Do You Agree?

Several years ago, I was riding with three other people, on my way to church, and we witnessed a hit-and-run accident. Each of us made a note of the license plate number of the car that was at fault, we called for police, and called an ambulance for the victim, and ended up showing up late for church. The accident became embroiled in a jurisdictional dispute, and no one came to take our statements for several weeks. When they did come, they wound up with four different license plate numbers. The first three turned out to be completely fictitious—those numbers had never been issued by the state. The fourth turned out to be a vehicle that was reported stolen several hours before the accident. No wonder he didn’t stick around to talk to the police. The four license numbers were close to the same, but three of them were remembered incorrectly. Does this make us liars? No, of course not, none of us intentionally provided false information. For most intents and purposes, it didn’t really make any difference—after all, the vehicle in question was a stolen car, even the correct license plate number didn’t help track down the people that caused the accident. Sometimes details just aren’t important.
Some people have made a big deal about differences in the four gospels. If they were all accurate, shouldn’t they all say the same thing? On the other hand, if they all said the same thing, what would be the point of having four of them?
For the most part, the inconsistencies are minor: I’ve posted before about the different accounts of who went to the tomb on Sunday morning; there is also an account in Matthew 20:30 that says Jesus healed two blind men, and another account in Mark 10:46 that says Jesus healed a blind man; Mark says that Jesus prophesied that “before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice” (Mark 14:30) and that, in fact, the cock crew once after Peter’s first denial (Mark 14:68), and again after the third (Mark 14:72), Matthew says the rooster only crowed one time (Matthew 26:34, 74) (I’ve even known people to really stretch the point by comparing the prophecy in one gospel to the fulfillment in the other), Mark 15:27 says that Jesus was crucified with a thief on either side, Luke, being less sure of what the other two men were convicted of, simply refers to them as malefactors (Luke 23:33). Details. Does it really matter if Mary Magdalene went to the tomb alone, or with a group of other women? Does it really matter if Jesus healed one blind man or two? Does it really matter if the rooster crowed once or twice? I have to admit, I think Mark’s version of the story is more powerful: Here is Peter, caught up in the moment, and at his first denial, the rooster crows one time. At some level of Peter’s consciousness, that had to have registered as a red flag, but he was so concerned about the immediate situation, that he didn’t stop to think about what the significance of a rooster crowing might be. It happens every morning, doesn’t it? But there was that nagging thought that there was a particular significance to this particular rooster. After the third denial, the rooster crowed again, and for whatever reason, the people around him decided to drop the issue. With the pressure off of him, Peter realized what it meant, and even realized that if he had been paying attention, he could have stopped himself after the first denial.
What’s really interesting is that the minor differences in the accounts shows that these men wrote down the best of their recollections, or the best they knew of what they had learned from the actual witnesses; they didn’t sit down together and concoct a story—then the four gospels would all say exactly the same thing. Critics of the gospels point out that when Jesus appeared before Caiaphas, the High Priest, that, as bad as Caiaphas wanted to see Jesus put to death for something, he couldn’t get two witnesses to agree on anything (Mark 14:59). Now if this man, who wanted to convict Jesus, wouldn’t go to trial with witnesses that didn’t agree, how dare we, as Christians, expect people to believe gospels that don’t agree? Unfortunately, the Gospels only record one of the accusations made against Jesus, that, He said, if the temple be destroyed, He would build it again in three days; to people who didn’t understand what He was saying, that would have sounded more like the ravings of a lunatic than a criminal that needed to be put to death. I suspect that the real problem here is that they would have like to have had Him convicted of insurrection, but when one accused Him of saying that Jews shouldn’t pay tribute money, another witness spoke out and pointed out that He said, “Render to Caesar…” This is the sort of contradiction that Caiaphas was complaining about, not minor details that wouldn’t have made any difference. Jesus called that straining at a gnat.

What About the Thief?

