therealjesus.com

See the bumper for Apologetics Talk:

I love what you have done here and on YouTube!

Check out http://therealjesus.com

I have had the domain for several years now. I just needed a awesome site like yours to point it to.

Have a blessed day!

Mike Cunningham

Above is an email from a viewer who is doing part of my advertising job for free out of a pure love for God and will probably keep doing it.

He's pointed his own registered website domain name toward my site.

Check it out: http://therealjesus.com

I first did the YouTube experiment just to see what type of feedback I'd get and it's exceeded my expectations. Of course, I'd like to have millions of viewers, but for now I'll settle for tens of thousands.

Now the big question is: How would the presentation do in the market if it were kicked up a few notches and given to distributors?

We live in a world where more and more people are "Jesus crazy" -- young people talk about Jesus more than in any other time in recent history. At the same time, most of the current young generation of believers are more clueless than any generation that has come before them.

On one level the popularity of Dan Brown's books and programs such as "The Lost Tomb of Jesus" illustrate the point that people are hungry to know more. Controversy about Jesus sells. Hollywood and Madison Avenue understands this. What we have not done as Christian witnesses is to present "pop apologetics" on the same level of quality as these books, movies and TV shows. Instead we present pale and palsied televangelism.

One basic reason for this is that Christology is a lost area of study.

As you might know, I have script materials for at least three to four more hours on The Real Jesus -- Examining the Christological Heresies of Pop Culture.

Most of the Real Jesus (part 1) was written in the fall of 2000. I think the material that I've written more recently is a lot better and more interesting. I've also begun a series of short 3 to 5 minute segment called "Apologetics Talk" -- in which I answer the many comments, questions and objections from atheists, skeptics and seekers who have responded to The Real Jesus series.

I'll be unveiling it sometime this summer.

For now here is the bumper that I've produced for the new series:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c29YbdAUvNs

Three Questions from a Biblical Skeptic

This is one of the latest responses to The Real Jesus series.

From: thematrix606
Sent: April 22, 2007
Subject: The Real Jesus

Hi,

I would first like to say you've done a great job on the Real Jesus documentary, nice directing. I personally don't believe in the God from the Bible so much, I am more spiritual. I have three simple questions that I would find very interesting to be answered by you. I really hope you won't ignore this but reply to me as I am not a hater or anything like that.

1. Before Jesus, before people knew right from wrong, what would happen to them? Would they go to hell or heaven? Also what of other parts of the world where Jesus was unknown and still is? Would they suffer for something they don't know?

2. How could, God in all conscious, knowing and seeing the past, present and future, condemn someone to eternal damnation or salvation? I.e. God puts a person into a ghetto for example, knowing that this person would be involved into crime, and punish him for it, even though the person might have not even heard of the Bible.

3. Why is it, if Jesus was so great, that only six to eight people wrote about him? I am referring to the Bible.

It would be great to hear what your answers are, I'm merely trying to get people to be open minded and think for themselves rather than accepting a piece of writing that could very well be propaganda of some kind.

Thank you.

Dear TheMatrix606,

Thank you for the compliment and for your questions. This is why I produced this Real Jesus series in the first place -- to answer questions and objections held by biblical skeptics. I am already planning on doing several follow-up projects based on some of the comments and questions I've been receiving.

1. Your first question is both simple and complicated. It is similar to the proverbial "What about all those tribal people in Africa" question.

All Christians have either heard or thought about that question at one point. Other people have done a better job at answering the question, but I will give it a try here.

The simple answer to your question is that no one is going to hell because they haven't heard of Jesus. The Bible teaches that each person will be judged by his or her own works and that each person will give an account. The Bible also teaches that God is a just judge.

The complicated answer is that it is precisely because God is a just judge that we ought to be worried. Any person who is honest with himself will tell you that scripture is correct when it says in several places, "All have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God." But we ought to rejoice that God is also an all loving and merciful Father. God has provided a payment for our sins in the ministry and sacrifice of Jesus Christ -- both in His perfect life and His death on a cross.

