Refuting Modern Myths about Jesus Christ

good afternoon or good morning or good evening whatever it happens to be where you are when you're watching this welcome to the answers Easter event my name is Tim Chaffee and I am the Content Manager for the attractions division at Answers in Genesis that means I have the unique privilege of developing the material that you see the all of the the wording on the signage in the Ark Encounter and at the Creation Museum which unfortunately at this time during the whole Cove at 19 virus we've had to shut those down but we're still continuing to provide content for everyone available on the web and that's what this conference is all about as well as we're approaching Easter Sunday or Resurrection Sunday as many of us like to say we are still presenting this material for people so I love what I get to do I have such a unique privilege to work with such a great team at the in the attractions division the people who make all these wonderful exhibits and then I also get to come out and share the good news about Jesus Christ and that's what we're gonna be talking about in this session we're gonna be looking at the person and work of Jesus Christ and in our day there are a lot of myths about who Jesus is so we're gonna be looking at those in just a moment but we know that Jesus spent most of his adult life in the land of Israel and actually had a an opportunity to go there with my wife a couple years ago loved it would love to go back someday and got to see so many of the sites fit that he obviously saw as he was there and this is really the most important place we can think about as far as history goes because of all the things that he did for us when God Himself became one of us and then came to the earth and lived a sinless life and went to the cross in our place dying for our sins and then rising from the dead right here in the Land of Israel near Jerusalem so if we were to ask this question to the average Christian or at least to most Christians who is Jesus Christ what do you think we would get as far as an answer well I hope we'd get some of these or maybe all of these and maybe more he's the son of God he's the second person of the Trinity he's the way the truth and the life that's what he said about himself he our sinless Savior he was crucified and he rose again three days later he's our great High Priest and he's our returning judge he's Emmanuel that means God with us he's fully God and fully man and he's king of kings and Lord of lords and so much more we could say about him in fact we opened up an exhibit at the Creation Museum a few years ago called Christ's cross consummation where we walked through his life and ministry and the work that he did for us and here's an image of that talking about his birth and then we've got all the way through the crucifixion and resurrection and the Ascension and his return that's coming so just in in one area of this exhibit we talk about the Old Testament and what it says about who the Messiah would be because God is giving his people he's telling them this is what I'm gonna this is what it's gonna be like when the Messiah comes when God becomes a man when he becomes one of us here's what it's going to be like he's going to be born of a virgin in Bethlehem he's going to be a descendant of Abraham Isaac Jacob Judah David he's going to be an obedient prophet he's going to be a faithful priest he's going to be the eternal king he will be God with us as we mentioned a little bit ago he will be a healer of the Deaf the blind the sick in the disease he's gonna be a great light in Galilee he's gonna be a parable teller he'll enter Jerusalem on a Colt he's gonna be hailed as the Messiah and yet he's gonna be rejected by his own people he'll be betrayed by a friend for thirty pieces of silver he'd be severely beaten he would be mocked and ridiculed then his hands would be pierced and his feet would be pierced and Lots would be cast for his clothing he would die as a sacrifice for our sins he would be buried in a rich man's tomb but he'd only be in the grave for a short while and he would live again after his death and then he would be raised to the right hand of God all of those things were prophesied hundreds of years before they happened so the Bible gives us great detail about who the Messiah would be and what he would be like and then Jesus of Nazareth came and He fulfilled all of those things and we here in that exhibit we talk about each of those prophecies but if we were to ask this question to let's say your typical college student today or to many unfortunately many high schoolers or middle schoolers who is Jesus Christ well a lot of times are gonna get a lot of different answers it might look something like this because of these best-selling books that are out there these popular level books that teach all sorts of false ideas about Jesus and so we're gonna spend our time in this session looking at a lot of these modern myths about who Jesus is the first one actually is becoming quite popular thanks to the internet and that is did Jesus even exist you know as Christians obviously we take that for granted we know that we have the Word of God scripture tells us he existed so we know that he did okay we have complete confidence in that because it's the Word of God but for so many people out there they're being told there's no evidence for Jesus's existence and then they buy into that and they think Christians are just believing something there's no evidence for they think that's what faith means of course that's not the definition of faith according to Scripture but here's what the Freedom From Religion Foundation had a billboard that said nobody died for our sins Jesus Christ is a myth in 2007 there was a film called zeitgeist and it's an in this this movie was trying to say that Jesus was just copied from all these other pagan beliefs which we're gonna get to in a little bit they'll say furthermore is there any non biblical historical evidence of any person living with the name of Jesus the Son of Mary who traveled about with 12 followers having healing people and the like there are numerous historians who live in and around the Mediterranean either during or soon after the assumed life of Jesus how many of these historians document this figure not one and then that that film zeitgeist was copied almost verbatim by Bill Maher in his film Religulous so he promoted the same ideas in this book by Kenneth Humphreys he called Jesus never existed Christianity was the ultimate product of religious syncretism in the ancient world its emergence owed nothing to a holy carpenter there were many Jesus's but the fable was a cultural construct the twelve disciples are as fictitious as their master invented to legitimize the claims of the early churches the original Mary was not a virgin that idea was borrowed from pagan goddesses scholars have known all this for more than 200 years but priests craft is a highly profitable business and finances an industry of deceit to keep the show on the road so this is what young people are being taught this is what you can can find website after website or video after video on YouTube about and they can make a pretty what looks like a pretty convincing case because long as you can write something that looks you know legible or that you can actually read or if you can make a video that seems authoritative you're gonna convince people especially people who are already looking for reasons to not believe in the Son of God Bart Ehrman is one of the most popular writers out there in terms of in terms of biblical criticism and textual criticism in fact he is somebody who grew up in an evangelical home and then he went to Moody Bible Institute and he went to Wheaton College and then he went off to Princeton Theological Seminary he said after a while he lost his faith for a while he called himself a happy agnostic now he calls himself an agnostic atheist and here's what he said in his book did Jesus exist so again this is not somebody who is trying to promote Christianity and and try to defend our position but here's what he says every week I received two or three emails asking me whether Jesus existed as a human being when I started getting these emails some years ago now I thought the question was rather peculiar and I did not take it seriously of course Jesus existed everyone knows he existed don't they but the questions kept coming and soon I began to wonder why are so many people asking I discovered to my surprise an entire body of literature devoted to the question of whether or not there was ever a real man Jesus I should say at the outset that none of this literature is written by scholars trained in the New Testament or early Christian studies teaching at the major or even the minor accredited theological seminaries divinity schools universities or colleges of North America or Europe or anywhere else in the world all the thousands of scholars of early Christianity who do teach at such schools none of them to my knowledge has any doubts that Jesus existed the historical evidence for Jesus's existence is overwhelming and we'll look at just a little bit of about a little bit about that but this is