation that assembled was predisposed to receive whatever was voiced from the pulpit as truth. It was a time when there was a common moral compass that governed America. Although certainly not everyone was a Christian, it was a time when everyone generally agreed that a society built on the foundations of biblical morality was a good idea. Respect 33

for parents, honesty, love for one sovereign God, and love for one’s neighbor were good ideas. Murder, lust, robbery, and profanity were bad ideas.

In those days, if someone had a question to which “Jesus is the answer” did not seem to apply, no one dared ask it of the pastor or Sunday school teacher. To do so would have been rude, impertinent, and sure to signal a lack of faith. The slightest tinge of skepticism was certain to provoke accusations of being worldly and without the mind of Christ. Unwilling to appear ignorant, faithless or backslidden, the seeker remained silent; often secretly wondering if to believe the Christian message meant checking one’s brains at the door and asking no questions.

As a result, a new type of semi-believer began to populate our churches. No longer did society consist of merely Christians and non-Christians. The church unintentionally produced something altogether new: the “somewhat Christian.” This new breed of believer, unwilling to rock the boat, meandered in and out of church willing to accept the concept of faith as I once heard a child explain it: “Faith is when you say you believe something you know is not true.” For most, those times of passive acceptance have passed.

The questions in the minds and mouths in post-9/11 Americans have changed. But is anyone in the church listening? People in and out of the pews have been rudely awakened to the frailty of life.

They desperately want to believe that if they just have enough faith, some day the senseless will make sense in the great by and by. But faith without evidence is hard for them to maintain. Not because of what they do not know; but because of what they do. These people, unlike those who lived before them, now have an extraordinary grasp of the universe in which they live. Instantaneous information that was not available to prior generations now floods into almost every home, office, and workplace for viewing on television sets and 34

computer screens. The human genome has been mapped. Animals have been cloned. The Hubble and Voyager space probes have shown us light years into space where Heaven was supposed to be, and apparently is not.

And at the same time, yet another type of person has entered the religious debate: the anti-Christian. These people not only believe Christianity is a philosophy that cannot be proven, they also believe Christianity is wrong and even dangerous. Further, they evangelize their point of view. While surfing the religious landscape, they are equally at home with New Age, Buddhism, Hinduism, and even some forms of Islam. Their calling card might be similar to a button worn by some Democrats during the pre-primary 2004 political season—“ABB”—Anybody But Bush. Likewise the anti-Christians are not committed to any particular religious tenet except one— “ABJ”—Anybody But Jesus, Meanwhile, the somewhat-Christians and the honest skeptics have within their souls the seeds of faith, planted by someone somewhere along the way. With the uncertainty of a post-9/11 world, they want to believe that out there somewhere is a God who has an end game plan. Some really want to believe the good news of Jesus. But they want their questions answered first and their questions are sophisticated and probing. They will not believe the Christian message only because they should. They do not have the sense of loyalty to a particular church or denomination held by the generations that preceded them. They do not consider it rude to ask annoying and uncomfortable questions of those who present themselves as spiritual leaders.

The tide must turn before more Christian churches close and Islam begins to spread in America as it has in Europe. James P. Gannon proposes an ominous possibility in a January 9, 2006, USA Today editorial: 35

I claim no expertise in these matters. But some who see the emergence of a post-Christian era in Europe that has profound consequences for the continent and perhaps is an ominous portend for the United States.

Where Europe has gone, America could be going—and that is a prospect that is frightening Christians and sharpening the religious divide in this country.8 The fact must be faced that the church cannot continue to present the Bible to 21st century adults with the same images, stories, and easy answers used to teach 6 year olds. Church congregations who still believe the Bible to be the infallible Word of God must be willing to hear the questions of the skeptics and the jaded who desperately want to believe the Bible, but whose intellect will not allow it. Someone has said, “The heart cannot accept what the mind rejects.”

Q&A From time to time I have been invited by pastors to speak in their churches. When I receive an invitation, I make it a point to talk with the pastor about his expectations from my visit. The response I usually get is that the pastor wants the congregation to be challenged by what I say. However, when pressing for more specifics from the pastor (because I respect the pulpit I’m in), I rarely find that to be the case. I often encourage the pastor to consider allowing a message to raise the bar a notch, stretching the congregants just an inch beyond their comfort zone to provoke them to Berean status.

Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true (Acts 17:11).

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I taught adult Bible education for years in a large Lutheran Church in Minnesota. One of my most satisfying days was when I learned that one of my students, a local businessman, had decided to take advanced theology courses at Luther Seminary. It was not only his decision to attend classes that pleased me, it was the reason he gave for attending—“To prove Linda Rios Brook wrong.” Was I threatened by such an attitude? Not in the least; in fact I was thrilled. First, because I know I do not have perfect knowledge, and am willing to be proven wrong. But more importantly, I knew that after his arduous study, no matter the conclusions at which he might arrive, he would know why he believed what he said he believed. He would be much less likely to abandon his faith in later times when circumstances challenged the beliefs he held, but could not defend.

More than a few times, pastors have told me that their congregations will not receive sound doctrine, a state which Paul prophesied would mark the end times, or that the congregation was “not ready” for a deeper message which might challenge their assumptions. In my experience, limited as it may be, I have found this to be largely untrue. If we are, as some say, a scripturally illiterate nation, could it possibly be because most adults learned what little Scripture they know as children, and haven’t learned any since? If so, does that mean they have no interest in learning or are incapable of learning? I don’t think so. Is anyone willing to ask the question: If the congregation is “not ready,” whose fault is it?

The usual suspect is the local church pastor. Before we drop the burden for scriptural illiteracy at the pastor’s door, let’s consider another question. Is it possible a pastor might have legitimate reasons for being reluctant to wean his congregation from milk to meat? I think this is quite possible and I would offer up two reasons why, both anchored in reality and neither of which should necessarily be construed as a character weakness in the pastor.

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People do what they do as a result of the experiences they have had. It is not unusual for overworked pastors to become overwhelmed with the stress of what is sometimes a thankless job. Some not only have a congregation to satisfy, but a church bureaucracy as well. The spiritual maturity of the congregation often comes after budgets and politics. At times, because of weariness, the path of least resistance is the only path that can be managed. Regardless of whether or not finances and competing agendas among the church leaders are going well, the pastor must still face his congregation every Sunday morning as if nothing is wrong. The simple fact is a congregation of milkdrinking sheep is easier to manage and has lower expectations than meat-eating lions.

Years ago I was part of a movement in a denominational church some called an “awakening” and others called an unfortunate series of events. Whichever it was, it resulted in a corporate concern of the people being voiced by two or three speakers at a national conference. We challenged a recently adopted position by the denominational leaders on an issue that seemed contrary to what the clear Word of God had to say on the matter. As the speakers delivered their remarks, it was obvious to everyone that the leaders of the denomination were clearly agitated by and unprepared for this unanticipated response from the people. I was standing close enough to hear an exchange by the highest official present and another church officer. When asked by the leader, “How did this happen?” the church officer replied, “This is what happens when you let lay people read the New Testament.”

A second reason why some pastors may be reluctant to challenge their congregations to higher levels of spiritual growth may have to do with the authority structure of the church in which the pastor must function. Challenge and change mean conflict.

Old wine skins and religious spirits will fight a bloody fight to protect the status quo. In a paradigm where disgruntled power 38

brokers in the congregation, on staff, or on the elder board, can manipulate the firing of a pastor, some pastors have become afraid of their congregations. They learn that to rock the boat may mean being thrown out of the boat. A case in point follows.

Some time ago, a pastor whom I have known for years, and who is part of a mainline denomination, invited me to his church to speak on a controversial topic, namely evil. The nature of the topic was one I have addressed frequently in what I refer to as transformational or “red” churches, but not one normally offered as Sunday morning fare in more traditional settings. I suggested to the pastor that he listen to a CD of my teaching on this topic to be certain he was comfortable with this level of teaching for his church. Here is the text of his response to me, minus words which might identify the church: I got the CD of Linda’s teaching. I’m about half done with it. Personally, I think it’s right on the mark. I believed for many years that Augustine’s view of evil and God’s sovereignty was deeply destructive to our faith.

So pass on to Linda my heartfelt kudos.

That said...I will have to consider carefully if the focus of this message will be the right thing for our Sunday service. I want to finish the CD before I make that decision.

Not everyone in church agrees with my Armenian view.

