Polemics - Discernment - Christian Existentialism & Mysticism
Vern Peterman · Nov 15, 2015
Defense of the Faith, No. 44
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926520522513

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

We've been kind of moving through different variations within Christendom and so today we have existentialism and mysticism. Christian existentialism and mysticism. Existentialism is extremely varied and so is mysticism. So there are brands of Christian existentialism that are a lot more intellectual, and others that are almost anti-intellectual.

Christian existentialism, as well as secular existentialism, has been, and I put it in their quotes, credited to Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, and there's a sketch to the left here. At the risk of being accused of oversimplification, We'll summarize that portion of his thesis, which is relevant to our purposes, in a brief couple of points.

God is transcendent and wholly other than man, so that God's revelations of himself, beyond any rationalistic human approach to knowing and understanding him, require of human beings a leap of faith. Right at the outset, What do you see about that? Is God transcendent and wholly other than man? No. So what's wrong with this? Pardon? Denies Christ's humanity. Yeah, you've got two things. One is Christ's humanity and so that's one. Yeah, Crystal? In Genesis it says that we are created in the image of God. Yes, so those are two very significant ways in which God is not wholly other, right? Christ died on the cross as a man. Would it be just as good to have a sheep die on the cross? No, because it would take a human being to pay the price. You can't just have some other kind of creature pay the price.

Second one, leap of faith, Kierkegaard said, was the sole means of making true contact with God verified on the human side by an experience beyond those kinds of typical and mundane experiences that all humans have within the physical realm. Some special experience that affirms by experience and feelings that affirms what you believe to be the case existentially. Isn't that an emphasis on the leap rather than the leap in the facts? Yeah, in other words, what we would say at Holly Hills is faith in the facts.

And as a matter of fact, I remember Hal saying nobody should ever take a leap, you know. Somehow that sounds like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute. Yeah, and seeing how that works. It works until the last minute. It's a sudden stop. Yes, it's a sudden stop at the bottom. Doesn't that also kind of connect to the charismatic approach? Well, and that's exactly what we'll be covering here.

The charismatic movement is a combination of existentialism and mysticism. Mysticism, on the other hand, has a much longer history within Christendom, though it shares some characteristics of subjectivity in common with existentialism. Mysticism was expressed in its unbiblical forms, opposed by the apostles in the pages of the New Testament, from the Book of Acts to the Book of Revelation. Nonetheless, mysticism seeks to make contact with God apart from the propositional truths of Scripture, so it bypasses or just leaves Scripture. Using scripture loosely as a springboard for that divine contact. A lot of people figure if you have God, prayer, Jesus somewhere in the mix, then everything else is okay. And that sort of justification works with a lot of people.

The history of mysticism goes back to New Testament era heresies and is expressed in the monasteries that have existed over the centuries and by both individuals and entire movements. Alright, so existentialism and mysticism we've already addressed. In lesson 38 we took a look at spiritual formation, contemplative spirituality. That's essentially mysticism.

It bypasses scripture. In other words, when you think of mysticism, it's attempting to have contact with God that bypasses scripture, and the role and function of scripture. Roy? Just a thought. I guess what I'm driving at with this emphasis on leap, it's like a human perspective of God, rather than that God reaches out to us by his creation as well as the scriptures. You have to go from the starting point of not realizing what God has revealed himself in, and that is in the person of Christ and in scripture, and you have to just set that aside or be ignorant of it. It's all creation. It is from either ignorance or denial that a person can arrive at that.

The spiritual formation, contemplative spirituality, is something that has had a real explosion within Christendom in recent years, but it in fact goes back centuries. It's been something since the earliest era of monasticism that contemplative spirituality and asceticism that went along with it ended up starting what continued on over the centuries, particularly in the Roman Catholic Church. So it is also a form of existentialism in that it looks to feelings and experiences from essentially Eastern and Roman Catholic meditation to confirm the truth of that approach to God. There's nothing in scripture that confirms that the contemplative spirituality, spiritual formation approach is sound and biblical.

It is simply by experience that a person would say, you know, I've had contact with God in, you know, repeating this mantra or whatever it is. Is there anything in Scripture that would say you need to empty your mind and get all that stuff out of there and then let There isn't anything. And so you have to, again, be either ignorant of scripture or deny it.

