Apologetic Musings

Did you know that according to ancient Historical documents that were found, Caiaphas had an encounter with Jesus Christ and as a result, left his position as a member of the Sanhedrin?

I am not going to comment on this, nor am I going to try to come up with reasons to disprove or approve this claim. It is recorded in some documents in a book that was found in the Vatican.

Here is what a reviewer says about the book:

“This book is a reprint of a 19th-century volume containing a series of reports from Jewish and pagan sources contemporary with Christ that relate to the life and death of Jesus. It includes interviews with the shepherds, Gamaliel’s interview with Joseph and Mary, Caiaphas’s reports to the Sanhedrin, Herod Antipater’s defense before the Senate for the slaughter of the innocents, and Herod Antipas’s defense before the Senate- copied from ancient manuscripts in old libraries at Rome and Constantinople and translated into English.”

This is good, because there are those who subtly tell stories that indicate the stories recorded in the Bible as being myths or never having happened. There is more evidence that these things really did happen though.

This book, although Historical, does not replace the authority of the Bible. But, as far as looking for Historical evidence of things or events that happened during the days of Jesus’ life on earth, or, during the time of the early church, this book could be very informative.

The name of the book is, ‘Ancient Records of the Birth, Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ” written by Oran Herschberger.

I ordered it a couple of days ago, from a third party seller, for around $23, but today, a copy of the book from amazon.com is $99. I would recommend doing an Internet search first, or check back every day to see if a new seller is carrying the book.

https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B000ROBGSE/ref=cm_sw_r_fa_dp_t2_Qtc9yb9803AGB

*Update*: You can order this book for $11.99 at Living Waters

http://www.lwcb.org/shop/view/6530

There are many mythological stories that seem to have a similar theme to the stories of creation in the Bible. Skeptics will use those stories against the Bible, claiming that because these stories exist, it means the Bible is false.

I am assuming that because they believe in billions of years of evolutionary changes and that man came from a blob of slime originally, that it puts the order of these stories in a different light. In the skeptic’s mind, it means simply that the Creation account in the Bible is no more than mythology.

If you do evangelism, you are certain to hear arguments having to do with the Bible being nothing more than a mythological story. They would point to the similarities of the Bible account and the mythological stories and claim that the events in the Bible were borrowed from mythology. Let’s see if that is true, or, perhaps it is the other way around?

The story of Pandora is very interesting. In Greek mythology, the gods created a woman, from earth and water, whom they named “Pandora’. Pandora was given a box. In this box each god was to give an attribute of himself. All of the attributes were evil, except one. Pandora was not allowed to open the box. Curiosity got the best of her and she opened it. She quickly closed it and all the evil was now outside of the box. The only thing that was good that came out of the box was Hope. (Paraprased version from Ruth Beechick’s book, ‘Genesis; Finding Our Roots ).

So, did the Pandora’s box story come before Creation or after it? Was Pandora really the first woman to be created? You can see the similarities of the story of Creation and the story of Pandora. Skeptics would say that Christianity borrowed from Greek mythology. So, in order for that to happen, mythology would have had to have happened first. In order to find out what happened first, we need to know the timetable of these events.

Many notable events are based upon dates, and our modern dating system is based around the life of Jesus Christ (B.C. means before Christ, A.D. means Anno Domini ‘In the year of our Lord’). There is a fairly new addition to this which is B.C.E. which means before common era. People who want to reject the validity of Christianity will use this one.

It is thought that Creation began no more than 6,000 years ago. It is thought that Greek mythology was going on around the 8th century B.C. So, if that is true, then the Greek mythological story of Pandora and her box would have taken place after the creation of the world.

There is another thought, and this is just speculation, but a very good possibility, is that the mythological stories are based upon what happened in Genesis 6. We are told that the ‘sons of God’ (which is probably referring to angels, and in this case, the fallen angels) came down to earth and had sexual relations with women, who gave birth to children who were giants, also known as men of renown. Could these giants have been these Greek gods that did interesting and amazing exploits which are written down today for us called ‘Greek mythology’?

Whether these weird stories actually took place, or even partially took place, we really don’t know. But we do know the Bible is true, and many stories have been made up using some Bible truths or aspects along with embellishment. The accounts in the Bible could not have been borrowed from these stories because the stories would not have happened until a long time later.