In fact, several in our church have read Greg Boyd’s book, God at War, and the matter has created quite a controversy. I’m in the process of instigating some other fairly radical changes at the church and I need to weigh the wisdom of throwing this fuel on the fire....

That said...It might still be right to have Linda here to speak on this topic. Let me pray about it and get back to you.

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Please pass my blessing to Linda and Larry. I deeply appreciate the courage Linda has to tackle serious matters we in the church have to address.

Note that the pastor did not disagree with the theology of what I proposed to teach. He later declined the topic saying that his people were “not ready” for such a message. Instead, he chose a path of continuing to propagate a denominational line that he himself did not believe. What was his motivation to make such a decision? In this particular instance, I believe the motivation was as he said, a concern about how much of a paradigm shift his congregation could process.

Here is my point. This may or may not be true in this specific case, but I believe that many times, pastors drastically underestimate the ability of their congregations to assimilate deeper biblical concepts.

If there is an exodus of believers from traditional churches, I do not believe it is because the people have renounced their faith.

I believe instead, in at least many instances, it is because their God-given hunger for Truth is not being satisfied with the fare they are being fed. Their intelligence is often insulted by the assumption that if they have not been to seminary they cannot possibly understand a message that goes beyond Christianity 101.

Although this book is written for those who do not believe— but desperately wish they could—it also provides a basis for believers who want to offer answers to today’s questions.

ENDNOTES 1. Dr. Don Bierle. Surprised by Faith (Bend, OR: Global Publishing Services, 2003), 11.

2. Ibid., 12.

3. Ibid., 12-13.

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4. Ibid., 14.

5. CBS Evening News, August 24, 2004.

6. George Barna. The Second Coming Of The Church (Nashville, TN: Word Publishing, 1998), 23.

7. Carl Sagan. www.ctinquiry.org/publications/reflections_volume_5/gingerich.htm, (Owen Gingerich), January 2006.

8. James P. Gannon, “Is God Dead in Europe?” USA Today, (9 January 2006), p. 11A.

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CHAPTER ONE

Is That All There Is?

I recently visited Disney’s Epcot Center in Orlando, Florida.

While there I attended an exhibit and watched a film that sought to explain the origins of the earth. It began by showing how the earth had been spun out into space as a by-product of a solar emission. In its initial molten state, the heat from the planet caused dense clouds to form around the earth and it rained and rained and rained some more. It rained so much that eventually the earth was covered with water, which became the seas. From the seas, single-cell organisms emerged that formed plant life. Other single-cell organisms in some mysterious way became a primitive form of animal life. Then millions of years later, without benefit of creative design or intelligence, animal life made an extraordinary developmental leap to become the astoundingly complex human species. So as the children sing at the end of the hokey-pokey party dance, “that’s what it’s all about.”

Let’s suppose that the chronology of life upon the earth were indeed something like that. First, there was nothing. From 45

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nothing, the vastness of the universe somehow comes into being, full of stars and uninhabitable planets. We know the planets are uninhabitable because, thanks to space exploration and pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Voyager deep space probes, we are able to see light years into space. In all of the many planets we can identify to date, there is no evidence of intelligent or organic life of any kind anywhere. None at all. The planets, though numerous, are hostile and barren; seemingly incapable of supporting even the simplest of life forms. Then suddenly, purely by cosmic accident, the third rock from the sun appeared and against all mathematical odds, atmospheric conditions converged in precisely the right formula for seas to form and then recede and separate from dry land. From this phenomenon and completely by chance, life, a concept unknown anywhere in the entire universe, came into being and flourished. Thousands of species of plants began to thrive upon the planet Earth.

As unlikely as this scenario might seem to an honest inquirer, the fact is that the earth is full of lush vegetation and minerals that are sources of nutrition, fuel, building materials, and medicine. The existence of life-sustaining plants and substances on a planet in the middle of a dead universe demands an answer to the obvious next question—Why? The theory of evolution attempts an elaborate, albeit bewildering, explanation as to what happened to bring about the vegetation of the earth, but has less to say as to why it happened. In order for the diversity of complex plant life upon the earth to make sense, there must be a purpose. Without a purpose for its existence, the fact that it does exist is pointless. The purpose of plant life upon the earth cannot be discovered until another form of life is assumed: animals. Even the animated dinosaurs in the evolutionist’s movie bear witness to the fact that animal life could not have survived without plant life. At last, the plants have a reason for being: to support the development of animal life upon 46

Is That All There Is? the planet. Thousands of species of animals live on the earth and against incalculable odds, from earthworms to elephants, each is supported by the happenstance development of grass, flowers, bushes, and trees with precisely the required nutritional composition to sustain the entirety of the animal kingdom. A rather amazing feat in a universe measured by light years where no other discernable life of any type has been found.

