Q&A 16: Do Christians sometimes propagate myths? Christianity & myth - Part II

Now, this is Christianity and mythology, but it's of a rather different character. Last week, we looked at, does the New Testament qualify as myth? Does it meet the definition? We said, unequivocally, no. It does not meet the definition of myth in any form. But this one is dealing with the question, do Christians sometimes propagate myths? That is accounts and explanations and doctrines that aren't in the Bible or otherwise confirmed to be true. There is a concise answer to this question. Yes. Sometimes they do. Yes.

I left School of Mythology. You know, we chuckle, but you are not at all far off the mark. I went into a coffee shop right near the school to meet with Brian White some years ago. And as I was waiting for Brian to arrive, I looked over at the table next to me and the two fellows who were discussing various things from their school. Each of them had a book, a textbook, from the school, and it said, The Myth of the Resurrection.

So you are unfortunately, sadly, right on. Yes. Okay. Other introductory thoughts here? Yeah. Christians can propagate myths, that is, things that seem to be interesting, relevant, but in fact are not true. In a great many cases, Christians get involved in propagating myths with good intent. That is, they're not intending to go out and deceive, and they even want to support what's true and biblical, but are unaware that what's been passed on to them, and that they are then passing along to someone else, is mythology. Some of these myths that Christians get involved in passing along are centuries old.

Some of them are only as old as the internet, and even younger than that. So there's a real variation there. Even those that are centuries old, however, end up getting propagated over the internet. So some of them that are generated only within the internet era still get propagated with the internet, right along with the ones that are centuries old.

The reasons that these myths or e-rumors are passed along, and we have two bullets here, they appear to provide good insight into the text of scripture, In other words, oh, here's some great insight into the Bible, right? And it turns out it's not really any insight at all.

Or the other one is they seem to support faith and scripture. And for example, they seem to be a good apologetic approach. Here's a picture of something. And of course, these days with Photoshop, you can make any picture you want. That would be a couple of them. And by the way, are there other possibilities of reasons that Christians, with maybe even good intent, would pass along e-rumors, pass along myths? We've been talking when they were a child, and we believe them to be true. Okay. Yeah, if you received it and thought... Yeah, that's a part of the stuff that goes along is that people sometimes don't know what's in the Bible and what's not, and will pass along things that sound like, oh, that's from the Bible.

Well, no, not so much. Right? Let me suggest one other possibility that's not a part of these two bullets, and that is sometimes people do things because there is an emotional response that goes along with the little piece of, you know, it's gushy email, right? It's, oh, isn't that cute? You know, it's that kind of thing. So there's that. And so it's easy to understand the motivation for a great many people to pass these along is certainly Nothing that we want to taint or assault, but simply a matter always of saying what's true.

Let me ask this question. Does the Bible need any help from Little White Lies? No. No. Interesting. Amy Semple McPherson was quoted as saying, sometimes you have to tell a little white lie for Jesus. I don't think so. Not so much. I don't think there's any need for that.

There is plenty of support for what is true. There are plenty of wonderful, tremendous insights into what scripture actually says. We don't need to invent anything. And we don't need to pass anything along that's not true simply because it has a good end result. So, here are some Christian myths, and by the way, this is not the end, and this will not be the last of them. More will be generated. The first one, in the Temple of Jerusalem, the priest went into the Holy of Holies with a rope around his waist. How many of you have heard that one? No, never did. It just never did. The truth, pardon?

Yeah, the idea is that the priest went into the Holy of Holies with the rope around his waist so that because, you know, nobody could go in there, he could pull them out. Right? Yeah, yeah, the hook. Yeah. And oddly enough, that happened to my, that happened to my great, great grandfather, but he didn't go into the Holy of Holies. He went out to the barn because it was freezing cold out there. And they did pull him back. Anyway, okay. The truth is that there is no evidence from the Bible or other ancient sources that this was ever the case.

