Christmas Mythbusters

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Well, if you have your Bibles, you may open them with me to the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke.
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We're going to look at Luke chapter 1, verses 1 through 4.
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The title of today's message is Christmas Mythbusters.
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Christmas Mythbusters.
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And we're going to be in Luke chapter 1, verses 1 to 4.
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Okay, Luke chapter 1.
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I don't know how many of you are familiar with the television show Mythbusters, but it is a long-running show where a couple of scientifically minded men take urban legends and myths and they put them to the test of reality.
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They've done everything to, how does quicksand really work? And you know, in movies quicksand sucks you under like water and you drown really quickly.
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Well, they made quicksand and showed how it didn't really work that way.
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And every year during Shark Week, I don't know if you ever watched the Discovery Channel, they would have some kind of a shark related myth, you know, like from the movie Jaws or something else, and they would test it to see if it were actually true.
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So, the reason why I've entitled the lesson today Christmas Mythbusters is because we're going to be talking about myths that are associated with the Christmas story.
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And not, probably not the ones you may be thinking of.
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As you know, there's a lot that surrounds the Christmas story that is not in the Bible, and yet we become very familiar with it, like the three wise men.
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The Bible never mentions that there's three wise men.
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The Bible only mentions that there's three gifts.
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And we can extrapolate from that that there was probably three wise men, but we don't know.
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Could have been a hundred wise men and they just brought three gifts.
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Could have been two and one brought two gifts.
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We don't know for certain.
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But the history and tradition has always been that it was three wise men.
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You know, the idea that there was an innkeeper who wouldn't let them into the inn, but sent them to the stable.
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You know, the Bible never mentions an innkeeper.
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Ever.
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It's in every Christmas play you've ever seen, but it's not in the Bible.
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So, there's a lot of myths that surround the Christmas season that are, you know, relatively harmless traditions that have sort of made their way into the Christmas story.
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In fact, it's likely that the wise men, even though every nativity scene that you see at Christmas shows the shepherds and the wise men, it's likely the wise men didn't even come on the night Jesus was born.
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It's likely that they were still traveling and that they came sometime between his birth and two years old, where they still were there in Bethlehem.
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So, there's a lot surrounding the Christmas story that we sort of take for granted and that we have sort of created a tradition around, but we don't know for certain.
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But that's not the subject of today.
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That's because those are sort of, I would argue, relatively inconsequential in nature.
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But there is some myths that I want to deal with today that sort of are more focused on arguments that you might hear from the secular world about Christianity and about the roots and foundations of our faith.
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You realize there are people out there who will tell you that everything you believe is a lie.
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That everything you believe is false.
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Everything you believe was made up in first century Palestine.
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It was made up by a group of farmers and fishermen whose desire it was to create their own religious system.
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And that everything that you believe about Jesus is a fabrication.
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It's a myth.
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In fact, in the Da Vinci Code, the book that was written by Dan Brown in the last decade regarding the history of Christianity, he made this claim.
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He said, nothing in Christianity is original.
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He said, nothing in Christianity is original.
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And the argument that Brown was making was that everything we believe about Jesus is actually stolen from other religions.
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Jesus is an amalgam of other religious figures formulated into a single being whereby people could worship this sort of created God who had all of these special features of all the gods of the other religions.
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Now I see some of you look kind of confused and rather maybe a little upset.
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That isn't true.
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That's the myth.
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That's what we're here to bust.
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But it's important that you understand what is being said.
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Because you all probably watch the History Channel.
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You probably watch television from time to time and see television shows, the search for the real Jesus.
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I get jobs doing the aliens.
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Yeah, the aliens is the new thing, right? And what's funny is how many people will believe in aliens but not in God? Because for them it's easier to believe in the incredible than what they would consider to be the impossible.
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Keith, there's an article in the editorial page today about what Christianity has done for the world.
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Well, good.
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Is that in the Times? That's in the Times, yes.
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Good.
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Well, that's great.
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And it is good to see positive things.
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And I do want to say, every once in a while there are very positive things that come on television regarding the faith.
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And so I'm not saying that everything that comes on, even the History Channel is to be written off.
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But a lot of times these myths make their way into the grand narrative and become very, very much a part of what you may hear when you're witnessing to someone.
