As I mentioned, Pastor Rob has asked me
to fill in for him, and it's always
a great joy to do so.
And he specifically asked if I would address
the Da Vinci Code.
Many of you were here, I imagine, about
nine months or a year ago or so
when I taught on this topic on a
Wednesday night, but were sure of the fact
that many of the people who come on
a Sunday morning are not able to make
it out on a Wednesday evening, which was
the time of the week that I taught
this previously.
And so Rob wants to make sure that
the entire church is inoculated against this modern
-day deception, especially with the movie coming out
in just a few weeks.
And so this morning, that is the topic
that we want to address.
And doing so is actually biblical.
Taking time occasionally out of our normal verse
-by-verse teaching through the Bible to do
this is something that God actually commands the
overseers of the church to do.
In the book of Titus, in chapter 1,
verse 9, God says that the overseers are
not only to exhort in sound doctrine, which
is what Pastor Rob does here on a
weekly basis, but they're to take the time
to, when necessary, refute those who contradict.
And the Da Vinci Code is a modern
-day opportunity of a person who is contradicting
the word of God and the facts of
history even.
And so this morning we want to take
up this issue and deal with it.
How many of you have a friend or
family member who's actually read the book?
Okay.
How many of you have a friend or
family member who you think will go see
the movie?
Probably most of us fall into that category.
The Da Vinci Code was written by a
man by the name of Dan Brown in
March of 2003, the former English teacher.
So this book just came out only three
years ago.
Exactly.
And yet in the three years that it's
been out, this book has been adversely influencing
the way millions of people around the world
think about Jesus, the Bible, the gospel message
itself, and the church at large.
Today, three years since his publication, the book
has sold approximately 40 million copies.
It's become one of the most widely read
books of all time.
In fact, it's the most widely read book
in the history of the world.
Second now only to the Bible.
And it's only been out three years.
That's how successful this book is just to
put it into perspective.
It's earned Dan Brown more than $355 million
in three years.
Time Magazine named Dan Brown one of the
world's 100 most influential people in 2005 because
of the enormous influence that he has had
through the writing of this book.
And the Da Vinci Code is not only
influencing people here in the United States, it's
making an impact around the world.
To date, the book has been translated into
44 different languages.
I saw it in an Israeli bookstore a
few months ago, a Hungarian bookstore last year
as well.
Different places that I've traveled around the world.
It's there.
You see it prominently displayed.
And the views of Dan Brown are, of
course, going to have an even greater impact
in just a few weeks.
Columbia Pictures has made the book into a
movie directed by Ron Howard that is going
to star Tom Hanks in the lead role.
I'm sure many of you have already heard
this.
The worldwide movie release date just weeks away,
May 19th, 2006.
To say that a tidal wave of fresh,
renewed skepticism regarding the Christian faith is about
to be unleashed by the release of the
movie would be the understatement of the year.
I hate to be the bearer of bad
news guys, but this movie is going to
be probably the most powerful intellectual assault made
against the Christian faith in 2000 years.
I don't think the Christian church has ever
faced anything like what is about to happen
here with the release of this movie.
It's going to have an enormous long-term
negative impact on the credibility of the Christian
faith.
I'm guaranteed that is going to be the
result.
That's why we deal with the book this
morning.
We want to help at least blunt the
impact as much as we can here locally.
The book launches repeated attacks, and we believe
the movie will as well against Christian beliefs,
even going so far as to say, quotes,
almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ
is false.
Page 235.
And although the views of Dan Brown are
put forth in a fictional book, they are
said to be based upon historical facts.
And that's what makes the book so dangerous.
Some people might say, well, why are we
going to talk about a fictional book?
Why spend the time refuting a fictional book,
Charlie?
Well, the book, yes, it does claim to
be fictional, but it claims to be based
upon hundreds of historical facts.
Dan Brown has said one of the many
qualities that makes the Da Vinci code unique
is the factual nature of the story.
All the history, artwork, ancient documents, and secret
rituals in the novel are accurate, as are
the hidden codes revealed in some of Da
Vinci's most famous paintings.
Over and over in the book, Dan Brown
erroneously asserts that the historical information that he
shares with his readers is supported by religious
historians, well-documented history, art historians, all academics,
well-documented evidence and so on, scores of
historians.
And so for the undiscerning reader, they think
they read this kind of thing.
I think, wow, I never knew that.
I didn't know this was well-documented evidence.
I didn't know that all historians know that
these things are true.
So what can we do?
A couple of things.
Number one, it goes without saying that we
need to be praying for the people who
will go and see this movie.
We need to pray for our nation.
My friends, 44 million people or 40 million
people, I'm sorry, have read the book.
Millions more than that will actually go and
see the movie.
Think of all the people in our society
today that don't like to read because they've
grown up playing video games, right?
But they'll love to go see the movie.
We need to be praying for them.
And then secondly, we need to prepare ourselves
to answer the questions that people are going
to have.
We've got about six weeks to get ready.
And so again, that's why we deal with
this topic this morning.
There's been a plethora of good books written
on the topic that have refuted all of
the errors in the book.
In fact, if you go out to the
book cart this morning after the service, we've
stocked up on that particular book by Richard
Abains called The Truth Behind the Da Vinci
Code.