I promised Friday that I was going to stop blogging about the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ this week, but, then I touched on the (in)famous thief on the cross on Friday, and realized that that topic alone deserved more discussion than I could possibly include in that post, so, once more, but tomorrow, something completely different, I promise.
Luke 23:39-43 gives the account, although Luke is apparently less convinced than Matthew that the individual involved was a thief, he uses the more generic term, malefactor. Basically, the story is this: at the crucifixion, Jesus and two others that had also been condemned to death. At first, the other two mocked Jesus, knowing that He had claimed to be the Messiah, and believing that God would not allow something this horrific to happen to His Messiah. Sometime during the crucifixion, though, one of the men had a fit of conscience, and defended Jesus, realizing that He didn’t deserve the same fate.
Where did this attack of conscience come from? Did this man, knowing that he was going to die, suddenly decide that he wanted to do something noble? Perhaps he thought history would remember him more favorably than the other… I can’t help but think that this was something more along the lines of Matthew 16:13-17, where Jesus asked the disciples who He was, and Peter told Him; leading Jesus to say that flesh and blood had not revealed it to Peter, but the Father. I’m not sure what the thief on the cross prayed, but it seems to me that whatever it was, led the Father to reveal to him that salvation was on the next cross over.
Now, a lot of people theorize that since the thief on the cross clearly believed in his heart, and confessed with his mouth, just as we are told to do in Romans 10:9, that it proves that belief and confession are all that is required for salvation. I have blogged before salvation being more complicated than that. Let us consider for a moment that this was a pretty extreme situation. For one thing, Christianity was a fairly new idea. Jesus’ followers weren’t even known as Christians yet. How many opportunities did the thief have to accept Jesus as his personal savior prior to finding himself dying right next to Him? Further, we know that the thief was a sinner (aren’t we all?); he wasn’t being crucified as a follower of Jesus. Now we have been taught that baptism is for the remission of sins (Luke 3:3, Acts 2:38). Obviously, the thief didn’t climb down off of his cross, get baptized, and then get back on his cross, but it’s equally obvious that he had the kind of sin in his life that would have kept him out of Heaven, so what happened? Surely Jesus knew what kind of man He was talking to… In Luke 5:24 (and Matthew 9:6, and Mark 2:10), Jesus demonstrates that He has the power on earth to forgive sins.
Further, in the book of Romans (often referred to as the book of salvation), Apostle Paul explains to us the mechanism of baptism: When we are baptized into Christ, we are baptized into His death, the body of sin is destroyed, for he that is dead is freed from sin. In other words, our baptism represents the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The thief didn’t have to go through a rite representative of dying with Christ, he literally died with Christ.
How many of us can say, honestly, that the first time we ever had the opportunity to accept Jesus was when we were in the process of already dying, that we were dying with Him, and that He personally forgave our sins? Not too many, I would think. Yet, I have heard an awful lot of people use the thief on the cross as an excuse not to get baptized. I don’t think God likes excuses (I’ve certainly never gotten a warm, fuzzy feeling when I have tried to use one on Him). The Bible also tells us that (in James 4:17), to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin. So, while the thief on the cross clearly didn’t need to be baptized, the rest of us do; not only would it be a sin to not get baptized, given the opportunity, but we would still face every other sin that we ever committed in judgment…
By the way, one other thing, in John 10:1, Jesus said that if anyone comes up any other way, the same is a thief and a robber. Now I have sometimes wondered if He didn’t say that, knowing that there would be a thief that would end up in Heaven by a little bit different route than the rest of us. Really, though, Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, so the thief did make it to Heaven by the same Way. Really, though, too, if you read John 10, Jesus isn’t talking about getting to Heaven some other way, He’s talking about someone coming into the sheepfold (the church) pretending to be the Shepherd, and that’s a whole different situation.