Why do these animals exist? What good are they? Do they have a purpose for being? If they have purpose, it isn’t immediately clear. Left to themselves, animals do not appear to do much more than eat the plants, sometimes each other, and produce more purposeless animals. Indeed, they are more complex than botanicals in that animals are self-directed, will search for food, seek the companionship of like animals, experience basic emotion and will defend themselves against a predator. While animals can feel, process limited cause and effect, and can respond to stimuli, they are not rational thinkers.

As a child in school, I was taught that the physiological makeup of a chimpanzee and a human is 98 percent the same. Even if that is true, the differential 2 percent is a universe-altering difference. Animals do not plan ahead, weigh decisions, or anticipate outcomes of variable situations. Animals have no moral compass.

Large and powerful animals devour small and weak animals with no qualms as to whether or not the victim deserves to be eaten.

Sharks hunt and kill, not from anger or ill intent, but because that is what sharks do. Lions and tigers and bears hunt, kill, and eat deer, antelope, and zebra without a thought as to whether or not there is a moral consciousness or higher purpose to be considered.

The existence of animal life is not a matter of question, but the purpose of animal life most certainly is. Why do they exist? The answer is not apparent until we acknowledge yet another life form: a rational, thinking being—humanity.

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People upon the earth give meaning and purpose to both plants and animals. Plants are valued for their medicinal attributes as well as for nourishment. Because humans are capable of appreciating beauty, plants also have aesthetic value. A cow does not care what color the grass is, but humans do. Co-existing with people, animals function as more than predators or the preyed upon. Some are trained to be beasts of burden and used as modes of transportation. Some animals become pets whose purpose is to provide companionship and entertainment for humans—a function unknown in the animal kingdom. Dogs are trained to guard against intruders and to be eyes for blind people. Because of humanity, animals are appreciated in countless ways—unknown and unimportant to other animals.

HUMANS AND GOD Human beings upon the earth provide the rational component making other life forms significant. While humanity gives meaning and purpose to plants and animals, at the same time, the presence of humanity presents yet another question. What is the purpose of human life? If people are important, why are they important, and to whom? The animals and plants do not care about human intellect. It does not matter to them that humanity can steward the earth’s great resources, learn, discover, build schools, advance civilization, and cure disease. Further, people have a sense of morality not known or understood by lesser life forms.

Why do we possess an inner moral compass? If, at the end of existence, humans simply die and sink into the ground to become food for the plants, what difference does it make whether they love their neighbor or eat their neighbor?

As with plants and animals, the purpose of mankind can only be understood in terms of his relationship with something higher than himself. Plants give meaning to soil. Animals give meaning to plants. Humanity gives meaning to both, but what gives 48

Is That All There Is? meaning to humanity? The meaning and purpose of human life can only be realized when interacting with a greater consciousness than our own.

This greater consciousness is what Dr. Don Bierle refers to as “the god hypothesis.” In other words, out there somewhere is God. But if that is true, how can we be certain of His existence?

What is He like and how can we find Him? To passionately declare that God exists does not mean that He does. Dr. Bierle relates a modern parable: Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, “Some gardener must tend this plot.” The other disagrees, “There is no gardener.” So they pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. “But perhaps he is an invisible gardener.” So they set up a barbed wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give a cry. Yet still the believer is not convinced. “But there is a gardener, invisible, insensible to electric shocks, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves.” At last the skeptic despairs, “But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?”1 If God exists but He cannot be known or found in any measurable way, what makes Him different than no god at all? If God does exist and the earth is a result of intelligent and intentional design by God, what must God be like? Are there 49

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reasonable assumptions that can be made about Him? Dr. Bierle suggests, and I agree, that there are at least two.

God would have to be infinite. He must be absolute, independent, and without limitation or need. He must be outside of linear time.