Instead it talks about setting your mind on things above, where you're actively walking in fellowship and relationship, and it's not emptying your mind. It's very specifically focusing it on someone in a place that you are seated with Him in. Yeah, we've done a brief series here a couple of different times, beholding the Lord through His Word. And that's key, it's through His Word.

If we look at what Scripture itself says about Scripture, Scripture is not to be set aside in order to make some spiritual advance. The last sentence in that paragraph, also a number of televangelists employ mystical, that is bypassing scripture, and existentialist appeal to feelings and experiences and approaches in their version of Christianity. One of them particularly is the Word of Faith movement. This would be Hagen, Joyce Meyers, some of those. where you claim something and then trust God for it.

But it's not something revealed, it's something you're just arbitrarily claiming. So it's not faith, it's really presumption. In fact, we saw this over in Uganda more than once. A lot of the guys over there would start going ahead in that direction. And I'd say, uh-uh. We're going to believe God that he's going to provide for us our sound system for our New Year's celebration and all that.

Well, no, you're not believing God, you're just presuming. Yes? So that's bottom-up Christianity instead of top-down? Yeah, yeah. I'm going to have faith in what I claim and I'm going to trust God, presume upon God to provide what he never promised. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah, right? In school we had a professor of philosophy. Okay. I got fired over this. Okay. And he actually taught that what you believe based on your experiences is okay. and what I believe based on my experiences is okay.

And the focus is all on the experiences and interactions that I personally have with God versus His revealing Himself personally. And that sort of thing is both existentialist and mystical. Yes. I would say it is mysticism. It's mysticism in great part, but it's also very presumptuous, because rather than seeing God as revealing himself, it's I'm going to assume something and presume upon God to do something, and I have no basis for it in God's revelation. I don't remember what it was. So you talked about people saying, I'm going to believe God for this, that, or the other thing.

One of the critical doctrines in the scripture is this idea of stewardship. And stewardship demands that we have a responsibility before the Lord for the ministry, maybe resources, or maybe a ministry and resources. But if I'm in charge of something, before the body, then I'm probably going to look more at what does the scripture say about provision than I am going to just say, oh, I'm going to walk by faith and then keep it to myself.

It's like the Calvinist who never preaches the gospel, because God will save whoever he wants to save and I don't have to be involved, rather than God will provide for this thing, but I'm going to let my need be known and I'm going to seek out a resolution because I have a stewardship. The somewhat tragic thing about this mindset that has infiltrated the church is that it completely removes what God does provide, which is the trials and sufferings. So when these believers come up against what God has promised he's going to provide, they get completely boned and have super shaky faith because they don't understand There's no need for faith. He's already provided things, but it's not a sound system.

In other words, if I step away from scripture, I now have very subjective basis for determining what's true, what's right, what's wrong. I've been in a situation as an elder where the church was overtaken by a vineyard church. A vineyard church had a split, and rightly so, because the pastor had his hand in the till. So it split the church, but then there were a large congregation that came over and overwhelmed, just moved in and overwhelmed the congregation that we had. And what I saw that just stung me is, if you felt blessed, then it's good.

Then God's doing it. And that's the basis for what's true, not what does the Word of God say. And all sorts of weird, just basic inventions of people began to take over. One of the things that happened at the bottom, page one here, one of the things that happened during the New Testament era is you had influence from Greek and Egyptian mysticism and then there was the Silk Road trade which brought in ideas from the East, early versions of Hinduism and Buddhism. were being imported as well. So the environment that the apostles had to deal with was a lot of this early mysticism coming from these different sources were things that the apostles actually had to defend against and correct because that was creeping into the churches. So, let's take a look at the top of page 2, and we have pretty long quotes there from Colossians, and there is a lot of it that is pretty applicable.

I'm going to jump into verse 8. He says, see to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. That word captive is by thugs and pirates. It means being captive by thugs and pirates. So yeah, Paul uses essentially derogatory language to talk about those who are coming in and bringing in teachings that were unbiblical.

And if you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, one of the things we've said is at the crucifixion there's a join to and died to. We were joined to Christ in his crucifixion, therefore crucified with Christ, and we died to three things, the Bible teaches. One is the sin nature, two is the law, and three, the world. This is one passage that says that. Galatians 6 also says we've died to the world. So those three things we have died in relationship to because of our identification with Christ's death.

