Covenant Presbyterian Church

Because we live in a universe that is purposefully created, fully interpreted, providentially directed, and absolutely controlled by the triune God, life will always be frustrating and ultimately futile for the unbeliever. Like the toddler that continues sticking his finger in an electrical outlet, the unbeliever cannot escape the shock of failure. Same result every time. The toddler learns; the unbeliever does not. Unbelief, of whatever form, religious or irreligious, high-brow or hoi polloi, simply does not work in God’s world. You can dress it up, give it implants, fund it, televise it, educate it, liberate it, or philosophize it. Same result every time. If we were not in the midst of a colossal battle against the world, the flesh, and the devil, the unbelieving landscape would be a truly pitiable scene. As we are in the thick of God’s great war against humanism, however, we must fight and defend, expose, and call to repentance. Unbelief kills, not only in the life to come but also in this life, as the shattered lives and ruined cultures of formerly Christian men and nations give constant, tragic testimony. "All those who hate me love death" is as true today as the moment after it was originally given by the Spirit of God.

In case you have not heard, however, unbelief claims to have delivered the death blow to the Christian faith: a stone box that once, supposedly, and possibly might have housed the remains of Jesus Christ. The death blow has been delivered, ironically enough, by James Cameron, who directed Titanic and the Terminator. Mr. Cameron has not been content to glorify one of the 20th century’s most vivid historical evidences that God will not be mocked. It is not sufficient that the rusty remains of a modern floating Babel are now shipped around the world so that gawking men might pay good money to wonder what might have been if man could only beat God, if he only could build a ship that God cannot sink. Turning amateur theologian, Mr. Cameron seeks now to silence the screams of his conscience, and the conscience of secular man, which has been vacated of all meaning and hope. Now he must make war on the God who sunk the ship of his dreams. He must sink man’s only hope in this dark hour: faith in the resurrected Son of God who lived, died, and rose again to save us from our unbelief and rebellion.

The stone burial box, called an ossuary, was found in a family tomb in Jerusalem over twenty years ago. At that time archaeologists and other qualified parties dismissed the idea that the box, upon which was engraved, "Jesus, son of Joseph," could possibly have any connection with the historical Jesus of the Christian faith. The reasons were obvious. A poor man from an obscure family having no connection with Jerusalem would not be buried in a family plot in Jerusalem in an expensive sarcophagus. "Jesus," moreover, was a very common Jewish name, thus making any identification of this Jesus with the Jesus utterly problematic. If this box did in fact at some point house the remains of the Jesus, it is a very strange fact that his half-brother James, who was martyred for his faith in the resurrection of Jesus, would have failed to come clean. Men do not die for a lie when they know it to be a lie.

Almost thirty-years later, however, the academic and popular landscape has radically changed. Postmodernism has reduced all "fact" to "self-fiction," equalized all truth claims, and abandoned the pursuit of meaning. In this environment, the "Jesus" industry is a sure-fire money maker. Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code is but one of several books attempting to prove that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene. These "Jesus mysteries" brings hundreds of millions of dollars into the coffers of this cadre of deceivers. And now we have DNA testing. In this same tomb another ossuary was found with the inscription "Miriamne," or Mary. Here we go. DNA tests on the two ossuaries supposedly demonstrate that "Jesus" and "Mary" were not related by blood; they must have been married. Hence, Dan Brown and James Cameron must be right in their suspicions. Stop. First, there are no bones in the Jesus ossuary. Even if bones were present, we have no DNA sample from the historical Jesus. Ergo, it is absolutely impossible to perform any DNA comparisons or make any valid connection between the Jesus ossuary and the historical Jesus. Second, "Miriamne" is supposedly a Latinized version of Mary. We are to assume that early first-century Jews, who hated the Romans, used the Roman version of her name, and that this "Mary" is the "Mary Magdalene" of the Bible. I can hear Jack Palance’s voice huskily whispering, "Believe it, or not." I don’t.

The hubris of this crowd is astounding. Mr. Cameron said in a recent interview: "It doesn’t get any bigger than this. We’ve done our homework; we’ve made our case; and now it’s time for the debate to begin." What debate? What case? Assumptions, myths, conjecture, and wishful thinking - these will overturn the Christian faith? It is truly pitiable the lengths to which unbelieving men will go to escape from the God whom they cannot avoid; the interest in these books powerfully testifies that unbelievers are constantly haunted by the God whose existence is indelibly engraved upon their fallen consciences. Yet, rejecting the truth of God for a lie, myth substitutes for sound research, fables for facts. The opinion of experts in archaeology, theology, and ancient history is rejected. Logic, history, and the unified testimony of the past two millennia are abandoned for fairy tales. It is embarrassing. It is also telling - about who we have become, about what we are willing to believe.

This sort of hoax could never be perpetrated upon an educated public. Yet when black studies or purple studies are substituted for history, lesbian literature for Shakespeare, values clarification for logic and Christian ethics, ignorance and prejudice take over. Whoever can tell the most tantalizing tale, pay for the glossiest cover, and spin the best yarn shapes public opinion. As with The Da Vinci Code, so with The Jesus Tomb, these books mesmerize the popular mind because it is ignorant of the well-attested historical facts of Scripture and unable to analyze logically historical and religious truth claims. Morris Berman was correct. We have reached the twilight of American culture. A real Dark Age has descended upon us, in which intelligent discourse has all but been abandoned, learning has vanished, and superstition has returned with full force. Despite their technology and self-professed enlightenment, unbelieving men prefer the dark cave of legend and myth rather than the bright world of truth and mature responsibility. Unbelief makes men very uncomfortable with truth. The dark is preferred in order to escape the blinding light of the majesty and truth of God.