He would have to be personal. In other words, He must have intellect, will, and emotion. If He does not possess these qualities, He would be incapable of communication and relationship with His creation.2 And so, throughout the years, the world’s religions have attempted to address the God hypothesis. The religions of the East—Hinduism, Buddhism, and New Age—contend that there is an infinite god force, but it is not personal. In other words they believe that “we came from nothing, we go to nothing.” In the West, there have been all manner of gods, especially from Greek and Nordic legends. These gods, such as Zeus, Athena, Diana, and Thor, are all personal, but they are not infinite. They war with one another and actually have more problems than most people.

Of all the world’s religions, there are only three that serve a God who is both infinite and personal: Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Let’s briefly consider the claims of all three.

In Judaism, we encounter a man named Moses who said he heard from God. And having heard, he wrote down what God said. Further, it is generally believed that it was Moses who wrote the five books of biblical history of humans upon the earth in the centuries before he himself existed. To be an observant Jew, it is therefore necessary to place a good deal of credibility in the fact that Moses was telling the truth. While many of the things Moses said are historically verifiable, others remain a mystery because the archaeological evidence has not yet been discovered.

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Is That All There Is? Some 2,500 years after Moses’ recount of the creation by God, we encounter Islam’s Mohammed who said that he also had heard from God. He, too, wrote down what God said. Because there were no witnesses to what Mohammed claimed, the decision to believe Mohammed rests with his credibility. The problem: what Mohammed wrote down and the historical accounts of his life are inconsistent. Moreover, the things God said to Moses and the things that Mohammed claimed God said to him are vastly different. Both cannot be true.

Christianity makes a claim unique among all world religions and cults. It is the only religion not founded by a man or woman who claimed to have heard from God. Its founder is a man who made a scandalous and audacious allegation. He claimed to be God. Christianity alone makes the assertion that God Himself became incarnate, entered the universe He created, and lived among ordinary men and women. Verses from the Bible’s New Testament reveal that: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. …The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:1,14).

There is little debate among reasonable people as to whether or not Jesus lived. Extra-biblical history agrees that the man known as Jesus of Nazareth lived, became a religious figure, and died a horrible death. The debate is over who Jesus was. Jesus put Himself at extraordinary risk because He claimed to be God, because either He was or He was not. He could have saved Himself from a lot of trouble if He had only claimed to be like God. Jesus was so convinced that He was God, He was willing to make Himself available for scrutiny in the natural world of reason and evidence. Even so, the claims about Jesus are more than 2,000 years old. Is it possible to verify any of those claims? To do so means we must find a trustworthy and historically verifiable body of evidence replete with eyewitnesses. We cannot study Jesus without relying heavily upon the Gospel accounts because the 51

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Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) are the largest body of literature dealing with His life. But how do we know the Gospel account is reliable? Is there any scientific way to establish the authenticity of these documents upon which we must rely? Dr. Bierle writes that to prove anything at all, one of two methods must be employed.

The most reliable method of proof is to use the scientific method. Simply stated, if something is repeatable, then it can be proved. Unfortunately, there are many things we accept as truth that cannot be proved by repeatability. For example, a person’s birth is not repeatable. It only happens one time. How can something that is a one-time event be proven?

A second method, used to prove historical events, is the legal method which governs the American judicial system. A case of evidence is presented and the jury weighs the evidence and makes a reasonable judgment or decision concerning the issue at hand.3 Since the New Testament claims to be a document of history, it must be examined by the legal method. To believe the accounts in the Gospels, we must answer two fundamental questions: (1) are the documents authentic, and (2) are the events described therein true accounts. Again, Dr. Bierle’s extensive research addresses these questions.

Testing the authenticity of ancient documents is a common practice among literary scholars. There is a large body of literature, both earlier and later than the New Testament, where the issue of authenticity is also raised. For example, the histories of Herodotus and Caesar (fifth and first century B.C., respectively), are well known. Tacitus and Josephus allegedly wrote histories about Rome and the Jews near the end of the first century A.D. Testing such literature are the principles of historiography.

