Want to know God?

Want to know God?

First Baptist Church, Gulf Shores

The Da Vinci Code” is currently appearing in theaters, bringing the runaway best seller of the same title to the attention of those who aren’t readers. The motion picture is being positioned as the “uncovering of a secret that could change the course of mankind.”

What’s the secret? Christianity is actually an elaborate con game foisted upon history by religious leaders who wanted to protect their status from the scandalous intents of Christ. 

Ah, how we Americans love a conspiracy theory. Over against the pseudo-scholarship and sensational claims of recent “discoveries” remains the much-tested and enduring holy Bible, which reveals Jesus Christ to us. The thing about Christianity that socks you between the eyes is its unflinching insistence that everything hangs on the facts of history, not the feelings of the heart.

The eyewitnesses to Jesus of Nazareth have presented their accounts so convincingly that countless millions who have investigated their records have come away changed by one incontrovertible fact: Jesus must be God in the flesh, falsely crucified for the sins of humanity but vindicated by God the Father through the resurrection.

Modern-day spin doctoring of old, worn-out theories cannot bear genuine scrutiny long without crumbling. But truth abides.

C.S. Lewis, who himself took a scornful and scholarly look at the Bible and came away converted, put the issue squarely before us: “You must make your choice … You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

Don’t be fooled by the leftovers of another century’s tired, but failed, attacks on the Bible and the Jesus it presents. Instead investigate the biblical records yourself — if you dare. There you will meet the real Jesus, who loves you enough to die in your place so that, by faith in Him, you can be called a child of God. Now that’s a plot twist worth experiencing.