Heresy Hurricane Season

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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All right, let's open with prayer and then we will get into our topic for today Lord Jesus again as we open up your word and we consider the veracity and the reliability of your

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New Testament We ask the Lord that you would open our hearts and our minds so that we may be able to know what the truth is

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That understand what the evidence points to so that we may have confidence in your written words

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So that our faith may not be stolen from us in days such as these we ask this in the name of Jesus.

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Amen By way of a little bit of a confession on Wednesday during our midweek gathering for Lent I sat at the ladies table

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Yeah, thank you. I appreciate you the absolution Roger at the ladies table One of our members informed me that on Monday night on PBS there was a documentary the last days of Jesus and She was telling me along with another of our members that this was a awful documentary that basically seemed to have as its whole existence the purpose of Basically saying what you think you know about Jesus that's not really how it went down and so I went on to the

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PBS website and Found the documentary in question watched it twice

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And all I can say is this is a train wreck now. I want to remind you all that the world is

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Hostile towards Jesus. They don't really like him if you if you ever hear an unbeliever say well we like Jesus But we don't really like Christians.

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They're lying Scripture says that those who are dead and trespasses and sins are actually

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Hostile towards God and this is an example of this And so every year it seems to happen like clockwork at Easter time also sometimes at Christmas outcome the hit piece documentaries and they're always marketed in such a way that Christians are interested in watching them because they think that this is going to be a documentary that somehow

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Vindicates the Bible or vindicates Jesus or will help us see how archaeology is

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Verifying what we see in Scripture to which I would say. Yeah, that's not the point these documentaries, you know

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So the best way I could put it is is that the movie that's out the case for Christ good

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Very good. Lee Strobel has done a fine job of laying out a basic apologetic argument demonstrating that the evidence for the

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Veracity of who Christ is and what he's done for us. This is all Historically verifiable no problem with that.

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But when you get something on like PBS the history channel, you know CNN things like this their agenda

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I don't know if you've noticed this Pagans do what Pagans do because Pagans are what Pagans are and so Pagans don't really seem to have this

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Burning desire to actually go out and you know tell the world that Jesus died for their sins and stuff instead

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Pagans are hostile towards God and they really cannot stand The message of who he is what he's done and that salvation is found in no one else except for him

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And so when you look at a lot of these documentaries, these are hit piece documentaries now I would note something here.

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One of the fellows who's prominently featured in this documentary is A fellow who

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I would liken to Saul of Tarsus not the Apostle Paul But Saul of Tarsus prior to his conversion and the fellows name is

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Simca Yakubovitch Now you may have you may be familiar with him because ten years ago

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He's the guy who came out with that documentary, you know kind of code produced with James Cameron called the lost tomb of Jesus and Simca Yakubovitch his name actually looks like it's pronounced

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Simca Yakubovitch II, but it's not it's it's Hebrew not Italian and so it's

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Simca Yakubovitch and this fellow the best way I could describe him is he hates he loathes

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Jesus and He has made it his life mission to find a way to utterly discredit

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Jesus so that people will stop saying that he's the Jewish Messiah That's the only way I can describe this fellow and I have followed his career for the better part of a decade now

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So I would say you've got to keep in mind if you if you see this the if you see Simca Yakubovitch associated with any documentary

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Archaeologically, he's got a major axe to grind and he is no friend of Christ and so as I watched the documentary and this is kind of the important thing is is what they're doing is they're trying to offer an alternative

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Interpretation to the last week of Jesus's life Which for us, you know liturgically began today with Palm Sunday.

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And so the idea is Jesus comes into Jerusalem There's a crowd of people who are welcoming into Jerusalem.

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They grab palm branches blessed as he who comes in the name of the Lord Hosanna in the highest and Jesus comes in and Literally less than a week later.

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They're shouting crucify him crucify him And so now you've got a narrative that makes this crowd look like they're well schizophrenic

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But they don't do any work to kind of carefully exegete any of these texts

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And so instead they've come up with an alternative narrative and the alternative narrative takes us to Imperial Rome Who was the

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Emperor while Jesus was on trial do any of you know? answer

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Tiberius Tiberius Caesar is the one who is Emperor of Rome at this time but if you know the history of Tiberius Caesar, which they give us a lot of in this documentary

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Didn't you know this that well to put it bluntly and not politely

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Tiberius was a bit of a pervert and Although he was Emperor of Rome He spent quite a lot of time in private seclusion in a seaside resort

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Engaging in his perversions. I'll just put it politely There's no other way to describe this.

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So while he's busy doing that the question comes up who's running the Empire?

