- Why are we going to talking about The Da Vinci Code over the next few weeks? Well, there’s a couple of reasons:
1. Dan Brown’s book makes some serious claims about Jesus that strike at the heart of what we believe. Because of the enormous popularity of this book and the likely blockbuster status of the movie, it’s essential that we address whether those claims are true. (While the characters are obviously fictitious, Brown claims the information to be true. At the beginning of his book, it reads: “All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.”)
2. As this movie comes out, it provides an open door to talk about spiritual things. People who normally wouldn’t want to talk about Jesus will have the questions of the movie on their mind. People who aren’t normally interested in discussing the Bible will likely want to talk about what the movie claimed. This is an opportunity that we need to seize. Therefore, this sermon series is not just to help you to understand the issues yourself, but it’s to equip you to be able to share the truth with the people you come in contact with. 1 Peter 3:15 says that we should always be ready with an answer as to why we believe in Jesus. I hope to prepare you to give those answers as they relate to The Da Vinci Code.
Our Starting Point:
“Can the Bible be trusted?”
- Why is this the question to start with in this series?
- The answer is that the Bible makes claims about who Jesus is and Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code basically asserts that those claims are fiction. Brown asserts that there are these secret orders that have the real truth and therefore that the Bible is not an accurate portrayal of who Jesus really was.
- This is obviously of huge importance. If the Bible is God’s Word, then it is something we need to pay close attention to. If the Bible is merely a collection of partially-made-up stories, then we need to file it under “Fiction” and quit giving it the attention that we as Christians usually do.
- Do we need to take everything we read in the Bible with a grain of salt or can we fully trust that it is in fact the inspired Word of God?
Four Accusations:
- In order to answer those questions, I want to answer four key accusations against the Bible.
- Even before The Da Vinci Code, many people have made comments about “Aren’t there mistakes in the Bible?”, “What about the factual errors in the Bible?”, or “The contradictions in the Bible keep me from believing it.” Do people who make such comments have a point or are they simply repeating statements that have little to back them up?
- With each of these four accusations, I hope to make it clearer that the preponderance of the evidence is on the side of the Bible’s accuracy.
1. “The Bible has some nice stories, but it’s not like all those events really happened.”
- This line of thinking raises doubts about the Bible by questioning the its historical accuracy. “Sure, some of the stories have a nice moral point - just like most works of fiction. But that doesn’t mean those events actually occurred.”
- This is an important question: are the details in the Bible actually facts? When the Bible says that this person did this thing at this place, is that literally true or was it written as a product of someone’s imagination?
- The best way to answer this concern is simple: dig in.
- As archeologists dig into the ground around the places where the Bible says things happened, do they find that what the Bible says is true or do they find evidence that disproves the Bible? The answer, in fact, is that the more they dig, the more they prove the Bible’s accuracy.
- The Bible’s events are not flights of fancy, but are actual events that involved real people. In literally hundreds and hundreds of situations, archeologists have discovered evidence that points to the accuracy of the stories in the Bible.
- Let me give you three examples to prove my point:
a. In Judges 6, we read one of the more “unbelievable” stories in the Bible. It claims that Israel marched around Jericho and then with a shout God knocked the walls down. Many would say, “C’mon, you expect me to believe that? How stupid do I look?” And, granted, that is an unusual story. Yet: “During the excavations of Jericho (1930-1936) Garstang found something so startling that a statement of what was found was prepared and signed by himself and two other members of the team. In reference to these findings Garstang says: ‘As to the main fact, then, there remains no doubt: the walls fell outwards so completely that the attackers would be able to clamber up and over their ruins into the city.’ Why so unusual? Because the walls of cities do not fall outwards, they fall inwards. And yet in Joshua 6:20 we read ‘. . . The wall fell flat, so that the people went up into the city every man straight ahead, and they took the city.’ The walls were made to fall outward.” (Josh McDowell, Evidence That Demands A Verdict (Vol. 1), p. 69)
b. In Genesis 7, we read the incredible claim that there was a massive flood that covered the earth. Many would say, “C’mon, you expect me to believe that? How stupid do I look?” Yet: Gregg Easterbrook writes, “‘The flood legends of Mesopotamia and the Bible’ is how the [New York] Times recently described beliefs about a huge, ancient inundation [that] once covered much of the Earth. Oddly this choice of words occurred in a new report about a study, just published in the American Journal of Archeology, giving evidence that a huge, ancient inundation once covered much of the Earth. Researchers studying the Black Sea off Sinop, a city in Turkey, found indications that a catastrophic flood struck the area approximately 7,000 years ago, flooding inhabited land and turning the Black Sea from fresh to saline. Sinop is approximately 500 miles from the ancient Holy Land. Oceanographers from the University of Pennsylvania and the Institute for Exploration, a science organization in Connecticut, reported evidence suggesting the deluge hit rapidly, was extremely wide in scope, and killed many. The work was sponsored by the nonpartisan National Geographical Society. A fast-hitting, catastrophic deluge is, of course, what Genesis describes.”
