Paul, an apostle—sent not from men nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead— and all the brothers with me, to the churches in Galatia : Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen. I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!

Let’s start by saying that the Da Vinci code focuses on a subject that many of us know little about and that is the Holy Grail, as a matter of fact the sum total of most of our knowledge comes from two movies, you just saw a clip from the first one, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Our other source for information concerning the Holy Grail is Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail, which I watched numerous times as a teenager and a few times since then, thus qualifying me to speak as an expert on this topic. At least as much of an expert as author Dan Brown who wrote “The Da Vinci Code”

So where do we start? Well, last week we learned that we can pray, we can prepare, and we can participate in seeking the real truth about he DaVinci Code.  But as we do all of that we are focusing more on our answers to the questions people will pose to us.  So what about us? Where do we stand.  Last week I asked what your answer would be when asked why you believed in Jesus Christ and why you did not believe in the falsehoods of the DaVinci Code. For most Christians the source of their faith is the scriptures and their knowledge of Jesus is based upon the four synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. You see most people who “read” the Bible focus on the New Testament.  Most preaching is from the New Testament.  SO it is only fitting that it is the foundation that Brown begins to attack and if Dan Brown were to prove true the ludicrous idea that the Gospels are untrustworthy, then we have no foundation.

The Truth about the Gospels

The premise of the DaVinci Code is that there are more reliable gospels then the ones we know. In particular Brown’s characters refer to The Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip and the Gospel of Mary. These were, in their opinion, part of more then eighty gospels that were considered for the New Testament but were turned down by the church and then destroyed. According to credible scholars, Coptic scrolls found in Egypt in 1945 are indeed the earliest Christian records and disprove the Gospels which the church accepts today. These fifty-two Coptic scrolls, only five which were referred to as Gospels in general and Gnostic Gospels in particular, have been the subject of much study since their discovery. And in 1977 an English translation of them was published.

A one-sentence description of Gnosticism: a religion that differentiates the evil god of this world (who is identified with the god of the Old Testament) from a higher more abstract God revealed by Jesus Christ, a religion that regards this world as the creation of a series of evil archons/powers who wish to keep the human soul trapped in an evil physical body, a religion that preaches a hidden wisdom or knowledge only to a select group as necessary for salvation or escape from this world. The term "gnostic" derives from "gnosis," which means "knowledge" in Greek. The Gnostics believed that they were privy to a secret knowledge about the divine, hence the name.

That much is true. I do not think there is a person in this world that would deny the fact, did you hear me say “fact”, that there are glaring discrepancies among the early Christian accounts of Jesus and the beginnings of the church. Some of these, however, are included in the New Testament gospels. For example, Jesus throws the moneychangers out of the temple at the beginning of his ministry in the gospel of John, but at the end of his ministry in the other three gospels. And Jesus is crucified on the Passover in the gospel of John, but after the Passover in the other three gospels. So, it is not surprising that there are also inconsistencies in other first and second century Christian writings. And, yes, we should realize that those who created the Bible had a political and religious agenda, as did those who wrote the gospels and materials that were excluded from the New Testament, and also as does the author of this novel.

However, most scholars, even liberal scholars, will concede that the four Gospels which we hold to were in all probability written between 50 and 100 AD. Those same scholars tell us that the earliest of the Gnostic Gospels was written at least a generation later and some of them as much as two to three hundred years after the event and even after the early church had established the Canon of the scripture, which is our Bible.   Hmmm? Sounds like the Gnostic Gospels were less than inspired by God and more inspired by folklore.

And, in reality, there weren’t eighty gospels being considered there were five or six. And the four agreed on had been accepted in practice if not officially since early in the second century. Around 150 A.D. both Justin Martyr and Tertullian spoke of the four gospels, remember this is at least a hundred years before the gospels of Philip and Mary were written. Not very long after that another of the Early Church Fathers, Irenaeus, wrote, “It is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are” he then goes on to name Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. By the time the earliest of the gospels found in Egypt was written the church had already settled on Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as the Gospel account of the life of Christ. And this was at least 150 years prior to Constantine and the Council of Nicaea who Brown asserts masterminded the entire conspiracy of the New Testament. This must have been quite a feat seeing it happened at least 100 years before any of them were born!

What the Da Vinci code wants us to believe is that the Divinity of Christ was something not believed by the early church, it was an invention of the Council of Nicaea in 325 and not only that but we are told that it was a relatively close vote at that council. I suppose in Brown’s mind it may have been a close vote. The 300 bishops came together to discuss the teachings of a prominent preacher named Arius who had proclaimed that Jesus was a created being, just like the rest of us and wasn’t actually the “begotten Son of God.” From that discussion the Nicene Creed was adopted affirming the churches belief in the divinity of Christ, the vote? 298 in favor 2 opposed, not all that close.

The earliest Christian writings that we have come from Paul, whom even the most liberal critics will concede wrote the epistles between 48 and 60 A.D. This is one thing that liberals and conservative scholars agree on. What did Paul teach about the Divinity of Christ.

Romans 1:3-4

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God— the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. Through him and for his name's sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith. And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.

It is the Good News about his Son, Jesus, who came as a man, born into King David’s royal family line. And Jesus Christ our Lord was shown to be the Son of God when God powerfully raised him from the dead by means of the Holy Spirit. And that isn’t an isolated incident  as we heard read earlier:

Colossians 1:15-20

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before God made anything at all and is supreme over all creation. And 1 Corinthians 8:6: yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.

But we know that there is only one God, the Father, who created everything, and we exist for him. And there is only one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom God made everything and through whom we have been given life. Throughout the letters that Paul wrote to the church he spoke of Jesus as God. If we read through the Gospels we see that Jesus allowed people to call him the Christ, and the son of God, he said he could forgive sins, he never stopped people from calling him the Son of God, he promised to rise from the dead and said he would be the ultimate judge at the end of time.  That is, in a nutshell, the truth about Jesus.

History tells us that all of the original disciples died martyr’s deaths; they were killed for their faith, and all they had to do to save their lives was to say that Jesus was just a man, that he wasn’t God. Would you die for a lie? No.  That is in a nutshell is the truth about Jesus.

 Are you into secrets? Probably we all love secrets, here’s one for you

Ephesians 1:9-14

And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ. In him we were also chosen, according to him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession—to the praise of his glory.

God’s secret plan has now been revealed to us; it is a plan centered on Christ, designed long ago according to his good pleasure. And this is his plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything in heaven and on earth. Furthermore, because of Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for he chose us from the beginning, and all things happen just as he decided long ago. God’s purpose was that we who were the first to trust in Christ should praise our glorious God. And now you also have heard the truth, the Good News that God saves you. And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago. The Spirit is God’s guarantee that he will give us everything he promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people. This is just one more reason for us to praise our glorious God.

And because a good story wouldn’t be complete without a warning let me leave you with this one: Galatians 1:9 I will say it again: If anyone preaches any other gospel than the one you welcomed, let God’s curse fall upon that person.

So here it is, watching or reading the Da Vinci Code is not a sin, believing what it says about Jesus is.

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