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I mean, I've had people tell me when witnessing to them, Jesus never existed.
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He is a myth.
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He is a fabrication of history.
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That he wasn't even a man.
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Now, such a thing is beyond the pale of even the most rigid skepticism.
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From a scholarly perspective, only a fool would argue that Jesus of Nazareth never existed.
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And yet, I've heard it myself.
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So today we're going to deal with some of the myths.
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And I brought you in here because I have a video.
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I'm really praying that it works.
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Because our internet here isn't the most top notch.
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But the video is humorous.
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It's only five minutes and I'm going to wait until the end to let you watch it.
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The last five or six minutes of class.
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It's from a group called Lutheran Satire.
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It's a pastor who, I tell you, he's very talented.
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And he's a Lutheran minister.
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And he makes these cartoons that address issues of real serious nature, but in a funny way.
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And I use them for our kids.
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We do family worship and we'll watch some of these videos sometimes just to get the kids interested in the subject matter.
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So I'm going to teach the lesson first and then we're going to watch the video.
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And I hope, please don't take offense.
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It's a cartoon.
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I'm not treating you like children.
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It really is.
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The subject matter is very deep and it's very funny.
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But okay.
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Well, good.
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We're going to begin by looking at some of the arguments that are made by those who would oppose the faith.
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And we're going to look first at the Zeitgeist movie.
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How many of you have ever seen the Zeitgeist movie? How many of you have ever even heard of it? All right, Jennifer.
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Thumbs up for you.
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You're the only one in the room other than myself.
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It's called Zeitgeist.
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It was a film that was intended to prove that Jesus Christ was nothing more than a rehashing of the Egyptian god Horus.
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Now, I'm going to tell you what the movie claims.
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And you tell me what you think.
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Okay? The movie claims this about the Egyptian god Horus.
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Remember, the Egyptian god Horus was several hundreds, thousands of years before Jesus, right? So we're looking at an older figure in history.
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Here's what the movie claims.
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He was born on December 25th to a virgin named Isis Mary.
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A star in the east proclaimed his arrival.
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Three kings came to adore him as a savior.
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He became a child prodigy teacher at the age of 12.
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And at the age of 30, he was baptized and began his ministry.
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Horus had 12 disciples.
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He was betrayed, crucified, buried for three days, and he resurrected.
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Now, let me ask you a question.
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If that were true, that would sound a lot like Jesus, wouldn't it? I mean, if you read somewhere that there was a god who preexisted Jesus by, let's say, 2,000 years.
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He was somewhere around 4,000 years ago.
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There was an Egyptian god who was born on December 25th to a virgin named Mary who had 12 disciples, who lived for 30 years, ministered, died, buried, and was resurrected.
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And then 2,000 years later, along comes Jesus with almost the exact same story.
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You might be so inclined to ask the question, well, is Jesus just a rehashing of the story of Horus? And it would be a legitimate question, would it not? If that is the case.
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If that's true, yes.
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If that's true, thank you, thank you.
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However, here's the rub.
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The man, the producer of the Zeitgeist movie was not a scholar.
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He was a charlatan.
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Let me give you the actual story of Horus and what the Egyptians believed about him.
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He was born to Isis.
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No mention of the name Mary.
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The name Mary was added.
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No mention in Egyptian history that she was ever called Mary.
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In fact, Mary isn't even called Mary.
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Mary is not the name of Jesus' mother.
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In Hebrew, it's Mariam, not Mary.
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The Mary is the Anglicized version of Mariam, the Hebrew name.
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So it doesn't make sense.
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Isis was not a virgin.
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She was a widow of Osiris and conceived Horus with Osiris.
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So Horus wasn't born of a virgin.
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Horus was born during the month of Kohak, which is October or November, not December 25th.
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Nowhere near the time that we celebrate the birth of Jesus.
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There's no records of three kings visiting him.
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The Bible actually never mentions there was three wise men anyway.
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I mentioned that earlier.
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But even still, there's no mention of three kings visiting him at his birth.
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Horus was not a savior for anyone and he did not die for anyone.
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There is no accounts of him being a teacher at 12 years old.
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He was not baptized.
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In fact, the only account of Horus that involves water is one story where Horus is torn to pieces and Isis, his godmother, requests the crocodile god to fish him out of the sea.