why Bart Ehrman would say of course he existed in fact the vast majority of scholars agree he existed the vast majority agree that he died on the cross even if they don't believe in him and believe that he rose from the dead and believe that he's the only way the father they still believe that these things happened in history but skeptics will say that the Bible is the only source of information about the life of Jesus he saw that in one of the quotes earlier and since those writers obviously had an agenda to promote the Christian faith you can't trust what they say about Jesus here's a Jim Walker said devastating to historians there occurs not a single contemporary writing that mentions Jesus all documents about Jesus came well after the life of the alleged Jesus from either unknown authors people who had never met an earthly Jesus her from fraudulent mythical or allegorical writings where are all the contemporary sources for the life of Jesus you can't count the Bible see there it is you can't count the Bible because they all had an agenda and the Gospels were written a generation or two later why didn't any Roman or Jewish historians write about him that's a great question and we'll deal with that in just a moment but let me ask this question first obviously Jim Walker who wrote this has an agenda doesn't he so using his own logic we can't trust anything he says either and that goes for anybody at any time at any place because every one of us have an agenda it's not about does the person have an agenda it's about what is truth what really happened and so even somebody with a bias can tell you what actually happened and it can be trustworthy so can we trust what the skeptics say about Jesus well not according to their standard but here's what we need to realize you know the Bible is not just one book so when they say the the Bible is the only source of information about Jesus that's not just one source now as Christians we believe that the Holy Spirit inspired the writing that was there so ultimately we would say that the Holy Spirit is the the author but there are at least eight different writers in the New Testament and most of them were eyewitnesses to the things they wrote about most of them knew Jesus and walked around and talked with him and learned from him and so you'd have to deny every single thing that every one of these guys says about Jesus I mean these people who say never existed they're not just denying the miracles they're saying this person was complete made up and look at what John writes in his first epistle and pay attention to how he how he emphasizes that the eyewitness nature of being able to be around Jesus look at all the terms he used to talk about the census that which was from the beginning which we have heard which we have seen with our eyes which we have looked upon which our hands have handled concerning the word of life the life was manifested and we have seen and bear witness and declare to you that eternal life which was with the father and manifested to us that which we have seen and heard we declare to you that you also may have fellowship with us and truly our Fellowship is with the father and with his son Jesus Christ John emphasizes over and over again that they saw him that they heard him but when a skeptic asked this question or when they challenged Christianity on this point they say there's no ancient historians who wrote about Jesus there are a bunch of people living in that time in and around the Mediterranean and none of them wrote about Jesus you know what I do I just turned the question aback around on them and I said can you give me the name of one tell me the name of one historian who lived at that time who should have written about Jesus but didn't you want to know what the response usually is silence they don't have one now there was one young skeptic that was talking to me before and I asked that question and after a couple of days he came back with two names the first one was Marcus belly is particular his history covered the time from the Trojan War and the third 12th to 13th century BC all the way up to the death of Libya in AD 29 and he died two years later in 1831 do you want to take a wild guess as to why particular didn't write about the life of Jesus it's because he's writing from Rome and Jesus is in and around Jerusalem and in Israel and his ministry is just getting started when particular stopped writing so why would he write about somebody who lives 1,400 miles away whose ministry is just getting started so we shouldn't expect particular to write about him the next name that was given to me was memnon of heraclea he wrote a history of his city heraclea potica and the tyrants who ruled it but we don't even know when it was that he wrote some people think in the second century AD some people think it was a little bit earlier than that why would he write about a Jewish rabbi 700 miles away when his history is just about his town and those are the only two names that people have given me so far but there's a book that's been published a few years ago written by a guy named Michael Paul kovitch and he lists a hundred and twenty six different historians and writers who should have written about Jesus but didn't a hundred and twenty-six of them so I'm gonna read a lengthy quote here and this is by from a website called history for atheists and this website is actually put together by an atheist historian so at Answers in Genesis we have a certain articles that are dedicated to arguments that creationists don't use there's because there's some arguments that are out there that are either unsubstantiated maybe they're just really bad arguments and we're just saying and we hear people say I'm say you know what that's not really helping our cause so let's let's avoid using these arguments and that's really what he's doing in this article because he hears all these atheists out there people who believe the same thing he does they're saying there's no evidence for Jesus saying sometimes that's absurd and here's here's what he says so bear with me during this lengthy quote most of the list compiled by the aerospace engineer Michael Paul kovitch mentioned above for example is padded by pretty much anyone who wrote anything in the period around the time of Jesus which makes his claim that 126 writers somehow should have mentioned Jesus rather ridiculous to begin with Paul kovitch claims writers that should have mentioned Jesus despite the fact we do not have any actual writings from these people at all the emperor Titus for example how kapal kovitch assess the lack of mentions of Jesus and the completely non-existent writings of Titus I have no idea and Titus is not an isolated example no less than 47 of the writers Paul kovitch lists have no surviving writings at all only slightly less silly than this are the writers who feature on the list despite having died before Jesus was born so Paul kovitch lists Lysimachus without noting which of the several writers of that name he's referring to not that it matters given that they all died in the BCS and so unless he they invented time machines could not really have mentioned Jesus given that he had yet to be born then we have people like silliest italic as' and Gaius valerius flaccus who were at least born in the AEDs but who wrote works that focused on events long before Jesus's time so silliest attack italic is wrote a poem of the second Punic War and so set centuries before Jesus's time well valerius flaccus is argonautica referred to above because it alludes to the eruption of Vesuvius was about jason and the argonauts and so similarly had no reason to mention Jesus equally ridiculous other claims that Serrano's who wrote a book on gynecology front earnest who wrote a book on aqueducts and Decimus Valerius a cicadas whose only known writing is a letter about a stolen pig all should have mentioned Jesus most apakah list is so patently stupid that I find myself wondering if he wrote it as a satirical parody of just how bad this kind of argument can be remember that's from an atheist telling his fellow atheists stop using this argument and then he goes through six different writers who do have some surviving writings who did write within a generation or two of Jesus and that were on Paul kovitch is list and he shows why it's still pretty absurd to think that they should have written about him for example Gallio who mentioned in the book of Acts as this proconsul we do have a surviving letter from him and it's written to his brother about some of the affair that were going on in his city okay nothing about what's going on is real in Jerusalem so why would he have written about Jesus at that time in that letter to his brother but let's examine that claim a little closer only the Bible talks about Jesus that's the only early source of information we have about Jesus well we have all of these writers in writings as well so let's go through some of these we have Flavius Josephus many of you have heard of him before he was a Jewish general who was captured during the war against the Romans and in the late 60s and he records the history of the Roman conquest of Israel the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 