Acts of God

by James Beauseigneur

  "Fine," Rosen replied, apparently changing his tactic. "Let's not talk about what I believe. Let's talk about Islam." Decker was taken aback by Rosen's sudden shift and did not respond.

  "You've probably heard or read that at one point Mohammed — who claimed that the truth had been revealed to him by the angel Gabriel — decided to demonstrate that he was God's messenger by moving a mountain by the power of his faith. According to the story, after three days of trying without success, Mohammed gave up and said, 'If the mountain will not come to Mohammed, Mohammed will go to the mountain.' Now, if Mohammed had moved that mountain, and if geologists today could confirm that the mountain had been, or even appeared to have been moved, then we'd have some tangible evidence of Mohammed's claim to be God's prophet, and based on that, it would be reasonable to seriously consider what he taught.

  "Or let's look at Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism. In 1827, Smith said that an angel named Moroni had shown him golden tablets which were inscribed in elaborate detail with the history of the ancient inhabitants of the Americas. This history, Smith claimed, included the complete and true gospel of Jesus, who, Smith said, had gone to the Americas after his death and resurrection in Jerusalem.

  "Unfortunately for our search for proof, there has never been any shred of archaeological evidence to support Smith's account of the history of the Americas. Oh, Smith's followers would point to ancient Aztec or Incan ruins or Indian burial mounds and say there was the evidence, but not one non-Mormon archaeologist or scholar has ever found anything to lend even the slightest credence to their claims. And as for the golden tablets, Smith said that after he translated them an angel took them into heaven, so we don't have any physical evidence that there even were any tablets. There were eleven other people who said Smith had shown them the tablets, but all were either close friends or members of Smith's family, and the stories these witnesses told did not match in many of their important details.

  "Fortunately though, the golden tablets were not the only documents that Joseph Smith translated. In 1835, after starting his religion, Smith acquired some ancient Egyptian papyri which he said were the lost books of Abraham and Joseph. At the time very few had been able to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics and so, just as with the golden tablets, Smith again relied upon God to give him the translation. Incidentally, Smith discovered a number of very interesting things from the papyri, including, he said, that black people were supposed to be servants and slaves to whites and Asians.

  "Unlike the golden tablets, however, the Egyptian papyri were not taken to heaven by an angel, but were placed in a museum. Thanks to the discovery of the Rosetta stone,19

  "Discovered in 1799 by Boussard and used by Jean Francois Champollion beginning in 1821 to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics, the Rosetta stone is inscribed in hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek.

  Egyptologists were later able to translate Smith's papyri and determined that, far from being the books of Abraham and Joseph, they are actually copies of the Egyptian Book of the Dead and another book called The Breathing Permit ofHor. While not nearly so sensational as promising to move a mountain, Smith's demonstration of his authority obviously met with no more success than had Mohammed's.

  "Of course, most religious leaders have not been so willing to go out on a limb to prove themselves or validate their teachings. Their claims to authority are generally based on the visions or experiences of their founders. Siddhartha Gautama, the father of Buddhism, based his authority on having achieved nirvana and bodhi. Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, said that he had a mystical experience in which he visited heaven and spoke with a god named SatNam. Lao Tzu, the father of Taoism, and Confucius, the father of Confucianism, simply claimed to know the truth based on their own acquired wisdom. Thousands of New Age groups throughout the world today purport to have the truth as it has been revealed by such entities as angels, space aliens, inner selves, ascended masters with names like Ray-O-Light, and even a 35,000-year-old warrior from Atlantis. The founders of Hinduism and Shinto are unknown, leaving those religions to stand entirely on the merits of their teachings. We have, therefore, nothing on which to base our decision about the truth of any of these religions except what the founder of the religion said and whether the teachings seem to work in our own lives. Whether we reject one religion or accept another is simply a matter of blind faith."

  "And now you're going to tell me that your religion is different, right?" Decker was careful to ensure that his voice had not lost any of its sarcasm, yet Rosen still seemed unaffected.