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while he's Otherwise occupied answer a fellow by the name of Lucius Sejanus You probably have never heard of Lucius Sejanus Lucius Sejanus was quite the fellow

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He was Extremely ambitious. He was originally the head of the Praetorian Guard So he's a

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Roman soldier head of the Praetorian Guard, which is like the elite Bodyguard group in charge of guarding

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Caesar. So you think of him as like the head of the Secret Service something like that, right and he eventually becomes the the guy who's running the

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Empire on behalf of Tiberius that makes sense now

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Since he was already running the Empire questions kind of arose whether or not he would be the good successor to Tiberius as the

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Emperor when the Emperor ultimately would pass on and Sejanus we find out from history actually kind of helped because there was two other rivals that he had who could potentially be the next

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Emperor and Sejanus worked Surreptitiously to cause very suspicious circumstances to arise that led to the death of these other two fellows and It took a while for them to put all of the pieces together

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But while they were putting all the pieces together remember he's running the Empire now I'll you're sitting again.

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What does this have to do with the death of Jesus? Well, the death of Jesus has everything to do with at least in their theory.

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It goes like this in Judea You've heard of Herod Antipas.

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You've heard of Herod Herod's son Herod the Great's son Herod Antipas He wasn't permitted by Imperial Rome to actually be the king of Judea like his father was

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Instead he was just a kind of a provincial governor if he would but he really really really really

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Wanted to be the king of Judea like his father before him, but the

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Emperor said no No, not one Emperor but two Emperors said no way

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Jose we're not letting you do that Okay, including Tiberius. Well while Tiberius was engaging in his adult activities

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I'll put it politely and Sejanus is running the Emperor Empire for him Herod Antipas makes a trip all the way to Rome and makes a political alliance with Sejanus and It looks like things are going his way and thinking what does this have to do with Jesus?

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Well, actually nothing but this is how the conspiracy theory that they lay out in this documentary goes

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And so the way it works is if you actually pay attention to the list of people who were connected to Jesus We know that one of the fellows that was a follower of Jesus grew up in Herod Antipas's house

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We know this scripture actually explicitly says this of this fellow and so here's how the conspiracy the new interpretation works see

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Jesus was in cahoots with Herod Antipas through the liaison of the guy who was one of his followers who grew up in his house and Jesus's ministry was being bankrolled by Herod Antipas and some of the people who had clout in Judea and so Jesus apparently had it out for the

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Established priesthood Jesus really was not in favor of and was radically opposed to the established priesthood in Jerusalem just like his cousin

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John the Baptist This is their interpretation

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I just trying to tell you and so what happened is that when it came time when

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Jesus came into Jerusalem He really didn't come in on Palm Sunday a week before he was

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Arrested he came in six months earlier but see the gospel writers just left all that out to make it look like he'd only been there for a week and What ended up happening is is that when he arrived there that happened to coincide with the when the time when

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Tiberius? became wise as to what Sejanus was up to and had him executed and Once word got to Herod Antipas and to Pilate that Sejanus had been executed

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They became well Cowardly women like oh What are we going to do?

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and this explains what they ended up throwing Jesus under the bus because Yeah, you sit there going

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Where are they getting all of this? Can you all just tell me where they're getting all of this think here?

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They're getting this all in here their own heads. So they've concocted a conspiratorial

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Very complex political almost soap opera like Explanation for what's going on with Jesus and the reason for this is simple

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They do not Believe that Jesus is the Son of God in human flesh

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They do not believe that he performed miracles. They do not believe that he walked on water They do not believe that he was crucified

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For no reason as an innocent person and that he rose again bodily from the grave and that he's coming again with glory to judge

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The living and the dead they don't believe any of that In fact, this is part of a bigger project if you would that goes back a couple of centuries

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Y 'all ever heard of Albert Schweitzer Albert Schweitzer was part of a group of very liberal

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Theologians who were very critical of the New Testament and the reason for this is that they bought into a philosophical worldview known as modernity

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If you've read any of the modernistic philosophers like David Hume or other people like this their general argument goes something like this

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We live in a world that is actually quite rational There's laws of nature.

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And so what is a miracle a miracle? A miracle is the breaking of the laws of nature and since the laws of nature cannot be broken

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How do you know they can't be broken because we've never seen them broken Therefore Jesus couldn't have broken the laws of nature and he really didn't perform miracles and he really didn't rise from the dead

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How do you know this again our logic which is a big circle by the way our circular logic?

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Yeah, so let me kind of explain So the idea then is is that a whole bunch of Christian theologians literally

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When these arguments came forward in history a couple hundred years ago, they bent the knee and said

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Modernity modernity you are Lord. We we surrender Okay, but they stayed in the church

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They surrendered to modernity they stayed in the church and then they went and became professors in seminaries

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And they they taught a whole generation of pastors. You can't trust the Bible You can't believe that Jesus walked on water or any of this nonsense.

