1 John 4:1-3 5/21/06 THE DAVINCI CODE: FACT OR FICTION (Part 3)

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Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2 This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world. (1 John 4:1-3)

I’m sure if you’ve been with us at all in this DaVinci Code series, you can easily understand why a text like today’s epistle reading would be appropriate as an overall guide to the things that we are discussing. “Do not believe every spirit…” Why not? Because a lot of them are lying. Pretty simple. And how can you tell the difference? When people are trying to present themselves as spiritual, but those folks do not acknowledge that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, and particularly, as John goes on, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, then you know those folks are not from God. And in fact, they are anti-God or anti-Christ. I’m not saying that. The Holy Spirit is saying that through John in the Bible. They are actively working against Jesus Christ – regardless of what they may say to the contrary.

Now Dan Brown and the Da Vinci Code are certainly in that category, among a multitude of pseudo-scholars who are trying to recreate the history of Christ, simply by what they say today, regardless of 2,000 years of research and evidence that proves the reliability of the Bible. The Jesus seminar people are in that group. They got all kinds of media attention in the 1990’s by claiming that fewer than one in five of the sayings and actions attributed to Jesus Christ in the Bible actually happened. And every year their group gets together and votes a few more off that list. In fact their bible is about this big (a few pages) I noticed one of their representatives popped up in the religion section of the paper again yesterday. Robert Price was speaking to the Freethought Association in Grand Rapids last week. He said he thinks that the idea that there are one in five true sayings in the Bible is “wildly over-optimistic”. He contends that “virtually nothing” reported in the Gospels ever happened and said:

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“I think there’s real doubt as to whether Jesus existed or not.”

Folks, any one who says something like that does not deserve to be put into the religion section of any newspaper and he certainly does not deserve the title of “scholar.” It’s a free country and he has the right to say those things, but he has absolutely no credibility among real scholars today. There is more proof of the existence and work of Jesus Christ in history than almost any other figure in history.

But again, I think it points out why a series like this is necessary. Why it’s important that we take the time to see what’s out there in terms of the attacks on the Christian faith and of course, take the time to give you the answers to those attacks.

Now, as we get back to the particular statements made in the book “The Da Vinci Code” (Can’t speak to the movie yet), so far we’ve shown the errors in Brown’s claims about the Priory of Sion, supposedly a secret society protecting the scandal of Christ’s marriage to Mary Magdalene. We’ve refuted the idea that the Bible is full of errors and wasn’t even really put together until Constantine’s time – or the false idea that the “winners write the history” they way they want it to be. We’ve introduced you to the Gnostic Gospels that Brown tries to use to advance some of his claims about Mary Magdalene and what he calls the “sacred feminine.” We’ve shown you that the Gnostics actually taught exactly the opposite. And as far their writings giving us any better knowledge about Jesus, they were in fact, written hundreds of years after the Biblical gospels, by people who were trying to distort those Gospels after the fact. They simply have no historic credibility. Again, we touched on Dan Brown’s wild idea that Mary Magdalene and Jesus were an item. We looked at his Gnostic sources and showed that there just is no evidence of that. Now we’re going to pick it up there again as Brown brings in Da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper to continue his argument. He also has some interesting ideas about the Holy Grail and I just want to have a little fun with that by showing a couple of clips this morning…

I’m sure that I’ve used illustrations from the Indiana Jones movies before, but today with our modern technology, I’d like to show you a clip from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade that contains one of my favorite quotes of all moviedom. Just to set the scene up, this is toward the end of the movie. Indiana and his father have been searching for the Holy Grail, the supposed cup of Christ that was used at the last supper, and in some legends, also used to capture some of the blood Jesus shed on the cross. Now, they’ve finally found the place. Indiana’s father has been shot and so Indy needs to find the Grail which is supposed to provide healing and super long life to those who drink from it, in order to save his father. So, after weaving his way through a series of difficult obstacles, Indiana finally enters the sacred room, guarded by one of the knights templar. Of course, he is closely followed by the evil German guy who wants to use the grail just to advance the Nazi cause.

Movie clip: start of scene 34

It gets kind of bad after that. Spielburg’s special effects kick in and instead of getting new life, the guy shall we say, ages prematurely turns to dust and blows away. Then comes my favorite line.