There's a great deal of guidance regarding how do you build the temple and all sorts of, you know, even dimensions and what things are made of, all sorts of specifications. And what the priest is to do and not do and where. Even the account of the Good Samaritan. is, here is a priest, there's a Levite, and they're not supposed to touch a dead body.

So for fear of touching a dead body, these guys walked by the fellow because he might be dead. And that would make them ceremonially unclean. So the first two that passed by did so because the law prevented them, or at least so they thought. There was a lot of tradition in these things, and these traditions were in great part recorded, sometimes many times so.

There's no solid evidence that in the temple in Jerusalem any of the priests went into the Holy of Holies with a rope around his waist. Interestingly, this myth has been propagated among the Jews as well. Even the Jews have done it. So what's interesting, I have a couple of links there, bibleplaces.com, And if you don't want to type all that in, but you want to see it, this is on the website, church website, and you can click on the link on the church website and not have to type all this stuff in. But there's a Christian ministry refutation of this, and then a Jewish rabbi's refutation for the Jews. So it's gotten widespread voice, but it's just simply not true. There's just no evidence for it.

Another piece of mythology. Page two. Number two at the top. It reads like this. Myth. Jesus' burial head cloth or napkin being folded was a cultural symbol which was well understood among the Jews to say that since he had left his table napkin folded, as at a meal that he was coming back. I just got that too from his sister. Yeah. Yep.

And it keeps being perpetrated. Every time I've gotten it, I've always gone back and tried to correct it. I googled that and I went to the first 20 websites and tried to get it corrected, but it keeps going. Oh boy. Okay. I'm sorry, what's that? I'm sorry, say it again? That was on the internet last week. Okay.

Yeah, this one, oh yeah, it keeps going and going and going. It's like the ever ready bunny. And I thought, wow, this is that cool. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. This is cool, if only it were true, right? It's a good thing to encourage Christians to look for Christ's return. I'm sorry, what? He is coming back. Yes. It's a good thing to encourage Christians to look for Christ's return, isn't it? So that part's a good thing.

This particular e-rumor is a pure fabrication. It originated around the year 2007, as far as I can trace it. The opportunity for the e-rumor comes from the King James Version translating the head or face cloth that was used in Jesus' burial wrappings as a napkin. So here in John 20 verse 7, "...and the napkin that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself." So here this head cloth was next to the rest of the clothing. There are a few problems with the e-rumor being distributed among Christians.

One is the Greek word that is being translated napkin in the King James Version. It's sudarium. It's from a Latin term. It's not a dining table napkin, but a barrel cloth to the head, or the word is sometimes used for a sweat rag. I don't think you want to wipe your face with a sweat rag when you're eating.

Anyway. Another Greek word not used in the New Testament meant table napkin, and oddly enough, this diasporan that you see in there, that's where we get our word diaper, so I don't know. Okay. But anyway, an actual table napkin was a different word altogether, not the word used in the New Testament anywhere. Okay.

The rabbis did have issues about the proper table napkin tradition. This is an issue that originated before Christ was born between Hillel and Shammai and their followers. And the debate among the Jews was not about the table napkin and folding it. It had nothing to do with that. The real discussion, and I have more detail on the footnote, I won't go into it. The real discussion centered around, do you put your table napkin on the table or on the cushion? That was the debate. It had nothing to do with whether you fold it or I'm coming back or anything like that.

The term translated, I'm on the third bullet down now in the middle of page two. The term translated folded or wrapped together can also mean rolled or twisted. So it's not necessarily a neatly folded type thing. The truth is with that word you couldn't really tell because it's just in some sort of form. Just not laying flat is all it means.

The fourth bullet, Christ did not come back to any meal or even sit down or sit around in the empty tomb. The only records that we have are that He didn't go back to the empty tomb. So if it did mean He was supposed to come back, which it didn't, He never went back to the empty tomb.

But instead appeared to over 500 people. The closest to being around the tomb after He rose was the time he spoke to Mary Magdalene outside the tomb, as recorded in John chapter 20, verse 18 verses. Also when he returns, he's not coming back to the empty tomb, but to the Mount of Olives, which is across the ravine, the creek Kidron, and the Mount of Olives across from the Temple Mount there. Acts 1 and Zechariah 14 both record specifically that place for when he's going to come back, not to the tomb.

