Mark Clark [00:00:00]:
Hey, everyone. Mark here. Welcome to the Mark Clark podcast. Today's episode is going to be an interesting one, probably for a lot of people, one that you maybe never thought of. But first, I wanted to say this podcast is part of a network of podcasts called the Thrive Podcast Network, a family of great podcasts that can help you. There's one that you should go listen to called pursuing faith with Dominic Doane. He is a great, great thinker. So hopefully, some of you, it's all about deconstruction and people who've really thought about their faith and gone, I don't know about this, go over and listen to that podcast.
Mark Clark [00:00:30]:
It is fantastic. But on today's episode of this podcast, we are diving into the fascinating question of what's called the Christ myth. And basically it's like, okay, Christianity is great, but did Jesus really ever even exist? Or is he a myth based on all of the ideas of, like, Horus and Mithras and Dionysus and all that stuff, which a lot of people in our culture believe? It's a fascinating topic. So we're going to go into the evidence that actually supports the historical Jesus and the authenticity of the Bible itself. Can you actually trust it? So this isn't just about faith. This is about faith. So whether you're a skeptic or a believer, this episode is for you and will challenge your perspectives and deepen your understanding of Christianity's roots. So let's jump into this.
Mark Clark [00:01:13]:
The Christ myth. This is episode three of the series that we're doing on skepticism, based on my book called the Problem of God, which you can actually go and buy on Amazon anytime you want. All right, let's dive in. We are in week three of the problem of God series. Really excited about it. Week one, we hit the problem of science. We unpacked a whole bunch of ideas and kind of challenged the dichotomy of faith versus science that, you know, you have to retire your mind to ever become a Christian. And we said, no, that's not true.
Mark Clark [00:01:40]:
Week two, we hit the problem of God's existence. And we said, are there actual reasons in regard to even nature, the way the stars are, the way the planets, the universe functions, the way that you and I function as human beings, to actually believe in God, that there's evidence toward this rather than it just kind of being a crutch, that we believe in difficult times. And we explored that. And this week we hit something very unique and fascinating in its rise and popularity in our culture, which is the issue of what's called the Christ myth. For those of you who don't know it, I'll introduce it to you. And what I'm gonna do this week is do two ideas together. We're gonna hit the Christ myth question, but also the question of the legitimacy of the Bible. And the reason we're gonna kinda collapse those two together is because they're kind of the same issue.
Mark Clark [00:02:27]:
If the Christ myth is true, then the Bible is not true. And if the Bible is true, then the Christ myth is not true. This is literally like Mayweather and McGregor all right, up against each other. That one was for the millennials. It's two boxers fighting each other, and there's only going to be one left standing. If the Bible's legit, if we can trust him, which I'm going to try to show historically we can, then the Christ myth is actually completely false. If the Christ myth is true, then the Bible's not. And so what is the Christ myth about? We got a lot of work to do today, and hopefully you understand that the point of this series is to really get into the mind of skeptics and people who push against Christianity, and maybe that's you.
Mark Clark [00:03:09]:
Awesome. Really glad that you're here. Sincerely, we love you as a church. This is why we do series like this. For some of you, it might feel like a technical series with lots of quotes and data, but we need to come at this stuff from a scientific perspective, historical perspective, philosophical perspective, psychological. We need to get into these things and these disciplines and understand first that it equips you, even if you're already a Christian, a follower of Jesus, to understand how to defend your faith, which is part of the biblical idea. First, Peter talks about that idea of being able to defend your faith at any moment. But also you got to understand that this is what the world around you believes.
Mark Clark [00:03:45]:
This is what your family believes, your friends believe, the university teaches. And so we need to understand that this is real life all around you, in the coffee shops and the malls and the pubs and where you live your life. This is how real people think. And if you're going to be able to understand, to answer and engage them, then you've got to understand this data. So understand that not every series is as technical or heavy as the series we're in right now, but there's really a necessity to do so stop at times and do series like this. So we got a lot of work to do, specifically historical work today. So hopefully you've had your coffee. We're gonna jump into this first question is.