You will also hear people try to negate the account of Noah’s Ark and the Global Flood that destroyed the world. Again, we have the same situation. We have the original account of what actually happened, in the Bible. Yet, many years later, others wrote accounts of a world wide flood, but with different details and aspects, missing the whole point of what the Bible is teaching on the reason for the Flood. It would make sense that the people would orally pass down the story of the Flood. Of course, things would be added to it and changed around. Then you come up with stories like, ‘The Epic of Gilgamesh’. It dates back to 2100 B.C. in the city of Ur in Sumer. Like the story of Pandora, the gods created Enkidu to stop Gilgamesh from oppressing the people of Uruk. The Greek gods and goddesses all have sinful, selfish hearts and they all seem to have some supernatural powers and abilities. In this epic, there are some similarities to the Global Flood of Noah’s day, and a lot of embellishments added to it. The true story of the Flood was twisted to make a very interesting novel.

The point is, that all these stories came after the Biblical events that they were obviously drawn from. They do not negate anything in the Bible. In fact, those stories give evidence of what really took place in the Bible.

Ishtar went after her lover into the underworld. Apparently, she resurrected him from the dead? This was a story of a resurrection from Greek mythology. I don’t know all the details of this story, so I won’t try to write them out. Skeptics will say that Christianity is borrowed from this story. Let’s look and see if it is.

In the book of Genesis, God created Adam and Eve. They fell into sin by taking and eating the forbidden fruit and plunged the human race into darkness. Satan was now the ruler of mankind. God in His mercy promised to provide a Redeemer who would come one day and destroy the powers of darkness. That happened when God sent His Son to earth to live a perfect life and die a horrible death in our place. After Jesus died, He was buried and rose from the dead on the third day. Those who want to doubt this event claim that it was borrowed from Greek mythology, particularly from the story of Ishtar.

If God already told Adam, Eve, and the devil what was to come by way of a Redeemer, and if He gave clues throughout the Old Testament of what this Redeemer would be like, and in fact did send this Redeemer, how can this be borrowing from mythology? It’s not like someone just decided to write a book called the Bible and then pick out stories from the past to build the story of the Bible on. God is eternal. He existed before any of the Greek gods or goddesses existed. There can’t be any borrowing from the mythological stories since God already had His plan in place before any of these supposed events took place.

Evolutionists tend to think that ‘man is the measure of all things’ and that man is progressively getting better as time goes on. Man started out as a blob, then progressed to a more sophisticated being and is continually becoming more and more developed. This, of course, can only work because of the theory of ‘billions of years’ and ‘natural selection’. I guess, according to their theory, one day man would be perfected as he continues to develop. This will affect society as well because as man develops more, he will be able to be more civilized. But, as you can easily see, this thinking is also flawed, like the rest of the theories the evolution requires to make the theory work.

I was watching a Youtube video done by a man who says he was a Christian at one time, but changed his mind and now is an atheist. Some of his points were very interesting. After watching this video, however, I was not convinced to be an atheist, nor did I change my mind on what I believe in based on the word of God.

One of the points he made was that people, in the area of civilization, are getting better. He showed some pictures of people who were trying to make peace. He compared it with recent History and History of the past, making his point clear. However, I failed to see how people are progressively getting better and more civilized.

If we go back to true History as we know it, God created Adam and then Eve. They were not created sinful, but listened to the voice of the devil and sold the human race into the slavery of sin. We are so deceived into thinking that there is nothing wrong with sin (except of course, when someone sins against us!). The Bible explains that we are blinded by our sin. We are also blind to the need for salvation. The Gospel message does not make sense to us apart from God revealing to us our need for a Savior.

Not too long after Adam and Eve sinned, the world began to feel the effects of the fall. People groups were now fighting against each other (read the book of Genesis for more information on this). Many died in battles. Many refused to repent from their sins and God eventually destroyed mankind, with the exception of Noah, his wife, their three sons, and their wives. The Bible says in Genesis 6, that man was so wicked that he was inventing ways of wickedness. I would have hated to live on earth then. No one wanted to turn to God though, which was interesting. That is one of the results of the fall of mankind. Man does not want God. He wants to rule his own life apart from God.

So, the world hit a peak of wickedness in Genesis 6, which required God to destroy everyone who was alive at that time. You would think that people would remember what happened during the Flood, but not too long after that, people deviated from God again and went right back to practicing the things that people practiced who were destroyed in the Flood!