c. In Genesis 1, we have the claim that God spoke and the universe came into existence. Many would say, “C’mon, you expect me to believe that? How stupid do I look?” Yet: the dominant scientific theory of our day (the one that all the scientific data seems to point to) is called “The Big Bang.” Its basic idea is: “All the matter in the universe was compacted into a space the size of the head of a pin, then it exploded ferociously and the universe has been expanding since.” When you boil it down, that sounds suspiciously like what Genesis is saying, “It wasn’t and then BOOM, there is was” (very loose paraphrase!). The Big Bang sounds to me like an attempt to explain scientific data of God’s creative moment while trying to find a way to leave God out of it.
- I could cite hundreds of other specific examples. The point is: the more they dig, the more they research, the more they prove that the facts of the Bible are facts. The events of the Bible really happened and the Bible is accurate in recording the real events that involved real people in real places.
- The Bible can be trusted.
2. “The Bible has some good teaching, but there’s no way to prove that God was involved in writing it.”
- Some would argue, “Perhaps the Bible puts forward some good moral ideas, but lots of books do that. There’s no way to prove that the Bible is God’s teaching.” The point is, again, an important one. Is there any way to prove that the Bible is not merely “a good book,” but “the God book”?
- The best way to answer this concern is simple: look ahead.
- There is one way in particular that would give us indication that there is something unusual going on here. If there were things written in the Bible that looked ahead into time and could be shown to have accurately predicted the future, that would give us indication of God’s involvement. No human has the ability to accurately predict the future 100% of the time, so if the Bible could be shown to regularly and accurately predict the future, that would push us toward knowing that there is something unusual about the Bible.
- In fact, the Bible makes many predictions of the future. They’re called “prophecies.”
- Let’s just look at one small part of the predictions the Bible makes: the predictions about the Messiah. Christians believe that Jesus is the Messiah and there are at least 61 separate predictions about what the Messiah would be like. (For list, McDowell, pp. 144-166.) It’s important to note that while some of these predictions (like what He would say) were within His control, the fulfillment of many of these predictions depended on people and circumstances over which Jesus did not have direct control.
- Let’s just look at three predictions:
a. In Micah 5:2, it is prophesied that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. That is fulfilled in Matthew 2:1 when Jesus, although his parents have Narareth for their hometown, are in Bethlehem for the census when Jesus is born.
b. In Zechariah 11:12, it speaks of him being sold for 30 shekels of silver. In Matthew 26:15, Judas betrays Jesus and the price he’s offered is 30 shekels of silver.
c. In Psalm 22:16, it speaks of him having his hands and feet pierced. Of course, Jesus is crucified (Luke 23:33). The particularly amazing thing about this prophecy is that crucifixion had not been invented at the time of the writing of Psalm 22.
- Couldn’t these have happened by accident? Peter Stoner estimated the likelihood of only eight of these prophecies being fulfilled in one person merely by chance. His conclusion was that the odds were 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000 (a 1 with 17 zeroes after it). Stoner says that would be the same as covering the state of TX with silver dollars two deep feet and then asking someone to travel as far as they wanted in any direction and pull the right silver dollar out, simply by chance.
- Stoner goes on to evaluate the chance of 48 of the prophecies being fulfilled by chance and the odds there had a 1 with 157 zeroes after it.
- All in all, it’s clear that the Bible has an amazing record in predicting the future. And we have only considered the prophecies surrounding the Messiah. There are many others on other issues that could be noted.
- Especially when you compare this perfect record to the records of “prophets” like Nostradamus and Jeanne Dixon, you realize how amazing this is. Nostradamus’ famous “Hitler” prediction, when you actually look at his text, actually refers to the word “Hisler” and that “Hisler” reference is in the text given as a place, not a person. One study of Jeanne Dixon and similar psychics found that they were on average right only 6% of the time. (See The Case For Faith, pp. 133-134.)
- The Bible has an unmatched record in predicting the future and that record indicates to us that something supernatural was going on in the creation of this book.