To understand how these principles work, let’s consider a wellknown work of antiquity, written about 50 B.C., entitled Caesar’s 52

Is That All There Is? War Commentaries. These are the personal memoirs of Caesar’s military campaigns. All we know about Caesar’s writing comes from copies of the original manuscript. Are all of the copies identical? No, they are not. They are handwritten and there are discrepancies among the copies. To the extent that changes occur in the copies is the extent to which they lack authenticity. Multiply this scenario many times over centuries and the problem becomes evident.

Why use copies? Why not go to the originals (autographs)?

None exist of ancient documents. Caesar’s original does not exist and neither do the originals of other ancient documents including the New Testament. Since we must judge the authenticity of a work by relying on copies, there must be guidelines for the copies, known as the bibliographical test.

There are three major questions that scholars ask to determine the accuracy of transmission over the years.

How many manuscripts (hand written copies) are there?

The more the better. A large number of copies allow comparison and correlation in order to reproduce the original. A large number of manuscripts written over the centuries minimizes the possibility, as Bierle has pointed out, that a “little band of people conspired to create them.” A large number of copies also means broader exposure and greater accountability to integrity.

Many people assume that using such impartial methods of testing would find that the writings of the New Testament must quite naturally be inferior to those of Plato, Homer, or Aristotle. Bierle challenges whether such an assumption is valid. For example, how many manuscripts have been found for other widely acknowledged works of antiquity?

For Caesar’s War Commentaries, ten manuscripts have been found. For Homer’s Iliad, 643 copies exist, the most of any 53

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ancient work. For Plato’s Tetralogies, seven have been found.

Twenty of Livy’s History of Rome have been found. Only a couple of Tacitus’s minor works have ever been found.4 How many manuscripts for the New Testament have been found? More than 5,664 in the original Greek language. There are 18,000 more in Armenian, Latin, Syriac and other languages.5 Dr. Bierle notes that his intellectual bias had never caused him to question the authenticity of the other ancient works he had studied.

But his religious bias that the New Testament could not possibly be authenticated was based on ignorance.

Sir Frederic Kenyon, an eminent scholar of textual criticism, said: “Scholars are satisfied that they possess substantially the true text of the principal Greek and Roman writers whose works have come down to us, of Sophocles, of Thudydides, of Cicero, of Virgil; yet our knowledge of their writings depends on a mere handful of manuscripts, whereas the manuscripts of the New Testament are counted by hundreds, and even thousands.”6

How old are the manuscripts?

According to Bierle, the second issue affecting transmission is the date at which the manuscript copies were written. He points out that the further removed the copies are from when the originals were written, the more likely they are to include errors, additions, or deletions. For example, Caesar’s War Commentaries was written about 50 B.C., but the first manuscript was not found until the ninth century, a gap of 900 years. Most of the Greek manuscripts have a gap of between 1,000 and 1,500 years. The shortest span of any known work is that of Virgil, with a span of about 300 years.

What about the New Testament? An academic himself, Bierle suggests that most scholars agree that the documents were penned over a 50-year period beginning about A.D. 47 with A.D. 54

Is That All There Is? 100 being a reasonable latest possible date. John Ryland’s papyrus, dating about A.D. 125, is a fragment containing a few verses of the New Testament Gospel of John. This represents only some 35 years after the original Gospel was written by the apostle. Whoever used this copy could have known the author— the apostle John, himself.7 The Bodmer and Chester Beatty papyri, dating from about A.D. 150-200, contain a majority of the records of the New Testament.

Kenyon’s commentary on the significance of these manuscripts contradicts many people’s perception of what is true regarding the New Testament records: “No other ancient book has anything like such early and plentiful testimony to its text, and no unbiased scholar would deny that the text that has come down to us is substantially sound.”8 The time interval between the original and extant copies of the New Testament stands far above all other ancient writings in manuscript evidence and short time span. There was nearly a continuous chain of copies from the originals to the printing press. Bierle observes, “If the text was not essentially like the autographs, when could they have become corrupted? There were copies made in every century since the beginning.”

It isn’t easy to distort historical events to people who were there when they happened. Let’s suppose that I and a few friends became convinced that Osama bin Laden, the leader of the terrorist regime al Qaeda, was actually a messianic figure around whom a new religion should be built. And let’s suppose that in order to further his reputation and to recruit followers, we go to New York City to hold a rally, because we know that on September 11 there will be throngs of people at the memorial where the World Trade Center towers once stood. What if we announced, “Men of New York City! Listen to us! Osama bin Laden is a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs which God did among you through him as 55

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you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death right here in New York City, but God raised him to life and we are all witnesses of the fact.”