Movie clip: scene 34 “He chose poorly”

He chose poorly, because after all, what is an itinerant preacher going to be doing with an ornate golden cup? And now it’s Indiana’s time to choose. Time is running out for his Dad. He has to decide:

Movie clip: scene 34 “That’s the cup of a carpenter…”

“You chose wisely…” Now, that whole scene is interesting and you could make all kinds of applications with it. Certainly any time we deal with the things of God we need to do so humbly and on His terms, instead of trying to look at God as a grocery store or Aladdin’s lamp to magically provide for all our greeds.

But I guess what I really want to say by showing those clips is: “I’ve seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. And I am now just as much an authority as Dan Brown to write about the history of the church.

Just as a point of interest, the term “Holy Grail” first surfaced around 1200 a.d. in basically a Christian fiction book. It was a story about Joseph of Arimathea acquiring the chalice of the Last Supper and using it to collect Christ’s blood upon His removal from the cross. Joseph is thrown in prison where Christ visits him and explains the mysteries of the blessed cup. Upon his release Joseph gathers his in-laws and other followers and travels to the west, and founds a dynasty of Grail keepers. Other writers built on those ideas to present King Author and other valiant knights searching for the grail. The term Grail comes from the Latin “gradalis,” meaning a “dish” or a container used for meal. It comes into the French as “san graal” or Holy Grail, “Holy Dish.”

But Dan Brown then takes the fictional search for the Holy Grail way out into fiction by telling us that Mary Magdalene herself was really the Holy Grail. She was the container that held the blood of Christ by carrying his child. In fact, in the novel he hints that for decades the secret of Mary as the Holy Grail was buried beneath the Inverted Pyramid near the Louvre Museum. Now, you think Brown’s book has no influence on people? Tell that to the Louvre security people who have had to rope off the exact location mentioned by Brown to keep visitors from damaging the area trying to find the supposed hidden chamber.

It’s all just a figment of Brown’s imagination. But he sucks you in and tries to make a credible argument for instance, using Da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper. He says:

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Da Vinci’s “’The Last Supper’ practically shouts at the viewer that Jesus and Magdalene were a pair.”

Sophie examined the figure to Jesus’ immediate right … a wave of astonishment rose within her. The individual had flowing red hair, delicate folded hands, and the hint of a bosom. It was, without a doubt… female.

Wow, is that true? Well, let’s take a look at the painting:

Slide – The Last Supper

Brown says the figure on the right of Jesus is really Mary Magdalene. Now, are there feminine characteristics on that person. Yeah, kind of. But what does that mean? It turns out, not much.

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Da Vinci habitually painted younger men with a more feminine look as witness his portrayals also of John the Baptist, And Jesus Himself

Slides: John the Baptist and Head of Jesus

The fact is, that was just Leonardo’s style. By the way,

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If Da Vinci intended to paint Mary into the picture, there would have been 14 figures.

If the figure at Jesus’ right is Magdalene, where is the missing John?

You know, it’s just fascinating how a fiction book, and fiction claims like this one about the painting of the Last Supper, can have such power to influence the way people think. For Instance,

What is unique about the way the word: “DA VINCI” is written here?

The answer is, it’s written as an ambigram – the word reads exactly the same both right side up and upside down. What does it mean? What are the vast implications of this symbol? It simply means a good illustrator did his work well. With the DaVinci Code, a decent author weaved a story, shredding the facts of history as he went…

Another unbelievable statement from the Da Vinci Code is the following:

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“The early Jewish tradition involved ritualistic sex. In the Temple no less. Early Jews believed that the Holy of Holies in Solomon’s Temple housed not only God but also His powerful female equal, Shekinah.”

You know, sometimes these claims are just so outlandish that you almost don’t even know how to respond. And it’s crazy that people might actually read this and believe it. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Slide: Fact

A jaw-dropping, ridiculous fantasy.

Nothing was or is as basic to the Hebrews as their foundational belief in one God (not two or more).

Attaching sexuality of any kind to this one God was so abhorrent to Jews that they did not even have a word in Hebrew for goddess.

“Shekinah” refers to the glory of God and His presence.

Brown’s claim’s go on:

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"I thought Constantine was a Christian," Sophie said.

"Hardly," Teabing scoffed. "He was a lifelong pagan who was baptized on his deathbed, too weak to protest..

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Historians agree that Constantine became a genuine Christian convert, repaid the church for its terrible losses during persecutions, built many churches throughout his empire - and desired baptism near death.