If there's one book that I would suggest
getting, if you're interested in doing more reading
on the topic, it would be that one.
And we're making them available this morning too,
if you're interested.
Now to help you be prepared for the
movie though, I want to examine some quotes
right out of the book and respond to
them.
And first, let's start off by telling you
a little bit about the plot of the
book.
For those of you who have not read
the book, I'm sure most of you have
not.
The Da Vinci Code is a modern day
murder mystery.
Throw in some romance and it's guaranteed to
be a hit, right?
Well, that's exactly what Dan Brown has done.
This book begins with the mysterious murder of
a museum curator at the Louvre Museum in
Paris.
The Louvre is the famous museum that houses
the Mona Lisa painting by Leonardo Da Vinci.
This murder leads the two main characters, Robert
Langdon and Sophie Nouveau, which will be played
by Tom Hanks, the Robert Langdon character.
Anyways, it leads them on a pursuit all
over France and England, trying to solve the
murder.
Well, as they try to unravel the mystery
of this murder, they discover numerous so-called
facts about Christianity that Dan Brown says have
been suppressed by the Catholic church for the
past 2000 years, but secretly handed down by
a secret society known as the Priory of
Scion.
According to Brown, this secret society included such
well-known persons as Isaac Newton and Leonardo
Da Vinci.
The books that I mentioned a moment ago
have refuted this whole story.
Even the Priory of Scion did not exist
back in Leonardo Da Vinci's day, but we
don't have time to really get into that.
Dan Brown, though, believes that Leonardo Da Vinci
hid clues or codes about these matters that
the Catholic church has suppressed in his paintings,
including this one of The Last Supper, and
thus we have the title of the book,
The Da Vinci Code.
Speaking of the codes that Da Vinci hid
in his paintings.
So this morning, picking up on the title
of the book, I want to address five
errors in The Da Vinci Code.
We don't have time to deal with them
all.
I've narrowed it down to five, and if
you can remember that acronym, the word codes,
each letter in that acronym will remind you
of something that is wrong with the book,
and that will equip you, hopefully, with some
talking points, should you have the chance to
talk with an unbeliever or someone who's seen
the movie, maybe even a Christian that has
questions about what Dan Brown says is true.
So the C, the first point, the first
talking point reminds us about how the book
airs when it speaks of the corruption of
the scriptures, the corruption of the scriptures.
If you're taking notes, the book says, quote,
the Bible did not fall magically from the
clouds.
Man created it as a historical record of
tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless
translations, additions, and revisions.
History has never had a definitive version of
the book.
First off, we agree with Dan Brown that
the Bible did not fall magically from the
clouds.
Um, if you believe that, come and talk
to me afterwards.
Second, Peter chapter one, verse 21, that's what
we believe happened.
It says there that holy men of God
spoke as they were moved by the Holy
Spirit.
Holy men of God spoke or pinned the
words that they pinned as they were moved,
as they were inspired by the Holy Spirit.
We believe that God's superintendent, he came alongside
the writings of more than 40 different authors
whom he inspired to make sure that what
he wanted written was actually written.
Now we also agree that the Bible has
been translated into numerous translations.
The Wycliffe Bible translation members have translated the
new Testament alone into more than 578 languages
based off the early manuscripts, the Greek and
the Hebrew.
They've translated the Bible, thankfully into the language
of the common people around the world.
And we rejoice in that.
But for Dan Brown to continue the popular
myth that the Bible we have today is
unreliable because it's evolved through numerous additions and
revisions, betrays the fact that he is either
ignorant of the facts surrounding the transmission of
the biblical text or he has purposely thrown
the facts aside to advance his own agenda.
I believe the latter is probably the case.
There are two pools of evidence that prove
conclusively that the Bible we have today has
not undergone corruption down through the centuries.
If you're taking notes, number one is the
manuscript evidence, the manuscript evidence.
What is a manuscript?
A manuscript is a hand written copy of
any ancient document that predates the invention of
the printing press in 1455.
Any surviving handwritten copy of an ancient document
prior to 1455 would be called a manuscript,
whether it's a biblical manuscript or a manuscript
copy of Homer's Iliad or some other ancient
work of literature before the printing press.
Bibles were meticulously, very carefully copied by hand
by Jewish scribes who took that calling very
seriously.
Well, today there survive some twenty four thousand
partial and complete ancient handwritten copies of the
New Testament, not to mention hundreds of copies
of the Old Testament.
These manuscript copies of the Bible have allowed
biblical scholars and textual critics to go back
verify that the Bible we have today is
the same Bible that the early church had
two thousand years ago.
There was an amazing discovery made in 1947
related to this whole issue of the biblical
manuscript evidence there in Israel, a shepherd boy
tending his father's sheep in a little town
known as Qumran, which is just north and
to the west of the Dead Sea.
He made an amazing discovery while looking for
a lost sheep.
And you can visit the ruins of Qumran
on a trip to Israel.
It's a fascinating place to visit while they're
in Qumran in a hillside cave that had
laid untouched for nearly two thousand years.