Unbelief is getting desperate. I believe this with all my heart. Look at its taxpayer-funded, secular, parochial schools, its moral pragmatism, its economic bankruptcy, and its abortion-caused, pending depopulation disaster. Unbelief simply does not work. It is always fatal for man. Yet unbelief cannot recognize its self-induced futility, because God has darkened its understanding, made its wisdom foolish, and given it over to a reprobate mind. And so it lashes out, believes childish myths, and prefers lies. It reveres the Titanic when it should bow before the God who sunk it. It studies random ossuaries when it should be poring over Scripture. It would now drive the risen Savior back into the tomb, furiously trying to seal the door to escape its titanic folly. The iceberg of unbelief has ripped the stern of our cultural ship; we are rapidly sinking. We pretend we will not drown. We swim for the lifeline of myth.

The irony of the ossuary hoax is that it is a revival of the very first unbelieving attempt to cover up and deny the resurrection. The Pharisees attempted to hush-hush the resurrection. Their plan: "Let’s bribe the guards and say that his disciples stole the body and secretly buried it." The Pharisees were the ones who were buried. The resurrected Jesus of Nazareth buried them under historical judgment and blessed his disciples to proclaim his gospel with power and effect. Truth beats myth every time, over time, and in time. This is but one in a long line of unbelieving attempts to crush the seed of the woman in order to build a world based upon the wisdom of man.

Dan Brown, James Cameron, and the other myth-makers have rightly hit upon one vital point. They have recognized even better than some in the church that the historical resurrection of Jesus Christ is the foundation of the Christian faith. They have gone for the jugular. Paul said, "If Christ is not raised, your faith is in vain...we are of all men most to be pitied." The way to encounter those who deny the resurrection is to proclaim it, for it is the truth that makes unbelief most uncomfortable. This must sink deeply into our collective Christian consciousness. We can defend biblical marriage, the rights of the unborn, and religious liberty. Little changes occurs other than to anger the secularists. But let us proclaim a resurrected Savior, and we have placed the drill head upon the exposed root of unbelief’s decay. We have challenged its view of history and nature, of man and God, of fact and fiction. We, like Peter at Pentecost and Paul on Mars’ Hill, have issued the clarion call of the King of kings - repent or be condemned. The historical resurrection of Jesus Christ, which was prophesied in the Old Testament, believed by the doubting-Thomas disciples only when they could no longer deny it, and authoritatively proclaimed by the apostles, is the proverbial line in the sand. It is the challenge to human autonomy, statism, and secularism - to every form of unbelief. Keep proclaiming it. It alone is the power of God unto salvation, and it will continue to overcome every obstacle raised in opposition to Jesus Christ, long after Dan Brown and James Cameron are encased in ossuaries of their own. Unless they repent, there will be no doubt that their bones lie therein, and that the day will come when their empty tombs give way to everlasting judgment under the wrath of the Lamb. May God have mercy upon their souls.

There is one more thing, however, that must be said. Let us assume merely for the sake of argument, that they have found the actual tomb of the historical Jesus. They think this would be the death knell of Christianity, and with its passing, the end of intolerance, prejudice, and religious zealotry in the world. The golden age of humanistic utopia would dawn, in which man is the measure of all things, every man his own moral standard, and mankind its own religion. Not so fast. If the Christian faith is not true, then nothing is true. Dostoyevsky saw the implication clearly: "If God does not exist, anything is possible." It is only biblical faith, with the gospel of the resurrected Jesus of Nazareth as its centerpiece, which provides the moral, epistemological, and metaphysical underpinnings that makes science, moral judgments, and even speaking possible. If they are right, we are all sunk, like Cameron’s Titanic. There is nothing. Dan Brown and James Cameron’s theories are equally irrelevant, meaningless. We cannot miss this opportunity to expose the consequences of denying the truth of God’s word and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. If Christ is not raised, man is dead in his sins without any possible hope of survival.

The last hundred years illustrate the consequences of unbelief painfully and vividly. Statism has given us Hitler, Stalin, and Mao: tens of millions murdered. Moral relativism has produced sexual liberation: tens of millions murdered. Postmodern denial of truth has produced skepticism: illiteracy, ignorance, STD’s. The United States has embraced pluralism: positivism, debt, imperialism are its results. The iceberg of humanism is very deep; it penetrates against all-comers. So before The Tomb of Jesus crowd congratulates itself too much, it had better count the cost. If it is right, it is wrong. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.

But rejoice, child of God. Christ Jesus has been raised from the dead. God in his mercy and love has saved man from his sin. The Jesus ossuary is just an old death box. The living Son of God reigns at the right hand of the Father; he is showing us with blazing clarity the awful consequences of rebelling against his reign and the inestimable blessings of submitting to him in humble gratitude and thankful obedience. Stay in the light of his glory and victory, dear friend; this passing monstrosity will soon lie at the bottom of the ocean.