So, any questions, thoughts about that one? And now you know when you get the internet email to explain to them. And you can even give them this link from the Holly Hills website. Go here, it gives you all the facts. In no way is this even remotely possibly true. It's completely fabricated. Okay, page three.

More likely, the folded, rolled, or twisted burial cloth for Christ's head was noted because if Christ's body had been stolen, the thieves would, in haste, have either taken the body with the wrappings, the whole thing, in other words, get him out of here, right? Or, they would have cast the cloth off quickly, quick, get this cloth off of him and leave it behind and just throw it around, right? and have it all unwrapped, but that's not how they found it. Instead, everything was together, just with the headpiece separate from the rest of the body, because that's the way things were wrapped. So the evidence is not that the body was stolen.

The evidence is not that Jesus was leaving it like a table napkin to say he was coming back. The evidence is that he was indeed resurrected. That's the reason John recorded it the way he did, right? It's support for the resurrection. It's real. It's genuine. Nobody stole the body. That's what it's about. The body is not there in the clothing.

All right, now we have myth number three, briefly addressed there near the top of page three. Myth. NASA computers have confirmed Joshua's long day and the astronomical movements in Hezekiah's day. How many have heard this one? Gotten this one? Yeah. No, they haven't. There's no evidence for such a calculation.

It would require that we had highly accurate astronomical measurements from the time of Joshua and of Hezekiah. Do we have those? No. The answer is no. The information would have to be included in the NASA calculations in order to be able to come up with some sort of a hitch. We just simply don't have those tight, accurate astronomical calculations and verifications from the day of Joshua and Hezekiah.

One might also wonder why NASA would care about astronomical calculations going back more than 2,500 years ago. Why do they care about that? They want their various rockets, satellites, things like that to deal with things now. What happened over 2,000 years ago is probably no concern of theirs.

The very best record we have are those events in Scripture, which is supplemented by some less reliable reports from the writings and oral traditions of other cultures of the Middle East and around the world. And by the way, there are recordings in other cultures of long days and days of unusual length and things of that sort. So there is some evidence, but the Bible has the most accurate recording of what took place and also gives the most reasonable explanation as to why that would happen. So there is some confirmation in the recordings of other cultures, but not with the NASA computers.

You can find out more detail, again, I give you a link there. You can look at the records of other cultures if you want to investigate that. Christiananswers.net is the website, and by the way, I highly recommend it. Really good group, and I've met and corresponded with some of the guys there.

OK, number four. The aorist tense in the Greek refers to a past event, either as a continuing condition in the past or at a point in time. The aorist tense conveys a once-for-all action. At various times in the last century or so, some have claimed that the aorist tense in the Greek always refers to a past event and or that the aorist tense conveys a once-for-all kind of action. Neither of those is the case. In general, what's called the aorist tense, we don't have anything exactly like it in English.

It can, with one exception, be defined as the decline-to-state case. you have to determine from context and comparison how it stands with respect to time. And so this, you know, continues on in various books and things that are still in print, this idea that the Earth Tense always conveys something in the past or at a point in time.

A couple of different things you can look up. We have here, there's a handout, a constructive caution regarding some Greek grammar and vocabulary resources. I'm not sure that one is on the church website, although I'd like to get it there. But you can get it from the files there. The information is there if you want to ask for Sue, Nancy, or Suella to get that for you. Yes.

Yeah, and what you're referring to, you're correct. There is the perfect tense. The perfect tense and the way we define that is a completed past action with ongoing results in the present and on into the future. That's the general definition of the perfect tense. And here's an example of where that was used. When Jesus was on the cross, the last thing he said was, it is finished, right? In the Greek, that is one word. And by the way, it's an accounting term. It's paid, okay? Just like we'll have a big red stamp on a bill that's been paid. Paid, right? That's what he said. He used a Greek accounting term and said, it's paid.