Mark Clark [00:04:18]:
Or your Red Bull or whatever it is. First question is, what is the Christ myth? What is this thing? And really we gotta understand that. It's really the biggest conspiracy theory in the history of the world. And it's basically this. That Jesus Christ never actually existed. That what happened is the early church came together and created Jesus out of mythologies that predated Christianity. Mythologies that came from Egypt and the greco roman cultures and the hindu cultures that were thousands of years before Jesus. They looked up at the stars, they saw the constellations and they created cosmic Messiah.
Mark Clark [00:04:55]:
Stories of virgin births and kings that came to the birth of this cosmic messiah. This cosmic messiah had twelve disciples and fed 5000 people and walked on water. Died on a cross raised three days after he died. All of that was long before Jesus. And all Jesus Christ is. Is a guy the early church came up with and said, let's re appropriate these ancient myths and create a new messiah and we'll just make up a religion. All right? That's the idea. And it's very popular.
Mark Clark [00:05:29]:
And it's a. It's a conspiracy theory that Christianity is the greatest story ever sold. That we're literally. We're just making this up. We're trying to fool everybody. And I have a buddy I was talking to the other day and it was September 11. So we were talking about September 11. And he goes, oh, yeah.
Mark Clark [00:05:47]:
You know, September 11, those planes didn't really go in those buildings. They set detonation and they collapsed those buildings. It was all controlled demolition and inside job. I'm like, oh, so you're crazy, right? So what we got to understand is conspiracy theories are so interesting because people attach themselves to them, right? JFK, you know, was shot by multiple people. And Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy. And UFO's came down in Roswell, New Mexico. And we've never been to the moon. And Stanley Kubrick, when he did the show shining, it's a film basically, with a built in confession that he just filmed the moon landing.
Mark Clark [00:06:26]:
And it's all a joke. And we're just trying to fool everybody that we got there because JFK said we'd get there by the end of the decade. And so we had to. So it was, you know, 1969. So we made it up. We put in the studio all of this stuff, you know, ax files. Right? I want to believe. Right? That's kind of what's embedded in us is this sense of.
Mark Clark [00:06:46]:
I don't want to just take what's in front of me as natural. I want to create a conspiracy theory. Now, how popular is this? The Christ conspiracy is very popular all over the place on university campuses. I walk down the streets of Vancouver, and people are there with booths handing this stuff out. I walked up to my neighbor a short time ago, and I was sharing Christ with him, and he said, listen, I know you're a pastor. I know you try to do good for people, but the reality is, is your religion is the greatest story ever sold, and here's why. And he starts to unpack like he'd read the script, man. Horus had twelve disciples.
Mark Clark [00:07:17]:
Horus was this. Da da da. Dionysus, mithras, Krishna, virgin birth, all this born on December 25. I'm like, oh, man, this is like we're having our coffee. I'm like, this is too early for this. All right, so this is like regular stuff I want to show. Bill Maher had a movie called religious. I'm not sure anyone saw it, but he put it out a bunch of years ago.
Mark Clark [00:07:38]:
And here's a scene from that movie. Unpacking, of course. He goes to the holy land experience, the christian theme park in Orlando, Florida. Kind of the pinnacle of christian thought in philosophy. He goes there and he starts talking to people who are there. And there's a guy dressed up like Jesus. Cause he, you know, he's putting on the passion play at 04:00 p.m. or whatever he's doing, and he talks to him and he unpacks it.
Mark Clark [00:08:02]:
So I'm gonna show you that clip so you kind of understand what the framework of the Christ myth is in pop culture.
Unknown [00:08:07]:
Does it ever bother you that the story of a man who was born of a virgin was resurrected? Your bio was something that was going around the Mediterranean for at least a thousand years. We've got Krishna, who was in India a thousand years before Christ. Krishna was a carpenter. Born of a virgin, baptized in a river. Are you saying that was written in history? That was written down in history, is.
Mark Clark [00:08:31]:
That what you're saying?
Unknown [00:08:31]:
Absolutely. There's the persian God Mithras, 600 years before Christ, born December 25, performed miracles, resurrected on the third day, known as the lamb, the way, the truth, the light, the savior and Messiah.