Delayed baptism was a mistaken custom of the time to wipe your slate clean at the end of life.

Constantine even gave sermons in latter life and embarked on a program of building Christian churches throughout the holy land.

More claims of the Da Vinci Code:

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“Nothing in Christianity is original…Even Christianity's weekly holy day was stolen from the pagans." "What do you mean?"

"Originally," Langdon said, "Christianity honored the Jewish Sabbath of Saturday, but Constantine shifted it to coincide with the pagan's veneration day of the sun." He paused, grinning. "To this day, most churchgoers attend services on Sunday morning with no idea that they are there on account of the pagan sun god's weekly tribute—Sunday."

You may have heard something like that before. It is of course, again, untrue.

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The earliest Christians started worshipping on the “first day of the week,” Sunday, which they called “The Lord’s Day,” to honor the day on which Christ rose from the dead. This is obvious from both the New Testament (Acts 20:7, 1 Cor. 16:2, Rev. 1:10), as well as the writings of the earliest church fathers.

The early Christian Church understood it’s freedom from the ceremonial law of the Old Testament, and acting on that freedom, they chose the most significant day in the history of the world to become the “Lord’s Day”, their new day of worship.

Acts 20:7 -- On the first day of the week we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people and, because he intended to leave the next day, kept on talking until midnight.

Well, our time is up. I have to admit now that I did go and see the movie. I put myself through it on your behalf. If I was going to play movie critic I would probably say something like.. Boring, preachy. You’ve got the whole murder mystery thing and the search for the Grail – kind of like the movie National Treasure, but every time you turned around their was another monologue feeding you these manufactured stories about Jesus and Magdalene. It looked like even the characters got bored with it after a while.

So I don’t think it’s worth the trouble of boycotting or getting all crazy about it. In fact, in terms of potential for the Christian Church, if it had been done better, I’d put it right up there with the Passion of the Christ and Narnia. It gave me the opportunity to do this preaching series and give you the truth about the reliability of the Bible and it gives you an opportunity to witness to the truth yourself in your discussions with your friends and in all your relationships.

In fact, I’m going to need one more week to wrap this up. We still have the Dead Sea Scrolls to talk about, Constantine and the divinity of Christ and a little more about the Gnostic Gospels.

I have to say now, having read the book and seen the movie, I have mixed feelings about it all. I know the Christian church will survive this attack as it’s survived all attacks for 2,000 years. “The gates of hell will not prevail against” God’s church… But I am concerned. I’m hearing and reading about a large percentage of people who are believing the statements Brown is making about the church and the Bible and about Jesus. I think particularly about our young people who might see this film and not be able to discern between reality and fiction.

In fact, let me just give you one more example. A couple of weeks ago, we had ants in the house. Joni’s reluctantly allowing me to show you this little clip, She’s a little embarrassed that we had ants in the house. It seems we get them every year about the same time in the spring. And I’ve tried different things, but nothing seemed to work. Well, I found something that works if you have this problem too, and I want to show it to you. But I just want to warn you, if you don’t like ants, you might not like this next clip…

Ants Slide

Do you get the point? Pretty creepy isn’t it? This was actually the tail end of things. There were actually many more before I thought to get a clip of it. And they absolutely loved the Terro food I laid out for them. They would go in skinny and come out bloated. They ate it up and they went back to their nest wherever that was and they shared it with their family and they told all their friends. And they all ate it and they all died. And now we don’t have any more ants.

Now, I think people today may be somewhat smarter than ants, but the analogy is the same. If it sounds good, if the authors are convincing,, if the special effects are good, if it matches with what they might want to believe anyway, they eat it up. And they share it with others, and they die spiritually. And that really is what is at stake here – the eternal salvation of many people. Folks, Jesus Christ is who He says He is, the Son of God and the Savior of the world. He’s the One, as John says in the Gospel reading, who loved us so much that “he laid down His life for His friends.” By His sacrifice on the cross, He paid the penalty, the punishment that all of us by our sins have deserved. He rose from the dead victorious over death on the third day. And He has commanded all of us to love other people the way He has loved us. That’s why this is important. That’s why all of this matters. It’s not enough for us to know the truth. We need to be bearers of the truth. The very least we can do is stand in front of the danger - stand in front of the traps - and warn people away. And if you are scared for yourself, please remember the second part of the reading today: “1John 4:4You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.”