  "I never cared for blind faith, Mr. Hawthorne. I want something that can prove itself worthy of my trust before I put my trust in it."

  "And you think your religion gives you that?" Decker asked dryly.

  "Absolutely! You see, there's the key difference. All the other religions stand or fall on something which no one can prove or disprove. No one can prove whether angels appeared to Mohammed or Joseph Smith. No one can tell if Siddhartha Guatama achieved nirvana, or whether Nanak visited heaven. No one can tell if a New Age channeler is just putting on an act or is really channeling a spirit, or for that matter, if it is a real spirit, is it a benevolent one or a malevolent one? It's left entirely up to the faith of the follower.

  "But Christianity isn't based on what Jesus said an angel told him. It's not even based on spiritual truth which he himself revealed. It's based on who he said he was — the prophesied Jewish Messiah — and what he did to prove it — specifically, he rose from the dead. Jesus staked his whole claim to authority on who he was and on his resurrection. Everything else he said and did stands or falls on that claim. If he wasn't the Messiah and he didn't rise from the dead, then you might as well take everything else he said and use it to stuff fortune cookies.

  "Since the very beginning, belief in Jesus' resurrection formed the core of Christian teachings.23 And remember, Jesus' followers weren't telling people about what had happened in some heavenly realm. They didn't talk about what had happened on Mount Olympus or in some far-off land. There's no 'once upon a time' in their story. They talked about what had happened right there, in the very same city where they lived.

  If Jesus' resurrection had not happened, if the body of Jesus were not, in fact, missing from the grave, then all anyone had to do to disprove it and discredit the apostles was simply to go to the tomb. All that the Jewish or Roman authorities had to do to crush the growth of Christianity was to produce the body. But they couldn't. And since there was no body, the only thing they could do to try to stop Christianity was to persecute and then finally kill its leaders."

  "So maybe the apostles just removed the body," Decker said with a bored groan.

  "The Bible says that the tomb was guarded by Roman soldiers. But even if the apostles had removed the body, would such men as followed Jesus — fishermen, carpenters, a tax collector, a rabbi — or any men for that matter, willingly have been tortured and killed as martyrs for something that they knew was a lie? And remember, I'm not talking about those who came later, those Christians who died because they believed what they had been told or because of some religious experience. Every major religion has those. I'm talking about people who, if the resurrection was a lie, would have known it. These were people who said they had seen Jesus resurrected from the dead and chose to die themselves rather than change their story. Some people may be willing to die for what they believe, but no one gives up his life for what he knows to be a lie."

  "You're forgetting one thing, Rosen," Decker said, sounding very much like a teacher correcting a presumptuous student. "I don't question whether Jesus rose from the dead. Remember, I've seen a resurrection myself, firsthand. It's not the resurrection that is the problem. It's the twisted meaning that you give to the resurrection."

  "I haven't forgotten, Mr. Hawthorne," Rosen replied. "In fact, you've hit the nail right on the head. As much as the resurrection itself, the real issue is the meaning of the resurrection. I believe that Jesus' resurrection provided the way fo
r man's reconciliation to God and proved that Jesus is the Messiah."

  "I really don't give a damn what you believe!" Decker responded.

  "No, but you should. Because I can prove Jesus is the prophesied Jewish Messiah, it will prove Christopher is a liar!"

  "It makes no difference whether Jesus was the Jewish Messiah or not," Decker continued. "And as for what that has to do with Christopher, the answer is obvious: nothing! You're grasping at straws because you don't have anything more substantial."

  Rosen got up from his chair and began to pace. "Consider this, Mr. Hawthorne," he said. "If a man testified that he was innocent of some crime — that he had been somewhere else at the time — it would prove nothing. He might really be innocent, or he might simply be lying. If the man's friends substantiated his alibi, you still might have some doubts. But if the man's enemies also supported his alibi. . . well, then you could reasonably conclude that he was probably innocent.

