God is not a coward.

Three things converged on me this weekend to launch this piece. 

The first was a review of some of the work I had done on biblical genealogies in preparation for a PhD thesis.  The Holy Spirit has chosen to lace up the scriptures with genealogies that establish a certain tone.  In one sense, if they were missing, it would be as if we wandered into a very old city that still had a vibrant community, only to find that there was no graveyard anywhere.

The second was a reading I did in the classic historical work of Will Durant, Christ and Caesar.  Some of Durant’s perspective is less elaborate than even that of Edersheim (The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah) in that he, like Josephus, leans heavily on the biblical record for his material.  However, Durant points out that there never was a serious challenge from the Jews to the early documents that supported the Christian faith.  

The third was that I read a short devotional by a popular Christian author that pointed out that the earliest gospel was that of Mark and it was written in 50 to 60 AD.

My response to these converging points is this:

My God is not a coward.  My God has no difficulty laying His cards on the table and challenging anyone to show Him up (John 8:46…might as well read to the end of the chapter).  My God would not write a book and withhold it from circulation until His enemies no longer had access to the material needed to research His claims.  Anyone who believes that, at the very least, the gospels of Luke and Matthew, were written down and available for examination later than a time contemporary with Jesus ministry is calling my God a coward.  The fact that not one assault upon the accuracy of the genealogies of Matthew and Luke together was ever established in antiquity indicates that the Jewish cult of power of that time could not deny the validity of BOTH.  It also points out that Jesus personally commissioned the gospel works of these 2 writers and told them how they were to shape their perspective on what He was on earth to accomplish.

The time has come for Christianity to shake off the hideous strength of the lies of the ancient church leaders who reinvented the truth of who Jesus was and how He lived.  The ridiculous and insulting pictures of Joseph and Mary barely making ends meet in a rude shop where crude articles of furniture were made is romantic…made up by Roman liars!  What did Joseph do with the investment of gold given him by the Magi? Why does Jesus know a lot more about banking and running a business than He does about carpentry?  Why is it difficult to conceive that Jesus would call someone who had a ready supply of writing materials and implements (Matthew, the tax collector) so that his ministry and mission could be recorded as it happened?

Jesus made sure that the Jews could get their hands on what was written and have plenty of time to deal with it if they could.  They never raised an objection.  “This thing was not done in a CORNER!” (Acts 26:26)