How many people would we sign up that day? None. In fact, it is a ludicrous idea. Why? Because the people in New York City were eyewitnesses to the events of September 11, 2001. No matter how persuasive we might be, they know that nothing like the events we described ever happened.

A similar situation happened 50 days after the crucifixion of Jesus. Peter stood in front of the throngs in Jerusalem who were there for the Passover and he made the following speech: Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. …God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact (Acts 2:22-23,32).

The people who were alive and living in Jerusalem at the time of the crucifixion were most probably still alive and living there 50 days later. Peter preached his sermon in the place where the events happened, to the people who would be in the best position to know. All early Christians were converted, eyewitness Jews who lived in the area and would have seen or heard about Jesus. We find no evidence that anyone from the crowd ever objected or challenged Peter by saying, “Peter, what are you talking about?

Nothing like that ever happened here.” Jesus was not a legend because a legend cannot develop within the same generation as the events and persons themselves because of the eyewitnesses.

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Is That All There Is? How accurately were the manuscripts copied?

The third question, according to Bierle, deals with the distortion of the meaning of the text due to copying changes.

Dr. Bruce Metzger, professor of New Testament language and literature at Princeton University, has published the results of his research on this topic. He compared the words of three ancient works: Homer’s Iliad; the Mahabharata, a religious work of Hinduism; and the New Testament.

The copies were divided into lines of ten words each to make the comparison easier. All differences in the manuscripts affecting the reader’s understanding were counted to find out how much distortion had occurred (in other words, the uncertainty of what the writer originally wrote). The manuscripts were laid out in this fashion: 15,600 lines for the Iliad, 20,000 lines for the New Testament, 250,000 lines for the Mahabharata.

Dr. Metzger reported that 764 lines of the Iliad were corrupted, a distortion rate of about 5 percent. In other words, one out of every 20 lines is uncertain. “Which Iliad do we read in class? Who decided which manuscript was correct? Yet it is rare that a professor would caution students about the authenticity of the Iliad. Its authenticity is assumed,” Bierle concludes.

The Mahabharata was worse with at least 26,000 lines corrupted, somewhat more than a 10 percent distortion rate. Or, one out of ten lines is suspect as to what the writers intended.

Considering the New Testament, only 40 lines or 1/5th of 1 percent (0.2 percent) are uncertain.9 The known writings by the church fathers of the first three centuries after Christ give us further basis for authenticity. Their 57

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extant writings in this time span contain over 36,000 references or allusions to the New Testament books. Dr. Metzger says, “So extensive are these citations that if all other sources for our knowledge of the text of the New Testament were destroyed, they would be sufficient alone for the reconstruction of practically the entire New Testament.”10 Sir Kenyon’s conclusion is justified by the evidence: “It cannot be too strongly asserted that in substance the text of the Bible is certain. Especially is this the case with the New Testament. The number of manuscripts of the New Testament, or early translations from it, and of quotations from it in the oldest writers of the Church, is so large that it is practically certain that the true reading of every doubtful passage is preserved in some one or other of these ancient authorities. This can be said of no other ancient book in the world.”11

It may be authentic, but is it true?

Bierle asserts that authenticity and truth are not necessarily the same things. Testing the truthfulness of the New Testament records requires some independent sources that would substantiate its historical accuracy. It is well known that there are many references in the New Testament to allegedly historical people (Pontius Pilate, Gallio, and Caesar Augustus) and to places (Jericho, Egypt, and the Sea of Galilee). Can any of these people or places be proven to actually exist?

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the desert (Luke 3:1-2).