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And so they began this project the quest to learn who the real historical

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Jesus is now this documentary Acknowledges something very interesting at the very beginning near the very beginning of it and they recognize that the only

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Data we have about Jesus comes from Matthew Mark Luke and John but they also acknowledge they can't deny that he's a historical figure because Roman historians

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Talk about Jesus. So we know that historically he lived But they don't believe that what we have in the

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Gospels is accurate that this is somehow some kind of legendary Account of the life of Jesus rather than an eyewitness account of Jesus But they don't tell you that at the beginning of the documentary

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They don't lay their cards out on the table until literally the last

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Minutes of the documentary now. I want you to hear the last minutes of this documentary.

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We'll play it Here we go Different picture of Jesus's last days

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I don't think we should think of Jesus as a marginal human being a peasant running around the

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Galilee on his own preaching about the kingdom of God He's had connections to Herod Antipas's chief of staff through his wife connections to The Pharisees who are the teachers connections to the

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Sadducees he had influence and he had connections This was supported by a political plot

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Hatched by two of the most powerful men in the empire. Is there absolutely no record of it?

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The answer may well have something to do with when they were written And who they were written for at the time the

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Gospels were composed Janus's name anywhere

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Tyberius's vengeance is not just against the person of Sejanus but against his reputation and he pronounces the very memory of Sejanus will be

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Any statue of him any dedication in his honor is to be struck down.

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So you're denying that the guy ever existed Mention of Sejanus was still dangerous decades after his death

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The very time the Gospels were written What many people don't realize about the

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Gospels is they're not contemporary eyewitness accounts of what happened

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Lots of people have thought that they were Monalysts, right?

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You don't know who Matthew Mark Luke and John happened to be As we study them more we realize first of all, they're written 40 50 60 70 years after Jesus And the story they all describe is carefully crafted

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You think of the Gospels as you would a politician trying to persuade you of a particular way of seeing things

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Trump they involve a lot of choice in terms of what goes into them and what gets left out but they're very much designed as recruitment literature and If you've got recruitment literature, you've got to be careful you don't alienate people

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And the whole group the gospel writers had to be very careful not to offend

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In an environment where there are serious consequences for being a

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Christian that you could be Hauled in front of Roman authorities and all sorts of terrible things will happen to you

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You might want to be a bit careful about your portrayal Yeah, that's right the gospel writers for failed to mention

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Sejanus because you know, he was illegal Oh, this is utter conjecture

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I Mean this is probably They openly recognize that this is a radical new interpretation

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I would say that wow, I believe that that Jesus was actually

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Elvis because remember Elvis never really died He was beamed up by the mothership.

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And so and once he was beamed up to the mothership I'm sure that the aliens made, you know, basically put the spirit of Elvis in Jesus And so that I think is a very good interpretation of explaining what really what happened in the

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Gospels Yeah Oh, yeah, that's it they're purposely accusing the gospel writers of omitting important relevant political information

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That would have helped us to understand who Jesus is and then their depiction of Jesus's crucifixion.

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Jesus is alone He's by himself. He is not crucified between two Two people there's not a crowd there at the cross and well, no, there were nails there were nails

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There were nails in his hands. They show them. Yeah, but they have a different way of crucifying him, which that's a whole other story but the issue here is is that they basically 2 ,000 years after the fact are saying they have a better explanation

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About what who Jesus is and what he did then the people who wrote the Gospels and how do they get away with this?

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Well, we don't believe the Gospels are really eyewitness testimony. How long were they written after Jesus's death?

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60 -70 years after the death of Jesus All right, who wrote these things then would be kind of the question now should we as Christians go?

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Oh, no Oh, I can't trust my Bible. Oh, oh, this is terrible. Okay.

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I'm not gonna go to Kong's finger anymore, you know You know This is this is absurd on its face and it totally ignores

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Important data in the Gospels themselves. Is it true? Do you think it's true that the

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Gospels were not written by the eyewitnesses Now, by the way, we have four

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Matthew Mark Luke John of those Gospels How many of them do we know for sure are written by an eyewitness?