1 Timothy 4, 1-5, but the Spirit explicitly says in the latter times some will fall away from the faith, the faith being a term used for the teachings of the apostles starting at Acts chapter 6 and going on into Revelation. fall away from de-faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons. By means of hypocrisy of liars, seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron, men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from food, which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth." Forbidding marriage and abstaining from certain foods, that's asceticism. The Bible doesn't teach that, and Paul speaks against it. So, for everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude, for it is sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer.

What you have here at the bottom of the page on the left here, it shows the pendulum effect in church history. It's probably somewhat simplified, you'd have to say, but nonetheless you see emphasis on emotions, emphasis on intellect. And so there's been this tendency over the centuries for things to swing one way or the other. And that pendulum swing has taken place in our own time as well.

They point to Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement looking more towards emotions. How do you feel about something? Did you have an experience that it was some extraordinary experience? So Christian existentialism has had a voice in the last century, and this is where it's not so emotional as it is intellectual, but neo-orthodoxy, Names such as Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, and others. The basic idea of Neo-Orthodoxy is this. The Bible is spiritually true, but not necessarily historically true. Spiritually true. the spiritual truth from the historical. So that's the fundamental idea of neo-orthodoxy.

That's one expression of Christian existentialism, quite different from the Pentecostal and charismatic approach. So another Christian expression that deals in existentialism and mysticism is the charismatic movement, which has had a variety of expressions. There have been three basic stages in the last little more than a century. One is you've got Pentecostalism after 1900. It existed in some other forms earlier, but after 1900 and then ultimately forming into denominations, Foursquare, Assembly of God. My grandparents were Assembly of God.

Tongues is the evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. You ever hear that? Tongues is the evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Just right off the bat, what's the problem with that? different depending on who the recipient is. The spirit decides. Paul asks a question with a negative answer built into the grammar. Do all speak in tongues? And the answer is no, because he's going through the different gifts. The gifts are distributed variously, not across the board. Right? Yeah.

Anyway, in addition to that, Ephesians explicitly says that we have the Holy Spirit. Yes, we have the Spirit. If you're a believer, you have the Spirit. When we went through Romans 8, and we concluded the Spirit is in us, and we are in the Spirit. Just like we are in Christ, and Christ is in us. Those are both true statements, though it sounds the same, they don't mean the same thing. Christ and the Holy Spirit have a different role.

But, yeah, we don't need some separate experience. And that's, of course, what they will look to is some separate experience. Yes. And in a lot of cases it's just bakery anyway. Yeah. And so they're trying to impress or to demonstrate to somebody that they truly are saved. Yes. Because they have this supposed gift.

Tongues. is, I believe, a psychological phenomenon. It is either one of those things that someone can speak in tongues, so to speak, rather easily. Other people have to be coached, and some people can never do it. It's kind of like curling your tongue. It's sort of a genetic thing. Some people never can.

And I would say that, the other thing is, it has been expressed in some way in every single major religion. Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, they've all in one way or another expressed it, right? In different parts of Christendom, even atheists have been able to do it. So it's not a truly spiritual phenomenon. It's not a sign that you've been baptized in the Holy Spirit. Baptism in the Holy Spirit is 1 Corinthians 12, 13. You're baptized by the Spirit into the body of Christ. That's spirit baptism.

I'm sorry, what? A lack of faith in the facts? Yeah. Yeah, people often times looking for an experience or some kind of an outward sign, when looking for that is actually a problem, instead of faith in what God has revealed. When you say tongues, you're talking about today's modern phenomenon. Today's modern phenomenon, yes.

Not the Acts. Yeah, not the Book of Acts. The Book of Acts, I mean, you look at tongues, it shows up chapter 2, chapter 10, chapter 19, so three times over a period of 30 years, and the first time it's Jews in a Jewish land, next time it's Gentiles in a Jewish land, and the next time it's Jews in a Gentile land.

Those are the three times it shows up. It's always at an evangelistic environment. And then it's only talked about in the letters, the epistles, in 1 Corinthians. And 12, 13, 14 talk about tongues. And it only says two or three at a time. It's more than we can go into right now.