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Not exactly the same story.
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Horus did not have a ministry.
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And Horus did not have 12 disciples.
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In fact, according to the Horus accounts, Horus had four demigods who followed him.
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And there are some indications that 16 human followers and an unknown number of blacksmiths went into battle with him.
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Not exactly the same story as Jesus Christ.
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There's no account of Horus being betrayed by a friend.
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Horus did not die by crucifixion.
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And there is no account of Horus being buried for three days and Horus never resurrected.
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There's no account of him coming out of the grave.
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And some accounts have Horus and Osiris being brought to life by Isis and then becoming the lord of the underworld.
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But nothing like the resurrection account we have of Jesus.
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The Zeitgeist movie lied.
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And not a little lie.
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It made it up out of whole cloth.
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It took the story of Jesus and read back into the story anachronistically of Horus and added intentionally ideas that would make it confusing and false.
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It's an absolute myth.
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So if somebody tells you that Jesus is no different than Horus and you might say, well, who's going to say that? Go to a college campus and talk to somebody about Jesus and some knucklehead, pardon the expression, will pull out Horus because this type of foolish bad scholarship is what satisfied the minds of those who don't want to believe.
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Yes.
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The story of Horus is an Egyptian legend.
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So it's, yeah, I mean it really is.
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There was an Egyptian god named Horus in the sense that they believed in a god named Horus.
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He was one of the mythological gods of Egypt.
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Christ was a living legend.
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I don't quite understand why this has not been advertised at Christmas time or any other time.
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The problem is most assured to me about Easter time.
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Yeah, it is.
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I've never seen it.
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No, but it does.
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I mean, I'd be happy to show.
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There's a movie made, Zeitgeist, the movie.
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Okay.
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Yeah, it's out there.
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It's out there, especially among unbelievers.
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It's very popular.
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See, we live in a Christian bubble in general.
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We don't talk to people who generally aren't Christians and we don't interact with people who generally aren't Christians.
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You come to church, you go home, your wife's a Christian.
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You know what I mean? You spend time with Christians.
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You watch Christian movies.
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You listen to Christian television.
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You listen to Christian songs.
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Oftentimes we get so caught in the bubble we don't know what the world is saying.
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This is what the world is saying.
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Yes, ma'am.
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Exactly.
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You send your kids and your grandkids go to public schools.
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This is what they hear.
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And he's homeschooled and he still lives there.
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What I'm saying is we should be able to give an answer to these things.
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We should be able to respond.
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Yes, ma'am.
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Miss Mary.
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My grandfather was born on Christmas.
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Okay.
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He died on Easter.
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Okay.
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He was a brother straight from a Christian you could think of.
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Okay.
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So that dates don't mean.
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Well, that's true, too.
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Yeah, the dates are meaningless.
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Keith wants an answer to debunk this.
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Well, I just gave you the answer.
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I gave you the list.
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It's not true.
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I know, but if somebody confronts you with this, what do you say? You tell them what they're saying is untrue and they have to prove it.
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Okay.
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If somebody comes to me and they say, Jesus, is this a rehashing of Horus? I'll say, first of all, that's untrue.
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Second of all, if you're claiming a statement of truth, it's your responsibility to prove it.
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Where did you get your information? From the Zeitgeist movie? Proven to be false.
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Scholarship has proven it to be false.
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Where else did you get your information? What books have you read? What Egyptian history have you read to prove that Horus' account is that close to Jesus that you would say one is simply a carbon copy of the other? You see, it's not necessarily that I have to prove them wrong.
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They have to prove they're right.
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They're making the claim.
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I'm just telling you why they don't have any basis for it.
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And that's what I would say.
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If someone had said it to me, I would say, well, first of all, I remember a lot of this stuff.
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And so I try to keep in my mind some of the answers very quickly.
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I would say, well, right away, Horus never was crucified.
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That's false.
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So what else have you said that's false that you don't even know is false? I mean, I would keep that in mind.
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That's enough.
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You said Horus was crucified.
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You said he was born of a virgin.
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That's not true.
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His mother, Isis, was with Osiris, his father.
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According to Egyptian mythology, your teaching is false.
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What you're saying is false.
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That would be how I would respond.
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Not in an ugly way, but I would point them to the fact that what they're saying is untrue.