  "In the same way, if I show you in the New Testament where Jesus said that he was the Messiah, I will have proven nothing. And if I then show you where Jesus' followers said that he was the Messiah, I still will have proven nothing. But if I could show you that Jesus was the Messiah based on the Old Testament — a book which has been preserved through the centuries by people who have rejected Jesus — then I might just have something."

  "The Bible is thousands of years old," Decker retorted. "It could have been changed hundreds of times by hundreds of different people during that time."

  Rosen laughed. He apparently felt prepared for Decker's response. "Mr. Hawthorne, the oldest existing manuscripts of ancient writers such as Aristotle, Plato, Sophocles, and Herodotus include a mere handful of copies that were made a thousand years or more after the originals were written. In the case of Julius Caesar, there are no more than ten manuscripts of his Gallic Wars, and the oldest is a copy that was made more than 900 years after he wrote the original. And yet scholars accept these documents as being adequately true representations of the originals."

  Decker yawned and propped his head with his right hand. As with his other attempts to show disinterest, Rosen ignored it and kept going.

  "The earliest manuscript portions of the New Testament," Rosen said, "date to within just 25 years of when the original texts were written. Some nearly complete books of the New Testament date to within one century or less from the originals. And we're not talking about just a handful of manuscripts that can be compared with one another to determine accuracy and consistency. There are nearly 25,000 complete manuscripts of the New Testament, with more than 15,000 that date to before the seventh century. These include 5300 copies in the original Greek, over 10,000 Latin Vulgate versions, 4100 Slavic translations, 2600 Armenian translations, 2000 Ethiopian translations, and about 1000 other early translations.

  "But we have more than these manuscripts for making comparisons to see what changes might have been made. In the first centuries after Christ, thousands of letters and other documents were written in which people quoted from the documents that would later be assembled and become known as the New Testament. These quotes are so extensive that even if there wasn't a single Bible anywhere in the world, you could go back to those letters and other documents, and using only those written within about 250 years after Christ, you could find every word of the New Testament with the exception of eleven verses.

  "That is not to say that there are no differences in the manuscripts. There are. But of the differences, most are simply a matter of spelling or word order changes that were made as styles changed over the centuries. In fact, a total of only about 200 words, or one tenth of one percent of the entire New Testament, are subject to more than trivial differences. And there is not a single major doctrine of Christianity in all of its denominations throughout history which has depended upon an area of disputed text.

  "As for the Old Testament, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls showed that in over 2000 years, those who copied the Old Testament were so meticulous that no significant changes were made to the texts. The Dead Sea Scrolls represent a major library of over 800 total documents, dating from between 250 B.C. to 68 A.D. Every book of the Old Testament is included, with the exception of some of the minor prophets and Esther."

  Decker was impressed at Rosen's knowledge of his subject. He guessed that there must be plenty of time to sit around and memorize things when you're cut off from the world in a place like Petra. Then again, knowing this kind of information was part of Rosen's job.

  "And of all the religious books in the world," Rosen continued, "only the Bible is candid enough to include admission of the flaws of the people, their leaders, and even of the writers themselves. The Bible doesn't gloss over anything. Whether it's the sin of a gang of rapists from the Israeli tribe of Dan, the sin of Israel's King David in committing adultery and having the woman's husband murdered, the sin of prophets, or the sin of the whole nation. Even the sins of Moses are exposed for everyone to read.

  "But I told you that I would prove that Jesus was the Messiah based on the Old Testament. Of course, since the Old Testament was completed 400 years before Jesus was born, anything I could find there to prove Jesus was who he said he was would have to be prophetic."

  Decker shook his head. "I knew you'd have to resort to religious mumbo jumbo sooner or later. You said you'd prove Christianity with historic evidence, but you can't, so you start talking about prophecy. That's not historic evidence, that's faith and opinions."