He used, and good thing you pointed out, he used the perfect tense. It's a completed past action on the cross with ongoing results in the present and on into the future. Isn't that great? Now, one more thing about the perfect tense, because I'm very glad you pointed it out. Unless the context indicates otherwise, it implies permanence. So that is very important.

Because Paul writes to the church at Corinth, and we've been studying Corinth, we know they were kind of a messed up church, right? He writes to them, and before he starts talking about their problems, he says, you've been sanctified. And guess what tense he uses? Perfect tense.

You have been permanently sanctified in the past, okay, with ongoing results in the future. And the reason I say the word permanently is there's nothing in the context or subsequent statement that calls into question. some termination or reversal of that, right?

It is a very good thing, and we'll be looking, starting next week, at a series. I'm going to be starting a series in this class on salvation, and it's one of the things that points out that we are permanently saved, and also that Christ's work was completely done, and not reversible. In the Seventh-day Adventist Church, they teach that that Christ's work was incomplete. There will be a time when you are judged before God, and Christ will walk away as your advocate, is what they teach.

And you will have to stand on your own merits. Now that is wrong. It's also scary. Because how many of you are ready to stand on your own merits? So, wrong teaching. And it violates what Christ said there on the cross. It is finished. Done deal. Permanent. We're done. Now, let's turn to myth number 5 on the top of page 4.

Archaeologists have discovered the remains of Noah's Ark, the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah, the chariots of Egypt's army in the sea at the time of the Exodus, and proven that Mount Sinai is to be found at Jebel al-Lawz in Saudi Arabia, not on the Sinai Peninsula. How many of you heard any of these things? There are videos available, DVDs now. Some of these ideas were perpetrated by a fellow who's now dead named Ron Wyatt.

He was a Seventh-day Adventist. I've heard different things about his background. One, I heard he was a dentist. Another was an anesthetist. But that's probably not as relevant. The things that he has claimed and even put out on video have been shown multiple times over to be false. Nonetheless, they continue to go around. He has a website. I've more than once gotten emails, again this internet rumor mill, emails showing pictures and all that stuff. It's interesting. We used to have RMCF meeting here.

And early on, they had a fellow by the name of Bryant Wood who spoke here. He has written against this. Others who spoke here, who are scientists who believe in the Bible as literal, went to investigate several of the things that he claimed. And they used words like fraud, dishonest. So this is not good.

So anyway, this claim that the place where Moses went up on the mountain was actually in Saudi Arabia, this Jebel al-Lawz here, is one of those places where he's made some false claims. He claimed to have found the remains of Noah's Ark. Sodom and Gomorrah, the chariots of Egypt's army. The pictures of chariot wheels down underneath the sea is one of the things that's a part of this video.

They still have a museum and his wife kind of heads up the show there. The problem is when such discoveries have been investigated independently by qualified scientists, like say several of them have spoken here at Holly Hills in the past, not on this subject, but there are people that we've had some contact with or opportunity of contact.

And many of them are believers in Christ, where the discoveries do not show themselves to be genuine. Some of the documentation by the qualified scientists and archaeologists include these. So I give some links there. Again, you could, instead of punching all those things in, you could get on the website and click on the link that's on the document on the church website and check those out for yourself. There are others as well, and some of those can be found on these links. So anyway, plenty that you can check into.

The first couple of them are by Gordon Franz. I met him about eight years ago, something of that sort. And then another one of them is by, like I say, Bryant Wood. He spoke here about eight, seven or eight years ago, and I've corresponded with him. So at any rate, if you find these claims, just a word of caution. There is a fellow who has an office in Colorado Springs, just south of us. His name is Bob Cornuke. He goes around speaking to various Christian groups. I know he showed up at a Promise Keepers meeting. He's been up at various other churches, even put on seminars. I'm afraid I cannot even begin to recommend what he has to present and to say.

Sorry about that. But anyway, I think it's important to bring this up. Now, let's ask this question. Why would I go through this? Why would I bother to point these things out? Why does it matter that we pay attention to these kinds of things? Pardon? Yes, warn us not to be deceived. Yeah.