The charismatic movement is where it jumped denominational lines and it was no longer taught that tongues is the evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. So the Charismatic movement would look to various apostolic era gifts, as I would call them, manifested among various people. So I'd come across Charismatic Catholics, Charismatic Baptocostals, different ones. The few times that I actually went to a service like that, it turned out to me it was more like entertainment than it was worship.

Unfortunately, you're correct. The hyper-charismatic movement is jumping outside of expressions that are described in scripture. Things like holy barking, holy mooing, holy birthing, holy barfing, stuff like that. Holy spirit glue, things that are not described in scripture. It's interesting, my A brother had a lady in his church who had been a hyper-charismatic, and then she became a believer. So, very interesting. It's a phenomenon that, again, things happen that isn't necessarily related to Christian faith even.

And unbelievers can exhibit a lot of these kinds of things. There's an interesting crossover between the hyper charismatic expressions and a lot of the things that show up in Hindu kundalini, it's called. So these deal with existentialism in that feelings and experiences are often looked upon as confirming or establishing what is true.

So these also deal in mysticism in that scripture is either bypassed entirely or scripture is the starting point for a departure from scripture. So what you'll find is, okay, here's this verse here, now we're going to go off and do this thing that has no connection with scripture, but it's just a launching point. So scripture can often be a launching point rather than something that people stay by, but it's just a place to start. So we'll talk about God and Christ and those kinds of things, and talk about prayer, but then we're going to go off and have this experience of being completely unguided by scripture, maybe not even described by scripture.

Then there are those who are not in any of these movements or churches, but still operate in their lives by existential and or mystical assumptions. One of them I mentioned previously, theophaustic prayer for deep-seated hurts. Theophaustic prayer, invented by a Baptist a couple decades back, if someone has some deep-seated hurt in their life, then you have someone come alongside you and pray for you that you'll have this mystical encounter with God or with Christ. And so people will have visions that they talk to the Lord or hear voices or things like that.

But it's completely unguided by scripture. And then the other question I have is, are we always guaranteed that some hurtful experience is going to be healed up and end up nice? Not necessarily. This again has to do with God's purpose in trials and suffering. But Theophilistic prayer has nothing to do with scripture other than it uses a few ideas and words, but it doesn't use scripture itself to touch the deepest part of us.

Another example, Christian music, which is to be teaching and admonishing as a result of being filled with Christ by means of the Spirit, and therefore must be biblical in content and message. The worthiness of a piece of Christian music is evaluated on the basis of confirmed feelings and subjective experience rather than by scripture. This song really blessed me. or I felt blessed. So it's one of those things where we need to look at scripture because songs are teaching and admonishing.

That's one of the things when we select songs to sing, we're saying, is this biblically true? Is this scriptural? So that's key. Yes? What does apostate, the base of that word, mean? It means God-like. So Theo is God, right? Right. And Vostok is? False, which is light. God-light. It's basically just made up, but that's the idea. So what should a Christian think about all this?

The Holy Spirit is personally and essentially involved in the writing of Scripture so as to bring truth to the pages of Scripture. So here's 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17. All Scripture is inspired by God, God breathed, and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.

2 Peter 1 20-21 But know this, first of all, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, that is, not to be subjectively validated as the basis of truth. For no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men carried along by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. So it's intended to be as objective revelation, God, to be applied subjectively.

Get the difference? It is objective truth to be applied subjectively, personally. Not truth determined subjectively. There's a difference there. So we start with objective truth and then we move from there to subjective application, personal application. But we don't determine the truth subjectively. That's an important distinction.

So as we brought up earlier in this elective is lessons 12 and 13 in the Bible, how do we get it? God is involved through the Holy Spirit in the writing, transmission, and preservation of Scripture. The words of Scripture send a resounding message regarding the specific content of Scripture that God has deliberately revealed for our benefit and His glory. One of the reasons for bringing this up is just simply to bring out what does the Bible say about itself, its own revelation?

And do we have a basis for bypassing it, as is commonly being done among Christian groups now? Do we have a basis for bypassing Scripture? Do we have a basis for just using Scripture as a launching point to then go somewhere else? Theophastic prayer denies what Scripture says about itself.