Mark Clark [00:08:44]:
Blasphemer.
Unknown [00:08:46]:
All I know is that I can. I don't go by that hearsay that I go by the word of God. I know. That's what I believe.
Mark Clark [00:09:00]:
All the old paintings on the tomb, they do the sand dance. Don't you know? If they move too quickly, walk like egyptian. Walk like egyptian.
Unknown [00:09:41]:
Let me ask you a question. Let's say, if you take the side that this is all made up, I do.
Mark Clark [00:09:48]:
What if you're wrong?
Unknown [00:09:50]:
What if you're wrong?
Mark Clark [00:09:54]:
There's a whole bunch of other data that comes out of that clip, and it goes through a bunch of different Krishna, different people. So here's the first question. Did Jesus Christ really exist, historically speaking? Now, a bunch of months ago, I read a, I watched an actual clip of Buzz Aldrin, who was one of the first guys. He actually went with Neil Armstrong to the moon. And a guy walked up to him and he said, hey, Buzz Aldrin, the moon landing was a hoax. It never actually happened. And Buzz Aldrin was sitting there and he's like, what are you talking about? He's like, you guys set it up. It was a big propaganda piece.
Mark Clark [00:10:24]:
It was a conspiracy. And Buzz Aldrin just punched the guy in the face, which was a perfect response to a bunk conspiracy. Spiritually speaking, that's what we should all do when it comes to this kind of stuff. So the first question is, did Jesus Christ actually exist? And on the level of conspiracy theories, the idea that Jesus never actually existed is on the level of we never actually went to the moon. One writer, Edwin Yamouche, a professor of history at Miami University, says this. Any argument that challenges the claim of a historical Jesus is so ridiculous in the scholarly community, it is relegated only to the world of footnotes. Now, the reason he says this is because for there's a whole bunch of reasons. A few.
Mark Clark [00:11:08]:
First one off the bat is historians tell us that there's at least ten people that were not biblical. So outside of the Bible who mentioned Jesus Christ in history. So these are people who weren't necessarily friends of Christianity. They were first century historians. Josephus, Pliny the younger, Tacitus and so on. So let me give you a couple of examples. This is outside the Bible, people who are even against Christianity that mention Jesus. So here's Tacitus.
Mark Clark [00:11:34]:
Here's what he says. Nero fastened the guilt. He's talking about a fire that happened in Rome on a class hades for their abominations. Called christians by the populace, Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of the procurator Pontius Pilatus. All right, Josephus says this. About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man, for he wrought surprising feats. He was the Christ. When Pilate condemned him to be crucified, those who had come to love him did not give up their affection for him.
Mark Clark [00:12:09]:
On the third day, he appeared restored to life, and the tribe of Christians has not disappeared. And so what you got to understand is people looked into this story and they said, Jesus actually existed. He died in our Pontius Pilate. There's a ton of historical reference points to the point of Christianity. Even Bart Ehrman, who was a Christian and became an agnostic who studied this time, said, of course Jesus actually existed. This is one. He. There is more evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ than the founder of any religion on the planet.
Mark Clark [00:12:40]:
In human history and humankind's experience of developing religion and philosophy, there is more actual evidence that Jesus existed. Now, here's a second issue around the question of did Jesus exist? The rise of the early church is actually a massive problem if Jesus never really existed. Because here you have a movement that actually moves so quick. And it was a group of people who said, not only did Jesus exist, he died on the cross, but he rose from death and the fact. And we worship him. And it wasn't a group of people who kind of came up with this without implication for their life, where they just said, oh, I've got some teachings of Jesus, and now nothing bad is happening to me. They started to get persecuted. And one thing that happened is they started to get ripped apart by lions, thrown into gladiatorial arenas.