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to Matthew and John now, what about Mark We think he may have been an eyewitness, but we're not sure we do know that Mark's Gospel are the preaching notes of the

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Apostle Peter this we know and Modern scholars seem to think that Mark was written first Which is fascinating because we actually have fragments of the

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Gospel of Mark that are from the first century Just want to let you know that But according to the early church, and I mean the earliest

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Christians, you know who they say wrote first It was Matthew the

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Church Fathers say Matthew wrote first and that he originally wrote his gospel in Hebrew and Then it was translated

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This is what the Church Fathers tell us now. What about that Gospel that we call

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Luke? What about it? What does it say about itself? Okay, let's take a look

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Luke chapter 1 listen to this in as much as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of The things that have been accomplished among us

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Just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us

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It seemed good to me. Also having followed all things closely for some time past to write an orderly account for you

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Most excellent Theophilus that you may have certainty concerning the things that you have been taught

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That opening paragraph makes it very clear where this gospel comes from Luke who is a convert to Christianity?

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he interviewed the eyewitnesses and composed his gospel accordingly and you'll notice that Luke's gospel gives us what was going on inside of the heart and mind of Mary when the angel appeared to her of When Jesus was born and about Zechariah which means there's only one person who was alive at that time who could have given that information to Luke and that's

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Mary herself and So the gospel of Luke is a unique document because it specifically

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Notes the fact that the purpose of this was to help Theophilus which is a wonderful name because it can also be used for us

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Theophilus in Greek means lover of God. So this is written to you as well Are you not a lover of God and this was compiled via?

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the eyewitness testimony straight up now The question then comes up.

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When was this written? Well after after what?

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Mm -hmm. Yeah, well after after the events So clearly this was written after the historical events that are recorded in but how long after?

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How long? Mary's still alive

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Can't be that long. Yeah, and people did not live that that long back then. So Mary's still alive the

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Apostle Paul What is his connection with Luke? Please open to Acts 6

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Acts 16. I want to show you something starting at verse 11

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Listen to this narrative. So setting sail from Troas We made a direct voyage to Samothrace and the following day to Neapolis and from there to Philippi Which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a

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Roman colony We remained in the city some days and on the Sabbath day we went outside the gate to the riverside where we supposed there was a place of prayer and we

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Sat down and spoke to the women who had come together One who heard us was a woman named

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Lydia from the city of Thyatira a seller of purple goods Who was a worshiper of God the

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Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul? Do you have a mouse in your pocket?

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What's this we stuff Why is Luke who is the author of Acts Saying we we we and it's not because of the three little piggies or any of that kind of stuff

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Why is he saying we? uh -huh, he

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You know who was there Luke was This is one of those famous sections of the book of Acts known as the we

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Sections or the we portions and the reason why they're called the we portions is because they're written in first -person

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Plural and Luke is saying, you know who saw this Me I Saw it and we were there and this is what we did one of the other famous we sections of the book of Acts is

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Found near the end when Paul is on the ship heading towards Rome because remember he's been arrested

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He's heading towards Rome he's bit he's appealing to Caesar and it talks about the great storm that came up and it talks about how we were tossed to and Fro and and the way waves came over and how we were shipwrecked and all this kind of stuff

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What does that tell you who was there? with Paul during these events fail

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Luke right. Okay now kind of put this together here Acts is part two of Luke and acts

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Where does acts end? What's going on when we get to the end of acts?

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It's yes, it's before maps but at the end of acts does it have this tidy little ending and Paul and Peter and John lived happily ever after No, it doesn't.

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In fact acts is one of these works where it kind of ends abruptly in chapter 28 and Where's Paul when this takes place under house arrest in Rome?

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What year was that? Answer is 60

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AD Paul's first You know time in prison in Rome is in 60

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AD When was Jesus crucified died buried raised from the dead?

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33 so at the very latest The oldest that acts can be is it was finished abruptly and we don't know why it ends so abruptly in 60

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AD That's the oldest it can be What does that make the gospel of Luke how old is that?

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Now, let me give you another text of Scripture. This will help us out a little bit here go to first Corinthians 15 first Corinthians 15

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Let me read this out for you see if this helps I Would remind you brothers

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This is Paul writing of the gospel that I preached to you which you received which you stand and by which you are being saved

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If you hold fast to the word that I preached to you unless you believed in vain So Paul writing to the church of Corinth in the year and liberal scholars agree with this by the way

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First Corinthians was written between 50 and 52 AD. That's your range 50 and 52

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AD How many years after the death of Christ is this? 20 something years.

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Yeah about 20 straight up So 20 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ The Apostle Paul is writing to the church in Corinth and he says this.

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I want to remind you of the gospel that I preached to you by which you are being saved if you hold fast to the word That I preach to you unless you believed in vain for I delivered to you as a first importance

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What I also received that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures That he was buried on the and that he was raised again on the third day in accordance with what?