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The same thing is said of another god.
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This one is applied to Mithras.
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Mithraism was a cult in the first century.
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Not the Egyptian god of Horus, but the Mithraic cult is another cult.
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I want to read to you what is said of Mithras.
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Mithras is said to have been born of a virgin.
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He is said to have been crucified.
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And he is said to have been risen in three days.
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That in and of itself, that's only three things, right? Mithras was born of a virgin.
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Mithras had died by crucifixion.
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And he rose after three days.
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If that's true, could it be claimed that the story of Jesus was stolen from the story of Mithras? If it were true.
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I mean, could we say that one is a copy of the other? Okay, well, let's see what history actually tells us about the Mithraic teachings and the cult of Mithras.
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One, he was born out of a rock, not a woman.
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Not exactly what we call a virgin birth.
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He was born out of a rock.
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Solid rock.
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He's a false god, not like rock and roll.
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A lot of children have been born out of that.
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That's a bad joke.
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He battled first with the sun and then with the primeval bull to be the first act of creation.
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Mithras killed the bull, which then became the ground of life for the human race.
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Not exactly the same as the story of creation in the Bible.
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Mithras' birth was celebrated on December 25th.
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This is true.
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But here's something you've got to remember.
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The winter solstice festival in Saturnalia and a lot of the ancient Roman festivals and pagan festivals were held in December.
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And December 25th did have a particularly significant importance in ancient history.
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And it wasn't tied to Jesus Christ until later.
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There is no real reason to believe that Jesus was born on December 25th.
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In fact, the Eastern Church celebrates Christmas in January.
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So Eastern Orthodoxy doesn't celebrate December 25th.
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It celebrates it in January.
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It's possible that Jesus was born in springtime.
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We do not know when Jesus was born.
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So we celebrate December 25th as part of the tradition of the Western Church.
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But there is nothing about December 25th outside of the sanctifying of pagan holidays, which did happen when Christianity became the religion of the common world, after Constantine made it legal and then it became part of what became the Holy Roman Empire.
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There was a sanctification of pagan festivals, Christmas being one of them.
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I don't mean to disappoint you, but that is true.
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Why do you think there's evergreens at Christmas? It actually has nothing to do with Christmas.
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It harkens back to the ancient pagan festivals.
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It's true.
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We've sanctified a lot of those things and made them Christian.
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It just is.
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I'm not going to tell you a lie.
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I'm not going to give you a myth to satisfy a myth.
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So yes, December 25th.
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But it's just like Miss Mary said earlier.
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Here's your granddad, born on December 25th, died on Easter Sunday.
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It don't mean a thing.
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Let's say this.
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Let's say I adopted a child.
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And I did not know when that child's birth was.
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And I said, okay, every year on January 1st, we're going to celebrate your birthday because we don't know when your birthday is.
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But we want to celebrate your coming into the world.
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Would that be wrong? Not at all.
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We don't know when your birthday is, so we're going to give you a birthday so that we can celebrate that.
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That's all that has happened with Christ.
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And so I can celebrate December 25th every year with impunity because it's not a sin to celebrate his birth.
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In fact, I think it's virtuous to celebrate the coming of the Messiah and the Incarnation.
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But here's the thing.
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Don't let that bother you about Mithras.
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I'm going to show the video in just a second because I've got to get going.
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But here's the thing.
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Mithras was never a teacher.
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No mention of him having 12 disciples.
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No bodily resurrection.
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Mithras completed his earthly mission.
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He was taken to paradise in a chariot alive and well.
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He never died on this earth according to the theology of Mithraism.
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It is not the same.
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And here's the real one that should get...
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If anybody has an issue with Mithra, it was contemporaneous with Christianity.
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Mithraism was a cult in the first century.
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It wasn't the same.
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It wasn't something that was before that could have been made into the story.
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In fact, it's possible that it even happened later than the Jesus narrative.
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It's not a copy.
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If anybody copied from anyone, the Mithraites copied from Christianity.
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So let me show you the video.
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And hopefully this will round out some of what we've done today.
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Oh boy, let it work.
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Please let it work.
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All right, I'm going to stop the audio here.
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And if anybody on the audio wants to watch this, it's called Horace Ruins Christmas by Lutheran Satire.