Bob Cornuke presented an object that he claimed to have gotten from the place where he said Moses actually went up on the mountain. It's a place in Saudi Arabia. And he never documented that, but from pictures that were taken, Gordon Franz took those pictures to two different specialists in ancient writing from that particular area. In other words, they were specialists in writing from that era. Both of those specialists said, this is a fraud. So whether Bob Korney perpetrated himself or whether he was sold something, either way, both of the specialists who looked at it and were experts in the writing from that place and time and era said it was a fraud.

Yeah, so not to be deceived, okay? Why else? That's right. In other words, what we need to focus on is the truth. The truth doesn't need enhancement. We need to focus on the truth, and the truth is personified in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's where our focus needs to be.

And so these are made-up distractions. Why else would we want to bring these things up? could lead us in the wrong direction. Yeah, we actually, what happened is this fifth myth here. There's a fellow here in Denver that went and got all these things printed up and had pictures and all that and put a stack of these, you know, pictures, papers with these pictures and all this phony stuff here at Holly Hills.

And so I called him up and sent him an email and said, don't be doing that. This is fraudulent. And he didn't particularly care for it. But I don't like to see it perpetrated. And why else? Why else would we want to point these things out? Yeah, we don't want to be forwarding the stuff around.

We want to be able to, instead of thinking it's okay, instead of thinking, you know, I wonder if it's true. You can say, well, no, it isn't. And really, if you look at it, here's another reason. If we show ourselves as gullible when we try to support, let's say someone is skeptical. I've run into folks who are skeptical, and we come up with something that proves not to be true, that undermines our testimony. We want to only state and support what is true, right? And so it's a matter of being discerning. It's a matter of being discerning.

One of the things that happened in Thessalonica, right within weeks of Paul's ministry, is Paul had been there and somebody told the believers in Thessalonica, the Lord has already come. And what Paul wrote there is apparently somebody had written a phony letter claiming to be from Paul that said the Lord has already come. So Paul had to write against that and correct that. So somebody coming up with something phony something that's not true, that's been going on a long time. And the problem with what this phony thing perpetrated is that people were getting panicked.

Oh no, the Lord's already come and I'm still here, right? And so it can not only lead to issues of what's true and what's not true, but it can even undermine faith. It can even undermine hope. take people from having the blessed hope to a place of desperation and panic.

A Maryland Bird blog? I see. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, this mistaken identity thing is a biggie. My brother's name is Eric Peterman, and it's interesting, occasionally he'll get mistaken, and he's a pastor, he'll get mistaken for a fellow who is a pastor slash bodybuilder. And who apparently lives down in Florida or something. So anyway, yeah, it is possible to have confused identities.

Let's ask another question. Does this mean that the internet is bad? No, and why do we make the distinction? Why do we not suddenly say, oh, the Internet's bad? There is good information. There's lots of really good Bible study resources. One thing is a lot of good books are now available on the Internet sometimes for free or at a very low fee. And that can be really helpful. I got rid of about this much in the way of reference books because I could get them on the internet now. I don't need to keep the books around, right? Yes?

We always, always, always have to be discerning. And that's true of whether it comes via email or you happen to get a search and hit it on a website. We are always called to be discerning. How do we be discerning? We start, everything gets measured by the Word of God. Everything. Experiences, people will have stories of this happened and that happened. Ultimately, everything gets measured by the Word of God. Everything. if not explicitly by the Word of God, at least asking the question, is it true?

What's true? I'll make a generalization, and I'll caution you that it's a generalization, and that is most e-rumors about God and the Bible I have found to be false. Most of them that claim they have some special insight, most of them that claim to be supportive of Scripture, Most of them that I've gotten have been false. Yes, and that's true. I mean, there'll be all sorts of things. And that's my general rule.