This little shepherd boy, by the name of
Mohammed, interestingly enough, discovered an ancient collection of
handwritten copies of the Old Testament.
These scrolls have been hidden in a cave
by or in a variety of caves by
a group of people known as the Essenes.
They were a Jewish sect living in Qumran
two thousand years ago.
They realized they were about to be annihilated
by the Romans who were putting down the
Jewish revolt at the middle of the first
century or so.
And so they hid their two most valuable
treasures in the caves, their scriptures and their
money, hoping if they would survive, they would
at least be able to go back and
recover those things.
None of them survived.
And so their scriptures, their copies of the
Old Testament survived for two thousand years till
they were discovered in 1947.
These scrolls and writings are now known as
the Dead Sea Scrolls.
And this discovery, the different scrolls that they
found represented every book of the Old Testament,
except for the book of Esther.
They found a handwritten ancient copy of every
book of the Old Testament, except for the
book of Esther.
For one reason or another, the Essenes did
not have access, it appears, to the book
of Esther.
This is considered this discovery of these scrolls
is considered one of the greatest archaeological discoveries
of all time.
What you're seeing there on the screen on
the screen is a picture of the scroll
of the book of Isaiah found in Qumran
that has been dated to at least a
hundred years before Christ.
Guys, there's not a verse missing.
It's the entire book of Isaiah, all 66
chapters.
You unroll that scroll.
It's 24 feet long.
Here's some of the containers that house the
scrolls and kept them in such good shape.
Well, these Old Testament manuscripts predate the time
of Christ's birth all the way back to
the third century B.C., which is within
a hundred years of the time of the
completion of the Old Testament.
So it's manuscript copies like these that verify
that the text of the Bible has been
accurately transmitted down through the centuries.
These manuscripts are on display today in places
like the British Museum, the Cambridge University Library,
the Smithsonian Institute, the Oxford University, the National
Library at Paris, as well as the Israel
Museum.
Now, even if we did not have any
manuscript copies of the Bible, there's another way
of verifying that the Bible we have today
has not undergone corruption, as Dan Brown suggested
it has, and that is by examining the
writings of the church fathers.
So if you're taking notes, this would be
evidence number two, that the Bible has not
seen corruption or contamination.
Number two, the writings of the church fathers
by church fathers.
We are referring to those leaders in the
church of the first three centuries A.D.
following the original disciples, men like Tertullian, Polycarp,
Justin Martyr, Eusebius and others.
These men and others in their commentaries that
they wrote on the Bible in their correspondence
with one another and in their letters to
different churches, they quoted the New Testament scriptures
alone more than 86,000 times, preserving for
us a second record of what the Bible
used to say 2,000 years ago.
Guys, their writings survived to this day.
You can buy a 30 or 40 volume
set of the writings of the early church
fathers in the first four centuries, and it
looks like the Encyclopedia Britannica.
OK, it's a collection of all their commentaries,
their letters, their correspondence, fascinating reading.
I haven't read them all, but I've perused
through them and over and over again, you
see them quoting what the Bible used to
say.
So if you wonder what Matthew 18 says
in your Bible is actually authentic and, you
know, can we trust it?
Well, you can go and look up in
a commentary on Matthew chapter 18 in one
of the writings of the early church fathers
and see what did they say.
Matthew chapter 18 used to say.
Their writings have preserved for us the Word
of God as well.
In fact, there are enough quotations from the
early church fathers that even if we did
not have a single manuscript copy of the
Bible, biblical scholars and textual critics could reconstruct
99.86% of the New Testament we
have today from their writings.
There are only 11 verses in the New
Testament that for one reason or another apparently
were never cited by any of the church
fathers.
That's how well they preserve the entirety of
the Word of God for us.
Isaiah chapter 40, verse eight says the grass
withers, the flowers fade.
Those things undergo change and contamination and corruption.
But the word of our God.
Stands forever.
God has given us that promise that he'll
faithfully preserve his word for all generations to
consider trustworthy forever.
Jesus said something very similar in the New
Testament.
Matthew chapter 24, verse 35, he said, heaven
and earth will pass away.
Those things are undergoing change.
They're subject to the second law of thermodynamics,
right?
But he says, my words will by no
means pass away.
Where have Jesus's words been recorded for us
in the New Testament?
God is putting his stamp of protection there
in what Jesus says upon his word.
He's going to preserve it as long as
time goes on.
So for Dan Brown to assert that the
Bible has evolved through countless additions and revisions.
So as to suggest that the Bible is
now unreliable, again, demonstrates either his ignorance of
the facts or his willingness to go against
the facts.
That's a little bit about the C in
our acronym.
Let's move on to the, Oh, the second
point, the second talking point that we have
regarding the Da Vinci code is how the
Da Vinci code airs.
When it speaks of the origin of the
deity of Christ, the O reminds us about
the origin of the deity of Christ and
how the Da Vinci code airs.
When it speaks this way, Lee T Bing,
when you see a picture of the character
from the forthcoming movie up there on the
left-hand corner, he's one of the characters
in the book.
This is a quote regarding this whole issue
of the deity of Christ.
He says at this gathering, speaking of the
council of Nicaea, this gathering together of church
leaders in the city of Nicaea, it happened
in 83, 25.