and all battles that went with that and then he also recorded or wrote down a history of the Jewish people and in his writings he speaks of James who was called the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ so here's somebody who was born just a few years after the crucifixion and resurrection growing up in the same culture and he says here's somebody the the brother of Jesus so he mentions Jesus and then there's another more popular quote and this one is disputed and you'll see why now there was about this time Jesus a wise man if it be lawful to call him a man for he was one who wrought surprising feats he was the Christ he appeared to them alive again the third day as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him can you see why scholars question whether or not Josephus a Jewish man who did not believe in Jesus as the Messiah would write these words and we also have other other texts from him we have other manuscripts from him that don't have these words and so this is disputed and it's very unlikely that he actually wrote many of those words what probably happened is that some Christian along the way embellished his statements and so scholars have agreed that there really was something there to begin with and they looked at some of the other documents we have from him and they've come up with this now there was about this time Jesus a wise man for he was a doer of startling deeds a teacher of such men has received the truth with pleasure and he gained a following both among many Jews and and many of Greek origin and when Pilate at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us condemned him to to the cross those that loved him at the first did not forsake him and the tribe of Christians so named from him are not extinct at this day so Josephus did write about Jesus and he's within a generation or two and then we have thallus now none of his writings have survived but we do have some of his wording recorded by Julius africanus he wrote he was a historian who wrote in Greek and he wrote a three-volume history of the world and in hid in there he was talking about the darkness that covered the land for three hours while Jesus is on the cross he said on the whole world they're pressed a most fearful darkness and the rocks were rent by an earthquake and many places in Judea and other districts were thrown down this darkness ballast in the third book of his history called as appears to me without reason an eclipse of the Sun okay so that was thought that there was an eclipse going on at that time it wasn't an eclipse it was at the wrong time of the month where you could actually have an eclipse to bring darkness on the land during the day where the Sun could be eclipsed and by the way those only lasts for a few minutes if you're in the path of totality but Jesus was crucified right around Passover and that means that always happened around the time of a full moon the only time you get those eclipses is during the new moon so it's at the wrong time and month so it wasn't that it was something that was supernatural or something that God did miraculously well Jesus is on the cross I needed something similar to the Egyptians as well he brought darkness on the land we have plenty the younger who was a Roman author he served as the governor of both India and Asia Minor and he's the nephew of plenty of the elder that's why he's called the younger and he's recognized one of the world's greatest letter writers and he said this Christians were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light when they sang an alternate versus a hymn to Christ as to a god what did he just say Christians believed about Jesus that he was God and bound themselves by a solemn oath not to do any wicked deeds but to never commit any fraud theft or adultery never to falsify their word nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up after which it was their custom to separate and then reassemble to partake of food but food in an ordinary and innocent kind they don't sound all that bad do they the way he describes them Christians were honorable people and they believed that the person they were worshipping the Christ is God so for the people who say the skeptics would say oh the whole idea that Jesus was never considered to be God until centuries later we're going to get to that by the end of this presentation you'll hear some of those claims that would according to to plenty that's just false how about Tacitus he's a Roman historian who lived over the reigns of six different Roman empires and he's known as the greatest historian of the ancient world known for his moral integrity he said this consequently to get rid of the report Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations called Christians by the populace Christos from whom the name had its origin suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurator's Pontius Pilate any most mischievous superstition thus checked for the moment bro again broke out not only in Judea the first source of the evil but even in Rome were all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their Center and become popular accordingly an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty then upon their information an immense multitude was convicted not so much for the crime of firing the city as of hatred against mankind mockery of every sort was added to their deaths covered with the skins of beasts they were torn by dogs and perished or knit or were nailed to crosses or were doomed to the flames and burnt to serve as a nightly illumination when daylight had expired Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle and was exhibiting that a show in the circus while he mingled with the people in a dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car hence even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment there arose a feeling of compassion for it was not as it seemed for the public good but to glut one man's cruelty that they were being destroyed so he said quite a bit about Christians in the end the torment they endured at the hands of Nero but he tells us that they were following Jesus who was crucified during the days of Pontius Pilate which lines up exactly with what the Bible says and here you have the greatest Roman historian write about it how can you have skeptics say there's no ancient writers who wrote about Jesus because there are in fact there's plenty of them how about suet o Gnaeus he was the chief secretary of Emperor Hadrian and he had access to the Imperial records he said because the Jews at Rome can take continuous disturbances at the instigation of crest duce he expelled them from the city now you notice the difference in spelling there normally it would be crew sous with an eye instead of an e now that is almost certainly just a misspelling because he was used to hearing it rather than actually seeing it written down but there's some debate about that but he also wrote this punishments were also inflicted on the Christian's a sect professing a new and mischievous religious belief so according to atonia s-- what Christians were teaching was a brand new idea we're gonna hear in just a little bit that many people are saying many skeptics are saying oh they just copied from pagan beliefs and yet here's a writer saying this is a new belief system lucien with a greek satirist and he criticized christians for being gullible people and he uses some rather colorful language to describe us the Christians you know worship a man to this day wait this is in the second century they're saying that that Christians worship Jesus the distinguished person is who introduced their novel writes their new beliefs right and was crucified on that account you see these misguided creatures start with a general conviction that they are immortal for all time which explains the contempt of death and voluntary self devotion which are so common among them and then it was impressed on them by their original lawgiver that they are all brothers from the moment that they are converted and deny the gods of Greece and worshipped the crucified sage and live after his laws all this they take quite on faith with the result that they despise all worldly goods alike regarding them merely as common property again Christians sound like they were pretty faithful what do they do they worship the crucified sage they're worshipping Jesus as God and yet now we're having skeptics say he never even existed there's nobody who wrote about him where we just had this and that the whole idea that he was God didn't come along until much later and here Lucia and saying yeah they believed he was God so what can we learn from these writings and from others that we didn't have time to get into in his book on called the historical Jesus dr. Gary Habermas went through 17 ancient non-christian sources about the life of Jesus and he says here's what we can summarize from that and these again this is not from without even using the Bible here's what you can learn about Jesus from these sources Jesus ministered in Israel had a brother named James he was a wise and virtuous man who worked miracles and accurately foretold future events he had