Jesus himself preached: "I am the way and the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me." This is what Jesus said. It is an exclusive statement and not a concoction of modern evangelists.

In regard to your question about how people are judged who have never had a chance to hear about Jesus, I simply reply that they will be judged by their works.

So while no one is going to hell for not hearing the Gospel, one thing is clear. You have now heard the Gospel. The real question is: What are you going to do about that? A good start would be to read the words of Jesus in scripture and take His claims seriously.

2. Your second question is related to the first one. How could a loving God condemn someone to an eternal hell?

I ought to begin by asking another question. Is there anyone who deserves to go to hell or simply does not deserve to be rewarded by an eternity in heaven?

If your answer is yes, then you are really answering your own question. Since the all loving God is also a just judge, He alone can make the determination on who deserves to go to hell.

I don't spend a lot of time thinking about the "special cases" because I don't think that there is enough information given in scripture to lead us to a sound conclusion. While some have attempted to construct a theology of a "natural salvation" for such people who have never heard the Gospel from the idea of "natural revelation" that is mentioned by Paul in Romans chapter 1, I think that there are many things regarding eternity that are not answered by scripture.

See Deuteronomy 29:29. "The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law."

I simply trust that if God is real, then His judgments are righteous and true.

3. You would be correct in numbering the authors of the New Testament as eight or nine depending on who you think wrote Hebrews.

These would be Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, James, Jude, Peter and Paul. These are exactly the people who we would expect to have the authority to write about Jesus.

Three of the Twelve Apostles wrote books, Matthew, John, and Peter.

John Mark is thought to be the interpreter and scribe of Peter.

Luke is known for his close relationship with Paul and also with John and Mary the mother of Jesus.

James and Jude are usually thought to be the half-brothers or family members of Jesus.

Paul is a special case in that he was the last of the Apostles called by Jesus "out of due time" in the New Testament.

One way of looking at the limited number of books in The New Testament is that compared to the Old Testament, there is a good representation of authors to account for events occurring over a much shorter period of time.

Five of the eight writers, Matthew, John, James, Jude, Peter (and possibly also John Mark) were eyewitnesses to Jesus life and ministry. The other three -- Paul, Mark and Luke -- were chosen because of their training in theology and writing.

One thing that a lot of people don't understand is that less than one-third of the ancient world was literate. The Jews had a much higher literacy rate than the Gentile Greeks and Romans, however, only a few among their group could write. That may sound odd to us today, but in those days, writing materials were expensive and the vocation of a scribe was a profession that required specific training.

Most of the Apostles had Christian scribes to write their accounts and letters. Paul had Timothy as a scribe and at least two church fathers tell us that John Mark was Peter's scribe, thus the Gospel of Mark can be thought of as Peter's Gospel.

The two exceptions to this rule were Matthew and Luke, who as a tax collector and a physician had the training to write their own books.

If a famous teacher were to have an accurate biography written about his life, one might choose three associates who knew the person intimately (Peter, John and Matthew) and two professional writers with educational credentials to investigate the basic facts and specific details that the other three may have overlooked (Mark and Luke). Then to round out the account of the life and teachings of that person, I might rely on two family members (James and Jude) and an expert in the aforementioned teacher's field (Paul).

These are the only accounts that were recognized as authoritative by the men known as the Church Fathers, who lived after the era of the Apostles from 70 to 200 A.D. There are a few mentions of "lost" writings by several of the Church Fathers. Most likely if these other accounts actually existed in the first century, they did not come down to us because these authors lacked the same authority as the eight who wrote the New Testament.

Apologetics Talk 1 - The Dead Sea Scrolls

I started the Apologetics Talk Vlog to answer some of the many comments I’ve been getting on The Real Jesus videos.

In the past, my videos have been seen mainly by Christians. But now with YouTube I am excited that I’ve had tens of thousands of viewers, many of who are skeptics and non-believers. I wanted you to know that your comments have challenged me to go deeper and examine my own beliefs.