He says at this gathering, many aspects of
Christianity were debated and voted upon the date
of Easter, the role of the bishops, the
administration of sacraments, and of course, the divinity
of Jesus until that moment in history, Jesus
was viewed by his followers as a mortal
prophet, a great and powerful man, but a
man nonetheless, a mortal Sophie, the person he's
talking to in the book responds and says,
not the son of God.
They didn't think Jesus was the son of
God until 83, 25.
They just thought he was a mortal man.
Lee T Bing responded, says, right.
Jesus's establishment as the son of God was
officially proposed and voted on by the council
of Nicaea.
So if he says, hold on, you're saying
Jesus's divinity was the result of a vote.
Lee T Bing says a relatively close vote
at that.
So Dan Brown suggests here, just to recap
what we've just read that the deity of
Christ was a late invention by the church,
that it was first proposed at the council
of Nicaea and that it barely passed.
And that the reason you today believe that
Jesus is God is based upon a vote
and invention in the fourth century.
Well, for the person who is unfamiliar with
the Bible church history or what happened at
the council of Nicaea, this might easily be
believed.
And a lot of people do come away
from the book, believing those kinds of things
that we're studying here this morning.
What was the council of Nicaea?
Let's clarify this first off the council at
Nicaea in modern day.
Turkey was a gathering of 318 bishops or
pastors, church leaders from all over the Roman
Empire.
It happened in 325 and it was to
discuss doctrines related to the person of Jesus.
The reason why they gathered together was because
of a man by the name of Arius.
And I'll talk a little bit more about
him in a moment.
But this meeting was hardly the place where
it was first proposed that Jesus was actually
God, as Dan Brown suggests in the book,
that belief that Jesus was God or was
God.
The son was firmly in place as the
popular teaching of the church in the fourth
century.
There was this man by the name of
areas that I mentioned a moment ago.
He was causing disputes throughout the Roman Empire
as it related to the person of Jesus.
Arius was denying the eternality of Jesus and
teaching rather that Jesus was simply a created
being.
We might call him the first Jehovah's Witness.
The followers of his teaching known as Aryans
held that the divine nature of Christ was
only similar to God, but not the same.
He's not really exactly God.
He's similar to God, but he's actually created
being.
Well, that's what areas was spreading.
Well, the church recognized this as a heresy
and they said, let's have a conference on
this.
Let's clarify for the church at large what
the Bible actually teaches.
And they called together what is now called
the Council of Nicaea.
And this gathering together, the bishops condemned soundly
areas as teachings and reaffirmed what the Bible
had already taught for the past 300 plus
years.
And that is the fact that Jesus was
and is God himself.
He has the very same nature, even as
God accord.
And just like the Bible says in Hebrews
chapter one, verse three, was it a close
vote?
Well, you guys know how to do math.
You tell me there were 318 bishops who
were called to the meeting there in Nicaea.
As for the vote that was finally taken,
only five of the 318 dissented and only
two of those five refused to sign the
resulting resolutions, which reaffirmed the prevailing view of
the church that Jesus was and is God.
Hardly a close vote, as Dan Brown suggests
in his book.
Allow me to read to you from the
official resolution or creed that came out of
that gathering together of the bishops.
It's called the Nicene Creed.
This is the statement that these bishops signed
on.
They wrote it up and signed on to.
Here it is.
They said, I believe in one God, the
father almighty maker of heaven and earth and
of all things visible and invisible, and in
one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten son
of God, begotten of the father before all
worlds, God of God, light of light, very
God of very God, begotten, not made being
of one substance with the father by whom
all things were made, who for us men
and for our salvation came down from heaven
and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of
the Virgin Mary and was made man and
was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate.
He suffered and was buried in the third
day.
He rose again, according to the scriptures and
ascended into heaven and said, if on the
right hand of the father and he shall
come again with glory to judge the living
and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no
end.
Amen.
Now you can see for yourself the very
high view that the early church leaders had
regarding Jesus.
They referred to him here as very God
of very God, begotten, not made.
He was begotten in his birth through the
Virgin Mary, but he was not created in
the sense of him being created sometime back
in the eons of time ago, but that
he had always existed with the father.
316 of the 318 early church leaders signed
on to that resolution, the Nicene Creed.
Dan Brown calls a 316 to two vote
regarding Jesus's deity, a relatively close vote in
the book.
He doesn't give you the actual facts.
He doesn't tell you there's 318 bishops and
what the final vote was.
He just says it was a relatively close
vote.
Jesus deity just barely snuck by all the
discerning bishops.
They really knew that Jesus wasn't God and
they tried to stop the vote, you know,
but they were just slightly outnumbered.
That's that's an impression you come away.
Can you imagine a basketball team being beaten
316 to two and then the losing team
telling people afterwards that it was a relatively
close game?
You would say, what are you talking about?
You guys got totally shut out, man.
You scored one basket.
You guys didn't have the ball like the
whole game, man.
You need to go back to high school
and take a math class.
316 to two is not a relatively close
game.
Man needs to take a math class.
All right.
It's a historical fact that the deity of
Christ was the prevailing view of the church
long before the days of Constantine and the
Council of Nicaea.