It says Scripture is alive and powerful, sharper than a two-edged sword. And how deep does it penetrate? To the dividing line between soul and spirit, that deep. Nothing else goes that deep. You can't get anything else that goes that deep. Scripture is intended to go deep and to touch you deeply and impact you deeply.

And that's God's intended use for it. But for me to say, well, it's not really cutting it. So I think I'm going to invent this other little thing that I have no means of verifying, except by subjective experience. And unfortunately, that's a lot of what's happened in various parts of Christendom. So we have some bullets here. We probably won't get through all of them in detail.

In the three relatively short books known as the Pastoral Epistles, 1st and 2nd Timothy, and Titus, Randy and I did an elective on that a few years back, there are over 50 references to doctrine, teaching, and instruction. The doctrine, teaching, and instruction are not to be pursued just for the sake of academic and intellectual development, but are intended by God as the essentials for every believer's spiritual growth and maturity. Is scripture essential or optional? It's essential, not optional.

Scripture is the mysticism that is biblical. We behold the Lord through his word. We're touched by his word. We grow from the truth of scripture. And it's essential, it's not optional. There isn't any plan B or plan C. Anything like that, that bypasses scripture, is human-based, not based on the Lord. No matter what we experience, no matter what we experience. Those are human beings.

In the New Testament Historical Book of Acts and on into the epistles we find repeated references to the faith as a specific set of apostolic teachings. It begins with Acts 6-7 and goes all the way to Revelation 2-13 with multiple instances in between. The appeal from Jude 3, I urge that you contend Epiagonizami, I urge that you contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints, that set of teachings of the Apostles. In Ephesians chapter 3, Paul makes clear that it has been given to him to reveal certain truths of Scripture that had not been revealed before.

In doing so, Paul makes use of a number of words and phrases that are identical to those found in the Greek Old Testament version of Daniel chapter 2. God has revealed. God has made known. Those kinds of words. God is one, Daniel says in Daniel chapter 2, God is one who reveals things.

That's who he is. That's his activity because of his character. In both of the messages from Daniel and from Paul, the truths revealed were intended as It should be propositional, a propositional objective message to be applied personally. Here is the character, there's a couple of slides here that I think are helpful.

One, the character of the truth revealed to us by God about God. What God has told us is absolute truth, not relative or variable. Why is that important? Why is it important that we see it that way? What God has revealed is absolute truth. We need a single source of truth that is not us, that is not tainted with sin. Okay. Yeah. Crystal?

When you know that it's absolute truth, there's no desire to stray from that truth or make anything else out of it. Because you become very attached to that truth. If it's absolute truth, we know we can stand on it. If there isn't any absolute truth or no way for us to know what is absolutely true, then we're all just adrift. Whatever our subjective experience is, that truth is defined by your symbolic universe, if you want to put it that way.

Absolute truth then says, this is the truth, there is no drift, there is no guessing. The next one, what God has told us is not different from one person to the next. Oh, that's just your interpretation? Did God intend to communicate with us something that was singular and understandable? Or, did God intend for us to look at the pages of Scripture and all have different interpretations and experiences? So, what Scripture conveys, and we give the references there, is that what God has told us is not different from one person to the next.

If I'm sincere, does that get me to heaven? No, it doesn't. Yes, you can be sincerely wrong. believed as long as they were sincere in it. I was just thinking of the law came by Moses and grace and truth came by Jesus Christ and the scriptures Jesus said are those portions of his revelations that deal with him and so we go beyond that early descriptions, and that seems to be a huge difference between the focus on doctrine, and being right, and being correct, and absolute, and all of that, and knowing Him personally. Ultimately the truth is personal, isn't it?

It is not simply propositional. Crystal? Well, in the sad, startling, illustration of what Roy just said just happened in Paris, France. They are extremely sincere. I mean, with the horrific act, that was a very sincere act of faith. It was sincere. It was sincere. Yeah, it was horrid.

What God has told us is absolute truth, but not exhaustive truth. Do we know the answer to every possible question from Scripture? No. So that's one thing is, we say it's absolute truth, it's not exhaustive truth. There are still things we could say, well, I'm not sure what the answer is to this. He's not told us every possible thing we might have a question about. But what has been revealed is absolutely true. And finally, there is great value in knowing what God has revealed to us. There's great value in it. So this is another aspect of the character of the truth revealed by God.