This is where I want to give back some reactions to the comments.

First, let’s talk about the Dead Sea Scrolls.

This was the archaeological find of the 20th century, not only did it tell us some important facts about the ancient Judaism, but it also proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Hebrew scriptures we have today are exactly the same as the scriptures in the centuries before Jesus Christ and the Apostles.

Now some people still don’t get this. For instance:

sirvega280 wrote:

The Dead sea scrolls don't prove anything that Peter Jennings "failed" to mention. The Jewish authorities that possess the Dead Sea Scrolls will not give the academic world access to the Dead Sea Scrolls so that they can analyze it themselves. The Jewish authorities will only tell us what it supposedly reads, and we are supposed to take their word for it, I guess. Or could it be that the Judeo-Christian community does not want us to find out anything that would undermine this religion?

I don’t know where he got this information, but it is wrong.

Photos of the Dead Sea Scrolls have been available to everyone for study for about ten years on the Internet. These are now public documents.

The Dead Scrolls prove that the Bible hasn't changed in over 2000 years.The Hebrew scrolls of the Old Testament written before the time Christ are virtually identical to the Bible we have today.

Now for years, I’ve been writing in my articles in The Forerunner that the Dead Sea Scrolls prove the reliability and the unchanging quality and the unchanging quality of the Bible. But after getting Sirvega’s comment, I wanted to know for myself.

So I ordered this book, The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible - Translated from Hebrew for the First Time into Modern English. What I found was amazing. Not only did it conform everything I’ve been writing and teaching about on the Dead Sea Scrolls, but it also boosted my faith in the integrity of scripture. It showed me that today’s biblical text is even more accurate than I thought it was.

Consider this. The last of the Old Testament books – Ezra, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi – were written before 400 B.C. so we have copies within about 250 years of the originals. That’s pretty amazing.

Besides the Bible, there is no other ancient writing that has surviving manuscript copies within 900 years of the originals.

900 years!

And yet historians accept many of these other ancient accounts of history as accurate. The very existence of the Dead Sea Scrolls is providential – a sign that the scriptures are the Word of God – post dating some of the originals by only 200 years.

So the next time you hear someone say: “The Bible we have today has been changed and altered and we don’t even know what the originals said.”

Tell them to check out this book on The Dead Sea Scrolls and see for themselves what’s true.

An Atheist's Backhanded Compliment

I got the ultimate compliment today to The Real Jesus video. I am always questioning how good the production is, even though I am pleased the content.

In response to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ji2ohptJ2Qg

jobaby51 has commented on your video: "The Real Jesus: Myth #2 (4 of 10)."

I have seen fundamentalist Christian camps supporting Intelligent Design, biblical inerrancy etc. use similar slick high production computer graphics and new-age background music in an attempt to add credibility to their perspective, but I can't help but notice that an atheistic view on this topic is never presented as such, nor do I ever expect them to do so, as their arguments really aren't in need of these embellishments. Their arguments speak for themselves.

I wrote to this person that the atheist position (without embellishments?!) is strong enough to win about 1 to 3 percent of the population.

It's an ironic statement because I produced the video in response to the programs on the Discovery Channel, ABC, A&E, National Geographic, and many others, that purport to draw in a religious audience with biblically themed programs, only to disappoint us by trotting out the "theologians" of the Jesus Seminar and other liberal viewpoints.

I thought that if I could respond with something approaching their production quality that I could contribute to the voice of Christian apologetics.

I have never expected the as-yet-unreleased DVD to be a best seller, but the YouTube phenomenon has already garnered The Real Jesus video (watch parts 1-9) approximately 18,000 viewers. While it doesn't come close to some of the videos on YouTube -- the ones that defy all common sesnse by drawing tens of millions of viewers -- it is still a good audience and I am getting many comments daily. I've had hundreds of comments so far. A response to these criticisms from skeptics is forming the basis for the next project.