In fact, nearly 300 years before the Council
of Nicaea, even before the end of Jesus's
earthly ministry, his deity was already being acknowledged
by his disciples.
The New Testament documents, all of which were
completed before the end of the first century,
are full of affirmations of Christ's deity.
For example, Thomas, one of the 12, refers
to Jesus as my Lord and my God.
In John chapter 20, verse 28, Paul, the
apostle called Jesus, our great God and savior.
In Titus chapter two, verse 13, John, the
apostle called Jesus God in the opening verse
of his gospel.
When he said that the word was God,
John chapter one, verse one, Jesus himself took
the name of God in the old Testament,
that title I am where God spoke that,
that title to Moses in the burning bush
there in Exodus three 14.
And Jesus applied that title to himself in
John chapter eight, verse 58.
He said himself that he was God.
Jesus also said that God was his father,
resulting in some of his listeners trying to
stone him.
Why?
John tells us in John chapter five, verse
18 in John chapter 10, verse 33, because
Jesus was actually by calling God his father
claiming to be, John says, equal with God.
The Old Testament prophet Isaiah, six or 700
years before the Messiah was even born, foretold
of the Messiah's deity.
Isaiah chapter nine, verse six is for unto
us.
A child is born speaking of his humanity
and unto us a son is given and
the government will be upon his shoulder and
his name will be called wonderful counselor, mighty.
God, hardly a fourth century invention by the
church.
The Old Testament was already predicting or prophesying
that very fact that the Messiah would be
yes, a child speaking of his humanity, but
he would also be God speaking of his
deity.
In addition to the testimony of Isaiah in
the Old Testament, the disciples in Christ and
the New Testament, there's a testimony again of
the church fathers in the second century, still
long before the fourth century council of Nicaea,
men like Ignatius polycarp, Justin Martyr, Iranius and
Clement of Alexandria, just to name some over
and over in their writings, affirm that Jesus
was God incarnate.
And that is a fact in the writings.
They refer to Jesus in a variety of
ways.
And you see some there on the screen
calling him God incarnate God and man manifest
deity, our Lord and God and so on.
Not only do the biblical writers and the
church fathers affirm that the deity of Christ
predates Constantine, but now archaeologists have affirmed this
to be the case as well.
On November 5th, just about five or six
months ago, Israeli archaeologists made an amazing announcement
there in Megiddo in Northern Israel, the site
of Armageddon here sometime in the future.
Just a few months ago, archaeologists discovered the
remains of the oldest Christian church ever discovered.
The evidence reveals that this church dates as
far back as the second or third century
AD, at least one to two centuries before
the time of Constantine and the council of
Nicaea in the fourth century.
The remains included a Greek styled mosaic entryway
to the church that bore an amazing inscription.
And you can see the photographers there all
on the scene to take photos of it.
What you are about to see here on
the screens is the very first archaeological discovery
ever mentioning Jesus Christ.
Up until November 5th, November 2005, there's never
been one archaeological discovery or piece of evidence
that would demonstrate Jesus actually lived.
We know from literary evidence that Jesus lived.
The New Testament authors wrote of him.
The Jewish Talmud mentions him.
Flavius Josephus mentions him.
But for skeptics and critics of the Christian
faith, sometimes writings aren't enough because they think,
well, maybe the Christians contaminated Josephus' writings.
Maybe they just doctored them up to make
it look like Jesus lives.
Skeptics like things written in stone, right?
God gave it to him five months ago.
There it is on the screen.
If you could read Greek, you could see
that the name Jesus Christ is right there
beneath the arrow.
Foxnews.com reported this.
They said this regarding this discovery.
They said two mosaics inside the church, one
covered with fish.
And you see the photo on the screen
there, which was an ancient Christian symbol that
predates the cross.
Tell the story of a Roman officer and
a woman named a ketose who donated money
to build the church in the memory of
the God.
Jesus Christ.
Not only does this recent discovery help reinforce
now the fact that Jesus actually did exist,
but it helps establish the fact that the
early church believed Jesus was God long before
the time of Constantine in the fourth century.
This amazing inscription guys predates the time of
Constantine by at least a hundred years.
What did the inscription say?
That the church was dedicated to the God,
Jesus Christ, not the mortal prophet, Jesus Christ,
the mere man, Jesus Christ.
No, the early church was already worshiping him
as God before the time of Constantine.
So take that Dan Brown for Dan Brown
to suggest in his book that up until
three 25 AD, Jesus's followers viewed him as
a mortal man.
Again, demonstrates either an ignorance of the facts
or a willingness to suppress the facts.
We've got the sayings of the disciples, the
writings of the church fathers, the discovery in
Megiddo, all of which we believe thoroughly and
soundly refute Dan Brown's assertion.
So we've looked at the Da Vinci code
and how it airs when it comes to
the corruption of the scriptures.
The C the O reminds us of how
the Da Vinci code airs when it speaks
of the origin of the deity of Christ.
Thirdly, let's consider the D and this reminds
us of how the Da Vinci code airs
when it speaks of developments of Sunday worship,
the developments of Sunday worship.
Christianity, the book says, honored the Jewish Sabbath
of Saturday.