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which scriptures Say that Jesus Christ Died and rose again on the third day the

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Gospels uh -huh because Paul in 50

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AD is already making reference to scriptures not scripture scriptures

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That reference Jesus is death and resurrection on the third day

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Which Old Testament texts tell us that? No prophecies say it that clear and yet by 50

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AD Paul is referencing a creed because that's really an early creed that says that Jesus died

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Was buried raised again on the third day according to the scriptures

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This sounds to me like the Apostle Paul was working with one of those gospels that wasn't written one of those non -existent eyewitness accounts of Jesus Strange isn't it?

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So the Apostle Paul already in 50 AD is referencing scriptures that explicitly talk about Jesus's death burial and resurrection

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We know that Paul was intimately Associated with Luke the author of Luke and Acts because Luke was along for the journey in parts of Acts So if they're right

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These weren't written till way later and not by eyewitnesses then

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Everything doesn't make sense when did Luke write Luke and when did

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Luke write Acts and clearly the internal evidence says it was written by talking to eyewitnesses and It had to have been written early because it ends so abruptly so it takes more faith to believe their theory that this is an eyewitness testimony than it is to believe that it is because The document says that it is

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Right, they're smart people, right Exactly Exactly.

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It was very ominous You know, I need a soundtrack That's my problem

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And I need a British accent. That's what I need But you can see how this works

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All right. Now I'm gonna show you some more evidence and this one's a little bit more Precise, but there's a book that is out there and you can get it

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The name of the book is Jesus and the eyewitnesses. It is written by Cambridge scholar Richard Balcom B -a -u -k -a -m

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Richard Balcom and This is an amazing book and what

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I'm going to be showing to you is again looking internally within The the documents themselves to see if this can make sense because I want you to think about this so 70 years after Jesus walked the earth

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I'm going to write a story about Jesus This is what this is what it's coming down to.

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These are the days before Google There is no internet Libraries are a bit sketchy at this point

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We don't have all of the documents that we have now in city halls and places like that.

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I Want you to consider this now? Where am I writing from it's kind of be gonna be like another question that comes up now,

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I Don't know if you guys have figured this out But I am NOT a local here

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Now I would ask you locals Do you think I could pull it off if I were to really like?

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Try to embed myself among the locals to make it look like I'm a local. Could I really pull it off?

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I Enough from you.

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Okay, so I am having difficulty with the Polish names How about how about my knowledge of the geography of this area?

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No, in fact Or you're my wife. Yeah, that's right. We get lost very quickly.

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I couldn't tell you where Crookston is Thief River Falls I Man with if without the internet,

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I'm gone. There's just like no way now I want you to consider this back in the day before there was

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Google Earth and Google Maps and stuff like this if People knew about cities in a particular region.

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What types of cities would they know about? Big ones capital cities. So, you know, so you could realistically say

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I know about Grand Forks Okay, but somebody who's not from here would probably have never heard of Alvarado They wouldn't know where Warren is or some of these, you know,

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Macintosh or you know, Eskin or places like this What you just said, yeah

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You're making my point. Thank you Yes, see what

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I'm saying, okay Notice how easy it is for me to screw this up if I don't really have local knowledge

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So I really couldn't pull this off. There's like no way now I want you to consider then that basically what these people are saying is that with these the

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Gospels are not eyewitness accounts But they got all of the minutiae

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Right in their gospel accounts when it comes to like the little details now as you're reading through the

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Gospels you'll see things in the Gospels like the list of names of the disciples and Some of the guys have well, he's

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James the son of Alpheus Why does it say James the son of Alpheus, but then you get to Thaddeus. It just says

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Thaddeus Why is that or then you get to Simon and then you have to make a distinction?

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Well Simon the zealot and then you got Simon Peter. Why are you making distinctions like this? That's part of it

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Then you have details in the Gospels like Emmaus is a Sabbath stays journey from Jerusalem That's local knowledge and Emmaus We're not even sure where that is today.

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Did you know that? We're not even sure where Emmaus is But back then we have the name of kind of an obscure tiny little village and we know exactly how long it takes to get there from Jerusalem How about Bethsaida?

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How about some of these lesser -known towns and you'll notice that we get a lot of minutiae

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Names of obscure villages and stuff like that and we also get weather information and we get information regarding Like plant cycles and stuff like that mentions of green grass at particular times of the year and things like this

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All of this is data that you would expect from somebody who is writing an eyewitness account if I were a writing a legend 70 years later,

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I Would not have access to this minutiae detail. Does that make sense?

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And here's the fun part this minutiae detail is in every Single gospel it's in Matthew.

