Another Wide Ranging Dividing Line

Travel Schedule, Condolences, and Opening Housekeeping

Edition of the program today. We'll be taking your phone calls as well at 877 -753 -3341. We've been moving everything forward today, basically, because I will be leaving, once again, October, a traveling month for me.

I will be with Vody Balkam in Texas this weekend, discussing Islam. He's gonna be speaking on subjects related there too, and then I'll be speaking at the church Sunday morning. So if you're in the Spring, Texas area, I look forward to getting to see you there.

Before we get started today, and as we take your phone calls, I suppose I should fire up the... If we're gonna do that, I might need to fire up the phone thing. That might be a good idea. Actually, you know, I should do that over here, because it's been so long since we did phones that I don't even know where to put them anymore.

As far as where to put them on the screen or something like that, but hopefully it will actually work. There you go. But I'll be looking over here instead of over here. So anyways, there's only so much space, you know, there's only so much space.

Anyway, I need to start off with an extension of our condolences today. You all hear me talking about the channel fairly frequently when I'm on the program. We have an IRC channel. We've had an IRC channel since 1996.

I believe we're now coming up on 20 years of having an IRC channel called Prasapalagiyan, which is a real bummer to have to spell frequently. So anyway, and you get to know folks in there. And one of the folks I've gotten to know over the years in that channel in various and sundry contexts is Alan Hampton and his wife Stacy.

And we just want to extend our condolences to Alan and Stacy. They lost a little baby week of delivery. I've never had that happen, but I know somebody at my church that I'm going to be probably getting them in touch with because it was, I mean, identical situation.

Last week, I mean, days before, days before delivery, full term, whole nine yards, and it doesn't happen. And that's an extremely difficult situation to face. And so we just want to extend our condolences to Alan and Stacy and certainly pray that the Lord will draw near to them and they will, of course, recognize God has a purpose in all things.

I do not believe there is any purposeless evil in this world. I don't understand the mindset of people that want to try to put God as far away from this as possible. I think if you do that, you also put purpose away as far as possible as well.

So our prayers definitely go out to them at this very, very difficult time for them. And so if you'd pray for them as well. So on the program today, like I said, we've got the phone lines wide open. We haven't taken calls in I don't know how long now.

It's been a long time because we were working so hard to try to get all the material covered prior to going to South Africa. I just had to move a YouTube video page over on my screen to get the stuff on the side out of my sight because it was just wrong.

It's just I just hate what is. No, it wasn't that. It was just something just so completely freaky that it was just extremely, extremely distracting to me. So I just had to had to move. I was trying to find something in the last 30 seconds before the program started.

I didn't find it, unfortunately. I'm not sure what I'm going to do here unless we unless we play a song or something while I look for it. But anyhow, since I've been back and again, I've got this weekend, we're going to be in Texas next weekend.

I'm going to be up in. Do I know where I am? I know I'm flying into Vancouver, right? But I don't know where I'm going from Vancouver, Vancouver. Somebody needs to bring up the Soloscriptura website and give me the specifics because I I don't even know where I'm going on the weekend after that.

But heading up Heinz Daskalonitz and the guys up there. I've been there a number of times before and heading back up there again to practice my saying up there in in Canada. But very, very busy, busy, busy, busy time here.

But I'm looking forward to the next thing that I have to do other than the conferences. In the sense of a debate situation, most of you realize that it is the encountering to be having. Don't even know when yet.

I suppose I need to hear from the pirate as to the exact date. Maybe there is a date. Maybe I haven't looked at my calendar. I was so focused on. Is it on the calendar somewhere? I honestly don't even know.

Stream of consciousness type thing here. Let's see. October, November, December. Nope, I don't have anything there. Sometime in early December. Probably the week of the 9th to the 13th, I would assume.

I know I'm in St. Charles the 6th to the 8th. As I have been for, I think, 14 years now. Which is why I am one of the elders at Covenant of Grace Church there. I have dual eldership. Some people have dual citizenship, I have dual eldership.