Stop there for a sec.
Basically, he's going to say that Christians used
to meet on Saturdays.
It was only because of Constantine that we
even meet on Sundays now.
OK, he goes on to say, he says,
but Constantine shifted it.
He shifted the day to coincide with the
pagans veneration day of the sun.
To this day, most churchgoers, including those at
Calvary Chapel Vista attend services on Sunday morning
with no idea that they are there on
account of the pagan sun gods weekly tribute
sun day.
This is absolutely false.
All available evidence indicates that Christians were meeting
together long before the time of Constantine and
they were meeting together on Sundays.
The Bible makes that very clear.
Acts chapter 20, if you're taking notes, verse
seven, as well as First Corinthians chapter 16,
verse two, both of which were written at
least 200 years before Constantine was born.
Both of these passages talk about believers coming
together, breaking bread and studying the word of
God on, quote, the first day of the
week.
Sunday, a day that the early church referred
to as the Lord's day in Revelation chapter
one, verse 10.
Gathering together on the first day of the
week had nothing at all to do with
Constantine.
It had everything to do with the fact
that Sunday was the day of Christ's resurrection
and post resurrection appearances.
The church became accustomed to Jesus suddenly appearing
and meeting with them on the first day
of the week.
And so they began to meet on the
first day of the week as a commemoration
of the resurrection and also as an anticipation
of seeing Christ again.
So not only does the Bible tell us
that the early church Christians met on the
first day of the week, we also have
numerous other early extra biblical sources that affirm
this as well, including the church fathers.
Once again, Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Iranius and Cyprian
all mentioned the fact that the early church
was gathering together on Sundays long before they
even had heard of Constantine.
These guys lived centuries before Constantine.
And then we even have plenty of the
younger.
He was a secular governor, not even a
Christian.
And he writes in his writings about the
gathering together of the Christians underneath his jurisdiction
on the first day of the week, early
in the second century.
The Didache, which was an early church writing
written in about AD 80 or so also
mentions this fact.
So all of these extra biblical sources, again,
refute Dan Brown's fanciful imagination, primarily because all
of these sources I've just cited predate Constantine.
He was not born until approximately 274 AD.
The early church, though, we see from these
different evidences was already meeting on the first
day of the week.
So once again, Dan Brown receives a failing
grade in history.
Now we've talked about three evidences.
Let's move on to our fourth one.
The E in our acronym reminds us of
how the book airs when it speaks of
the establishment of the canon of Scripture, the
establishment of the canon of Scripture.
We're not talking about canons as in guns.
The word canon with one in is a
term that means standard.
And so when we speak of the canon
of Scripture, we are referring to the standard
collection of 66 divinely inspired books that God
determines should make up the Bible.
By the second century, the complete canon of
Scripture, exactly as we have it, 66 books
was already popularly being recognized.
But when it comes to the establishment of
the canon of Scripture, Dan Brown again makes
many inaccurate statements in the book.
We'll just consider a couple here quickly.
Lee Tebing in the book says more than
80 gospels were considered for the New Testament,
and yet only a relative few were chosen
for inclusion.
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John among them, 80
gospels.
This is absolutely false.
There's no historical evidence to back up a
statement such as this.
Nobody, not even the most liberal scholars that
I can come across seem to know where
Dan Brown got his figure about the existence
of 80 gospels.
I know where he got it.
Two horns, a tail, right?
Even if you count all the heretical, apocryphal
writings of or about Jesus, there were less
than 20 documents in the first four centuries
that could even be called gospels or accounts
of Jesus's life.
The Gnostics, the heretics tried to sneak in
some gospels such as the Gospel of Thomas,
the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Mary
Magdalene.
These were fraudulent second and third century inventions
by the Gnostics.
They claim to be you know, they tried
to make them appear to have been written
by these, you know, earlier disciples.
The early church quickly recognized them, though, as
being unauthentic, primarily because of the heresy contained
in them and the historical errors and that
kind of a thing.
But Sophie responds to this whole 80 gospels
claim in the book.
And she says on the tail, you know,
just right on the tails of this last
quote, she says, well, who chose which gospels
to include?
There were 80 gospels.
Well, how did we get the four gospels
that are in the Bible?
Lee Teebing says, aha, the fundamental irony of
Christianity, the Bible as we know it today
was correlated by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine
the Great.
He's the one that put the Bible together.
Dan Brown says again, though he airs by
suggesting something so ludicrous.
Constantine had nothing to do with the coalition
or canonization of the Bible.
Someone tried to tell you that asked him
for one shred of evidence that supports that
to be the case.
Don't let them cite Dan Brown's book either.
Make them go somewhere intelligent.
The Old Testament was compiled by the Jews
long before Jesus was even born and certainly
long before the time of Constantine.
As for the New Testament, its formation began
by the end of the first century, still
200 years before Constantine was born.
Constantine Dan Brown goes on to say this.
He says constantly commission and finance a new
Bible which omitted those gospels that spoke of
Christ's human traits and embellished those gospels that
make him godlike.
Basically, he's saying here that Constantine, he doctored
up the Bible.
