Yesterday I read an article written by Joe Kovacs and posted at the World Net Daily website: www.wnd.com/2014/09/Christian-singer-jesus-may-have-lied-about-adam-noah. "Michael Gungor, lead singer of the Grammy-nominated worship band Gungor, suggested Jesus may have been wrong about the creation story, or possibly even lied about it to fit in with popular culture." The article then quotes Mr. Gungor: "I think you're making a lot of assumptions based in a perspective that was handed to you from our culture, and the way we think in the modern world is very different than how people thought in the pre-modern world. To just see a few words that somebody said, that Jesus said about Noah, and you assume that you can get into Jesus' mind and know exactly how he thought about the whole situation, and how He considered history versus myth versus whatever - how do you know? And even if He was wrong, even if he did believe that Noah was a historical person, or Adam was a historical person, and ended up being wrong, I don't understand how that even would deny the divinity of Christ. The whole idea of the divinity of Christ being fully human and fully God, that God lowered Himself to become a human being with a human brain, in a human culture with human language and human needs and human limitations. The point is it wouldn't freak me out if He was wrong about it, in His human side. But I still don't see the issue. If Noah and Adam were mythical ideas, the point of what Jesus was saying still applies to me. It has very little to do, in my perspective, with Jesus trying to lay out a history of the world for a historical-minded people. Even if Jesus knew that Noah and Adam were mythical, but knew He was talking to people who thought they were real, that's another possibility. Jesus was just referring to a story he was part of to these Jewish people that know that story."
This article came on the heals of a comment by an anonymous responder to my blog from last week. (By the way, I never post comments from anonymous people to my blog). That person wrote, "There is not a single piece of historical evidence to prove that Jesus ever existed. Not one single scholar or historian from the first century AD mentioned even a single word about Jesus. ... The truth is - Jesus never existed."
Now Mr. Gungor and Mr. Anonymous have a similar problem. They have a faulty view of Jesus Christ. For Mr. Anonymous, it is a question of whether Jesus ever lived or not. And the basis for his refusal to believe in an historical Jesus is that there is no first-century historical evidence for the existence of Jesus. My response would be - what about Dr. Luke? Certainly he was an historian and he lived in the first century. He had access to those people who saw Jesus personally. Dr. Luke wrote from the perspective of someone outside the inner circle of Jesus' followers. He also wrote from the perspective of at least two decades after the death and resurrection of Jesus. He had access to Peter, to John, to Mary, and to a host of others who had interacted with Jesus. He had, as a best friend, the Apostle Paul who had an encounter with the resurrected Christ. And, I think what really captured Luke was the fact that Paul and others were willing to suffer and even to die for the truth of the historical Jesus. Yes, Mr. Anonymous, there is credible evidence for the historical Jesus. You deny his existence because you deny the historical-reality of the Bible. Those accounts that we know as the Gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John - are as historically reliable as would be any account given by a Cicero or a Plato or any other ancient writer.
The problem Mr. Gungor has is that he simply cannot reconcile the divine and human natures of Christ. Mr. Gungor's problem has deep roots in Gnosticism, a philosophy that became prevalent in the Early Church during the later decades of the first century and onward into the second, third, and fourth centuries. The Gnostics believed in a form of dualism: there was a good God, who was spirit; there was an evil god, who was flesh. They believed that a good God would never inhabit that which was evil, therefore the whole idea of God becoming flesh was repulsive to them. There was no incarnation. There was no John 1:14. By the way, the Apostle John wrote his Gospel and his three epistles as treatises to help the Early Church counter Gnosticism. Friends, in a way we do not fully understand, there was a complete blending of both the human and divine natures in the person of Jesus Christ. Could Jesus have lied? Absolutely not! Why? Because He was the Son of God and God cannot lie. Could Jesus have believed something that was a myth? Absolutely not! Why? Because He was God-in-the-flesh. Here is where Mr. Gungor has a gap of incredible proportions: if Jesus lied about Noah and Adam, stating that they were real historical figures when He knew they were just mythological imaginations, then how can we trust Jesus when He said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me?" Because of Jesus' claim to be equal with the Father - remember He said, "I and the Father are one" - then either all of Jesus' statements are true, or none of them are true. We cannot pick and choose which ones to accept as truth and which ones to accept as myths.
Here is what I find so troubling, especially with the statements of Mr. Gungor. He is writing music that is being used in worship services across our nation. But the Jesus he is writing about is not the Jesus I have committed my life to. Oh the words sound pretty, but my Jesus believed that there was a real Noah who survived a real flood. My Jesus believed that it was a real Adam and Eve who sinned in the Garden and whose sin was then inherited by all men everywhere. Perhaps it is time that we simply do not use a song because the words sound good. Perhaps it is time that we carefully research to know the heart and mind of the song writer. Is the Jesus they are singing the same Jesus we worship? Perhaps He is not!
Friends, there was and is an historical Jesus. He was and is the eternal Son of God. He was and is "God in the flesh." He was and is the embodiment of absolute truth. The Apostle John was so correct when he wrote, "He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life" (1 John 5:12). I have chosen to commit my life to this historical Jesus, and He has made all the difference. And I look forward to that day when this historical Jesus will return to claim the throne in Jerusalem that is rightfully His and will reign over the earth as no one has reigned over it before. The angels there upon the slopes of the Mount of Olives were so correct when they announced to a sad group of disciples, "Men of Galilee," they said, "why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven" (Acts 1:11). That's my hope! I trust it is yours as well!
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