But I will be in St. Charles again the 6th through the 8th. So I think the week after that probably is when we will have the debate on Pirate Christian Radio with Mr. Pinto on the subject of Codex Sinaiticus and his theory.

Well, that's the problem. I've now been through Terrorism Among the Wheat twice. I'm not really sure what the theory is. And I may post an article here eventually just with a series of questions and hoping that Brother Pinto will take the time to respond so I have some earthly idea of exactly what is being said.

It sounds to me, if I were to summarize it briefly, that the theory presented in Terrorism Among the Wheat, sequel to A Lamp in the Dark, a nearly three hour long video which, with all kindness can I say, could have been done in 45 minutes much more effectively.

But a three hour video that in essence is seeking to present the idea that we should not trust or utilize Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus. It seems in light of certain radio programs that Mr. Pinto has done recently that we shouldn't trust the Bodmer Papyri.

In other words, all we should trust are Byzantine manuscripts. Period. End of discussion. But the reason specifically that is laid out, the first hour, hour and a half is all about how bad Rome is. And you don't have to convince me about how bad Rome is, but there's also the necessity to make sure your arguments against Rome can stand up against the best Rome has to offer.

And unfortunately, a lot of the people that are promoting the arguments that are used in Mr. Pinto's video aren't debating the best people that Rome has to offer by any stretch of the imagination. And I would say I have, or at least those who I haven't debated have standing challenges to debate and chose not to do so over the years.

But be that as it may, first hour, hour and a half, Rome's bad. Rome does bad things. Rome has bad theology. But even doing that, it gives Rome much more authority, power, weight than Rome ever deserves.

This is what I was looking for, but I couldn't find it. I didn't have time to really look. It would have been easy to queue it up if I had more than 30 seconds. But one of the things that just immediately caught my attention when I first listened to this particular video, it's a video, but I listened to it first, obviously, on the bike.

When I first listened to this video, it goes into a discussion of Sermon 131. And I'm amazed that Sermon 131 would be cited the way that it was. Now, what is Sermon 131? Well, let me see if this will play.

I know, I know, it's not plugged in there. I'm trying to find the specific text itself here. But, Roman Empire, yeah, I don't see it on the screen. Anyways, some of you, well, actually now come to think about it, most of you would not be familiar with this.

Are the old Roman Catholic articles still available, or did they just become blog entries? What happened with them? I'm confused.

Everything that was in the vintage site became a page by whatever the topic was, the word vintage is connected in the description. So if you know what the topic is, all you got to do is search it.

Okay.

And if you want to narrow it down, use the word vintage at the end of your search.

All right. So if I go to amn .org, which looks just so wonderful here, and I find the search thing down there at the bottom, and I go sermo131vintage. Okay, there's three things that come up there. See, I remember what the name of the URL was.

So I sort of have to click on it, and all those names have changed now, of course. But the title of the document. Okay, it's called Catholic Legends and How They Get Started, An Example-Vintage.

So this is working much better than before, because before you probably would have, in our old site, you would have searched for something like that, and you probably would have come up with something along the lines of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

There is nothing about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on our website.

That's how bad the old search engine was. No, no. You're welcome.

We need to be very truthful here. Anyways, there is an extensively long article. I don't know how many. I mean, this is big. This is very big. And like I said, it's called Catholic Legends and How They Get Started, An Example.

And I, unfortunately, no longer can tell when this was posted. But it was posted in the late 1990s. I know that much, simply because I made reference to it in my debate with Peter Stravinskis, and that was in 2000, as I recall.

So late 1990s, I think, is when this was originally posted. It is a lengthy article with lots and lots of quotes. On Augustine's Sermon 131, it provides the Latin translation, "...for already in this matter two councils ascend to the apostolic sea, whence also rescripts reports have come, the cause is finished, whether the error may terminate likewise.".

What happens is, in Terrors Among the Wheat, Sermon 131 is presented as if Augustine actually meant the way Roman Catholics have taken this text. So in other words, Rome is given yet another victory because Mr. Pinto and his folks aren't aware of the fact that the Roman Catholics have abused Augustine.