Ever get a virus warning? I've yet to find one of those that's real, either. You know, it'll say things like, last Wednesday, Microsoft warned about this. And then you find out that the false e-rumors started back in 2002. Been a lot of Wednesdays since 2002, right? So yeah, just in general, a lot of these e-rumors should be looked at as suspect until proven otherwise.

Yes. I occasionally use Snopes. I don't trust it exclusively though. If I find something on Snopes, I'll check it somewhere else, at least one other place. Truth or fiction? Urban legends? Those are a couple of other sites. Fact check? There are other sites. Part of the problem with Snopes is basically it's just one person. I think it's like a single liberal gal in her basement or something. Pardon? Couple, yeah. Sometimes they do a good job. There have been a few places where I looked at and said, I want to check it out some more. So I'll look at some other locations. Another thing to do is to go to the original website.

I've heard things like, you know, okay, Obama's birth certificate is going to be checked out by the Supreme Court, you know, and so you go to the Supreme Court's website and it said they already had that case submitted and it's already been thrown out and it's done.

So, not happening. Okay? So that's another thing is aside from these fact check, truth or fiction, urban legends, things like that, snopes, you can also, if it makes reference to something specific, go to the original website. Several times I've gone there and it's funny, each time I do that I find out that the e-rumor is just not true. Other thoughts, comments? Yes. Gotquestions.org. Yeah, pretty good.

I've actually had correspondence with them in the last two weeks. They, let's see, they had one response. I forget what it was about. They had one response that was slightly, it may have been about this napkin thing. It was not quite skeptical enough. Yeah. Oh, no, excuse me. They had to do with the rope, the rope around the waist. It was not quite skeptical enough.

So I wrote to them and I said, you know, I said, I appreciate your website and you do a great job. This is something you might want to take a look at. I think it needs to be a shade more skeptical. But GotQuestions.org is in general a pretty good website. And another way to check out, because most of what they're going to do is check out Bible questions, not just kind of general internet questions like Snopes or something like that would, but specifically Bible questions. In general, a good place to check. Now, other thoughts, questions? Exasperations? Yes.

I mentioned the name Bryant G. Wood. Dr. Bryant Wood's a good guy. I've never met him, but I've corresponded with him. He was here, but I missed the time when he was here because I was just swamp busy. Bryant Wood has written about it. He's written about it in a popular level periodical called Bible and Spade. He's given pictures and so I've used some of his pictures with permission. That was why I wrote to him.

He's given pictures and some reports from other archaeological investigations. He places Sodom and Gomorrah on the southeast part of the Dead Sea area and has some pretty good documentation including some of his pictures that I've used where there's one place where there's skeletons and a whole bunch of burned material all around the skeletons. which fits what you would see in the Bible. Real interestingly, what he also records there is that that area, while it now is a real salty, super dry, hot desert area, was once very lush. And the archaeological investigations bear that out for that area. Ron Wyatt located an area on the other side of the Dead Sea, and they had pictures of various things, but those did not check out.

So yes, you're correct. And it's Bryant Wood who has done at least a couple of articles that I'm aware of about Sodom and Gomorrah having been located. And it actually gives the pictures and the map locations and the ancient names as well as the biblical names. And the modern names as well.

Well, I think that's where if you look at anything, for example, here is the napkin idea. Well, then you go and look up the word, and we have resources to look up what does that word mean. And it's Sudereon, and the word means a head cloth for burial or a sweat rag. And then you look up the word, and you won't find it in the Bible, but other Greek references will have it. You look up diasporon, and you find that that is the word, the correct word for table napkin. The only thing is that never shows up in the New Testament, not even once.

So that would be an example of where you can check it out. Good references, objective references, no axe to grind. You can check it out directly. So then also for Bryant G. Wood, he has his articles published on the website. Others have referenced his research. Like I say, he has spoken here. and the reason is because he's believed to be quite a reliable fellow. He was only one name. A number of people have written about, for example, Ron Wyatt's work, including scientists from the Institute for Creation Research, and you can look those up.