Mark Clark [00:13:25]:
Their kids were killed, and so they suffered immense pressure. This was a group of people who would then go out and take care of people who were sick and actually get the disease themselves and die, because as history looks back, they weren't afraid of death. And the only explanation for the reason they weren't afraid of death, why they were willing to face torture and never recanted their testimony that they saw the risen Jesus, not like a few people, hundreds of them, and then thousands of them into year, and then millions of them into year, 200, 300, AD, 50% of the roman empire became people. What happened? Historians look back and go, there is no explanation, because if a group of people just get together, nobody dies for a lie that they made up. No one dies for a lie that you say you might die for, a lie you think is true, but not one that you came together with. A group of people said, hey, let's come up with a lie. Let's actually lie about this, and let's just make up a religion. What happens the minute you start getting fried on a pan? Which is what happened to people the minute they start ripping your fingernails out, threatening to kill your children, sawing your body in half you kind of go, okay, okay, okay, we made it up.
Mark Clark [00:14:35]:
But none of these people did. And history looks back and goes, there's no better explanation than these people actually saw their leader rise from death, that they saw him crucified, that three days later they saw him raised from death. And the early church actually took off from there. I was reading a book about conspiracies, and this one guy talked about the idea. He's an ex homicide detective, and he goes in the investigates murders, and he says, here's the issue. After 30, 40 years of being a homicide detective, as you're studying evidence for what happened in a particular situation. He said, issue number one is you always have to resist a conspiracy theory, because most of the time, it's what it looks like. You constantly, as a detective, have to resist when people come in and go, but what if this, what if this, what if this happened? And what if this group? And the reason he said, you have to always resist the conspiracy theory is because conspiracy theories are very rare.
Mark Clark [00:15:31]:
By definition, there's not a lot of them that actually can be pulled off. And the reason is, is because what you need for a conspiracy theory to work is you need a limited amount of people. He said, ideally, two people involved, and once the deed is done, you kill the other one. Right? That's the best way a conspiracy actually works, because the minute two people know about it, bad things are going to happen. Secondly, you need really good forms of communication. And thirdly, you can't be applied any pressure, or the conspiracy theory will break really quickly. Now, let me give you an example that illustrates all three of these things. I was golfing about a month ago with three of my buddies, okay? So we arrived at the golf course, and it's wet.
Mark Clark [00:16:11]:
And those of you who are golfers know that when you get a cart, you want to be able to pull up to your ball and be near your ball. But this day, they said, you can't go on the fairways. It's too wet. You got to stay on the cart path. Now, one of my buddies, a bunch of years ago, he got in an accident on his bike and his motorbike, not his bicycle. And he had multiple surgeries with six months in a wheelchair. He has, like, you know, ankles that are all made of, like, steel and screws and all that kind of stuff. So I said to my other buddy, I said, well, he's not here yet.
Mark Clark [00:16:40]:
Why don't we make sure we can go and we get the handicap flag? Because they'll take a flag. It's a big orange flag. And they'll put it on your cart if you're handicapped, and then you can drive right up to the ball. So I said, why don't we get that? And so he goes, okay, that's a good idea. So we went out. The guy went in, he said, hey, my buddy's handicap. Can you get us that flag? And he's like, yeah, sure. I'll bring it out.
Mark Clark [00:17:00]:
So we're all sitting over here, and my buddy arrives, and he's on the phone. And so we're over here getting drinks and getting ready to go, and he's on the phone, and we're like, hey, hey, your handicap. And he's like, what? And he keeps talking like this. And so we're over here, and he's standing there, and a guy walks out with the flag, and he's like. He gets off the phone. He's like, hey, what are you doing? He's like, oh, this is your. This is your flag. He's like, what do I need? What's the flag? What do you mean, the flag? He's like, oh, because you're handicapped.
Mark Clark [00:17:27]:
And he's like, do I look handicapped? Screams at the guy. And the guy's standing there, and he's like, uh, I'm really sorry, sir. And then he goes back inside, and my buddy's like, what's going on here? He's like, two minutes later, I come around the corner. I'm like, where's the flag? He's like, what flag? I'm like, the handicapped flag. He's like, why do we. I said, you're handicapped. He's like, I'm handicapped? I'm like, yes, I. You need to be.
Mark Clark [00:17:55]:
He's like, oh, shoot. So he goes back into the pro shop. He's like, oh, you said handicapped. Yeah, yeah, that's me. Totally. Totally. Right. The issue is you need very clear lines of communication.