numerous followers both Jew and Gentile he was considered to be both God and man he was worshipped as God he taught his followers about immortality and that his death was the means of life for many Jewish leaders unjustly condemned him for teaching spiritual apostasy he was executed by crucifixion under she's pilot during Tiberius as rain executioner's gambled for his clothes darkness covered the land and earthquakes occurred his teachings broke out again after his death because his followers claimed that he had risen from the dead Jesus appeared and showed the scars of crucifixion and he was exalted by God which might be a reference to his ascension all of those things you can learn about Jesus without even using the Bible from ancient non-christian sources and yet skeptics today are going around telling people there are no ancient sources about Jesus and what we just read their lines up perfectly with Scripture so did Jesus exist yes of course he did not because these ancient historians tell us he did even though that's great evidence for it the best evidence we have for that is because God's Word the infallible inerrant Word of God tells us that he did how about this one was Jesus copied from pagan gods now I'm gonna read a quote here from The Da Vinci Code in fact here's the reason I'm doing I know this is a work of fiction okay but here's what it says at the very beginning of the book all descriptions of artwork architecture documents and secret rituals in this novel are accurate and then it goes on to make a whole bunch of wild claims about who Jesus is and the reason I'm using this book is because I'm going to show you quotes that were from The Da Vinci Code which came out back in the early 2000s and then show you how in the last 10 to 15 years people are taking those ideas and putting them into non-fiction books or at least they're claiming they're nonfiction really much of it's fiction because of the false claims about Jesus and they're using the same ideas that came right from The DaVinci Code which actually was borrowed from another book and by the way this book sold over 85 million copies ok that's enough for one in every four people in America to have that's how wildly popular this book was but here's what it claims one of the characters says nothing in Christianity is original the pre-christian God Mithras called the Son of God in the light of the world was born on December 25th died and was buried in a rock tomb and then resurrected in three days by the way December 25th is also the birthday of Osiris Adonis and Dionysus the newborn Krishna was presented with gold frankincense and even Christian Lee's weekly holy day was stolen from the pagans Constantine shifted it to coincide with the pagans veneration day of the Sun really that happened at the time of Constantine's in the 300s that Christians started meeting on Sunday rather than on the Sabbath then how come in the new testament in act 20 we read now on the first day of the week when the disciples came together to break bread paul ready to depart the next day spoke to them and continued his message until midnight on what day of the week the first day of the week that was on sunday and in 1st Corinthians 16 on the first day of the week let each one of you lay something aside storing up as he may prosper that there be no collections when I come so very early on Christians were meeting on Sunday not on the Sabbath but here's the claim that this whole idea that that Jesus was just copied from these different pagan gods who all had these similar teachings about them they all had these similar stories and Jesus was just kind of made up or maybe there's a maybe that really was a person named Jesus but certainly wasn't any of these things and they just copied all these elements from pagan gods about him to promote these ideas for example in the film zeitgeist they talk about Horus they said he was born of a virgin named Isis Mary even though there's no record of her ever be Isis ever having Mary attached to the name on December 25th and it never there's never any record of December 25th being his birthday or anything and by the way that's irrelevant because the Bible never says Jesus was born on December 25th that's not to are not trying to make an argument for when he was born and what time of year any of that it just doesn't tell us it was December 25th so what is happening is here people are trying to refute popular ideas about Jesus without even knowing what scripture says his birth was marked by an Easter star he was Eastern star he was adored by three kings again a detail the Bible does not record Bible says that Magi came to visit him and never said there were three of them they just gave him three gifts again they're arguing somebody made up these details about Horus and other these other gods and are arguing against popular ideas within Christianity rather than what the Bible actually says that he was at eat the horse was allegedly a teacher at age 12 and he was baptized by something and up the Baptizer who was later beheaded there's no record of that he started his ministry at age 30 he had 12 disciples he was a miracle worker he was called the Lamb of God in the light he was crucified and rose from the dead three days later and young people are eating these things up they think wow Christians just ripped off all this mythology and they do the same thing of these other Savior figures as well they say no the Christians have borrowed from all of these well I could spend some time going through each one of them and refuting them but rather than do that let me share with you a rather humorous video by a group called Lutheran satire and you can find this on YouTube horse ruins Christmas and I'm going to let this this pastor refute these claims by Horace well thanks to all of you for coming out to our service this morning and I pray that the rest of this Christmas day is wonderful for each and every one of you not so fast preacher man behold it is I Horus Egyptian god of the Sun and value all believes that you've been celebrating the birth of your Lord Jesus you've really been celebrating the birth of me for you see thousands of years before your Jesus came around i Horus was born on December 25th I've horas was born of a virgin Horus was baptized by a man called all of the Baptizer those crucified in was resurrected three days later so you see your Jesus is nothing more than plagiarized poppycock and I laura's have come to feast upon the sorrow of you foolish Christians yeah none of the stuff you just said is true yes it is no there's no reference in Egyptian mythology to Horus being crucified or resurrected three days later there's no documentation anywhere for the existence of a figure named on up the Baptizer Horus his mother was not a virgin woman but the goddess Isis and there is no specific date anywhere tied to the birth of Horus I'm pretty sure there is actually no all of these claims and many others indicating the early Christians you linked the mythology of Horus and stuck it on top of Jesus were all complete made up by Gerald Massey in 19th century cuckoo banana Birds self-taught Egyptologist who never provided the slightest shred of evidence for any of these claims and who was laughed out of the room by every serious Egyptologist on the planet so thank you very much for your attempt to ruin our celebration of Christ's birth but I'm afraid we're all still having a very Merry Christmas Horace Horace did I say my name is Horace no no what I meant to say was behold it is I Mithras Roman Celtic God of the something something and value all believes that you've been celebrating the birth of Jesus you've really been celebrating the birth of me for you see I'm Mithras was born of a virgin I'm Mithras had 12 disciples and I Mithras gave those disciples a meal consisting of my body owned my blood sound familiar Christian dummies actually Mithras was born from a rock not of a virgin he had two companions not 12 disciples and the Mithraic meal was one he shared with the Sun God where they feasted not on his own flesh but on the flesh of a bull but even if those claims were true Christians were already confessing the virgin birth recognizing the 12 apostles and celebrating the Lord's Supper before they ever encountered any Mithraic cults so I'm afraid that you've taken neither the Holly nor the jolly out of our Christmas Mithras oh you must have misheard me I'm not Mithras I'm Lynn and value all sinks that you've no Christian on the face of the planet ever heard of kept Sokoto until the 16th century resin I'm Norse God there were a hundred and ninety-three popes before Boulder's mythology was actually written down then I'm Horus Egyptian god of the Sun you already did that one and it actually is somewhat humorous the arguments that they will use but the sad part is so many young people buy into it because they're looking for reasons to not believe the claims of Christ and we need to be prepared just like this guy is in the video to answer those questions because you can see how easily they're shot down in his book on the the resurrection of the Son of God NT right it's about 800 pages long he spent several hundred pages looking at the