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Like Weeds in the Garden
Dear Friend of Creation:
With more than 40 million copies sold, The Da Vinci Code is the new best-selling hardcover novel of all time. On the heels of the bestseller, a few weeks ago The Da Vinci Code movie was released with much fanfare.
At the heart of Dan Brown’s blockbuster success is a secret. The secret isn’t that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene. The secret isn’t that other “gospels” tell us the truth about Jesus. The secret isn’t that Jesus was “voted” to be divine by Constantine. These so-called “secrets” of The Da Vinci Code are fiction, plain and simple. There’s not a shred of historical evidence for any of them!
No, the real secret is something far more insidious. According to Professor Darrell Bock--an expert in New Testament studies at Dallas Theological Seminary—the secret is that The Da Vinci Code is “a conscious effort to obscure the uniqueness and vitality of the Christian faith and message!”
Divinity Denied
The Da Vinci Code may be just a novel, but it is a novel clothed in claims of historical “truth” that tears at the heart of Christianity. The novel denies Christ’s divinity with a long-debunked hoax. As with cult religions, the novel claims the insight of some “new” and “secret” information—some supposedly in the form of clues left by the Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci.
Isn’t it just like the spirit of the world, under “the god of this world” (II Cor. 4:4 ) to try to deceive a generation ungrounded in true facts about the Christian faith? This is why ministries of apologetics like Creation Moments are so important today. We defend the truth of the Bible!
As you know, we live in a time when truth is relative. Postmodern sensibilities are such that truth does not rest on known facts, but on the inclinations and perspectives of individuals. The feeling is that “what’s true for you is true for you, and what’s true for me is true for me.”
According to relativism, we should tolerate virtually everything, and avoid making claims for absolute truth or uniqueness apart from the general mass of humanity. Relativism says Jesus was just a prophet—a figure like Buddha or Mohammed. It says Christianity is just one among a smorgasbord of acceptable religious alternatives.
The reality is that Christianity is unique; truth is indeed absolute; tolerance has limits; and humanity is accountable to our Creator. Furthermore, Jesus Christ is the Living Word of God, the Alpha and the Omega, the great I Am, the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace!
The divinity of Jesus is made abundantly clear from even a cursory reading of the Bible. It’s not an idea injected into Christianity by the 4th-century Council of Nicea, as Dan Brown’s novel claims. Jesus Christ never married. He died on the cross. He rose from the dead. And He ascended into heaven, just as the Bible says.
The Bible is true, as is demonstrated whenever it can be put under the scrutiny of real history and factual evidence. And it stands or falls as a whole. If you disbelieve a part of the Bible, the whole thing begins to unravel for you. A biblical worldview holds together through all challenges so long as it is a biblical worldview ENTIRELY.
Last month, a skeptic wrote to us after visiting our website to berate us for our young earth creationism. He went on and on about how various population growth models couldn’t be true if the earth was really so young. How could there be over 6 billion people on the planet in less than 10,000 years?
His was a common mistake made from an inability or unwillingness to believe certain aspects of the biblical revelation. The Bible says that humans originally lived very long lives, and were still living extraordinarily long lives for quite a while after the great flood of Noah. Simply put, in those days there was more time for more offspring!
Evolution assumes short lifespans. But the Bible tells us that Noah lived for 350 years AFTER the flood, having entered the Ark at the age of 600. Noah’s son Shem lived for 502 years after the flood. And three generations down from Shem people were still living over 400 years, with new generations approximately every 30 years. Six generations down from Shem people were living over 200 years. And nine generations later, they were still living well over 100 years. This is all known from the genealogies recorded in the Bible (Gen. 11).
Given very long lives over which to “be fruitful and multiply”, and knowing from Scripture that there were lots of “other sons and daughters” not named in the genealogies, we easily arrive at 6 billion people on earth today using the timeframe of a biblical young earth model.
Dangerous Assumptions
We simply cannot assume, as evolution does, that all things have always been as they are now. Certain processes can and have changed dramatically through history, as have average lifetimes. This is why we need biblical revelation to guide us. Subverting God’s revelation with assumptions based on present-day information always leads to error.
Evolution DEMANDS long ages of time to hang together as a “theory”; therefore, evolutionists reject catastrophic and cataclysmic change as major factors in earth science and history. Evolutionists are particularly biased against a global flood, since that specific form of cataclysm is a key part of the Bible’s revelation.
Evolution-only dogma leads people to error. One gets the impression that many evolutionists would actually prefer to live with evolution’s glaring weaknesses and stay in error rather than to admit that something more than natural causes is at work—to admit a Divinity.
Similarly, in the case of The Da Vinci Code, the divinity-denying conclusions are based on fabricated history and bad assumptions. Unfortunately, people will believe the cultic and New Age lies of the novel. Even Christians may be troubled and discouraged by the book.
This is why it is so important to get truth into the hands, heads, and hearts of unbelievers and believers. At any given time, we never know who is being particularly oppressed by the devil, and who is particularly open to the Holy Spirit. We all need to be fortified against worldly deceptions with the truth.
Accurate facts and evidence support biblical claims as in no other religion. When the famous philosopher Antony Flew gave up his atheism recently for a form of deism, he admitted that “the evidence for the Resurrection is outstandingly different in quality and quantity and better than for claimed miracles in any other religion.” We can trust biblical truth!
The “god of this world”—Satan—propagates lies. And people either willfully latch onto or fall prey to these lies. If we are not discerning of biblical truth and Christian history, we leave ourselves open to deception.
Even blatant lies are tough to get rid of. They are like weeds in a garden—they just keep coming back! Today, ancient heresies and God-denying philosophies are being brought back and dressed up as “new” or “secret” knowledge. Evolution is itself an ancient idea that was popularized in the modern era by Charles Darwin. And the so-called “secrets” of The Da Vinci Code are really a revived form of the early heresy of Gnosticism.
As Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda, famously said, “If you tell a lie often enough people will believe it.” To counter this tendency, we need to expose lies and error and proclaim truth. Creation Moments does this with the most important foundational truth of all: there is a God who created you and me who has revealed Himself through the Bible and through Jesus Christ!
Our Creation Moments website was visited by 68,000 people last year. As you can see by the above case of the visitor with the population growth comments, they’re not all friendly to us. And that’s another wonderful aspect of our ministry! We are making a profound and consistent statement about creation in a forum (the Internet) filled with all kinds of false philosophies, with enemies as well as friends.
On the airwaves and through the Internet, Creation Moments communicates both to a hostile world and to fellow creationists and Christians. We get positive comments every week with messages like, “I really appreciate the web site and the e-mail that I receive every week!” and “I am so proud of you guys! I love listening to your broadcast!”
Won’t you please help us continue our outreach? It’s only with your prayers and contributions that we can move forward. Our work is ongoing and will be necessary until the consummation of the age.
Please give as generously as you possibly can this month. Giving is arguably the greatest spiritual gift and Christian service that there is. Giving defines what God has done for us (John 3:16). Giving generously in return for what the Lord has done is a privilege for me; it is for you too.
The need in our day for the type of ministry Creation Moments provides is truly great. I know what God has called Creation Moments to. And I will be praying, that if you have been with us and are reading this letter that the Lord would also called you to be part of what He is doing through Creation Moments. God bless you!
Yours in Christ,
Mark Cadwallader
References
Bock, Darrell. Breaking The Da Vinci Code. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2006
IMPACT newsletter. Coral Ridge Ministries, March 2005. pg. 5.
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