Christianity is Historical

Christianity as Historical Faith

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Ebendroth. I used to have a stronger voice than I do now, but at least I have a voice. I have a voice in the podcast world. We don't call them pods around here.

That's for the younger generation. We call them podcasts. I guess maybe some are podcasts if you're Scottish. I know something. I think there's a Christian podcast maybe too. Who knows? Good news. Discovering Colossians by S. Lewis Johnson, adapted by yours truly, is out on Amazon.

I want to say it is $17 .99. You can get it shipped right to your house with free shipping if you have Amazon Prime. And it is a great commentary. Not because I did it, because he wrote it. I cut and pasted a few things, discussion questions, added in some of his handwritten notes that I had.

And he'll really encourage you. Written in 61, 62-ish. Maybe he wrote it before, but that was when it was first published in the Dallas Seminary's journal, BibSac. But you could even see there in the 60s that Lewis was talking about covenant of works and stuff like that.

So, anyway, I think you'll really, if you teach the Bible in any way, shape, or form, and you'd like to teach through Colossians, I think that'll be a good commentary for you. And we would encourage you to buy a bunch of them if you want.

If it's going to be a group study, or your church is going to buy a bunch, email me, mike at nocompromisedradio .com, and I'll make sure you get a discounted price, and I can drop, ship it to you. 10 or more, you get a deal.

How about that? 100 or more, you get a real deal. And 1 ,000 or more, I'll come and preach at your church on my dime. It is copyrighted by SLJ3. That's Samuel Johnson Jr. That's his son, Sam, who's still alive and in Tennessee.

S. Lewis Johnson. Lewis's daughter, Grace, whom I have met, she has died probably, I don't know, time goes by so fast, in the last two years. And anyway, I think that's my last project. Most of the other S. Lewis Johnson projects will be done at Believer's Chapel.

Pastor Dan Duncan, that's where Lewis preached for many years, of course, and was an elder for many years. And I think they have his library there. I almost got his library, but that's another story for another time.

Luke’s Gospel as a Historical Account

Today, I'd like to talk to you about Christianity as historical. Historical Christianity. Now, why would that be important? By the way, I'm here at the church building, and we just had one of the most intense thunderstorms slash lightning storms that I've ever maybe been in in my life.

It was about, I don't know, 15 minutes worth, and it really, really was coming down hard. The last few days have been 90, 95 degrees, 98 humidity, burning hot. The AC in my house can't even really keep up.

Anyway, I don't think this has cooled it down much, but at least it's not thundering. I had to do something else for a while because I thought if I keep recording shows while it's thundering, then what's going to happen?

I mean, it was pretty scary. How scary? It was about that scary. I know, I know. That's pretty scary. By the way, that's what I played in all city band when I was in about, my guess is eighth grade. Not many people played the tuba, and I played tuba in all city band.

And this is one of the few kind of solos you get if you're a tuba player. Pretty simple, but that was my claim to fame. Sousaphone on the field and tuba or tuber in the all city band. I wasn't that good.

I don't know how I was on the all city band. They didn't have any other players. I mean, the people that were good were the flautists and the people that played the French horn and trumpets and clarinets and some of the one and the two ends are just crazy how to read the music.

I just was basic. Here's two beats, one and a two and a tuba. What would happen if Christianity wasn't historical? Put another way, what if there's no book of maps? The 67th book of the Bible, book of maps.

What if you didn't have any maps in the back? Kind of reminds me of the book of Mormon. I always tell people, could I see your section of the maps back there? It's maybe Navu Indian tribes now. They probably put them back there.

I'm probably wrong now. They probably do have maps back in the book of Mormon. We'll have to see. I have been preaching through the gospel of Luke, as you know, and it struck me that Luke, this physician who details things very carefully, makes sure that we know that this is history.

Let me just read chapter two to you. And when I first read chapter two, one to seven, I'm not going to read all the whole chapter. What goes through your mind when I first read this? My guess is it's going to be, it's right at Christmas time because the guy who gets up to read it can never say Quirinius properly.

They always mispronounce it or stumble. Probably now that I'm making fun of it, that's what will happen to me on Sunday. When I read this, you'll think of Christmas, but I want you to think of history.

Real man, Quirinius, real man, Caesar Augustus, real man, Jesus of Nazareth. In those days, by the way, it doesn't start off with once upon a time in the land of middle earth, in Narnia. In those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.