all the teachings about resurrection in all the different cultures and around the Mediterranean for 400 years before the time of Christ to the the 400 years afterwards and showed the whole idea the Christian view of the Resurrection was not found anywhere among those groups okay they didn't believe that somebody would come and that he would die and then rise from the dead immediately after that what they're talking about what some of the pagans believe is that their God was the Sun God or something or the the God of the harvest so every winter they would die and then they would rise again every spring that has nothing to do with what the Bible speaks everyone is talking about Jesus rising from the dead and so in his book when Paul preached in Athens nobody said ah yes a new version of Osiris and suchlike because it was a new idea in fact the whole idea of the resurrection that you would have a bodily resurrection that was abhorrent to the Greeks they hated that idea that's why it was so difficult for them to understand it that's why even the believers in Corinth Paul had to spend 58 verses in 1st Corinthians 15 explaining it to them because they really struggled that concept of a bodily resurrection not just Christ's resurrection but our own future bodily resurrection in his book Michael okona said this about these copycat claims myth there's that they're known as Christ mythos and these guys who are doing copycat teaching method are often guilty of twisting data providing false claims appealing to other sources who are also not scholars requiring an unreasonable burden of proof before acknowledging the existence of Jesus while being unaware that the scenarios they have proposed in order to address the data border on unbridled fantasy readers should understand that publishing on the World Wide Web does not make one a world-class scholar since the only credential one must have to publish on the internet is to breathe so all of these claims about copycats they stretch any sort of similarity they can find they invent facts they bring up all sorts of irrelevant details a release of modern make-believe and a lot of times what happens that the other groups actually came along later and then adopted some of the Christian beliefs in some of these cases and then people will say oh the Christians borrowed that even though Christians were already claiming that so let me allow Horace and the pastor to finish up here on this issue I don't understand if all the things that Gerald Massey said about me for complete fabrications there's no textual evidence whatsoever vital a theist like Bill Maher reference these claims as if they were true well Horace I suppose it is strange that people who insist that they won't believe anything without verifiable evidence are more than willing to believe anything without verifiable evidence as long as that thing can be used to mock the gospel but we shouldn't be surprised when people reject proof of Christ's resurrection in favor of demonstrable lies that let them remain in unbelief after all Jesus did say if they do not hear Moses and the prophets neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead I said that before Jesus did you absolutely did not well I think that summarizes it pretty well as far as this whole idea that Jesus was copied from from other pagan saviors so to speak or pagan gods the whole idea is nonsensical but again be prepared to hear that because this is what young people are being taught how about this one was Jesus married again from The Da Vinci Code the early church needed to convince the world that the mortal prophet Jesus was a divine being there for any any Gospels that described earthly aspects of Jesus's life had to be omitted from the Bible really we had to omit Gospels from the Bible that that describe earthly aspects of Jesus's life you've probably never read about Matthew Mark Luke and John about how Jesus became tired or how he became angry or how he wept any of those things right now the Bible is very clear that he was fully man and he's fully God continuing on unfortunately for the early editors one particularly troubling earthly theme kept recurring in the Gospels Mary Magdalene more specifically her marriage to Jesus Christ really where did the Gospels ever say Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene they don't and there's no early writing that says that but this is something that became very popular since the time of The DaVinci Code and even a little bit before that but this really popularized the idea in fact that's really what the whole book is about there's a spoiler alert for you one of the characters is allegedly a descendant of Jesus and Mary but these ideas were repeated about seven years ago in a book called the lost gospel by some simcha Jakob ovitch and Barry Wilson what the Vatican feared would and Dan Brown The Da Vinci Code only suspected has come true but now we have a document that claims that he was indeed married and fathered children not only this our document indicates that for some of his original followers Jesus's marriage was the most important aspect of their theology this is complete fabrication what they've done is they found a writing from the intertestamental period between the time of the close of the Old Testament and news has before Jesus's earthly ministry before his earthly life it's about Joseph from the Old Testament and his wife Ison Oz and they say well this this was really written during the Christian period even though it was written by Jude before the time of Christ and they'll say it was all just code for Jesus and Mary Magdalene because of course the early church allegedly had so much power that as they found out that people were writing this they would have put him to death that's the claims in this book again complete nonsense the early church didn't have power in fact they were being persecuted just about every place they went but this book came out at a good time for this whole idea because just a year earlier this little fragment was produced or was published maybe would be a better way to say it it was produced just a couple years before that there's a little bit of a spoiler for you but this is known as the gospel of Jesus's wife maybe you remember the news on that here's a picture of Karen King from Harvard showing off the gospel of Jesus's wife fragment well what is the Gospel of Jesus is wife well it's just a little fragment of a larger document presumably it doesn't it's cut off on both sides so you don't get to have the wording that's to the left or the right of it but here's what the translation is it's written in Coptic and it it supposedly dates back to the 4th century so even 300 years after Jesus and we're supposed to believe that this is authoritative about whether he was married or not not to me my mother gave me life and it goes on to the next line the disciples said to Jesus deny Mary is not worthy of it jesus said to them my wife there's the key phrase she is able to be my disciple let wicked people swell up as for me I am with her in order to an image there's the translation of what's on that little fragment and from this we call this people called us the gospel of Jesus's wife well how did the news report this New York Times a faded piece of papyrus refers to Jesus his wife ABC News with Jesus married ancient papyrus mentions his wife Huffington Post two years later this after some more research was done on it gospel of Jesus his wife papyrus is ancient not fake scientists and scholars say Smithsonian the gospel of Jesus his wife is most likely not a modern fake chemical analysis shows the text was written thousands of years ago I'm not sure how would be thousands of years ago if it's about Jesus because he hadn't even been crucified and resurrected thousands of years ago but that's just a little bit nitpicky there but why is Karen King the person who was able to receive this fragment the person who who gave it to her why Karen King well maybe because she's known as a feminist scholar and here's what she wrote in a book called the gospel of Mary Magdalene or Mary of Magdala about this book this astonishingly brief narrative represents a radical interpretation of Jesus's teachings as a path to inner spiritual knowledge it rejects his suffering and death as the path to eternal life it exposes the erroneous view that Mary of Magdala was a prostitute for what it is a piece of theological fiction and by the way that's about the only point in here that I would sort of agree what the Bible never says that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute it says she was a sinner it says that she had seven demons cast out of her but it never says but that she was a prostitute maybe maybe she was but again we don't know that for sure but let's continue on it presents the most straightforward and convincing argument in any early Christian writing for the legitimacy of women's leadership it offers a sharp critique of illegitimate power and a utopian vision of spiritual perfection it challenges their rather romantic views about the harmony and unanimity of the first Christians and it asks us to rethink the basis for church authority all written in the name