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Is That All There Is? Bible scholar F.F. Bruce points out about Luke’s Gospel that, “A writer who thus relates his story to the wider context of world history is courting trouble if he is not careful; he affords his critical readers so many opportunities for testing his accuracy. Luke takes this risk and stands the test admirably.”12 The science of archaeology is really only 150 years old. Therefore, it is safe to say that more is known today about the first century New Testament background than has been known since the third century. With so much information available, it is no longer difficult to test the New Testament’s claim to historicity. Consider the following examples from Dr. Bierle’s work: Politarchs. During the apostle Paul’s second missionary journey, he visited the city of Thessalonica. Luke refers to the city magistrates there as “politarchs.” The problem is that this term does not occur anywhere else in any known literature. It was assumed for quite some time by some scholars that Luke had created the term because he did not have firsthand knowledge of the area. But beginning with William Ramsay in the late 19th century, at least 19 inscriptions have been found by archaeologists, which cite “politarchs” as the correct title of magistrates in Macedonian towns.13 Nails. The Gospel writers refer to the use of nails in the crucifixion of Jesus on a cross of wood. Critics have questioned the use of nails, as opposed to tying the victim on the cross, and even the practice of crucifixion in Palestine. Indeed, it was widely reported that nails were never used in this fashion. In recent years, though, Biblical Archaeology published a scientific article on the excavation of the only crucifixion victim ever discovered. The 24-28-year-old man was found in a tomb near Jerusalem with a 71/2" nail through his feet. His crucifixion was dated, by the carbon-14 method, as A.D. 42. (Jesus was crucified in A.D. 30.) Furthermore, the man’s calf bones were “brutally fractured…clearly produced 59

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by a single, strong blow.”14 This evidence supports a Palestinian variation of Roman crucifixion referred to in the Gospel of John: The soldiers therefore came and broke the legs of the first man who had been crucified with Jesus, and then those of the other. But when they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead, they did not break his legs (John 19:32-33).

The archaeologist explains the importance of this practice: “Normally, the Romans left the crucified person undisturbed to die slowly of sheer physical exhaustion leading to asphyxia. However, Jewish tradition required burial on the day of execution.

Therefore, in Palestine, the executioner would break the legs of the crucified person in order to hasten his death and thus permit burial before nightfall. This practice, described in the Gospel in reference to the two thieves has now been archaeologically confirmed.”15 Pontius Pilate. Pontius Pilate, identified in the New Testament as the governor of Judea during the time of Christ’s crucifixion, squares with references to him in writings by the Jewish historian, Josephus, and the Roman historian, Tacitus. Archaeological excavation of ancient Caesarea, the city where Pilate lived, uncovered a 2-by-3 foot cornerstone with the inscription: “Pontius Pilate, the Prefect of Judea, has dedicated to the people of Caesarea a temple in honor of Tiberius.”16 William Albright, famous archaeologist at Johns Hopkins University writes: “The excessive skepticism shown toward the Bible by important schools of the 18th and 19th centuries, certain phases of which still appear periodically, has been progressively discredited. Discovery after discovery has established the accuracy of innumerable details, and has brought increased recognition to the value of the Bible as a source of history.”17 60

Is That All There Is? Nelson Glueck, renowned Jewish archaeologist, writes, “No archaeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference.”18 Why hasn’t the voluminous evidence of the authenticity and reliability of Scripture convinced the skeptics? It may be because religious conviction is more often based on culture and bias than on historical proof. Tryon Edwards, in The New Dictionary of Thoughts, writes: “Prejudices are rarely overcome by argument; not being founded in reason they cannot be destroyed by logic.”19 It is interesting to note that in the 18th century, French skeptic Voltaire boasted that within 100 years of his time, the Bible and Christianity would be swept into obsolescence and pass into history. Instead, about 50 years after his death, the Geneva Bible Society took over his press and his house to produce stacks of Bibles and distribute them around the world.20 If anyone chooses to reject the New Testament evidence as insufficient, honesty to the facts requires that they reject all other ancient literature as well, whose evidence is quite inferior to that supporting the New Testament.

ENDNOTES 1. Bierle, Surprised by Faith, 16-17.

2. Ibid., 19.

3. Ibid., 24-25.

4. Ibid., 31.

5. Ibid., 30.

6. Ibid., 31.

7. Ibid., 32.

8. Ibid., 33.

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JESUS for ADULTS 9. Ibid., 35.

10. Ibid., 36.

11. Ibid., 37 12. Ibid., 38.

13. Ibid., 43-44.

14. Ibid., 42-43.

15. Ibid., 43.

16. Ibid., 39.

17. Ibid., 44.

18. Ibid., 45.

19. Ibid., 47.

20. Chuck Northrop, Is The Bible From God Or Man? 1993.

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