More on that later.

The greatest irony is that when a skeptic wants to insult my low budget effort, he does it by calling it "slick high production."

And to think it's all done on an $1800 iMac with used Final Cut Studio software I bought on EBay.

Now that I am within a couple days worth of work of finishing up part 10 this makes me feel better.

The Real Jesus: Myth #7 (9 of 10)

Myth #7: Jesus never really rose from the dead

John Dominic Crossan: “Was Jesus even buried at all? ... I feel terribly sympathetic toward the followers of Jesus because I hear hope there and not history.”

In his book, The Historical Jesus, John Dominic Crossan is clear about the agenda behind his attack on the truth of the resurrection. Remember that in Crossan’s mind, the resurrection is not plausible and the Gospel accounts are not reliable. Therefore, he uses historical reconstructions based upon what he believes might have happened. Again, there are no written historical records to back up his claims. Instead, he writes:

"If you cannot believe in something produced by reconstruction, you may have nothing left to believe in" (John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus, p. 426).

Crossan’s attack on the truth of the resurrection, in the big picture, is really an attack on the nature of truth itself. According to Crossan, truth fluctuates from generation to generation. He writes:

"It is not … that we find once and for all who the historical Jesus was way back then. It is that each generation and century must redo that historical work and establish its best reconstruction ... it is that Jesus reconstructed in the dialogues, debates, controversies, and the conclusions of contemporary scholarship that challenges faith to see and say how that is for now the Christ, the Lord, the Son of God" (John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus, p. 217).

In Crossan’s reconstructed version of the story, Jesus’ death was accidental — the type of execution that the oppressive and arbitrary justice of the Romans might carry out on any given day. In the days following the crucifixion, one or more of the Apostles may have invented a story about Jesus’ resurrection from the dead in order to give themselves some credibility. And then some followers of the Apostles, who just happened to be scribes, may have recorded the event as though it were history -- another unfortunate accident -- according to Crossan.

But Crossan fails to answer some obvious questions: If the resurrection were a hoax, why would there be a Christian movement in the years after Jesus’ death? If Christ’s death were an accident, why would there even be a scribe who would want to record a distorted record of Jesus’ death?

Lacking answers to these questions as well any real evidence for their claims, the scholars of the Jesus Seminar speculate endlessly as to how and why the resurrection story came about.

Jennings: “Some scholars think that the resurrection stories were borrowed from eastern pagan cults called mystery religions.”

Jennings: “The mystery cults had an influence because the people who wrote the Jesus story took an earlier story and passed it on via Jesus.”

The writers of the New Testament also mention the “mystery religions” that Peter Jennings refers to here — most notably, the Apostles Peter, John and Paul. What is being described here is Gnosticism — an eastern cult that had followers the world over at the time of the Roman Empire. At the time of Jesus, even Judaism had succumbed to the effects of the ancient mystery religions.

But do similarities among stories told among cults and mystery religions disprove the resurrection of Jesus? Let’s look at some evidence:

According to the Apostle Paul, writing in 1 Corinthians 15:5-8, there were over 500 eyewitnesses, including the Apostles, who saw Jesus after the resurrection. Many preached the Gospel and a few of them wrote books and testimonies.

There is also the testimony of the resurrection of Jesus Christ in the blood of the martyrs in the first century. Many of the eyewitnesses to Christ’s resurrection died as martyrs for their faith. It would be hard to imagine people dying for what they knew was a fraudulent claim.

[J.P HOLDING INTERVIEWS: “What are the evidences for the resurrection?”]

In contrast to this strong evidence, Marcus Borg of the Jesus Seminar states:

“If we don’t understand why he could be executed, then we miss the political passion that animated his mission ... When we turn Jesus’ death instead into the eternal sacrifice for sin that makes our forgiveness possible, then we really set aside that which mattered so much to Him ...”

The epitome of liberalism is the false dichotomy between the social Gospel and eternal salvation. Of course, there is no contradiction between the two.