We have a chart on the right there that shows the five biblically-backed revelations, and we say general revelation is nature, providence, which would include a sort of a general guidance, and conscience, and then finally, special revelation, scripture, and Christ. Okay, so let's take, we're running out of time here, Let's take a look at one other item and that is, I'd like us to turn to page 6.

Walk but neither leap nor drift. The approach of Christian existentialism is to either bypass the spiritual function of Scripture that Scripture reveals of itself by God's intent, or to misuse Scripture as a point of departure from which to go on to other mystical experiences. Either way, God's deliberate revelation through Scripture does not remain in its God-intended role. Spiritual growth then becomes humanly centered, lacking the necessary explicit scriptural definitions.

So human experience becomes the definition and my subjective measure of the spiritual realm. By the way, what could be wrong with the human subjective evaluations and measure of the spiritual realm? What can go wrong with that? I agree with you, I get a little more specific for us. But it's the flesh, it's the sin nature that's guiding you. Yeah, this is part of the problem is on what basis, what part of me is doing the feeling? Is this my new nature in Christ or is this the old nature showing up? Right?

Yeah. limited. I mean, we don't have to admit it, but I personally am limited by where I grew up, what culture I've been from, what gender I am. My perceptions are grossly limited. So my experiences cannot be valuable for every situation. We have from scripture that we will go through various trials and I might not even like them. I might not like them and so I won't feel blessed and so I'll think that the trial is something I just need to get through or run away from or something. God's being mean. I'm mad at God because X, Y, and Z. Instead of recognizing here's what God's doing because He's revealed it.

Yes? When we have spiritual growth from a human perspective, I have personally seen and experienced pride get in the way because your measure of spiritual growth is upon yourself. Therefore, it's like, look how awesome I am. By the way, what is the measurement standard for spiritual growth? What's that? Christ. Yes, Ephesians 4, 11-16. The measurement standard is Christ himself.

So one of the things that we see here, 2 Peter 3, 14-18, and I have the middle part of that underlined. He talks about our beloved brother Paul according to the wisdom given him wrote to you as also in all his letters speaking in them of these things in which are in which some things hard to understand which the untaught and unstable distort as they do also the rest of scriptures to their own destruction. So is it possible that you read scripture and distort it? Yeah, so a person has to be careful that we're really asking what does scripture say and not reading something into it because we like it.

And then in verse 18, but grow, and by the way that's an imperative, in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He is the direction towards which we grow. He is the standard measure of spiritual growth. In Hebrews 2, 1-4, for this reason we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard from the apostles, so that we do not drift away from it. That's a nautical or shipping term. So we do not drift away from it. It's paying attention to the truth and not just going as we've been blown and moved by the waves.

I want to bring to your attention the last four pages here as a supplement. I could have wished we had it some months ago, but it was only posted just this last week. This is J. Warner Wallace. You may have heard of J. Warner Wallace if you watch Dateline or 60 Minutes.

He is a cold case detective in Southern California. who has been very successful at cracking cold cases. And a lot of these cold cases, witnesses in many cases, all the witnesses are gone. And so all you have is whatever testimony they left, and whatever evidence was left. And so he, by the way, being a former atheist, came to the New Testament and he said, this is a cold case. The New Testament is a cold case because I've got all this evidence here from the New Testament, but I can't go back and inquire of anything from any of the witnesses, but I've got all this evidence.

And so, real interesting, I don't agree with him at every single point in everything that he writes. And so I've got that sort of disclaimer there at the footnote at the bottom. Nonetheless, I think he's done pretty well here with this particular article, why I know the Gospels were written early, not some later fabrication. And so anyway, I invite you to take a look at that.

One is the New Testament doesn't describe the destruction of the temple, 70 AD. It does not describe the destruction of the temple, and you would think somebody writing later would put that account in there. Additionally, the New Testament doesn't describe the siege of Jerusalem, similarly.

Luke said nothing about the deaths of Paul and Peter, which took place somewhere in the middle of the 60s AD. Here's the gospel writers not even talking about it. Luke said nothing about the death of James. James died in 62 AD, according to records from Josephus. But like the deaths of Paul and Peter, the execution of James is absent from any biblical account, even though Luke described the deaths of Stephen and James the brother of John. in the book of Acts. So, a death of a significant saint?