Then we go through History and see many horrible things happening. Many were destroyed by Roman authority. As History continues, cruel rulers and conquerors came about. The most recent tragedy was of course, when Hitler was in power. He destroyed 6 million+ people. That was tragic. But are people actually learning from these events and changing for the better?

There is a lot of fighting going on around the world today. Even with peace treaties and negotiations, the world really is not getting any better. All you have to do is to watch the news and see what is going on.

Today we have school shootings. We have buildings and buses that are being bombed. It is not safe to go anywhere today, for we don’t know who will show up in our presence and what they will demand of us.

Crime is at an all-time high. Every day, people go to court because they are called to do jury duty. We need people to do jury duty because there are so many criminals around.

Most murderers are never caught and some continually go around murdering more people. People are on drugs because someone deceived them and got them hooked, so guess what the person has to do once he is addicted? He or she either has to become a drug pusher himself or get involved in crime in order to pay for their drug habit. Jails are filled with people today. Many are on death row.

Have you ever gone down the street in a section of town where a large university is? Very few keep the speed limit. In fact, sometimes, people drag race at night. Emergency vehicles can be heard often if you live in a town near a college or university.

Then there is the pornography business. There’s the Black Market which is known to its users. There is something called the ‘Sex Slave Trade’ even in this country! Women get raped every day right here in the U.S.A.

Did you know that the number of girls who have been sexually abused is very high. What is more amazing is that the sexual abuse is done by the father, or a close male relative, in many cases.

Does it look like our civilization is getting better? Evolutionists would say that people are progressively getting better. They believe that human beings sprang up originally thousands of years ago. They also believe that as time goes on, people become more developed. Darwin believed that black people are not as developed as white people are. He also believed that women are not as developed as men. So, I guess, according to him, if you are a black woman, you are not very well developed.

As you can see the absurdity in this way of thinking, consider the fact that the Bible makes more sense than any evolutionary thinking based upon men and women who are trying hard to find any evidence, true or false, to fit their theory and make it plausible. The only reason the Bible doesn’t make sense to some people is because they don’t want it to. “Professing themselves to be wise, they become fools”. I couldn’t agree with this more.

I am reading a book by Ruth Beechick called, “Genesis; Finding Our Roots” which gives much details of Historical findings which relate to Biblical History.

The people who are of the Miao culture, for example, recite their genealogy all the way back to Adam.
The Chinese were very religious people many, many years ago. They believed in one supreme God, who was creator of all. They also practiced giving ‘border sacrifices’ which was a similar practice to one that Adam practiced after being kicked out of the Garden.
Chinese Bible History http://amaic-abraham.blogspot.com/2012/10/ancient-chinese-history-in-light-of.html

Go about 1/4 of the way down on this page, and you can see some wonderful information on the Miao culture and how they have preserved the information they originally received concerning the Flood and beginning of time.
http://powerpointparadise.com/blog/2011/02/chinese-mythology-clarified-by-miao-legend-genesis-hebrew-history/

Here is an excerpt from that page that you might find interesting:

“How do the Miao know that?

Like the Chinese, the Miao are yet another ancient nation that remembers some of their earliest patriarchs. Not just that, but they possess surprisingly accurate recollections of the Creation, the Flood, and even of the Tower of Babel and its confusion of languages! Many of the finer details of their accounts coincide almost identically with the Biblical record in Moses’ Book of Genesis.

They were found to already possess this knowledge in the form of ancient couplets, when they for the first time encountered Western missionaries. The oral traditions in which the descent of the Miao was preserved, owe their purity to the fact that they have been recited faithfully and in full at funerals, weddings, and other public occasions for thousands of years, since time immemorial. Thus they are able to reproduce the earliest names of their primogenitors.

Now here’s the corker! They coincide not only accurately with the Hebrew Bible, but also clear up mythical details of the earliest, mystifying Chinese mythology.”

I could write a lot from the Ruth Beechick book, but for now, I will just leave this nugget that I had found in her book. She points out this same thing as the article above. The Miao culture has preserved much of the original events as recorded in the History of Israel.

People complain and say that the Bible is taken from mythology. I am not sure how this is supposed to work, but, if the Bible is true, then God created the world way before mythology was even invented. Plus, there is a thought that much of our mythology is actually rooted in events that really did happen. There is much embellishing going on in mythology, and we can’t conclude truth from mythological stories, but there is more to this than we understand.