of a woman so that might give you a clue as to why the person who discovered this fragment gave - Karen King because he knew this is something that she would really like and this you would run with it now she did publish all she did write a journal article for Harvard I believe it's Harvard theological review is what it's called and in that article she's much more cautious than she was in some of the more popular statements that were being made and the way the news media was running with it but in 2016 the Atlantic published an article called the unbelievable tale of Jesus's wife by Arielle sabar and if you want to read a really good article of documenting documentary investigative journalism this would be a great one to look up now make sure you have about an hour to read it because it's very lengthy but this author tracked down he had to go to Europe to what used to be East Germany he had to go down to Florida to try to find this guy who ended up giving the document to Caren King and when he went through all of the research he discovered that the entire thing was a complete fraud it was done by a guy named Walter Fritz who was a former student of Coptic and he was a very bright student he picked it up very easily but he was kind of more interested in the party life so he left his studies and for a while he lived in was right before when the Berlin Wall fell he lived he worked in a museum in East Germany in East Berlin and he actually stole fragments of documents there and he apparently used some of those ancient documents to forge this whole idea of the gospel of Jesus his wife and he claimed it was he confessed that he did this and yeah the reason that he chose King he marked her because he knew that she would run with it so the whole thing's a complete forgery where are all those news headlines telling us the thing was a fake okay they don't make headline news they're not on the media when this is discovered it was just back page if it's ever mentioned at all because people are looking for anything to go against what the Bible teaches about Jesus and you know what this is a important time to bring up this idea if anything comes up if there's this new discovery that allegedly settles a brand-new modern debate maybe it's just too convenient to be true so anytime something up comes up like that so there's a very hot topic and culture and then somebody finds an old document that Jesus supposedly said this about it you might want to question it for example how about Martin Smith and what's known as the Maher Sabha letter where he claims to have found part of a secret Gospel of Mark something that had been hinted at for years where there were extra verses in the Gospel of Mark somewhere and Martin Smith claimed to have found them in fact he said that he found this writing that was in Greek in the back of this this other book that had had been written in some and he found these pages and here's what it says now remember in the Gospel of Mark there's this really weird passage where when Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane there was a young man there who was wearing nothing but a linen cloth and the soldier took hold of him grabbed the cloth and he took off and fled naked there's just that one verse and mark that's a little bit strange well this writing plays off of that and look what it says but the youth looking upon him loved him and began to beseech him that he might be with him and going out of the tomb they came into the house of the youth for he was rich and after six days Jesus gave him instruction and in the evening the youth comes to him wearing a linen cloth over his naked body and he remained with him that night for Jesus was teaching him quote the mystery of the kingdom of God end quote and thence arising he returned to the other side of the Jordan what did this document just imply about Jesus and this young man that they were homosexuals would it surprise any of you that many scholars have noted that the writing that Martin Smith allegedly found the Greek writing actually matched his own Greek writing and several people who knew him said that he was a closet homosexual now many people have denied that as well so that's debatable but either way he forges this document to speak to a much more modern issue and he makes this claim about Jesus that Jesus was a homosexual and yet there's no evidence for anything like that in of course not in the gospel then of course he's not but back to this question about whether Jesus was married and by the way if you think that's offensive just wait we're gonna see that they make some even even more wild claims than that so a lot of times Christians will give kind of a knee-jerk reaction to this question of course not he he wasn't married because the church is his bride okay well first of all that that's a metaphor that's being used in the Bible the church doesn't actually become like one woman who marries Jesus that's not what it's describing is talking about the Union we have with Christ it also says that the church is his body and that he is the head of the body okay these are metaphors that are being used to help us understand our unity with Christ some people just say well that's blasphemy well think about that is it necessarily blasphemous because marriage was around before sin marriage at the beginning was very good so that's maybe not the best response either some people say well Mary Magdalene never referred to him as the husband just as her teacher well that doesn't prove anything so we need to give better responses be a little more careful in how we answer yes the Bible is silent on the issue in the sense that it never tells us in any statement Jesus was not married okay but in this case the silence is deafening because we have so many details about his life and ministry that is something that would probably come up okay talks about Peters mother-in-law and Paul even mentions that as well that that Peter is married so I mean we do have certain details about some of them Jesus knew his purpose he knew that he came to this earth not to raise us not to get married and raise a family he knew that he had come to die on the cross for our sins so would he really get married and then have to leave them when one with a young child and everything because he knows he's gonna be crucified at a certain time know that of course not the early church fathers actually denied this they said he wasn't married and it creates a lot of theological dilemmas or difficulties because Jesus is fully God and fully man and yet the Bible speaks about when two people come together husband and wife come together that the two become one flesh okay so if Jesus unites that way with a sinner what happens then and if they have children what what do they become okay they demigods what he see the problems there there is no evidence whatsoever that Jesus is married and there's all sorts of evidence to the but this is an idea anything that go against the biblical teaching about who Jesus is people will rush to it they'll buy into it so maybe you've heard this phrase the historical Jesus before is the historical Jesus different than the biblical Jesus well there's been historical Jesus studies going on since the late 1700s there's been three different quests or three different waves of this where you know started way back then where they were trying to figure out if you D mythologize the Bible if you removed the supernatural elements what can we learn about Jesus and then for a while people thought there's nothing new to learn and then since the 1950s this really picked up again this is the Jesus Seminar represents what's called the new quest and then in the 1980s there's a new movement called the third quest which actually is becoming much more in line with what scripture says about him but let's focus on the Jesus Seminar for a little bit because this is what a lot of the the television shows you see about Christianity especially at this time of year if you watch if you turn on History Channel or Discovery Channel and they have shows about their real Jesus and who he was you're gonna hear certain things and most a lot of times it comes from these people who were part of what's called the Jesus Seminar and what they did is they gather together several times during the 1980s it was a group of scholars from all different backgrounds okay mostly liberal scholars and I'm not talking about politically I'm talking about theologically how they they didn't believe the miracles in the Bible they don't believe that Jesus is the Son of God and then they get a bunch of like-minded people together they even had a filmmaker who has no theological training made some of the raunchiest films ever made in Hollywood and all these people are part of the Jesus Center and what they did is they got together to vote on the words of Jesus they use these colored beads they've used a red bead if they think Jesus surely spoke these words a pink bead if the words likely came from him a gray bead of gee if Jesus didn't say that but the ideas are kind of similar to his and a black bead if he definitely did not say this and this is considered to be scholarship can you imagine getting a room full of