- The Bible can be trusted.
3. “The Bible that we have today is not the same as what the original authors wrote.”
- Another objection that folks with throw at the Bible is that it has changed down through the years and so therefore we don’t know what the Bible originally said.
- Brown writes in The Da Vinci Code: “Because Constantine upgraded Jesus’ status almost four centuries after Jesus’ death, thousands of documents already existed chronicling His life as a mortal man. To rewrite the history books, Constantine knew he would need a bold stroke. . . . Constantine commissioned and financed a new bible, which omitted those gospels that spoke of Christ’s human traits and embellished those gospels that made Him godlike” (p. 234).
- We’ll get to the “other gospels” in a moment, but right now we want to focus on whether the Bible we have is “embellished.” Have there been significant changes to it so that what we read is not the same as what the original authors wrote?
- As you know, in ancient times there were no copier machines to run off endless copies. Instead, each book had to be copied by hand by a scribe. Obviously, unless carefully handled, this would open up the possibility of errors.
- How can we know that what we have now is an accurate reflection of the originals?
- The best way to answer this concern is simple: add it up.
- The evidence comes from the number of copies that we have available to us.
- Let’s use Homer’s Iliad for comparison. Iliad is ranked number 2 in having the most ancient manuscripts (or pieces of manuscripts). There are 643 copies of Iliad. (Also, the time span between original writing and the earliest known copies of the Iliad is 500 years.)
- By comparison, there are 24,000 copies of the New Testament manuscripts (or pieces of manuscript). (Also, the time span between the original writing and the earliest known copies is only 25 years.)
- The point is clear: we have an abundance of material concerning the New Testament. Further, this material testifies to the accuracy of what we read today. The evidence is overwhelming both in numbers of manuscripts and closeness to the original authors.
- The Bible can be trusted.
4. “There are other secret writings about Jesus that have been silenced.”
- The quote cited under point 3 from The Da Vinci Code implies that there are other gospels and other holy writings that have been covered up because they’re embarrassing. That simply isn’t an accurate statement of fact.
- The best way to answer this concern is simple: read up.
- Read up on what’s actually written in those books and you’ll find the reasons that they were not included in the Bible.
- The truth is that there are other books that were written about Jesus that aren’t in the New Testament. This isn’t a secret - it’s a well-known fact. That there would be other writings is not surprising. Jesus was a popular and controversial teacher. One would expect that many people (with both honorable and dishonorable motives) would write about Him.
- Those other books were not kept out of the Bible because they were embarrassing. They were not included in the New Testament because they are not factually accurate. Writings like “The Gospel of Thomas” were rejected because the leaders in the church found them to not accurately reflect the life and teaching of Jesus. For instance, in one book, Jesus is shown as a child, molding a bird out of clay, then throwing it into the air and watching it fly away. This kind of a frivolous miracle stands in stark contrast to the Biblical reality that when Jesus used His miraculous powers He used them to heal and not to show off.
- These are not “secret writings” that the church has conspired to keep hidden. They are widely read works that were rejected because they did not have the accuracy that is obviously demanded to be a part of the Bible.
- The Bible can be trusted.
A Final Question:
“Why are people so interested in being able to deny the accuracy of the Bible?”
The Answer: “Because the Bible makes claims on you.”
- Most books (including The Da Vinci Code) can be an enjoyable read, but in the end they make no request of you. They don’t ask you to change your life.
- The Bible, on other hand, makes some huge claims. It makes claims on who God really is. It makes claims on the only way someone can find God. It makes claims on how you should live your life. It makes claims on what you should believe. It makes claims on how you should spend your money. It makes claims on what your goals in life should be.
- And not only does it make claims, but many of its claims require a radical reevaluation and readjustment of our lives. Those are not things that everyone wants to do.
- Therefore, it is in the interest of many people to find reasons to disbelieve the Bible. If it’s not accurate, then its claims are invalid.
- Leith Anderson makes a valid and interesting point in saying that almost everyone he’s known who claimed “intellectual objections” to believing in Jesus or the Bible actually had other issues when you dug a little deeper into their heart. They didn’t want to give up that habit. They didn’t want to change that behavior. (For specifics, see pp. 234-236 in Lee Strobel’s The Case For Faith.)
- I’ll say this for them: they’re right that the Bible makes radical claims on your life.
- If the Bible, as we’ve shown clearly today, is accurate, then the question for you this morning is, “Will you believe the Bible and allow its claims into your life?”