There was no Roman Catholic Church in the days of Augustine. And yet, unfortunately, a lot of people who are very anti-Catholic will actually give Rome more credit than Rome actually deserves. Will say that Rome existed earlier than Roman Catholicism as a system really existed.

And this is a good example. I would suggest that Mr. Pinto, and I know that people, I know his folks listen to this program all the time, and so he will know immediately that we're talking about this.

I would really suggest you go to our blog and read this. Because Rome has spoken, the case is closed, is a gross misrepresentation of Augustine. And that can be proven by just simply examining the history.

And looking at the fact that Augustine did not live in light of that. I mean, when Zosimus did what he did in regards to Pelagius, I mean, look at what Augustine did. It's just giving Rome something Rome does not deserve.

There was no Roman Catholicism at that time. The papacy was not some hyper-powerful, controlling-the-whole-Earth type thing. And I know that helps if you're trying to create conspiracy theories and stuff.

But the historical facts are totally against this abuse of Augustine and Sermon 131. So look it up, read it for yourself, recognize this information's been out there for a long, long, long, long, long, long time.

And then you'll discover that, well, here it is in the movie. Anyways, getting back to the movie. It seems the idea is that Sinaiticus is not what we thought it was. Sinaiticus was written in 1840 by Simonides.

And yet, somehow, and this is where it's not totally clear to me yet, all this time is spent trying to connect Tischendorf to Rome. Except Tischendorf isn't the one who makes Sinaiticus. And exactly how he finds it, and why in the world it would be where it was, when it was, and all the rest of that stuff is really left completely up in the air.

And there's a lot of stuff that's left out, actually, unfortunately, that we're going to have to talk about. But the idea is that Sinaiticus has caused millions of people to lose their faith in the Bible.

And the only evidence that's given of this is a BBC documentary. Now, anybody who trusts the BBC to have even the slightest understanding of anything relevant to Christian history really needs to have your car keys taken away.

Because, bad thing. It's a bad, bad thing. And so, I listened to this BBC documentary and said, you've got to be kidding me. They haven't a clue what they're talking about. You're actually saying that the whole reason Sinaiticus exists is to destroy people's faith, and that that's what Tischendorf is trying to do?

The very book they quote from all the time about Tischendorf's story, if you just read the rest of it, is a defense of the Gospels, an excellent defense of the Gospels. And his whole idea is that Codex Sinaiticus is now their ace in the hole, their silver bullets.

What he really was looking for was a means of absolutely demonstrating that the New Testament has not been changed, that the New Testament is ancient, that the New Testament is reliable, etc. So you have this gross, horrific misrepresentation of Tischendorf.

To call it biased is to engage in real understatement. It's just horrifically unfair. And I could just simply read to you some of the things that Tischendorf said that are just 180 degrees opposite of the presentation made in the video.

And people are asking, what movie is this? Terror is Among the Weed. We're talking about the debate coming up in December with Mr. Pinto on the subject of Codex Sinaiticus. So lots and lots of things that we'll be getting to.

I'm glad, honestly, to have the necessity of addressing some of these things. I think it'll be helpful to folks to have a little bit more history. But obviously the toughest thing to deal with is when you just throw this historical fact out and that historical fact out.

You throw in some scary music, this type of thing, and all of a sudden you turn things into conspiracies, and that's a problem. But that's what we need to be looking at. So we'll be talking more about that as time goes by.

I suppose as we, I guess maybe, have we tested the phone lines since the last time I did this? Because, you know, it's a possibility that we move stuff around so much and here and there they just become so old and unused that maybe that's...

There it goes. Okay, all right. It actually works. Okay, good. Anyway, probably why no one's given me a call is because everyone is sitting online listening to the strange fire conference. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

That's why it's just you and me sitting here talking to each other and there's one other person in channel. That's it. That's the entire extent of it. Obviously, I've seen this thing coming, and I'm in somewhat of a unique situation here in that I know Michael Brown.