This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria and all went to be registered each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem because he was of the house and lineage of David to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.

And she gave birth to her firstborn. Oops, excuse me. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger because there was no place for them in the inn, I-N-N.

We can talk about that word in maybe another time. And I'm sorry that I have to take these deep breaths. I can't breathe through my nose. I mean, I barely can. I sleep with those Breathe Right strips at night.

Everything's just inflamed and having a deviated septum doesn't help. And so do I get in, go get the turbinate surgery or do I not and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I have my appointment, my once a year cancer appointment next Tuesday, which is probably already in the past by now, by the time you hear this.

So if you ever think about praying for me that I could breathe, I mean, I was going to do some more noco recordings, video recordings, but I don't really want to sound like this. So we plow forward. When I read those verses, I want you to think of history, that in fact, this is a historical book that you have.

There are names of real people. And by the way, there are names of real people that are found elsewhere in the annals of history, not just Bible history. If there was no record of anything or any one of these people that are mentioned here in the first seven verses of chapter two are anywhere else, Herod, let's say, or Augustus, you know, the Tiberius rulers, it wouldn't matter.

I mean, the Bible is enough. That's certainly true, but we never have to worry about archaeology finding something that contradicts the Bible. On the other hand, it's the exact opposite. Is it not? This is historical.

That's what Luke is trying to do. He's trying to let you know. So you could have certainty about your faith. Remember every time you read the gospel of Jesus, according to Luke, you, you must read it through the lens of how it was written and why it was written.

How was it written? And as much as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who, from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us.

It seemed good to me also having followed all things closely for some time past to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus as Luke chapter one, one to three, that tells me how it was written, detailed, orderly account handed it on by delivery.

This is the narrative of things that actually have been accomplished among us. And you can kind of think of first John chapter one, one to four and touching and handling and seeing the surreal person.

Certainty, Assurance, and the Gospel

Why was it written? And here's, here's the, the overlaying framework for the frameworks overlay. Here's the undergirding framework. Here's the undergirding support. Here's the overarching ladder. You know, when I haven't played for quite a while, uh, let's see, I have this, I haven't played this one for a long time.

How long have you been on that medication? And how long have you been on that medication? Judge Judy can't talk either. How was it written? Detailed. Why was it written? Verse four of chapter one of Luke that you may have certainty concerning the things that you have been taught that is about Jesus.

So you can know for certain this is called an assurance booster. It's a booster. And I live in Worcester. I just saw that acts 29 video that was put out and there's a pastor. I think it's a CRC church.

It's an X 29 affiliated church. And the pastor, I don't know if I'm saying, I don't know if his name is David Sullivan, maybe. And he was talking about LGBTQ folks and how to minister to them. And it's really hit the internet by storm, uh, based on his capitulation, uh, to certain things.

And I didn't even know the guy was in Worcester in Worcester. It's a booster. We can say stuff about boosters too, but that's another show altogether. How many times you've been boosted? I mean, I don't know.

That's just new do new talk these days. I don't think we ever went around, uh, in the past. Maybe we used to say, did you get a flu shot? Right. I think people might ask that. Did you get your flu shot?

It was just kind of like, Oh, just wondering, you know, it wasn't some judgy thing. Did you get your flu shot? And all of a sudden when COVID hit, then they ask you questions and it was more judgmental.

And on one side you have people, I can't believe you're not going to get it because now you're going to get me sick. On the other side, I can't believe you're going to, you got it because you might make me sick or it might hurt you or, you know, back and forth.

I mean, wasn't there enough already to split churches, homeschool, private school, public school, Halloween, no Halloween, alcohol, no alcohol, pipes and tobacco, no pipes and tobacco, meat offered idols, et cetera.

When I went to Israel, maybe with the most, maybe I probably, I liked to see a Gali the best, but historically speaking, and of course that's in the annals of history, Sea of Galilee, it's a real place.

I like the Pilate stone. So when you go to Caesarea by the sea maritime, that's the Caesarea that's near the Mediterranean. Then there's another Caesarea, Caesarea Philippi. That's where Peter said, you're the crisis on the living God.

When Jesus said, who do you say that I am? The Pilate stone is a damaged piece of limestone that has an inscription that mentions Pontius Pilate. And we don't have anything about Pontius Pilate in any extra biblical sources.