So it's a matter of, if at all possible, going to the original references, And if they make a reference to some other documentation, look that up. As much as possible, go into original references, not just somebody said this and somebody said that. These days with Photoshop, you can make a picture say anything, so check it out.

So there are ways of checking these things out. You know, what I give, for example, about the rope around the waist. People who have looked at documents out of the New Testament times and around there, including the Jewish scholars. You know, you heard about the Talmud and various writings of the Jews. People have read through the entire thing, and a lot of that's available online now.

You just don't find this supposed custom. What's that? Oh, you may have. I'm just telling you it's bogus. Yeah. Well, it's like I'll sit here and tell you about twice a year. I think I've used up my quota for this year. Don't believe anything I tell you. Look it up. Check it out. Because I don't want somebody just saying all Vern says. That's no authority at all. You need to check everything out. You need to look things, what's really true.

It's like Act 1711. The Bereans weren't noble. Why? They checked out even what Paul said. Does that check out with the Word of God? Well, lo and behold, it does, right? But they checked it out. And we're to do the same. Here's the church in Philippi and Paul says, I pray that you would have discernment. He prayed for their discernment.

It's something we all have to have. What's true and what isn't? There's a lot of books that claim all kinds of stuff, and they're totally false. Yeah, his comment is there's a lot of books that claim all sorts of things, and the reality is they're selling something. And we simply have to be discerning about these things. We don't need false support. for Christian faith. There is a mountain of huge, good, solid evidence for Christian faith. We don't need anything phony and cooked up.

At any point, we always need to check things out. If I tell you something is in 3 Corinthians, you probably better check it out. Especially if I tell you it's in 1 Hesitations, right? Yeah, and here's the testimony that says he's coming back. I don't need a phony story about napkins to tell me he's coming back. These things can be checked out. There are references in many cases. The Bible study materials that are just the standard materials that we use can be used to check them out.

I'm not aware of this, for example, the story about the rope. I'm not aware of that creeping into a lot of the reference materials. It tends to be more passed along by word of mouth. And you will see it sometimes on the internet, but some of the standard reference materials that I'm aware of, I haven't seen it creep in there. Okay, other thoughts, questions? Yes?

I was just wondering, you may not have time, but I've heard that during one of the Jewish ceremonies, when they take that bread, the ceremony, when they take it, is it underneath a pillow or something? You're talking about the Jewish custom about the Passover. And they take the unleavened bread and break it and put a part in an area where they hide it. What's interesting is that, of course, the Jews would be quite upset if you told them that it relates to Jesus.

You know, that would really bother them. I'll just tell you. Yeah. Yeah. They have. It's the custom is true. I went, when I was over in California, there was a presentation by Moisha Rosen's daughter, Ruth Rosen, in which she mentioned exactly what you said, that that is indeed the custom of the Jews.

They interpret it as representing Jesus' burial. The Jews would not like it. if you said that that's what it means, but yes, that's what they do. It's not, that's another one of those things that's tradition, it's not spelled out in scripture that you do so. But most of the Passover celebration among the Jews now is tradition.

At the core is what's biblically required, which is fairly minor. But you're correct. And that's not a myth. Yes, and that's another thing that was brought out. The bread has stripes and punctures, and it's interpreted, again the Jews would be upset to see it viewed that way, but it's interpreted as representing Christ having been beaten for us. By his stripes we are healed, as Isaiah 53 says. So anyway, those are true, not rumor, right? Or at least if you heard it as a rumor, it's a true rumor.

Yeah. Other questions, thoughts, exasperations? You're just so exasperated you can't even bring yourself to raise your hand, so. Yeah. Okay, you are. Oh, yeah, and again, I think the best position is to consider it not true until you've confirmed it. So, and again, confirm it, going to original sources as much as possible, checking things out. Other thoughts? Alright, let's pray.

Lord, we thank you that the truth that you have revealed is wonderful. We indeed have a blessed hope. We have a dear and precious Savior who in fact loved us and gave himself up for us, who for the joy set before him endured the cross. We thank you for precious truths, eternal truths, that we can count upon, that are true forever. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.