Yep. But Peter and Paul are not described there. And you would have thought that it would be, since it's evident that Paul and Luke spent time together. Luke's gospel predates the book of Acts, because Luke begins Acts saying, in my former account, And so then Paul quoted Luke's gospel in his letter to Timothy, and he also quoted Luke's gospel in 1 Corinthians. So Paul is quoting, so that's an early gospel, and Luke quotes from Matthew and Mark.

So those were written early. So anyway, he's just put together some fairly easily understandable arguments here that say that these books were written early and not later as a lot of the critics and skeptics like to say. So multiple lines of evidence pointing to them having been written early. So anyway, I just want to bring that to your attention. I think it's worth reading and he's done a good job of making the arguments simple and understandable.

Any other thoughts, comments? Yes? I went and visited a church in Oklahoma City with my friend and they said something about that none of the writers of the New Testament had ever even knew Jesus. That's the skeptical viewpoint. Here is the range. The maximalist says that the Gospels and these books were written at the time that they claim. The minimalist, which is a more skeptical viewpoint, is that these things were written later. What is happening over time is the evidence is pushing the date earlier and earlier and earlier.

There was a time, for example, when the Gospel of John was said to be written about 170 to 180 AD, in which case it was like a century and a half after. Yeah, not by John the Apostle, but it was written by somebody writing as if he were John. That used to be the theory. Then they found a fragment of the Gospel of John from 125 AD, and so that doesn't work. Just recently, and the testing is not done, but a fragment of the Gospel of Mark has been found that preliminarily, and I have to be cautious about that, preliminarily looks like it was written in the 80s AD.

So again, that evidence keeps pushing things closer. It used to be said, as recently as about 15 years ago, that there were no physical synagogue buildings during the time of Christ. And that people writing later projected the existence of those synagogue buildings back into the writing.

Well, recent archaeological finds, including most importantly the one at Magdala, negate that. And the work was done by the Israel Antiquities Authority. They've got no Christian axe to grind. But they found coins in the floor of the synagogue at Magdala that dated from the time of Christ.

So the theory that there were no synagogues But that's been projected back in time. It just got, you know, bomb-filled. One of the books that's out there, you can look it up on Amazon, The Myth of Nazareth. Nazareth was not even a city, or a town, supposedly, until about 70 AD.

Well, archaeologists have nailed that one too. several different structures have been found dating from the time of Christ and before. So a lot of the evidence is continuing to shove those dates earlier or negating some of the basis for the statements like you just referenced. And this right here, his arguments, too, further support the idea that the Gospels and the New Testament was written early. So, yeah, the evidence is increasingly moving things in the direction of, yes, these are valid documents and the authors are who they claim to be, etc. In your statement, your truths were intended as propositional. What does propositional mean? A propositional truth is something that is, you're able to state it, verbalize it. Let's say for example, a propositional truth would be Christ is deity. He's the second member of the Trinity. Christ is deity.

That's a propositional statement about God. rather than something that I cannot even convey with language. That's this holy other idea, where I can't even describe God, and God's so holy other that I can't relate to Him. Both the birth of Christ and His life, as well as a consistent statement from the Old Testament into the New, that man is made in God's image. Both of those things revealed from Scripture negate the idea that God is holy other. and that we can make no propositional statements about him. Instead, we find that we have statements about God's character, and multiple statements, and as a matter of fact, we can get to know him.

That's something that's significantly different between Christianity and Islam. In Islam, God is unknowable. In Christianity, you'd better know him. Radically different message. Radically different message. Islam does not believe that we're made in God's image, but that's what the scripture says, that's what the Bible says. And it's repeated, not just Genesis, but it's repeated on through the New Testament. That we're made in His image, in His likeness. Okay, let's close it up.

Lord, we thank you for what you have revealed in your word and what you've made clear, that we are not adrift, that we're not left to our own subjective assessments of everything. And we thank you for your word that very intentionally and on purpose, you revealed yourself, you revealed truth about us. in relationship with you and in fellowship with you. And we just thank you for that. And we know that you've done it because you love us and you care for us so very much. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.