We were exchanging some emails back and forth last night. In fact, he obviously was very busy at his computer last night because he was exchanging tweets and Facebook stuff with hundreds of people because of the strange fire conference.

So I know Michael, and, you know, I could pick up my phone, give Michael a call, and we could chat and things like that. But I've said many, many, many times, despite the fact that Michael and I are very good friends, good brothers in the Lord, we have a lot of differences.

In fact, I was really surprised that someone who will remain nameless in channel this morning, the conversation came up, and he's like, what do you mean? What about Michael Brown? You mean he's charismatic?

And I'm like, yeah, he was part of the Brownsville revival. What are you talking about? Really? Didn't know that. That's disappointing. I'm like, oh, okay. All right. What that demonstrates is, you know, here's someone who's probably heard all of my debates with him on our program and everything else and never got the idea that he is a convinced and not mildly charismatic person in the sense of the charismatic movement.

Signs and healings and tongues and et cetera, et cetera. Now, I don't know that I've never heard Michael doing that. From what I've heard, it's more of a prayer language issue for him. But anyways, the point is that, you know, he's president of FIRE School of Ministry, which grew out of the Brownsville revival.

Obviously, we have some major, major differences. And he's going around right now saying, I need to find someone to debate on cessationism. And no one's stepping forward. I'm like, I do not want to get into that.

I mean, I am a cessationist. I think very clearly that the miraculous sign gifts had a specific purpose. And that purpose has been fulfilled. I do not believe that the spirit of God... Now, I believe the spirit of God.

If God intended, while I was in South Africa, to supernaturally put me in a position of giving testimony to a fellow from the Zulu tribe who can't speak any language, I am fully convinced that God could allow me to speak in such a way that he would understand me.

Maybe I'd still be speaking in English, and he'd understand it in Zulu. I mean, God can do stuff like that. I'm not for a second saying that he can't. But we all know that in the charismatic movement, that's not what we're talking about.

That's not what we're talking about. We're not talking about a miraculous incidence in the context of missions. Well, then again, what are we talking about?

I don't know.

I mean, old-line Pentecostalism, you had to speak in tongues. It's the sign of the infilling of the Holy Spirit. And if you don't speak in tongues, then you're not really saved in the first place, and la-la-la-la-la.

And I'm sorry, but everything I've ever seen on TBN where someone was going, shum-ba-la-ba-la-ba-la-bla-bla-bla-bla, is just as bad as Ernie Cantor speaking Arabic. I mean, it's the exact same thing.

It's just simply repetition of sounds. It's not language. It has no meaning, and it's not inspired by the Holy Spirit of God. It is absolutely an emotional thing. And when the false teachers are doing it, it may not just be even emotional.

I mean, if you're standing up there, and, you know, I was speaking with someone in South Africa, and he was talking to me about, well, let's just say we export all of our bad teachers to South Africa.

And here they are coming into a country that does not have nearly as much as we do, and yet they are so demanding of money, money, money, money. It just makes me ill. It makes me sick. Now, Michael isn't in money.

And that's why I would say that we have to make, we have to differentiate between a Michael Brown and a Creflo Dollar or a Kenneth Hagen or whoever else. I mean, that's why I can't even define the charismatic movement.

What is it? I mean, other than a common belief in the existence of supernatural sign gifts. And it may not even be sign gifts. I guess I can't even use that term now that I think about it. What is it?

How do you define it? I don't know. It is so multifaceted that one of my concerns is, now, I haven't read Strange Fire. I do not have time to be sitting there listening to a Strange Fire conference. Maybe once it is available, I can talk Phil Johnson into sending me the key talks, and I can get them, because I've got a huge mileage goal between now and the end of the year on the bike, and I can catch up that way.

I don't know. Maybe that's what I can do. Someone has, thankfully, purchased Strange Fire for me in audio, the book, when it comes out. But it's not going to be coming out until December, so I'm not going to be able to get to it until then anyways.

But I am concerned because of some of the stuff that Michael has quoted from his preview copy of Strange Fire, including the idea of identifying the charismatic movement as a false church and calling for all-out war against it.