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It's in Mark It's in Luke and in John and the other thing I can tell you is somebody who spends a lot of time translating

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And I know both Greek and Hebrew It's hilarious when you're reading some of the Gospels and the reason why is you sit there and go whoever wrote this is a

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Jew There's just like no way around it because there's Jewish idioms and phrases That have literally been just smuggled into the

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Greek text without any attempt of trying to make it Greek It's like there's like this Hebrew thing here and it's like, oh my gosh, whoever wrote this totally was a

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Jew There's no way around it. It's just chock -full of Hebraic isms, which is what you would expect because Who are

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Jesus's disciples? Jews now I want to talk a little bit about popular personal names now,

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I know we've all seen this right a woman gets married and Her and her husband announced sometime later

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We're pregnant And everyone's so excited, you know, do I get a pink booty or a blue booty?

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What do I get? I don't know right, you know And then they share the ultrasound pictures on Facebook and everyone just go.

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This is the best thing ever, right? And what does the mom do? She goes to the store and she buys a baby name book

38:28

So that she can look through the most popular baby names so she can begin to figure out am

38:34

I gonna call her Annabelle? Or am I gonna call him Caleb? You know things like this and you know, and I'm kind of over dramatizing

38:41

But you get the idea my wife and I went through this three times now. I assure you that The names that were most popular when my children were born are not

38:54

The names that are most popular now That's an important little phenomenon.

39:01

In fact, if we go back in time in the 1970s the most popular male name was

39:07

Michael the least the most popular female Jennifer Michael stayed at the top all the way through the 80s and 90s and but it switched from Jennifer to Jessica Jessica again in the 90s and then in the 2000s it switched to Jacob and Emily most popular names

39:26

Okay, and why am I saying this well We have an interesting Archaeological phenomenon that happened at the time of Jesus and in no other time in Israel's history

39:38

Let me explain While Jesus was growing up. What was being constructed and built and worked on the temple

39:48

Herod's temple This was a multi -decades long building project and that required them to quarry tons and tons of stones limestone and you know other types of stones for this particular

40:06

Construction project and you know what a lot of stones didn't make the cut

40:13

They didn't make it to be part of the temple and what happened to those stones

40:19

Here's the answer and this is a very unique thing about Jesus's time The stones that didn't make the cut had they were literally taken and then they were bored out

40:29

So that they became boxes and these boxes look like stones in the temple.

40:35

They became known as Ossuary's otherwise you can call them a bone box And so the burial practices at the time of Jesus while the second temple was still being built

40:45

It's not contemple Judaism is what this is called for century What they would do is when somebody died they would take their body put it on a slab in a cave or something like that roll a stone over it and One year to the day that they died they would open up The tomb and the only thing left would be bones they would gather up the bones put them into the ossuary write their name on the outside of it and Then put a lid on it and keep it in the family tomb when the next person died

41:17

Same procedure let their body decomposed one year later collect the bones put it in the bone box add their name to the ossuary

41:28

This was a burial practice that was only being practiced at the time of Christ Keep that in mind.

41:35

So guess what they've found in Jerusalem a ton of them

41:42

Look no more like tons and tons and tons hundreds and thousands of Ossuary's and what do those ossuary's have on them?

41:52

names and so we have literally a list of all of the most popular names of men and women

42:02

From the exact time that Jesus was alive. Well, let's we're gonna get there. So let's talk We'll come talk about how this all works

42:09

So the question is did the gospel writers get the names right and in the right proportions because we have hard data on this so We can kind of fast forward the lady who did all of this work and put the database together on this

42:24

Her name is Tal Alon. She's an Israeli born historian Notably of women's history and Judaism and lexicography.

42:30

She's currently professor of Jewish studies at Freya University in Berlin and She's the author of lexicon of Jewish names in late antiquity and you're sitting there going why on earth would somebody want to put something?

42:42

That boring together. I thank God for people like this and the person who has

42:48

Summarized her work again, Richard Balcom BAU CK Ham Balcom.

42:54

This is the guy who wrote Jesus and the eyewitnesses and here's the data most popular Jewish names

42:59

Palestinian Jews 330 BC to 200 AD And so this is this is a different list altogether, you know, so we've got difference we got different The Dead Sea Scrolls give us information the

43:13

Oshawares give us information Josephus give us information in the New Testament gives us information and all of these are data points if you look into those kinds of things but top

43:23

Jewish names in Israel at the time of Jesus are Simon and Joseph When we look at the gospel accounts and the book of Acts So 15 % of the general population of Israel using

43:36

Tal Alon's data They had the names either Simon or Joseph in the book of Acts and the

43:42

Gospels 18 .2. It's like within the range of You know, you know I'm talking about top nine men's names 41 .5

43:51

% in Israel we were right in the same data when you just compare Within the margin of error to top women's names were

43:58

Mary and Salome This one's a little bit off. We have a lot less less women's names in the

44:03

Gospels top nine women name We're again, we're still right in the ballpark. We're seeing these in the right proportions so When you look at the rank most popular name

44:14

Simon after that Joseph Lazarus Judas John Jesus and Ananias Jonathan Matthew Manan and James That's your kind of like your rank right there in the top.

