The Gospel According To Matthew

Saint Matthew and the Angel by Rembrandt

The record of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham: (Matthew 1:1)

Here begins the first verse of the first Gospel of the New Testament. When you start to research the origins of the Gospels you find yourself wandering down rabbit holes best left unexplored, to be honest they would have been better left off undug. 

People, being merely humans, will argue anything, many times just for the sake of arguing. I've often heard engineers arguing the exact same side of an argument as their opponent just as caustically as if they were disagreeing over a matter of life or death. My boss calls this "vehemently agreeing with each other." Much of the time disagreements, especially between scholars, has little to do with the actual subject and in the end the argument boils down to "Listen to me!" 

I see that a lot in arguments against the Gospels, intellectuals and psudo-intellectuals thumping their chests and promoting the theory du jur of why the Gospel they targeted is false/forged/phoney. In the end their treatises do little more bowdlerize the gospels by expunging Jesus from the material and focusing solely on the "researcher's" skills of morphology while congratulating themselves on their conversion to evangelical atheism. 

Sewing Doubt - The Attack is ON!

After re-reading my previous post I realized that there was a huge point that I wanted to make which I didn't get around to making. The point was that intentional or not, Dr. Martin's theory that Christ's disciples were little more than armed thugs was merely part of what appears to be a coordinated  and multifaceted attack on the bible. It is quite possible, and probably likely, that some of Jesus' may have started out as lawless thugs, but in the end they were men and sinners like we all are and learned at the foot of God made man. To claim that Jesus was crucified simply because Peter was carrying a knife denies the sanctity of Jesus' atoning work on the cross and is nothing less than a blatant attack on God's word.

Does Dr. Martin even realize he's being used as a tool of Satan to sew doubt? Probably not, but as I researched that post I found so many 'great minds' all across the internet sewing doubt by proclaiming God's word as little more than insignificant babble that I began to get nervous. I shouldn't be surprised as creating doubt over God's word was Satan's first attack to drive a wedge between us and our Father;

The Difference Between READING the Bible and Reading The Bible

Dr. Dale Martin, a professor of Religious Studies at Yale University has come to the conclusion that Jesus was crucified because his disciples were a band of thugs. He bases his arguments on John 18:10

Simon Peter then, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest's slave, and cut off his right ear; and the slave's name was Malchus.

From this one passage Dr. Martin makes the conclusion that Jesus' disciples were a bunch of armed thugs and Jesus was been executed just because they were armed. I will admit that the Pax Romana (Roman Peace: roughly translated as "We will keep killing you until you are peaceful") was pretty stringent. Martin goes on to say 

Christ Is The Thunderbolt

God Called Us...

Selling Evil To You And Your Children

Imagine a fellow comes to your house, you know him, in fact he teaches your young children. He tells them stories and gives them lessons on everything from math to sharing with each other. You even listen to those stories and enjoy them and remember years past when he came to your house when you were young and told similar stories. On occasion you went to his house as a child, so now you take your kids there and have a wonderful time. Now imagine how you would feel if you suddenly realized he was poisoning you and your children. Slowly, insidiously, bit by bit filling you with delicious tasting poison until you and your children are terminally ill. Well then, if this chain of thought enrages you, welcome to the Wonderful World of Disney. 

Is A Christian Anarchist Actually A Christian?

"Christian anarchism is a movement in political theology that claims anarchism is inherent in Christianity and the Gospels.It is grounded in the belief that there is only one source of authority to which Christians are ultimately answerable, the authority of God as embodied in the teachings of Jesus, and thus rejects the idea that human governments have ultimate authority over human societies. Christian anarchists denounce the state as they claim it is violent, deceitful and, when glorified, idolatrous." - Wikipedia

To be honest I have never heard about Christian Anarchism before this morning. True story: on the drive in to work this morning I asked God to show me something I've never seen before that I can blog, and He sure answered my prayer. When I first heard of Christian Anarchy a few moments ago I thought "that's about as silly an idea as Christian Marxism - who would fall for that?" Then I remembered that I had bumped into Chuck Currie, a Marxist so deep that he would warm the cockles of Hillary Clinton's heart. Ok, Marxists are very good at public relations. Ignoring the track record of Marxism, the despair and poverty it drove millions to, the tens of millions of people that were murdered in the name of Marxism, people still fall for it, most evil of governances. It's the same way with the Christian Anarchist.