That concerns me.

It concerns me because I don't know how you define it. If what Pastor MacArthur is talking about is simply the obvious, heretical, ridiculous teachings of people like Copeland and Hagen and Creflo Dollar and these people that are running around making themselves filthy rich, the word-faith movement, et cetera, et cetera, well, great.

But I don't know what that distinction is being made in a way that would allow for specificity. Did you have something you wanted to...?

I was just going to say, when I was into that before I met you, I made no distinction. When I turned on TBN, that was charismaticism, and I was totally into it. But word-faith was charismatic, and charismatic was word-faith.

I didn't understand or know of any distinction.

Well, but there has to be distinctions made because certainly the person sitting there watching television may not be making distinctions, and certainly the charismatic movement has not, unfortunately, engendered the kind of discernment that you would expect that the Spirit of God would produce in people who are indwelt by Him in such a way that even their speaking capacities are overtaken by the Spirit.

But at the same time, I know people who will teach that tongues still exist, but that they're rare, that they have a limited application, and that that has absolutely positively nothing to do with name-it-and-claim-it, word-faith, or anything else.

And if a person can't make the distinction, certainly we can't follow them in their lack of discernment. We've got to be careful in how we define what it is we're shooting at. I think it's important. So I haven't gotten into this thing because until the conference is completed and the sermons have been preached and the material's been produced.

But we're sort of getting to that point now in the sense that materials are out. I personally would have a hard time not saying that it would be very useful. Michael's asking for the opportunity to talk, not at the conference, but to talk with Pastor MacArthur, talk with people there.

Look, I know Michael well enough to know that the conversation, I think, would be a good one. And I think it would be a perfectly appropriate thing. Okay, I'll go ahead and say it. And if I could be in the middle of it to make that happen, I'd be willing to do that because I know both sides.

And I think Michael would probably say that I have at least had a small part in making Reformed people aware of him because I've teamed up with him. You know, we debated Anthony Buzzard and Joseph Good on the Jewish Voice broadcast.

We were going to team up and do something else and got snowed out. Not sure what that means. Might have something, I don't know, you know, Blizzard, you know? And, hmm, strange. But, and of course we've debated each other.

And I just did that whole series on, you know, the Calvinist call-in program that Michael did. So, you know, I think we've been pretty fair along those lines. So anyway, I'm seeing lots and lots of stuff going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.

And the only thing that I'm concerned about is if it ends up just being Charismatics talking to Charismatics and Cessationists talking to Cessationists and there's really no meaningful discussion about, you know, what goes on from there.

And right now it's sort of looking like that is how it might end up being and I hope that's not the case. I hope I'm wrong about that. I hope I'm wrong about that. But I think there's plenty of room for discussion.

There needs to be a clear, you know, I would call upon those in the Charismatic movement who are convinced of the continuation of gifts to recognize that anybody who teaches that because you have gifts of the Holy Spirit means you're not going to suffer in this life or that the call is not to suffering or that the call is to, you know, you're just going to name it and claim it and you're going to be rich and you're going to be healthy and all the rest of that stuff.

That stuff has to be identified as the absolute fraud that it is and I think that there is much to be said about the fact that if you were to consistently identify by name the false teachers, your ministry amongst Charismatics as a whole would be greatly limited.

Let's just face it. I mean, I think that's why I don't get too many phone calls from TBN. Have you ever gotten a phone call from TBN? No, I didn't think so. Because of exactly that. So I'm hoping that this won't just be a big we get our side all excited and they get their side all excited and we lob a few shells each other's direction and then that's it.

And then we just go back to talking to ourselves and nothing really comes of it. I think there needs to be discussion of what the purpose of spiritual gifts is. I think there needs to be a purging on the part of everybody of the idea that gifts are focused upon us rather than upon the edification of the body.

I think there needs to be an emphasis upon the fact that the Spirit gives the gifts as He wills which is why demanding that certain gifts be given is utterly unbiblical. There needs to be an acknowledgment that if there was a purpose for those sign gifts and that purpose is fulfilled that God's under no obligation to continue to do things the way He did in the first century.