That is to say, Herodotus, I guess that's wrong timeframe. Josephus, that would be better. They don't say anything about Pontius Pilate. And so in 1961, this artifact was discovered and it's got Pontius Pilate's name on it.

And so I think that's fascinating because you can go there and look at it. They've got a replica there, Caesarea maritime, there's the thunder, but the real one is put in the Israel museum. And the translation reads to the divine Augustus, Tiberium, Pontius Pilate, prefect of Judah, Judea has dedicated, then it doesn't have the rest, right?

Because it's only part of it. That's fascinating to me. We have this real person, Pontius Pilate. Well, Luke is wanting you to know these are real people. Caesar Augustus was a real person. This is history.

It was Jay Gresham Machen. And we'll talk about him more in a little bit. If you want to be a good theologian, you need to be a historian because this happened in real time. Caesar Augustus was a real person.

Remember Caesar is a title and Augustus is somebody that's renowned. So you have Caesar, that's like a King or Emperor. And then Augustus is someone who is August, who is revered, who is to be honored.

Caesar Augustus, his real name was Gaius Octavius Thernius. And he was born in 63 BC and he ruled Rome from 27 BC to AD 14. Real person, real land, real time, real name. By the way, when you read Caesar Augustus, what you might not know is that he was probably a greater Caesar than his granduncle.

Who was his granduncle? Another real person in real time and his name was somebody called Julius Caesar. We have the grand uncle Julius Caesar. And of course, you know what happened to Julius Caesar, right?

And so Caesar Augustus, the one right there in Luke 2, was 19 years old when he comes to power. He reigns a long time and he builds things, not like Herod, of course, but he does build things. He takes a census for the empire.

He does many things that are not quite as ruthless and brutal as other Caesars, a lot less brutal than Herod, that's for sure. And when Julius Caesar is murdered, here comes Caesar Augustus. This is interesting here.

Hendrickson writes, his sister of Octavian, Caesar Augustus, was married to Antony. When Antony left his wife behind and became infatuated with Queen Cleopatra, and when in addition he began to show far greater concern for himself and Cleopatra than the welfare of Rome, Octavian and the Romans understandably turned against him.

In the battle of Actium, Antony was defeated. Both he and Cleopatra shortly afterward committed suicide. Well, that's a real person. These are real people. This is historical. You've got to have a historical Christianity because otherwise who's going to be your substitute?

Who's going to be your representative? That's why Jesus, that's why the eternal son took on human flesh, had to be real human flesh. If you're a real person and not an avatar, or not AI... By the way, I know we're going to start talking about, and there's all these robots, and did Jesus die for robots too?

I just know it's coming. It's going to be on the Gospel Coalition website. Did Jesus die for robots? You know it's coming. There's a real taxation going on. Of course, why do you tax people? It's taxation you have to have with registration back in those days.

For us it's taxation, no taxation without representation. For them it was no taxation without registration. They needed to know how many people were there. Lots of times the censuses in those days, the centi, it would be because you need to recruit military folks, and you need to get money, taxes.

The Jews aren't going to have to be part of the Roman military, but of course their money, the Jewish money needs to go to Augustus. Augustus, I mean, he was August. He built the Roman Forum. He's got libraries that he founded, and he, it was said, found Rome built in brick, but left it in marble.

I mean, he was the one who really had Roman peace, right? Pax Romana, peace in the, what's it called? Territories. In the domain, in the Roman, I don't know what I'm thinking about, I want another word in the Roman dominated geographical landmark state, landmark Baptist.

We're going to say Roman region. That's what we're going to say. I'm going to stick to it. The second I get done with this show, I'm going to know what I wanted to say instead. Some people call the Roman peace, the Pax Romana, Pax Augustus, because he's the one who did so much.

And by the way, he built a lot of roads too, Roman roads, and that's going to be used by the Lord for the propagation of the gospel as well. Augustus was so great. They had all these things that they were trying to figure out how to make him a God somehow, and that he was conceived by a serpent, an inscription that they found in history in 9 BC says that Augustus was a God whose quote, birthday signal, the beginning of good news for the world.

It's as if Luke, the physician is writing, here's this great August man, real time, real people, and he's going to have a census and it's going to be decreed. And they think he's a God. They think he's great.

