FALSE TOMBS AND GNOSTIC TALES
By Berit Kjos
"Last
year, it was the Gnostic nonsense of the 'Da Vinci Code.'... Now it's a
variation on the 'Da Vinci' theme. We are not only being told that there was a
Mrs. Jesus (aka Mary Magdalene). We are also informed that her tomb and that of
Jesus have been found in Jerusalem; that DNA testing has proved that they are
not related and so must have been married (how exactly does it prove that?)...
In a surreal moment on 'Larry King Live' earlier, the film's producer, James
Cameron, told us with a straight face that we should all be thankful that we
now have tangible evidence that Jesus existed. Actually, no serious historian
of biblical antiquity has ever doubted that there was a historical Jesus.
"All
archaeologists confirm the nature of the find." says Discovery Channel.
Really??
"Professor
Amos Kloner, the Jerusalem District archeologist who officially oversaw the
work at the tomb... dismissed the claims. 'It makes a great story for a TV
film.... But it's impossible.... There is no likelihood that Jesus and his
relatives had a family tomb.... They were a Galilee family with no ties in
Jerusalem.'"
Is this
science? Or part of an intensifying battle against unchanging truths -- a
despicable mockery of the God of the Bible and the significance of His death,
burial and resurrection?
It
doesn't take much discernment to see through the hollow "theories"
used to validate these "scientific" fabrications. But in today's
atmosphere of politically correct "open-mindedness," there is little
resistance to riveting misinformation! And those who are driven by manipulative
marketing are likely to buy the tempting illusions about God as well.
The
producer (James Cameron) and director (Simcha Jacobovici) of Discovery
Channel's "Jesus Tomb" documentary
featured
fake evidence, false conclusions and a phony tomb -- one that's more accessible and "convincing" than the
original.
"Jacobovici
shows pictures taken by a camera that was sent down a pipe into the tomb. The
majority of the viewers won't understand that this is not the same cave,"
said Professor Kloner, who supervised the original work in 1980. "Much of
the movie was filmed on sets recreated from the drawings and photographs taken
from those [false] works.... The documentary was made according to the
'imagination of people.'... I don't accept the claim that this tomb was the
burial place for the family of Jesus."
The two
filmmakers may have been motivated primarily by fame and fortune. But the
change agents that supported them have more revolutionary missions. So, before
we rebut the Discovery Channel's absurd suggestions,
let's remember that the vast majority of today's media
masters have joined the crusade for global transformation. They share a stake
in the destruction of Christianity -- the main obstacle to the UN vision of social
solidarity and spiritual synthesis.
Since
Biblical certainties stand as a barricade against crowd thinking and
dialectical delusions, what could better serve the globalist purpose than
undermining the heart of the Christian gospel: the purity, death, burial and
resurrection of Jesus? The timing of this travesty is no accident. This new
"revelation" -- riding in the wake of The Secret -- surfaced just in
time to corrupt the celebration of Christ's resurrection in the minds of people
around the world, ie at Easter time.
It all
makes sense when we remember that Discovery Channel is part of the global media
conglomerate, Discovery Communications. The last few years, its senior vice
president for Public Policy & Communications has been Donald A. Baer, an
influential member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a "former
Assistant to President Clinton for Strategic Planning and Communications."
Strategic
communication -- whether outright propaganda or "convenient" facts --
is vital to the CFR's plan for a New World Order. As Aldous Huxley warned in
"Brave New World Revisited" (his 1958 update on Brave New World), the
emphasis on psycho-social manipulation was set in place long ago.
"There
are two kinds of propaganda--rational propaganda in favor of action that is
consonant with the enlightened self-interest of those who make it... and
non-rational propaganda that is... dictated by, and appeals to, passion....
"Propaganda
in favor of action that is consonant with enlightened self-interest appeals to
reason by means of logical arguments based upon the best available evidence
fully and honestly set forth. Propaganda in favor of action dictated by the
impulses that are below self-interest offers false, garbled or incomplete
evidence, avoids logical argument and seeks to influence its victims by the
mere repetition of catchwords, by the furious denunciation of ... scapegoats,
and by cunningly associating the lowest passions with the highest ideals....
"The
power to respond to reason and truth exists in all of us. But so,
unfortunately, does the tendency to respond to unreason and falsehood --
particularly in those cases where the falsehood evokes some enjoyable
emotion....
"Mass
communication, in a word, is neither good nor bad; it is simply a force and,
like any other force, it can be used either well or ill.... In the totalitarian
East there is political censorship, and the media of mass communication are
controlled by the State. In the democratic West there is economic censorship
and the media of mass communication are controlled by members of the Power
Elite...."
No
small part of that "Power Elite," Discovery Communications wields its
mind-changing influence through its vast network of global operations which
include Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, Discovery Health Channel, Discovery
Kids, Discovery Times Channel, TLC, Travel Channel, The Science Channel,
Military Channel, Discovery Home Channel, Discovery en Espaņol and dozens more.
Do you wonder what kinds of facts and worldviews this massive media system
promotes? Or what it censors?
Let's
turn to its page on "The Lost Tomb of Jesus." Here we are told that
"hundreds of tombs and thousands of ossuaries (limestone bone boxes) have
been discovered in the Jerusalem area.... One of these tombs was found to
contain ten ossuaries. Six of the ossuaries in this tomb have inscriptions on
them. As it turns out, every inscription in this particular tomb relates to the
Gospels."