For example, there is the thought that mythology actually started in Genesis 6, when the ‘sons of God’ had sexual relations with women, and the women bore children who were different than normal human beings. Could these children have been what was described in mythology as these ‘gods’ and ‘goddesses’ that are portrayed in the mythological writings?

I know this brings up a lot of questions and speculation, nevertheless, it is a possibility for the strange stories we read about when we read the old mythological writings. That too, corresponds with the validity of the Scriptures, and ties in with the Biblical story of God’s redemption of mankind through the promised One He would one day send to earth.

I just have a quick post today, and it concerns the thinking of the Muslims when it comes to the deity of Christ. I am in a group dealing with Christians and Muslims having discussions (reasoning from the Scriptures maybe?) and they are firm on their belief that Jesus never said He was God. My question for you and for me, is, are we ready to answer this claim? Do we have a good enough understanding of the Scriptures to know the truth about what Jesus said about Himself? Can we come up with other Scriptures as well to help people understand the deity of Christ and why it is important.
I will visit this later on, but, for now, I am saving each email that comes in with a claim about the reasons why Jesus is not God. The research we do will not only help us with Muslims, but will help us with other groups such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and even some ‘Christian’ groups (I heard a clip of Kenneth Copeland speaking and he said in the clip, the same thing; Jesus never claimed to be God).
Also, I want my readers to know that this is not overwhelming and it is not going to be too hard to refute this false teaching. But it will take work and study to learn the Scriptures and to understand where they are coming from, and taking into consideration their lack of understanding the whole content of Scriptures vs. just understanding one Scripture taken out of context. (Example: Jesus never said He was God because when the rich young ruler asked Him what he could do to inherit heaven, Jesus asked the young ruler why he called Jesus ‘good’ and they went on to say that Jesus said only God is good, therefore Jesus was saying He was not God).
Are you skilled enough in the Scriptures to refute this belief system? If not, do you see the gravity of this situation? If we don’t stand up for the truth and defend it, evil will take over. It’s just the way things are on this side of eternity, living in a fallen world. If we are apathetic toward the things of God, evil will prevail. The way we refute evil and heresy, is with the truth. But we have to know the truth before we can refute the lies. Can we do this? How important is this issue to us?

Skeptics are always looking for loopholes. They try to find something inconsistent with the truth, or, they twist the truth around to make something sound plausible.

From of old, Skeptics have been saying, ‘Where is this coming He promised?’ ‘If your God is so real, He would have come back by now.”

People in the days of Noah weren’t paying attention either. They went on living life as usual, even though there was a man making a strange boat (whatever that was). They should have been concerned, but they weren’t. Then they were taken by surprise. No one survived but those in the boat.

Those in Noah’s day had several years to think about this. It took many, many years to build the Ark, and they just ignored this whole activity. The promised flood did come.

Today, we all know deep down in our hearts, if we are honest with ourselves, that there is a God, and we will give account to Him when our lives are over. One day, God’s Son will return to earth to collect all His children, all those who have repented and placed their trust in Christ.

The Skeptic is pragmatic. He sees only as far as today. He has lost sight of eternity. He knows nothing of God’s mercy. If it doesn’t happen now, its not going to happen, he thinks. But there is another angle to this that Skeptics don’t understand. Really, none of us do fully.
Here is what the Bible says about this: “…knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.”  For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God,  and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.

 But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.  But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.2 Peter 3:4-10 ESV. 

Don’t forget, and here is the main point we have to remember that is left out of the equation; God does not want anyone to perish! He will wait for those who will repent and turn to Him, to come to Him before He comes back to judge the earth.
If Jesus came back today, there are many who would not be ready. God is a lot more patient with us than we are with ourselves and with others. God will take whatever time necessary to prepare a person to come to Him through Christ, to be reconciled back to Him. The Skeptic sees this as a loophole, but, in reality, it is God’s mercy that Jesus didn’t come back yesterday as there would be some who would not have been gathered with all the saints yet. Only God knows how many more days He will wait before He comes back. The key for us is to be ready.

For more information concerning your relationship with God and salvation, please go to: Http://thegospelconversation.blogspot.com   or   http://test4gp.wordpress.com