He's done all these wonderful things. He's like the savior of the world. Can you imagine? There goes the thunder too. I mean, to call him savior, savior of the whole world. You can just see the little backdrop here, the back plate, the Roman legions, the Roman empire.

There we go. The empire. Who could not think of that? Who could not think of that? By the way, I've got my message Bible right here and I have to go to Luke 2 for a moment. Anybody that started yelling at their radio saying empire, thank you.

You can stop yelling. About that time, Caesar Augustus ordered a census to be taken throughout the empire. Why did I not look at the message Bible? And I could have figured it out for once. It could have helped me.

This was the first census when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And that's, that's really so far. Great translation. Everyone had to travel to his own ancestral hometown to be accounted for. So Joseph went up from Galilee and town of Nazareth up to Bethlehem and Judah, David's town for the census.

As a descendant of David, he had to go there. He went with Mary, his fiance, who was pregnant. While they were there, the time came for her to give birth. She gave birth to a son, her firstborn. She wrapped him in a blanket and laid him in a manger because there was no room at the hostel.

And how long had you been on that medication? What in the world? And then she went to the youth hostel and there was nothing but a manger to lay the baby. And so she put some blankets on him. We're going to talk more about what swaddling clothes are, but they're not blankets.

I can tell you, I can tell you that. If you're rich, they were made of some pretty fine material. And if you're poor, you can just, whatever you've got to make that baby nice and snug, right? They're all snug in the womb.

And then now you're going to wrap them up all nice and tight. Boy, I thought the thunder had passed, but I guess not. The Bible is not a fable. It's not make-believe. It's not a myth. These are real people.

Jesus was a real person. He had to be, or you're doomed. I'm doomed. Jesus isn't a concept. He's not a thought. He's not a power. He's not a force. He's real. Jesus is real. Mages said the student of the New Testament should be primarily a historian.

The center and core of all the Bible is history. Everything else that the Bible contains is fitted into a historical framework and leads up to an historical climax. The Bible is primarily a record of events.

That assertion will not pass unchallenged. Modern church is impatient of history. History, we're told, is a dead thing. Let us forget the Amalekites and fight the enemies that are at our doors. The true essence of the Bible is to be found in eternal ideas.

History is merely the form in which those ideas are expressed. It makes no difference whether the history is real or fictitious. In either case, the ideas are the same. It makes no difference whether Abraham was a historical person or a myth.

In either cases, life is an inspiring example of faith. It makes no difference whether Moses was really a mediator between God and Israel. In any case, the record of Sinai embodies the idea of a covenant between God and his people.

It makes no difference whether Jesus really lived and died and rose again, as is declared by the Gospels. Be it ideal or history, its encouragement is to piety. In this way, religion has been made independent, as is thought of the uncertainties of historical research.

The separation of Christianity from history has been a great concern of modern theology. It's been a failure, though. See how he was mocking people and say, you know what, we don't care if it's history or not.

I mean, Jesus just, whatever's written about him sure inspires me. He wrote that, by the way, in the Princeton Theological Review, when Princeton was good, 1915, he said at the end of this section that I'm quoting, you can retain a lofty ethical idea, but be perfectly clear about one point.

You can never retain a gospel, for gospel means good news, tidings, information about something that has happened. In other words, it means history. A gospel independent of history is simply a contradiction of terms.

The Gospel, Good News, and Real Events

Dear listeners, and the thunder just said, amen. Dear listeners, when it comes to reading the Bible, when it comes to, when we talk about law gospel all the time, when we talk about gospel, good news, specifically about the redemption found in the God-man, Jesus Christ, the risen Savior, the eternal son who comes and rescues the elect.

When we talk about the good news, we're talking history. Every time I say gospel, I want you to think of Jesus, of course. And we think of Jesus, you think about the father who sends him, et cetera, when we think Trinitarianly.

But I also want you to think when I say gospel, I want you to think history. It really, really happened. And by the way, that's why people probably love to go to Israel because they see these things that are reminded.

That's an actual place. Nain is a place. Bethlehem is a place. Oh, the sea, Caesarea Maritime is a place. Anyway, my name is Mike Abendroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry. And I want you to know that Jesus really was born in Bethlehem, a place.

Why was he born in Bethlehem? Well, that's a good question for next show. Email me Mike at nocompromiseradio .com. Almost had it right there. Roman empires.