THE DA VINCI CODE - BLASPHEMY HITS THE BIG SCREEN

Don Feder dot com ^ | May 19, 2006 | Don Feder

[MonroeDNA]

"If you do not believe in the Bible, how do you know what God wants you to do?"

You got to be kidding me, right?

It's pretty obvious. Look back on your life. Do you not see God trying to let you know what to do? Like most of us, you didn't listen at the time, but in retrospect, you see it now.

Look at a tree, or a flower, or a sunset, and you see God.

No book needed. It's right there in front of you, everyday.

Perhaps you need guidance from some 2000 year old book, or from self-professed expert guides (priests, etc). I don't.

[ClancyJ]

I am happy to see that you see God in your life and in the simple things - that is so very true and is around us daily if we just look.

But don't let man turn you against the Bible as that is God's inspired word. If we did not have His word we would have to get instruction on what to do to follow Him and please Him by hearing the word through others.

How would you know about Jesus and why He was sent without God telling us and laying out what He expects of man.

Man can ignore or misinterpret the "feelings" of God letting us know far too easily based on what we want. An example - your comments above about you liking the idea of Jesus having children and a family, that it shows something about sex (I can't flip back to read your comments because everytime I flip out of my post to check on something, I lose my post. This is the third version I've written this time).

Suppose a man just loved molesting children. He could easily justify his actions by telling himself that Jesus loved children too, and then getting a nice comfortable feeling that yes, Jesus would feel molesting children was acceptable. So - although we do often feel we know what God expects through our relationship, out of respect for God, we should at least honor his inspired word to learn what God thinks.

And in the New Testament God made a new covenant with man. He sent His Son, Jesus, to live as a man and be tempted as we are. And Jesus was to spread God's word teaching through the land. Then Jesus was to be cruxified on the cross to die for the sins of man. Jesus paid the price for our sins.

All we have to do to receive this eternal life is to

-confess our belief that Jesus is the Son of God
-repent of our prior sins and be baptised for the remission of those prior sins and we will be saved.

We then are added to Christ's church and Christ will intercede for us with God. And we follow God through our lives.

Here is the website of John Clayton-a former atheist who set out to prove the Bible was inconsistent with science and full of flaws. He was an science teacher and avidly radical about the Bible. Yet, he could find no inconsistency with science. He became a Christian and set out to find a church that taught what the Bible taught. Very interesting - his seminar information is there on the website so that it can be read.

http://www.doesgodexist.org/

[af_vet_rr]

So you believe Jesus must have been married because a rabbi would have mentioned it if not.

I don't mean this as an insult, but it appears English is not your first language. I apologize for not making it clear and implying that you couldn't comprehend what I was saying. I'll try to make my friend's point a little more clear.

My friend's point was that because Jesus was a Rabbi, and Rabbis were bound by law, history, traditions, and customs, to be married, there is no reason why Jesus wouldn't have been married.

Because it would be common knowledge to people back in the first and second centuries that Rabbis were married, then there would be no need to mention it in in the Gospels.

Because marriage these days is not as highly regarded as it was during those times, people are not going to automatically assume that certain types of people were married, because they don't have that knowledge.

And, the fact we are even discussing whether He was married or not is because the theories proposed in the stupid movie brought it up.

Just because Brown decided to try and stick a little bit of historical perspective into a movie doesn't render that historical perspective false. There is nothing wrong with looking at Jesus as a historical figure, in fact you can understand a lot more about him when you look at his life, death, resurrection, and teachings against the backdrop of the Roman/Jewish conflict and against the backdrop of having been raised and lived as a Jew and a Rabbi of that time.

And, many will therefore believe the Bible to be wrong.

The Bible does not say that Jesus wasn't married, so it can't be wrong if he happened to have been. In my view, Jesus being married or not is a much smaller problem (and not even really a problem) than some of the inconsistencies between some of the Gospels.