I think that would cut 90 of the ground out from underneath the charismatic exegesis to be perfectly honest with you. If you just recognize the Spirits are given as the Spirit wills and obviously the Spirit's going to act in accordance with God's purpose in the edification of His church.

And so, I don't know. I feel conflicted in this situation because I know both sides and I wish both sides were talking a little bit more than evidently they are. So, anyways. That's obviously a big thing going on.

877 -753 -3341 is the phone number. 877 -753 -3341 that's a phone number you can call and be a part of the program. I saw a picture that's a picture's worth a thousand words, I guess. And the picture is posted up at FBC Jack's Watchdogs Monday, October 14th, 2013.

Ergin Kanner, platform guest at Richard Land's inauguration at Southern Evangelical Seminary. And then, of course, he spoke at the conference. And there's the picture and there's Ergin and there's Dr. Land and I was not aware of the close connection there.

But there is evidently a close connection at that point. Again, I honestly think that this is what is giving Kanner the confidence to continue in his lawsuit against a Baptist pastor for simply posting videos of him lying to try to cover those things up is because big names just sort of turn a blind eye.

It's like, well, you know, the powerful folks want Kanner there. And so he can do what he wants.

Yes?

I began to wonder if the first steps are not being taken to bringing him back to liberty.

Oh, I suppose. I suppose. I don't know. I don't know. It's disappointing to me. It's very, very disappointing to me. 877 -753 -3341. The RadioVaticana .va had an interesting article. Pope Francis, this is from the 12th.

Pope Francis, Mary's faith unties the knot of sin. Mary's faith unties the knot of sin. Thousands of pilgrims were in St. Peter's Square Saturday evening to join Pope Francis in venerating...

Oh, great.

Folks, can't you learn how to format text so that it actually, you know, word wraps? I mean, this is 2013, okay? ...in venerating the original statue of Our Lady of Fatima. Mmm, the original one. We don't want a fake.

We want the original. The statue made its journey to Rome as the celebrations, the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima, which is October 13th. Ah, I missed it.

Dread.

Pope Francis will preside over Mass on Sunday morning in the recitation of the Rosary before the statue. He will then consecrate the world to Mary's Immaculate Heart, and you thought he was just a liberal.

During the evening's event, the Pope welcomed the statue, which was processed through St. Peter's Square, which means it was carried around. Which, I'm sorry, I just have to point out is a so obviously pagan thing.

And led the faithful in reciting the Seven Sorrows of Mary. The Holy Father then, by the way, Holy Father is a name of deity, just so I'd mention that. That's what Jesus referred to the Father as. Then offered a reflection, which focused on the Blessed Mother's faith, explaining that her, quote, "...faith unties the knot of sin.".

End quote. Funny how not the apostles ever say anything like that. Sin, he says, is, quote, "...a kind of knot created deep within us.". End quote. And these knots take away our peace and serenity. It was Mary's yes which opened the door for God to undo the knot of ancient disobedience.

She is the mother who patiently and lovingly brings us to God so that he can untangle the knots of our soul by his fatherly mercy. The Pope also reflected on how it was Mary's faith that gave flesh to Jesus.

Believing in the Incarnation, Pope Francis continued, means giving him our flesh with the humility and courage of Mary so that he can continue to dwell in our midst. No, it's not easy to read this stuff, in case you're wondering.

The Holy Father, name of deity, then reflected on Mary's faith as a journey, saying how she precedes us on this pilgrimage, she accompanies and sustains us. Are you getting the sense, folks, that these are only words that would be appropriately applied to deity?

You know?

You getting the idea? I think it's pretty obvious. But anyways, to say that her faith is a journey is to say that her entire life was to follow her son. Mary understood that the journey of the cross passes through the cross from the time Herod sought to kill the newborn Jesus until his passion and death on the cross.

And when she received word that the tomb was empty, her heart was filled with joy of faith, Christian faith, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Pope Francis concluded his address by turning to the statue of Our Lady of Fatima, saying, We thank you for our faith, and we knew our entrustment to you, Mother of our faith.