Christ lived a perfect life, not only as an example for us, but actually according to scripture to be the “second Adam” (1 Cor. 15:45) to fulfill the covenant of righteousness so that His righteousness may be imputed to us.

In Christ’s death we find forgiveness for our sins, not only because he died as a martyr for the truth, but also because He became sin on our behalf. His eternal sacrifice through his death for sin does not in any way obscure the message of His perfect life.

Pro-Life Priest Found Not Guilty of Federal Charges

This is very great news. I had heard the judge in the case was a feminist pro-abortion advocate.

Pro-Life Priest Found Not Guilty of Federal Charges

OMAHA, Neb., Apr. 5 /Christian Newswire/ -- A jury deliberating for three hours found Fr. Norman Weslin not guilty today of charges he violated the Federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.

Weslin was arrested last April when he entered the Bellevue abortion mill run by LeRoy Carhart, the nationally known abortionist who has twice defended partial-birth abortion to the U.S. Supreme Court. Weslin had knelt in prayer inside a security vestibule and never actually entered the clinic's office. While inside he occasionally spoke through a mail slot asking women to spare their children from abortion.

Weslin had faced 18 months in a federal prison, three years probation, and a $25,000 fine if convicted.

The Real Jesus: Myth #6 (8 of 10)

Myth #6: The miracles of the New Testament were invented by the Gospel writers.

Jennings: "Most scholars think these stories were invented by the Gospel writers as advertisements for Christianity in its early years."

Jennings: "Did Jesus really heal people?"

[INTERVIEWS WITH APOLOGIST J.P. HOLDING: "Did Jesus heal people?" Refer to Mat. 11:2-6]

And when John had heard in prison about the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples and said to Him, "Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?" Jesus answered and said to them, "Go and tell John the things which you hear and see: "The blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me" (Mat. 11:2-6 NKJ).

Note that Jesus is declaring himself to be the Messiah, the Son of God, by showing John the Baptist that specific prophecy is being fulfilled. Hundreds of years before, Isaiah wrote of the Messiah:

Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped. Then the lame will leap like a deer, and the tongue of the dumb will shout for joy. For waters will break forth in the wilderness and streams in the Arabah (Isaiah 35:5-6).

The Real Jesus: Myth #5 (7 of 10)

Myth #5: The Gospels contradict one another and contain fiction

Jennings: "Scholars don't take everything that they read in the New Testament literally because there are four different and sometimes contradictory versions of Jesus' life."

Yes, there are differences in the Gospel accounts. Let's begin with the first obvious difference that seems to concern Jennings so much -- the story of Jesus birth. First, there are different genealogies of Jesus. The Jews knew that the Messiah was to come from the house of Judah and specifically must be a descendant of David. Up to this point, Matthew and Luke agree with one another.

There could be several reasons why Matthew and Luke contain different genealogical accounts. The church historian Eusebius, writing in the early fourth century, records that separate genealogies appear for the following reason. Jesus had both a biological mother, Mary, and a legal (but not biological) father, Joseph. Matthew records Jesus' genealogy by "law" through his adoptive father, Joseph, and Luke records the genealogy of "nature" through his biological mother, Mary. According to Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History, Julius Africanus, a third century church father, explained this alleged contradiction in his Letter to Aristides (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, book I, chapter 7).

[CONTRAST JENNINGS' FOLLOWING CLAIMS WITH RESPONSES BY APOLOGIST J.P. HOLDING]

Jennings: "The Gospels give different versions of what happened on the day that Jesus was baptized ... "

Jennings: "Historians differ about what happened a the Last Supper. Some people think His whole speech about the Body and Blood was added by the Gospel writers."

Jennings: "The Jewish leaders take Jesus to Pilate and pressure him before he will pass the sentence. Many historians don't believe it."

Jennings: "Jesus is not an heroic figure at all until He gets into the hands of all the people who are going to write and embellish him."