But it's not true! Consider its claims and the contrary evidence:
"ALL
LEADING EPIGRAPHERS AGREE ABOUT THE INSCRIPTIONS."
Not true!
Steve Caruso, a professional translator at Aramaic
Designs, has been studying the Aramaic language for nearly a decade. Decoding
the imprecise script and scratches is neither easy nor conclusive:
"Out
of all of the inscriptions, the one attributed to Jesus is the most difficult
to make out, and as a result the most difficult to interpret.... I honestly
could see how Bar or 'son (of)' was implied.... With Yeshua or 'Jesus,'
however, I had a great amount of difficulty...."
"It
is not scholarly and not scientific," said Professor Kloner, the original
research manager. Dismissing Discovery Channel's claims altogether, he notes
"that the documentary spends about 10 minutes talking about 'the missing
ossuary,' suggesting it could be the same ossuary that turned up several years
ago in the hands of an antique dealer.... Experts later discredited the ossuary
(which bore the inscription 'James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus') as a
forgery and fraud."
"ALL ARCHEOLOGISTS CONFIRM THE NATURE OF THE FIND."
Not true!
"I've known about these ossuaries for many years
and so have many other archaeologists," says "the dean of biblical
archaeology," retired Professor William Dever. "None of us thought it
was much of a story because these are rather common Jewish names from that
period," he explained. "It's a publicity stunt, and it will make
these guys very rich, and it will upset millions of innocent people because
they don't know enough to separate fact from fiction."
Others
agree. "Leading archaeologists in Israel and the United States are
denouncing the purported discovery of the tomb of Jesus as a publicity
stunt," writes Alan Cooperman in his article, "Jesus tomb claim
denounced." He continues:
"Scorn
for the Discovery Channel's claim to have found the burial place of Jesus, Mary
Magdalene and most explosively, their possible son, came not just from
Christian scholars but also from Jewish and secular experts who said their
judgments were unaffected by any desire to uphold Christian orthodoxy."
"This
whole case is flawed from beginning to end," said Jodi Magness, an
archaeologist at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. "By going
directly to the media, she said, the filmmakers 'have set it up as if it's a
legitimate academic debate, when the vast majority of scholars who specialize
in archaeology of this period have flatly rejected this."
"THE
FILM ALSO DOCUMENTS DNA EXTRACTION FROM HUMAN RESIDUE FOUND IN TWO OF THE
OSSUARIES AND REVEALS EVIDENCE THAT THROWS LIGHT ON JESUS' RELATIONSHIP WITH
MARY MAGDALENE."
Not true!
This absurd claim hides the fact that no one checked or
recorded the DNA of Jesus 2000 years ago! DNA testing for identity -- even in
the most prestigious laboratory -- means nothing if there's no original sample
to compare it with. Matching the DNA of individuals or unknown family members
may sound "scholarly" or "scientific," but it proves
nothing about our Lord!
Not
only does Discovery Channel market its blasphemous message under the
prestigious banner of "science," it also invokes the occult mysteries
behind Gnosticism. The following statement by Director Simcha Jacobovici (posted
on Discovery's website) shows how important those long-hidden heresies were to
the filmmakers.
"The
key moment in the investigation was the identification of the second
Mary," he says. And in our "Post DaVinci Code" era, everyone
knows Mary Magdalene." Then he shares an old secret:
"...her
real name is Mariamne, which is the Greek version of Mary Magdalene. I found
out that Scholars don't argue about that, because of the Gnostic gospels,
because of the Acts of Phillip, several ancient texts that have recently been
discovered.... And guess what, that's what it says on the ossuary.... So at
that moment the light bulb went on."
Was
Gnosticism the key that unlocked the tomb's mysteries? According to this
documentary, those occult legends tell us that Mariamne and her son moved to
France (which didn't become a nation until centuries later). Discovery
Channel's myth
brings her back to Jerusalem before her death. Otherwise, how could her bones
be added to the tomb?
The
dramatization of Mary, Jesus, and the fake tomb makes it all the more
believable. And to a world seeking spiritual thrills, this Gnostic version of
"history" may seem too real to resist.
CONCLUSION
Today's
assaults on Christianity are well timed and increasingly blatant. But they
shouldn't surprise us. Blinded by the world's never-ending stream of
entertaining distractions, the masses have little time for the truth, facts and
logic that would enable them to resist deception.
That
fact hasn't escaped our global leaders, including the mainstream media within
the Council on Foreign relations. The mood of the nations has been surveyed,
assessed and manipulated for decades awaiting that "opportune" time [Luke 4:13] for speeding the transformation.
What the International Congress on Mental Health concluded in its 1948 report
has now become reality:
"Change
will be strongly resisted unless an attitude of acceptance has first been
engendered."
More than half a century later, that general
"attitude of acceptance" has been established! Nations around the
world are fast conforming to the pattern set by UN founders in the 1940s. And
the global networks of "mental health" and pluralistic partners are
working to prevent any uncompromising Truths or moral guidelines that would
hinder "positive" or "collective thinking" around the
world.
We don't know the nature of the next assaults on God and
His people, but we know the God who reigns in the midst of them. Are you ready
to stand firm in Him when they come?
"...though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God...." 2 Corinthians
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