They said that to a statue. There's a picture of the statue. Mary's wearing a big old hunk and crown and all the rest of that kind of stuff. No connection, for those of you who are concerned, to the actual Mary of history or the Bible.

This is a demigoddess that has been created within Romanism, and it's a sad thing to observe. By the way, if you thank Mary for your faith, what you're saying is you don't actually have Christian faith, because that's not worth saving faith.

It comes from faith. Faith, by the way, is the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the believer, true saving faith is. But there's just so much in here that is just completely outside the realm of anything that could be called biblical.

But there you go. Mary's faith unties the knot of sin, and that's actually not the case at all. I mentioned briefly while I was in South Africa that someone is trying to get their 15 minutes of fame. I've never heard this guy before.

Dr. Larry Hurtado has never heard this guy before. I don't know anybody who's heard this guy before. But American biblical scholar Joseph Atwill will be appearing before the British public for the first time in London on the 19th of October.

Ooh, three days ago. To present a controversial new discovery. Well, here we go. A new discovery. Ancient confessions recently uncovered. Hmm. Were they found in a tomb in Talpiot, maybe? I don't know.

Maybe they're found next to the Gospel of Judas. Maybe they're found next to the Gospel of Judas' wife. Taken from a PDF. Anyway, ancient confessions recently uncovered now prove, according to Atwill, that the New Testament was written by first-century Roman aristocrats and that they fabricated the entire story of Jesus Christ.

His presentation will be part of a one-day symposium entitled Covert Messiah at Conway Hall in Holborn. Full details can be found at this URL, and I'm sure ticket prices will be found there, too. Although to many scholars, his theory seems outlandish.

Well, you think? And it's sure to upset some believers. Atwill regards his evidence as conclusive. Now, the funny thing is, as Dr. Hurtado pointed out, if you actually have stuff like this that is conclusive, then you present it in the academy and it goes through the process of being examined and cross-examined and so on and so forth, and that's how you handle these things.

When you skip past that and you just go straight to the public, you're just trying to make money. That's all. You're just trying to make money. Atwill regards his evidence as conclusive and is confident its acceptance is only a matter of time, which is why he doesn't go through the normal route, of course.

I present my work with some ambivalence, as I do not want to directly cause Christians any harm, he acknowledges, but this is important for our culture. Alert citizens need to know the truth about our past so we can understand how and why governments create false histories and false gods.

They often do it to obtain a social order that is against the best interests of the common people. Sounds like there's a political agenda here. Atwill asserts that Christianity did not really begin as a religion, but a sophisticated government project.

I'm sorry, it's so hard to read this seriously. I'm trying. A kind of propaganda exercise used to pacify the subjects of the Roman Empire. Jewish sects in Palestine, at the time, who were waiting for a prophesied warrior messiah, were a constant source of violent insurrection during the first century, he explains.

By the way, they didn't care about that in Rome. No, they didn't care. In fact, it was just a pain when they had to send Titus in AD 70, and they just wiped everybody out. If they'd cared, it would have been different, but they didn't care.

When the Romans had exhausted conventional means of quashing rebellion, and they had rebellions all sorts of other places, finally they didn't start religions there. Isn't that weird? Oh, anyway, they switched to psychological warfare.

They surmised the way to stop the spread of zealous Jewish missionary activity was to create a competing belief system, which then resulted in all the arguments between Christians and Jews. I'm sorry.

One year from now, no one will even remember this, but we have to deal with it as it comes up. That's when the peaceful messiah story was invented. Instead of inspiring warfare, this messiah urged, turned the other cheek pacifism and encouraged Jews to give unto Caesar, says onto, it should be unto Caesar, and pay their taxes to Rome.

Yes, that was the central Christian message. I'm sorry. Was Jesus based on a real person from history? The short answer is no, Atwill insists. In fact, he may be the only fictional character in literature whose entire life story can be traced to other sources once those sources are laid bare.