But, a rabbi would not care about the life message of Jesus because a rabbi never accepted Him as the Savior. So, of course, they tend to believe He was only a good man and therefore, of course He was married.

I'm sorry I've confused you - the point my friend made was that because Jesus was a good Rabbi, he could have been married.

Well, this is the Lord's Son who was put here on earth for a purpose. Raising a family was not His purpose.

Which is why I think that even if he was married, he would not have had children - King David's line would have continued through one of Jesus' siblings (or cousins depending on your point of view).

[ClancyJ]

Look, I am not a punching bag for your comments on my intelligence.

I may not understand where you are coming from as the posts here do tend to run together.

Here are my points and I am not judging your views or even know them.

- Whether or not Jesus was married has absolutely nothing to do with what His life was all about. That is a deflection into areas that will lead to diminishing Jesus into not being here as the Savior but as merely a good man.

- If we were not told in the Bible, it is not needed for our understanding. We also do not know what happened to Joseph since he was not mentioned during the cruxification. Possibly he died.

- We are given the lineage of Jesus - but, a fact hardly ever mentioned is that the lineage did not actually give birth to Jesus because it lead to Joseph. We don't have the lineage of the birth mother, Mary (or I don't). So, therefore, the genes were not through the lineage of David but through Mary because this was a virgin birth and Joseph was not involved in it other than to marry Mary and raise Jesus. But, does this matter? No. Joseph was married to Mary and raised Jesus although his genes were not involved.

Now that is according to our understanding of things. God can do anything, he created His Son, so if He wished genes from the lineage of David, He would surely be able to accomplish it. The Bible mentions the lineage continually but never speaks of the lineage of Mary, the mother. So, we could even conclude that though Mary was the birth mother, her virgin birth of God's Son did carry the genes of the lineage God mentioned all through the Old Testament - otherwise, why mention it as a promise?

God is not limited to our world view of how things work - He is God. We come along and use our human reasoning to figure out what happened, how it happened and we can lead ourselves into error because we are looking at events through human eyes in our framework.

- Jesus was a Jew but His purpose here was not to be a rabbi to bring forward the Jewish law of the Old Testament. His purpose was to bring the new law - the New Testatment, to serve as the one time sacrifice for the sins of each of us. This was not just for the Jews but for gentiles and any that accept Him as the Son of God and follow him.

- If you will note, the New Testament does not teach we are required to follow any of the Jewish regulations and prior laws. Why?

- The Jews were God's chosen people, but they, chosen though they were, always failed to follow God, and as the final travesty failed to acknowledge His Son as the Savior. How do you think that makes God feel - his own chosen ones refute His own Son given to serve as the one time sacrifice for man's sins so that man can be perfect enough to be in the presence of God in eternity?

Therefore, I am always leery when a rabbi, or a Jew starts determining the validity of Jesus. The marriage issue is a prime example. They are looking at Jesus as a good man - not the Savior generally. Some will or do accept Jesus but, on the whole, they are still waiting for their Savior.

Which, to me, is such an insult to God who has chosen them as His people. Why are they always resistent to God? Who in the world could be more worthy of their adoration and their honor - yet, they deny that Jesus is the Son of God.

Right or wrong - that is where I see it.

[af_vet_rr]

Look, I am not a punching bag for your comments on my intelligence.

I wasn't intending you to be - it just seemed that you didn't understand what I or my friend had said.

Whether or not Jesus was married has absolutely nothing to do with what His life was all about.

And I agree - as I said, his being married or not does not reflect upon his divinity.

That is a deflection into areas that will lead to diminishing Jesus into not being here as the Savior but as merely a good man.

I disagree - it doesn't diminish him in the least to say that he could have been married, just as it doesn't diminish him in the least when discussing whether or not he was a carpenter or what color his hair was.

- If we were not told in the Bible, it is not needed for our understanding.