44:28

And here's the thing. Do people have last names then? No, so if you

44:35

Had a child and you named him Joseph He's eight years old.

44:42

He's playing outside with his friends. It's time for dinner Joseph come time to eat

44:51

Five kids come running No, no, no, no, no, I meant

44:56

Joseph Ben Yehuda, you know Yeah, you have to yeah, you have to make a distinguish.

45:01

And by the way That's the way you did it back then you had to use what's called disambiguation This is what we call it today.

45:09

And so when we look at the list of names of Disciples, let's take a look at a list in the

45:17

Gospels and I want to go to Matthew I think I'm in chapter 10.

45:23

Yes. Watch this list Jesus called to him his 12 disciples and he gave them authority over unclean spirits now knowing who the most popular names are

45:33

There's certain names we would expect if they show up in this list. They're gonna require Disambiguation the names of the 12

45:41

Apostles are these first Simon who is called Peter Who is called Peter is disambiguation?

45:47

Why what's one of the most popular names at the time the most popular name

45:53

Simon? He has disambiguation Regarding who he is who is called

45:58

Peter Andrew his brother is Andrew one of those popular names Nope No disambiguation just Andrew James the son of Zebedee.

46:10

There's disambiguation is James one of the most popular names Yep It is

46:18

Okay, so you're kind of seeing how this goes if you have a popular name you get disambiguation if you have an unpopular name

46:25

No need for it. John his brother Philip and Bartholomew Thomas and here's

46:32

Matthew the tax collector Disambiguation. Okay. I wonder if Matthew is a popular name here.

46:38

Let's see. Yes, it is. It's in the top ten You see how that works Uh -huh

47:12

Okay, the daughter of Clifford Cliffordson, okay interesting

47:22

Yeah All right, so we see how this is working

47:36

James the son of Alpheus is James a popular name or not Of course it is. How do you know it's got disambiguation now by way of comparison is

47:46

Judea the only place where Jews lived No Just down the highway in Egypt.

47:54

We also have data regarding the most popular names of Jews Who were living in Egypt and they are?

48:02

Eliezer Sabbataeus Joseph Dosa Theus pap papoose

48:09

Ptolemaeus and Samuel Totally different group, right? Now here's the question

48:16

I have how is it that non eyewitnesses? Writing from God knows where at a time far removed from when these took place

48:27

How did they get this? Right? Oh, they had a vision.

48:35

Yes Told you Elvis mothership. There's beaming going on. You see what

48:40

I'm saying? It takes more faith to believe that the Gospels are not eyewitness accounts of Christ than it does to believe that they are and you know why

48:51

I believe they are because they say they are and And the church this is the fun part the church knew exactly who wrote them and The earliest

49:02

Christians told us who wrote them. It's like this is not rocket science

49:15

Oh, yeah Of Course and you know why?

49:32

Because they're dead and trespasses and sins and they're hostile towards God I mean, I want you to consider this if the if I were to say as a pagan the

49:41

Gospels. All right, they're true Jesus is who he claimed to be What does that mean for my life?

49:54

Yeah Look out Right, but consider then the claims who does

50:00

Jesus claim to be? none other than God in human flesh and not just any

50:07

God the God of the Jews of the Old Testament in human flesh and What's his claim on us?

50:13

He's our creator and What does he come to do? To die for our sins.

50:19

What is he telling us to do repent and be forgiven? What if we persist in sin and unbelief there's this thing called the lake of fire you don't want to go there

50:28

It's a very warm forever vacation spot, right and I want you to consider this.

50:36

What does this have to do with then with how I'm living my life, right?

50:48

We'll just let it go Oh Yes, yes, yes, yes,

51:00

I actually have some data on those hang on a second Let me find this did the the documents that you are talking about and here's how the other argument goes

51:08

See, here's how the liberal scholars say we have found an entire collection of other

51:15

Gospels Did you know this? They were found in Egypt in the Nag Hammadi library like the gospel of Judas the gospel of Peter the gospel of Mary These are other

51:25

Gospels. And do you know why they were not permitted into the Bible? Why because those very ornery and mean -spirited

51:37

Orthodox Christians the ones who said there's a such thing as heresy They wouldn't permit those in because it didn't fit with their preconceived notions about Jesus So we have more information about Jesus than they do because they're narrow -minded

51:55

Bigots, that's the reason why they give and so what do we do with these other? Gospels.

52:01

Well, the question that comes up is what are they? That's really the question and Are do they give us reliable data as it relates to I to eyewitness testimony?