a Bible believing Christians together and say let's vote on the words of Jesus how well do you think the Gospels would do you'd have a hundred percent every single time in just about every single case okay yeah there are a couple verses that are disputed and that's a different time for another time but for the most part we're gonna agree yeah Gina said that because here's what scripture tells us but how did the Gospels fare when they also included the gospel of time as something that was written a hundred years after the Gospel of John it wasn't written by Thomas wasn't written by an eyewitness but let's take a look at how these how these did so you can see Matthew doesn't fare very well there you've only got eleven red beads that where Jesus definitely said this okay but look down at the Gospel of John let's focus there because of time we got to kind of get through this zero statements that Jesus definitely said and one statement that maybe he likely said from John four where he says a prophet is not without honor except in his own country that's the only verse in the Gospel of John but the Jesus Seminar said yeah that probably came from Jesus they reject everything else as far as the words of Jesus in the Gospels but look at the Gospel of Thomas it actually does better than all the other Gospels the one that was written 100 years later not by an eyewitness they say oh yeah these are the ones that that's we can have more trust in this and this is scholarship no it's nonsense is what it is but why do you think the Gospel of John did so poorly in their eyes well I think it's pretty obvious and it goes back to John's purpose statement in the Gospel of John in John chapter 20 he said this and truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples which are not written in this book but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God and that by believing you may have life in his name the purpose of John's gospel was to show you that who Jesus really is that he's the son of God in it by believing in him you can have eternal life and so the Jesus Seminar says nope none of those words are from Jesus well what else did they find about Jesus well they said that his father was a Roman soldier that the virgin birth was borrowed from Apollo's affair with a woman let me ask you a question how is Apollo's affair with a woman how does that inspire the idea of a virgin birth according to them Jesus was not born in Bethlehem there was no Roman census in the town of Augustus Judas was invented as an anti-semitic slur and Jesus just buried in a shallow grave and I'll get into that one in my next talk which will air tomorrow at noon beginning into that issue about whether Jesus is just buried in a shallow grave and then his body eaten by by animals so we want to tune in for that one as well that's gonna that'll be on Easter Sunday at noon so really what happens with these whole historical Jesus studies really just see what you want to see one person said historical Jesus studies have been compared to a man who looks into a deep well to find out what Jesus was like only to find the reflection of himself their attempts have been made to labelled Jesus as a revolutionary cynic feminist hippy social justice warrior homosexual or transgender don't believe me was Jesus gay probably from the guardian Jesus the first transgender man well it gets worse Jesus was drag queen with queer desires claims theology professor I wish these were just that this was just made up I mean these claims are made up obviously but I wish these weren't being published I wish this isn't what people were being taught but they are sometimes people are just trying to be as provocative as possible the problem is where do a lot of people get their news today YouTube Facebook Instagram from their friends not from something that's well researched not from not checking it out not making sure it's actually accurate and then they run with it so who was the historical Jesus well he's the same Jesus that we read about in the Bible because what the Bible tells us is historically accurate he is the son of God the second person of the Trinity he's the way the truth and the life just like he claimed to be he's our sinless Savior and he was crucified and resurrected he's our great high priest and returning judge he's Immanuel meaning and he's also fully God and fully man he is king of kings and Lord of lords and let's deal with one more question here actually there's two parts for this one was Jesus deified at the Council of Nicaea that was hinted at earlier and this is we see again a DaVinci Code in fact for a lot of these people almost everything hinges on the Council of Nicaea they lump all of that in in 325 AD many church leaders gather together in Nicaea and all sorts of ideas get thrown into there but here's what da Vinci Code says Jesus is establishment as the Son of God was officially proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicaea hold on you're saying Jesus divinity was the result of a vote a relatively close vote at that this is right out of the vinci code well since then we have this book by gaze of Emmys Christian beginnings from Nazareth to Nicaea this book is meant to guide readers along the evolutionary path from the Jesus of history toward the Christ deified at the Council of Nicaea there's the claim again so the early church didn't believe Jesus was God if that's the case then how can Ignatius and one around 8 105 say God himself was manifested in human form Clement says it is fitting that you should think of Jesus Christ as of God Irenaeus that He is God for the name Immanuel indicates this Origen said no one should be offended that the Savior is also God Novation said he is not only man but God also Cyprian said Jesus Christ our Lord and God all of these church fathers from before the time of the Council of Nicaea was very clear that Jesus is God so what really happened at Nicaea well it was called by the Emperor Constantine to resolve the Arian crisis areas had already been declared a heretic four years earlier in Alexandria he was he believes something similar to what Jehovah's Witnesses teach today where they say that Jesus is not Almighty God he's a mighty God to him the first creation of God and that he makes everything else and arias was going around teaching things like that that Jesus was a created being he was not the creator himself and that idea had already been shown to be heresy four years earlier but he continued promoting it in fact he teaches these little rhyming couplets and it made it popular people could remember it easily and so he was teaching that Jesus was a created being and so they gathered together and I see and they did actually rule on this over 300 bishops affirm the traditional view that Jesus is divine to voted in favor of arias and yet The DaVinci Code does is a relatively close vote I believe it was 316 to two I'm not sure what universe they're living in where that's a closed score-- there's other myths about Nicaea that they determined the biblical canon at the time of Nicaea the actually the canon for the most part was recognized long before that there were still a few disputed books and usually the very small books like Jude second Peter James was one of them for a little while those ones would be disputed for a quite a while but it wasn't until about 70 years later in the three 90s when there were church council that I actually said here's the official canon of the New Testament now the church is not the one that determines the Canon God determines it because the Holy Spirit's the one who is inspiring those writings the church discovers those the can and the church recognizes it because we have the Holy Spirit within us and we recognize his voice Constantine ordered the publication of 50 Bibles in the destruction of other Gospels is another myth and this is promoted throughout the da Vinci Code he did order the publication of 50 Bibles but we don't know if that was ever carried out but the whole idea that all these other so-called Gospels were ordered to be destroyed as nonsense so what actually happened and I see a well there was the establishment of the Nicene Creed they standardized the date of Easter and that's why it moves around every single years because of what how they how they determined they would set the date and they established 20 different Canon laws mostly about Christian living in church leadership so let's wrap it up by looking at the second part of this question did Jesus himself ever claim to be God because we'll have skeptics saying no he never made such a claim john 8:58 jesus said to them most assuredly I say to you before Abraham was I am hinting at the Old Testament recognition of who God is that in Jesus saying that to me and the Jews there knew what he was claiming because when he made claim like this thing they picked up stones and tried to stone him because they said he was blaspheming because he was claiming to be God and I give them eternal life and they shall never perish and neither so anyone snatch them out of my hand and my father are one Jesus is claiming equality with the Father in mark chapter 2 why does this man speak blasphemies like this who