Special Knowledge

Sometimes we get lulled into believing that if we know something that someone else doesn't know, that makes us special, or somehow more valuable. Really, the knowledge may be special, but we are still no more, or less, important than anyone else. In fact, if we hold that knowledge to ourselves, it may end up being detrimental to our environment--whether this is a special knowledge of how things work on the job, or an understanding of an item of Scripture. It's easy to think that, as long as I hold this knowledge to myself, they can never fire me, but, if the day comes when that knowledge is desperately needed, and you are on vacation, you might just get fired.

Sometimes that 'special knowledge' is flawed, anyway. I know of a church that teaches that if you really understand Scripture, then you will know where God came from. There is some truth to that, but the Scripture verse that they use is Habakkuk 3:3, which reads, in part, "God came from Teman..." Of course, God always was, and, even if God did have His origin in someplace called Teman, what does that mean to us? nothing, really, because we have no way of knowing where that was... But a little research shows that Teman was a city built by (or at least named for) one of the grandsons of Esau (also known as Edom). In Genesis 36 it tells us about the man Teman (or Duke Teman). In Jeremiah 49, we find that God was displeased with the inhabitants of Teman--so much so that He was going to utterly destroy the city. Amos 1 corroborates this account, as does Obadiah 1. So, in Habakkuk, God is returning from the destruction of the city of Teman. This could make for an interesting tongue-in-cheek Bible trivia question, "Where does the Bible say God came from?" along with, "Who cut Samson's hair?" (most people will say Delilah, but she didn't).

There is another religious organization that teaches that there were actually five crucifixions on Good Friday--Matthew 27 says that there were two thieves, and Luke 23 says there were two malefactors (or criminals). They say that you shouldn't assume that the two thieves in Matthew are the same men that are mentioned in Luke. I say you shouldn't assume that they are not... They are adamant that, while a thief is a malefactor, a malefactor is not necessarily a thief. I will concede that point, but, if there were two thieves, and two criminals who were not thieves (murderers, seditionists, heretics, or whatever), then that would have made a total of four malefactors; Luke clearly says that there were two. Only two. (In the Bill Cosby version of the Great Flood story, that's what Noah kept telling the rabbits, "Only two.") If the two malefactors in Luke were not the two thieves in Matthew, then Luke must not have been able to count...

There is also a philosophy floating around that the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, even though both describe rebuilding the Temple at the end of the Captivity (a period of time when the Israelites were held captive in Babylon), are actually talking about two separate events--that the temple was actually rebuilt twice. Odd that the destruction of the Temple in between the two accounts is not mentioned... Does this mean that the Ezra mentioned in the book of Nehemiah is a different Ezra than the one that wrote the book of Ezra? Is the Nehemiah mentioned in Ezra a different Nehemiah than the one that wrote the book of Nehemiah? Is the King Artaxerxes mentioned in the book of Ezra a different Artaxerxes than the one mentioned in Nehemiah? Now, Ezra 4 does indicate that they were working on building the Temple during the reign of Artaxerxes, but were forced to stop building until the reign of King Darius, while Nehemiah says that they started building the Temple during the reign of Artaxerxes, and doesn't mention the work being stopped, or King Darius taking the throne. Later on in Ezra, though, in Chapter 7, it specifically mentions the seventh year of King Artaxerxes (why are we talking about him again, after talking about King Darius succeeding him? Maybe there really were two kings referred to by the Jews as Artaxerxes, but, considering that Ezra would presumably then include both of them, that would indicate at least some overlap between Ezra and Nehemiah--but I think it is probably just that Ezra got ahead of himself, and backtracked his narrative into Artaxerxes' reign), and Nehemiah starts out "in the twentieth year." In the twentieth year of what? Well, Nehemiah 2:1 says that it was the twentieth year of Artaxerxes; that would be after the seventh year of Artaxerxes, mentioned in Ezra, but before the second year of Darius, also mentioned in Ezra. So, Nehemiah covers a shorter time period that Ezra, but Nehemiah's timeline is completely included within Ezra's timeline. That makes it unlikely that Ezra and Nehemiah are describing separate events, only that Ezra is including a lot of details that Nehemiah does not.