He you know, he did away with the
authentic gospel that told us the real truth
about Jesus and the fact that he was
just a human and just a mere man.
And he had Matthew, Mark, Luke and John
all doctored up and changed so as to
make it appear that Jesus was actually God.
Well, again, Brown is mistaken.
There's again no historical evidence that any of
the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke or John
were ever embellished in the fourth century.
Neither is there any record that these texts
were ever recalled in order to be embellished.
Recalling thousands of handwritten manuscript copies of the
gospels would have been impossible.
And if it had ever been pulled off,
you can bet that the early church would
have written about it in their histories of
the church.
And none of the church fathers or church
historians ever mentioned any such thing as Constantine
tampering with the Bible, embellishing the four gospels
and so on.
There's not a shred of historical evidence to
support Dan Brown's claims in the book.
And he knows that most people will not
investigate that fact, though, and they'll just believe
it.
And he's laughing all the way to the
bank.
Another quote from the book, he says, the
earlier gospels, the ones that, according to Dan
Brown, supposedly told us the real truth about
Jesus.
He says these were outlawed.
Constantine outlawed the real gospels that told us
just about the humanity of Jesus.
They were gathered up and burned.
But he says, fortunately for historians, some of
the gospels that Constantine attempted to eradicate managed
to survive.
The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in the
1950s, hidden in a cave near Qumran in
the Judean desert.
First off, there were never any earlier gospels.
The earliest gospel records regarding Jesus's life are
the four gospels that are in the Bible.
The so-called gospels that Dan Brown's thinks
are the earlier authentic gospels weren't written until
the second or third century, long after the
four gospels were written.
Secondly, there's no evidence that Constantine ever gave
orders to even destroy any of the later
heretical gospels.
Dan Brown seems content in just inventing things
out of thin air.
Then he said that, fortunately, some of them
have survived.
And he says the Dead Sea Scrolls, that's
them.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, he goes on to
suggest in the book, actually reveal to us
the real truth about Jesus.
This is absolutely laughable.
The Dead Sea Scrolls included portions of every
Old Testament book, except Esther, some commentaries on
the Old Testament, some extra biblical works and
some secular documents.
And that's it.
Nothing to do with Jesus at all.
Many books have been written about the Dead
Sea Scrolls, and one after another, they've documented
and clearly stated that the Dead Sea Scrolls
did not contain anything mentioning Jesus.
You will not find the word Jesus mentioned
a single time in any of the Dead
Sea Scrolls.
The Qumran community, which wrote and preserved these
scrolls, existed long before the time of Christianity.
They had nothing to do with Jesus or
Christianity.
Most of their documents were written centuries before.
So again, we find Dan Brown to be
unreliable as a source of church history.
Now, fifthly, and finally, let's wrap this up.
The S reminds us of how the book
airs when it speaks of the singleness of
our Lord, the singleness of our Lord.
The book says the early church needed to
convince the world that the mortal prophet, the
mere man, Jesus, they need to convince the
world that the mortal prophet Jesus was a
divine being.
Therefore, any gospels that described early earthly rather
aspects of Jesus's life had to be omitted
from the Bible.
Unfortunately for the early editors, one particularly troubling
earthly theme kept recurring in the gospels.
Mary Magdalene, more specifically her marriage to Jesus
Christ.
It's a matter of historical record.
End quote.
Now, Brown even goes on to assert that
Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a child together
named Sarah and that it was Jesus's intention
that Mary Magdalene become the head of the
church and that she would pass the torch
on to women after her death and that
today women should actually be the overseers in
the church.
The book says, though, that it was the
greedy, power hungry disciples that kept this from
happening.
According to Brown, they forced Mary Magdalene and
poor little Sarah to flee for their lives,
and they ended up in France, where their
bloodline, Jesus's bloodline continues to this day.
Since that time, Dan Brown says that the
church has conducted the greatest coverup in human
history.
Of course, all of this is ridiculous, and
scholars from every end of the spectrum have
pointed out that there are no historical facts
to support Dan Brown's far-fetched ideas.
It's long been believed by scholars from every
persuasion, liberal and conservative, that Jesus was unmerit.
You can't find any reliable scholarship that says
otherwise.
There's no mention of a wife when he
was in ministry.
There's no mention of a wife at his
trial or crucifixion, and there's no mention of
a wife after his resurrection, even though repeatedly
the authors of the New Testament tell of
Jesus's other family members.
They mentioned numerous times his mother, his father,
his stepfather, Joseph.
His brothers and sisters are mentioned even by
name, but no mention of a wife, and
that's because he had no wife.
Dr. Paul Mayer, he's a Harvard graduate, best
-selling author, and now a professor of ancient
history at Western Michigan University, said this regarding
this issue of Jesus and his marriage, supposed
marriage.
He said, if there were even one spark
of evidence from antiquity that Jesus even may
have gotten married, then as a historian, I
would have to weigh this evidence against the
total absence of such information in either scripture
or the early church traditions.
But there is no such spark, not a
scintilla of evidence anywhere in historical sources, even
where one might expect to find such claims
in the bizarre second century apocryphal Gospels.
There is no reference that Jesus ever got
married.
End quote.