I disagree - keep in mind that the NT was written at a time when people would have known much of what was going on around them or during the time of Jesus. When you just read the NT and nothing else, you are getting an isolated look at things, because you see it with 21st Century eyes - not the eyes of those living then. If you study the culture, the lifestyles of people living then, and the geopolitical history, it makes the sacrifices and actions of Jesus and his followers even more important than they already were.

In fact, some of what went on around Jesus and within a few generations before and after him, has caused reprecussions that have carried down to this very day, outside of religion - I'm talking social/historical changes that have led to conflicts that are still simmering today. I believe it's very important to know what life would have been like for those in the Bible.

- We are given the lineage of Jesus - but, a fact hardly ever mentioned is that the lineage did not actually give birth to Jesus because it lead to Joseph.

In Luke, Chapter 3, many believe that is Jesus' ancestry through Mary - after all, Jesus is referred to as the Son of David almost 20 times. Something mentioned that often is obviously very important. We could debate that for the rest of our lives (what Luke is referring to).

Therefore, I am always leery when a rabbi, or a Jew starts determining the validity of Jesus. The marriage issue is a prime example. They are looking at Jesus as a good man - not the Savior generally.

He wasn't looking at it as the validity or divinity of Jesus, but as a "if you were living back then and you were a Rabbi as Jesus was, it's very probable that you were married and people would have assumed you were married" - it's the same as if saying Jesus were a carpenter or Jesus wore this type of clothing or had this kind of beard or ate this kind of food. It has nothing to do with his divinity, but rather the way things were.

As far as your comments about Judaism, why we don't follow the Old Testament, or why those laws and beliefs were not all carried forward for the most part (although many were), that's something Biblical scholars could argue for decades to come - we don't have access to the Q document(s) or the original Gospel of Mark, or anything else that the New Testament was based on (the Nicene Creed doesn't help much either - we know the final results of course, but not all that went into those councils). There was so much turmoil in that time - it took many years before Christianity was truly seperated from Pharisaic Judaism (which became Rabbinic Judaism), and so there is a lot we don't know in how the Old Testament was viewed among those followers.

[Sun]

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/5/22/04716.shtml?s=et

Catholic actor Mel Gibson has slammed "The Da Vinci Code" book and movie for attacking the beliefs that he holds sacred, World Entertainment Network reported.

"The Passion of the Christ" star has been outraged about the thriller's controversial plot concerning Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene.


Gibson says, "What worries me is that people will take this as fact.

"I'm not angry, per se, that it refutes everything I hold sacred, the foundations of my beliefs. The Da Vinci Code is an admitted work of fiction but it cleverly weaves fact into maverick theories in a way that will appear plausible to some."


The angry star was actually the first choice of Dr. Robert Lomas (the intellectual who inspired the Robert Langdon character) to play him. Tom Hanks plays Langdon in the film.


Lomas says, "In an ideal world I'd quite like to have been played by Mel Gibson."

[DaveTesla]

1 Corinthians 7
The Unmarried and the Widows
25 Now concerning virgins, I have no command of the Lord,
but I give my opinion as one who by the Lord’s mercy is
trustworthy. 26 I think that, in view of the impending
crisis, it is well for you to remain as you are. 27 Are
you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free
from a wife? Do not seek a wife. 28 But if you marry, you
do not sin, and if a virgin marries, she does not sin. Yet
those who marry will experience distress in this life, and
I would spare you that. 29 I mean, brothers and sisters,
the appointed time has grown short; from now on, let even
those who have wives be as though they had none, 30 and
those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and
those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and
those who buy as though they had no possessions, 31 and
those who deal with the world as though they had no
dealings with it. For the present form of this world is
passing away.
32 I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man
is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please
the Lord; 33 but the married man is anxious about the
affairs of the world, how to please his wife, 34 and his
interests are divided. And the unmarried woman and the
virgin are anxious about the affairs of the Lord, so that
they may be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman
is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please
her husband. 35 I say this for your own benefit, not to
put any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and
unhindered devotion to the Lord.