52:14

And so I actually have some data on this So the conclusion then the only way the four Gospels got all of this

52:21

Minutiae data right is because it contains high quality eyewitness testimony Now when we compare the apocryphal

52:27

Gospels like the gospel of Thomas the gospel of Mary You look at the names that they give so we talked about the most popular names

52:34

We know well according to the apocryphal Gospels here. We have a list of names Didymus Judas Thomas James the just and Simon Peter.

52:42

Those are the only names that we have and There's no minutiae data regarding geography

52:48

Villages or anything like that gospel of Mary you have the names of the Savior Peter Mary Andrew and Levi Does this sound like a list?

52:57

composed of eyewitness accounts Gospel of Judas we have Judas and Jesus and then we have the heavenly beings or bellow

53:04

Sophia Nebro Yalda both sock loss Seth I Can't even pronounce some of these these are aliens by the way

53:15

Yeah, I'm not making that up these are aliens these are extraterrestrial beings that Make an appearance in the gospel of Judas Does this sound like eyewitness testimony to you based upon the historical data?

53:27

No, and it gets worse regarding like let me find that other piece of data because there's there's a little bit more

53:34

It's only the Gospels that actually have a list of names that fit with the data that we know from that time period

53:41

Regarding the geographic information in the four Gospels Matthew Mark Luke and John These are the names of the different places that are listed

53:48

Jerusalem Nazareth Capernaum Bethany Bethlehem Bethsaida Jericho side and tire and then smaller places and neon

53:56

Arimathea Bethpage Caesarea Philippi Cana Chorazin Dalmunatha Emmaus Ephraim Magadan Nain Salem and Sychar and some of these are really obscure small places

54:09

This is the geographic information we get in the in the four Gospels When you compare the other

54:15

Gospels that you were told about gospel of Philip it names Jerusalem and Nazareth the

54:20

Gospels of Peter the Savior one town each and Jerusalem and then the second and third gospel second and third century

54:27

Gospels don't even give us the names of any places at all So here's the idea the claim of the person who says oh

54:36

These Gnostic Gospels they give us they give us more data regarding Jesus. No, they don't there's nothing internally within them

54:45

That would make us say this is a historical eyewitness account that gives us data regarding Jesus In fact, my daughter

54:53

Christina describes them as really bad fan fictions Yeah, these are totally myth this it's there's like nothing there's like no

55:11

Eyewitness historical data at all that we can say and there's no reason in these documents internally

55:17

To believe that they're giving us a fuller picture of Jesus I mean, it would be like me saying listen, let me tell you about the love story between George Washington and Abraham Lincoln's daughter man

55:28

That was a hot romance You know, you know you might get away with that today

55:34

I mean because I mean how many hundreds of years after the fact but I mean that's the level we're talking about Yeah, many of these

55:44

Gnostic Gospels are second and third century. So that puts them to 300 years after Christ Yeah No, no, we're not no this is this is not that body of work that the

55:59

Roman Catholics are Point back to that body of work. The Apocrypha is is our documents written written between the intertestamental periods between the

56:09

Old and the New Testament like first and second Maccabees You have a wider account regarding Daniel and there's other things like that in the

56:18

Apocrypha, but that's not what's in question here That's not one question here. We're talking about after Christ's death resurrection ascension and Christianity has gotten going

56:27

Then you have this other body of works and by the way, the Church Fathers were fully aware of the apocryphal

56:33

Gospels They were fully aware of them and they straight -up repudiated them in fact, we knew of their existence long before they were found because some of the

56:43

Church Fathers took time to extensively write against the heresy of Gnosticism and Quoted from them and told their stories extensively and said and made it clear

56:55

This is to be rejected because this is not historically true at all and so what happens is is that the liberal comes along and they create an alternative narrative and So the alternative narrative is you have these really?

57:07

really evil wicked politically incorrect narrow -minded bigots and haters and They suppressed these loving kind Gnostic communities in their

57:16

Jesus tradition It's just nonsense It's just utter nonsense and the core of this is designed to create doubt in your mind that the

57:27

Gospels are telling us the truth about who Jesus is and what he's done for us and That's really this is all all these people traffic in is doubt and that's exactly what the devil always traffics in You can trust your

57:41

Bible. You can trust the New Testament the historical narratives that we have in the Gospels. It is

57:48

Impeccable and they give us valid Historically accurate eyewitness accounts of the life teaching miracles death

57:57

Resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ who is our Lord? So don't let these people

58:03

Shake you up because they're the ones who cannot stand up to real scrutiny

58:08

It doesn't matter how many PhDs behind their name or if they teach it really smart institutions

58:14

It just that's nonsense. Yeah our dramatic music. All right. All right.