None of the Gnostic writings that Dan Brown
seems to be so fond of, whether it
be the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of
Philip, the so-called Gospels, anyways, the Gospel
of Truth is another one.
None of these contain any references to a
marriage between Mary and Jesus.
Even the ultra liberal scholar by the name
of John Dominic Crossan agrees he's part of
the Jesus seminar.
I don't know if you've heard of them.
They're the most liberal theological think tank on
the face of the planet.
They deny the physical resurrection of Jesus.
They deny that he's even crucified on a
cross.
That's how liberal they are.
And listen to what he says regarding Jesus's
marriage, supposed marriage.
He says there is no evidence that Jesus
was married.
Multiple indications that he was not and no
early text suggesting wife or children.
End quote.
John Dominic Crossan.
One of the few things that the vast
majority of liberal and conservative scholars can agree
upon is that Jesus was single.
Dan Brown is out in left field when
he says that the marriage of Jesus to
Mary Magdalene is a matter of historical record.
As if anyone who would do the research
and look into the history would easily discover
that this is a fact.
So again, this demonstrates his willingness to go
against the facts to advance his radical ideas.
If you have read the book here in
conclusion and have had nagging doubts or questions
that have troubled your mind or robbed you
in any way of the confidence you've had
in the Bible, you can rest assured this
morning that this book is built upon the
sand of Dan Brown's fanciful imagination.
I want to encourage you and all of
us, whether you've read the book or not.
Number one to trust the Bible.
The Bible, of course, has been substantiated by
hundreds of fulfilled prophecies, thousands of archaeological discoveries,
manuscript evidence, and so on.
We can take our stand upon this book.
It's been scrutinized and criticized and challenged for
2000 years, and yet it stands today more
reliable than ever, just like God promised.
Secondly, I would encourage you to be a
noble minded Breon.
The church needs more people who are slow
to believe and quick to think.
A lot of people, even in the church,
just believe what they hear, believe what they
read, believe what they hear in the movies,
believe what their pastor tells them.
First Thessalonians 521 tells us to test all
things and to hold fast to that which
is true.
We're to be like the Brians there in
Acts chapter 17, who even examined the teachings
of the apostle Paul to make sure that
what he was saying was true.
We need to be that that kind of
a believer.
And then thirdly, we need to use the
popularity of the novel and the forthcoming movie
to look for opportunities to discuss with unbelievers
and our neighbors and our coworkers about the
reliability of the Bible and the real Jesus
guys.
What the devil means for evil.
God can turn around and use for good
if we're on the lookout for God to
use it in that way.
And I believe that he will.
Amen.
Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we do thank you today, God,
that we can have a faith that is
grounded in fact, Lord, a faith that can
be verified by the facts of history, archaeological
discoveries, fulfilled prophecies and, and so on.
Lord, we're thankful that our faith stands up
to scrutiny and attack and challenges even today
by this author, Dan Brown, who's had great
success in an undiscerning world and attacking Christianity.
But Lord, we know better.
We've taken the time to investigate the facts
and the history of the early church, Lord,
and we see Dan Brown's theories found wanting.
And God, we want to pray right now,
Lord, for those in our country and around
the world who would be exposed to these
ideas and Dan Brown's book or in the
movie, Lord, maybe they've already been exposed.
We want to pray Lord, that you would
give them discernment, Lord, that you would turn
on the lights, that you would help them
not to be so gullible.
God, we pray that you would use us
even in the months ahead, Lord, in the
lives of many people whom we work with,
whom we go to school with, who live
in our neighborhoods.
Lord, we pray that you would direct our
steps, that you would give us divine opportunities,
Lord, to stand before people who have questions
about Christianity, Lord, that we might point them
in the right direction or that we might
offer them the truth and Lord steer them
toward a relationship with you.
And Lord, we do pray knowing that today
on a Sunday morning, there's probably at least
a handful of people right now in our
midst who don't even have a relationship with
you.
Maybe today's the first time they've even come
to church in years, Lord.
God, we pray today would be the day
of salvation for them.
Lord, we pray that today they would realize
that the Bible is absolutely trustworthy and Lord,
the message that it contains in it about
your son's death on the cross for our
salvation is true and it requires a decision.
Lord, you've placed the good news in our
laps, the good news that we can have
our sins forgiven, that we can have eternal
life with you, God.
Lord, but it's up to us to turn
from our sins and to put our trust
in you and to put our belief in
that message.
And God, we pray today would be the
day that many people would do that or
whether they hear this study on a CD
or watch it on a DVD.
We pray that right now, Lord, you would
give them just a conviction of sin, but
a reminder of your grace and your love.
If that's you, if you want to today
begin a relationship with God, have your sins
forgiven, escape God's righteous wrath and judgment in
eternity and hell, you can turn from your
sins today and acknowledge Jesus Christ is Lord
and you can invite him into your life
with a prayer like this.
Dear God, I admit that I've sinned against
you, but yet I believe that you still
love me and you're offering mercy today.
So Lord, I ask that you'd forgive me
of my sins.
I pray that you would come into my
life and that you would be my God.
I believe that Jesus died on the cross
for me and rose again from the grave.
God, help me to follow you from this
day forward in Jesus name.
Amen.