  "Like most skeptics, Mr Hawthorne, you are missing the whole point of prophecy. Prophecy is inherently historical. It stands or falls based only on whether it does or does not accurately predict future historical events. God used prophecy to prove the authenticity of the Bible as his word. Of all the religious documents in the world, the Bible is the only one that deals with events of the future with the same certainty that it deals with events of the past and present. No other book, religious or otherwise, includes the minute details and the grand scale of prophecies as does the Bible; whether discussing the rise and fall of empires and kingdoms that had not even been created when the prophecy was written, or prophecies of individuals who would not be born for hundreds of years afterward. One of these individuals — the most important one — is the Messiah.

  "The Messiah has always been central to Judaism, Mr. Hawthorne. The prophet Isaiah said that he would be born to the linage of Jesse.28 Jeremiah narrowed it down further to the descendants of Jesse's eighth son, David. The prophecies get incredibly more specific after that. Isaiah said that the Messiah would be bom to a virgin. The prophet Micah said he would be born in the province of Judah, in the small village of Bethlehem.

  "Isaiah went on to say the Messiah would be called Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, and the Prince of Peace;32 that his ministry would begin in Galilee; and that he would perform numerous healings and other miracles.

  "But to make it even more exact, the prophecies of Zechariah and Daniel even specified when and how the Messiah would arrive in Jerusalem, so that no one who was willing to see the truth could miss it. According to these prophecies, the Messiah would come into Jerusalem riding on a donkey 483 years after the decree to rebuild Jerusalem, which had been destroyed by the Persians. That decree was issued by the Babylonian Emperor Artaxerxes in 457 B.C.37 When you account for the fact that there was no year zero, that means the Messiah was to come in the year 27 A.D. From the Gospel of Luke, we know that Jesus was born during the first tax taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria, or about the year 7 B.C., so in the year 27 he would have been 33 or 34 when he rode in to Jerusalem and a week later was crucified. In brief, he exactly fulfilled Zechariah's and Daniel's prophecies.

  "But if that's not precise enough for you, Zechariah said that the Messiah would be betrayed by a friend for 30 pieces of silver; that the money would be thrown on the floor of the Temple; and that it would be used to buy a potters' field."

  For the moment, at least, Decker was interested enough in what Rosen
was saying that he did not take note of the fact the 'friend' the prophet Zechariah referred to was obviously Judas ... or as Christopher had revealed, Decker himself in a past life.

  "And Isaiah said," Rosen continued, "that at his trial, the Messiah would not defend himself, but would be led as a lamb, silent to the slaughter.

  "Writing more than a thousand years before anyone had even heard of crucifixion, King David prophetically described the Messiah's death in painful detail down to the piercing of his hands and feet, the taunting of the crowds, and the casting of lots for his clothing. Isaiah gave additional details of the crucifixion of the Messiah and said that though he would be innocent of any wrongdoing, the Messiah would be executed with criminals, and then buried in a rich man's grave.

  "But the prophets said Messiah's death would not be in vain. In fact, Isaiah explains that the Messiah would intentionally give his own life as a sacrifice to save each of us: that he was pierced for our sins, and crushed for our iniquities.

  "The prophecies also reveal that Messiah would be resurrected. And though he had been killed, what he had done and said would be told throughout the world for generation after generation, forever, and that ultimately, all people of all nations would bow down to him. It doesn't take a Bible scholar, Mr. Hawthorne, to see that all of these prophecies are describing Jesus. In fact, the only way you could miss it is if you wanted to.

  "Christopher told you that Jesus came to earth to settle an argument between Lucifer and Yahweh, and that while Jesus originally sided with Yahweh, after living thirty years among the people of earth he began to change sides. Christopher claimed that that was why Yahweh had him killed. He said that Yahweh made a deal with the Apostle John, who in turn tricked Judas (who Christopher said was actually you in an earlier life) to betray Jesus. But the prophecies prove that can't be true because all of the major details and even many of the minor details of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection were written down hundreds of years before he was even born. What Christopher told you, what he has told the whole world, is a lie."