can forgive sins but God alone but immediately when Jesus perceived in a spirit that they've reasoned thus within themselves he said to them why do you reason about these things in your heart which is easier to say to the paralytic your sins are forgiven you or to say arise take up your bed and walk but that you may know that the Son of man has power on earth to forgive sins he said to the paralytic I say to you arise take up your bed and go to your house demonstrating his authority not only to to heal people but also to forgive sins and then it may be the clearest statement in the Gospels and this one the one of the reason this is important because mark is often considered by biblical scholars to be the earliest of the Gospels written and this passage even critical scholars will acknowledge that this was something that was said the high priest asked Jesus when he's on trial there are you the Christ the Son of the Blessed so what did she just gonna do is he gonna back down here at this point he's gonna say no no guys you're misunderstanding what I'm talking about or is he actually gonna go and boldly proclaim who he is take a look Jesus said I am and you will see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven four times in that passage Jesus said that's exactly who I am not only did he just say I am he you'd the the term Son of Man which is going back to Daniel chapter seven referring to the the one who is in that vision who approaches the Ancient of Days the Son of man approaches the ancient days and has given authority by the Ancient of Days so here's this divine figure in heaven and Jesus says that me he said the right hand of power and he's the one who comes on the clouds of heaven you know who comes in the clouds of heaven in the Old Testament Yahweh does the God of Israel does the God of heaven and earth and Jesus says that's me and that's why the high priests of this point tore his clothes and said it was blasphemy and if Jesus was not really God it would have been blasphemous but Jesus is God and we teach this in our exhibit as well in the Christ's cross consummation exhibit in fact let's sum up this message and even the message of really of the whole creation Museum of that exhibit as well because we know that God created a perfect world without sin suffering and death and yet the first Adam rekted through his sin through his rebellion when he ate of the fruit that God said you shall not eat he brought sin and death and suffering into this world but God already had a plan to redeem us and he sent his son to become one of us to be born of a virgin to live a sinless life and when he was tempted to not go forward he succeeded he said not my will but your will be done and he went to the cross as our sacrifice in our place the Son of God died for us so that our sins can be wiped away so that our sins can be forgiven so that when God looks at us he doesn't see our sin and wretchedness instead he sees the righteousness of the son of God those who have placed their faith in Jesus Christ those who have been justified by faith in Christ have their sins forgiven and thrown as far as the East is from the west and our washed as white as snow we can experience forgiving a forgiveness from God through what Jesus Christ has done and it doesn't end there because three days later he conquered the grave when he rose from the dead and showed himself alive by many infallible proofs which I'll also be talking about in tomorrow's session in fact that's what the whole thing is going to be about an Easter Sunday at noon Eastern you want to tune in for that but Jesus showed himself alive by many infallible proofs demonstrating that he had conquered death he had power over the grave giving us the hope and the guarantee of eternal life to all who believed in him in fact here's what Jesus said I am the resurrection and the life he who believes in me though he may die he shall live and whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die do you believe the and this is why so many skeptics will believe anything about Jesus other than the truth because either they love their sin too much or for whatever reason they are too prideful they just don't want to bow the knee to Christ but the book of flipping tells us that someday every knee will bow and every every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord of the glory of God the Father we had the opportunity to do that now willingly if we haven't done so already and those who hold off those who maybe are too prideful those who for whatever reason don't want Jesus is Lord someday they're still going to kneel and proclaim that Jesus is Lord but by then it would be too late for them and they'll be sentenced to eternity apart from him and I don't want that for anyone believe in the one who said he is the resurrection in the life and then went out and proved it by dying on the cross and rising from the dead we could spend a lot more time talking about these things but we we need to move on let me tell you about a few resources that we have here at Answers in Genesis and this you can get for free this is our answers insider there's our monthly newsletter that goes out just go to answers insider.com and and you can sign up for that we've had several Facebook live programs going on every single day during this whole covet 19 shutdown period so take advantage of that every day at 10 a.m. noon 3 p.m. 7 p.m. tune in and check out what we've got going on those days on Facebook live you can follow ken ham's page or Answers in Genesis page too to see those and if you want to help support our ministry during this time obviously with the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter shutdown we're not bringing in the sort of revenue that we normally would and if you're in if you're in a position where you can't help and you'd like to help obviously we'd welcome any gift that you can give during that time visit the website Answers in Genesis org slash give and you can help with that if you'd like to see that the talk that I'll be presenting on Easter Sunday that's called he has risen that is available as well from our bookstore I've written a book on the resurrection of Jesus Christ some of the details that we talked about in this session or also are also explained in this it's called in defense of Easter answering critical challenges to the resurrection of Jesus and then Elsa did a six DVD series 12 sessions like a small group or even a personal study on the crucifixion and resurrection is called risen without a doubt this is available it's got a study guide that goes with it some of the things we talked about it are available in this book as well how this two volume set how do we know the Bible is true volumes 1 and 2 for example there's a whole chapter that I wrote about the the The Da Vinci Code and there's also another one about the Jesus Seminar so you can find out more about those in these are in these books and if you're wondering more about the Answers in Genesis ministry and some of the the answers we give to questions that people ask so frequently about creation evolution the age of the earth and all of these things that we get here at the Creation Museum at the Ark Encounter pick up a set of the answers books there are four volumes in that series now each of them have about twenty five to thirty five of the most commonly asked questions so pick up a copy of those and also we've got a book called the lie written by Ken Ham other than Scripture itself this is really kind of a foundational book of the ministry and what it does it helps us understand so much how so often it's not really a battle about the evidence even as we just saw today in this presentation when we're looking at what is the evidence that Jesus existed is existed from these ancient not extra biblical writings from the from these pagan sources everything the evidence is right there yet it comes down to a worldview issue some of us are willing to look at that and say yet that's perfectly in line with Scripture here's what it says other people will just blindly look past that they don't want to see it because their worldview wants them to say no Jesus didn't really exist because they don't want to deal with who he is and we're also running a special right now during this time during this conference you can and actually go until the end of the month you can take $10 off and get free shipping of any order of 49 dollars or more just use the coupon code save 10 at checkout I'll go to Answers in Genesis dot org slash store and another special that we're running maybe you're not aware about the ministry has been doing for quite a while we've had classes that we that we teach that home schoolers can use anybody can use these on a variety of subjects related to creation apologetics and you can get all six of our courses right now usually nearly $300 value you can get all of those right now during this time for just $19 so you'll want to take advantage of that at answers education comm so I'm going to thank you very much for your time today god bless

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Length: 71min 9sec (4269 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 11 2020