Mark Clark [00:18:12]:
You all need to be on the same page. You need to have no pressure applied at all. And of course, the early church gets all this pressure applied. They actually die believing this stuff. And so, history has looked back to the rise of the early church, said something actually happened here. Now let's compare. Let's get into the issues of the comparison of these horus things and all of that kind of stuff. First off, the people who promote the Christ myth, whether it's achara s in her book, the Christ Conspiracy, Tom Harper.
Mark Clark [00:18:38]:
Just to let you know how popular this is, Tom Harper wrote a book called the Pagan Christ. It was the best selling book in Canada in 2004. The best selling book in Canada in 2004 was a book about the Christ myth. That's what Canadians actually think about. And so there's a movie called Zeitgeist, the God who wasn't there. These are all the popular frameworks of this theory. Now they get facts wrong. For instance, zeitgeist makes this claim about the symbolic number twelve.
Mark Clark [00:19:08]:
And it says, christianity built all of its symbolism of twelve based on the twelve months calendar and the Zodiac. And it says, quote, in the Bible, there are twelve tribes of Israel, twelve princes, twelve kings, and twelve judges. So here's what we slow down the tape. I know it's less sexy to do that, but we need to slow down the tape and actually get into facts. The Bible has a couple of instances for sure where there's twelve. There's twelve tribes of Israel. And then, of course, Jesus gets twelve disciples based off the twelve tribes of Israel. But it never mentions any twelve princes.
Mark Clark [00:19:39]:
There's no twelve princes, there's no twelve kings. There's no twelve judges. There's far more kings and far more judges than that. Secondly, it talks about the idea that Horus had twelve disciples. The reality is, is most of these writers don't deal with any of the primary sources. They never go to Egypt and look at the hieroglyphs. They just cite each other. And so they say, look, Horus had twelve disciples.
Mark Clark [00:20:00]:
Then you look into Achara s's book the Christ Conspiracy, and you go to her footnote, and all she's doing is quoting George Massey. She's not quoting hieroglyphs. She's just quoting another guy who said the same thing. The problem is on the hieroglyphs, Horus only had four disciples, a turtle, a bear, a lion and a tiger. All right, so the reality is four people hanging around Horus does not actually equal a parallel. But are there parallels? So let's get into some of these massive claims of the parallels of Christianity. First, let's deal with HOrus. He's the most popular ancient God that predates Christianity in this debate.
Mark Clark [00:20:33]:
So here's what they say about him. First, that he was born of a virgin. Was horus born of a virgin? If you get into the stories of HOruS, here's how HORuS was actually conceived. His mother's name was Isis. His father's name was Osiris. Here's how Isis conceived of Horus. Osiris was in a fight with another God. He got cut up.
Mark Clark [00:20:52]:
IsiS then came over his body parts, which were cut up on the ground, and she hovered over his severed phallus, and that's how she got impregnated to actually say, hey, now I'm pregnant and I can have Horus. Now, I'm not sure that's considered a virgin conception. All right? Secondly, it says not only was he born of a virgin, he was born on December 25. Everyone freaks out. Oh, my goodness. But, of course, you and I know as Christians that's not a parallel with Christianity, because, and I don't want to ruin anybody's Christmas, but I'm about to. Jesus wasn't born on December 25. Historians tell us he was probably born sometime in September or October.
Mark Clark [00:21:30]:
The reason we celebrate it is because in three, just before 400 ad, Pope Julius I changed. When christians celebrate Christianity in order to subvert a romantic roman worship of God, the saturnalia celebration of her birth. Now, the reality is, as Christianity comes along and says, listen, December 25, that's not a thing. We don't care about that. That's not a parallel. Jesus wasn't born on December 25. Now, here's another issue. Three kings who attended the birth of this cosmic messiah.
Mark Clark [00:22:02]:
What do we do with that? Well, the reality is Christianity doesn't ever teach the three kings where they get a. This is, they look up in Orion's belt and they see three stars, and then there's a lead star. And so that's obviously been up there for a while. And people say, look, Christianity just borrowed this thing and made it up about Jesus. Here's the problem with that. First, no one talked about those three stars following a lead star until about the 18th or 19th century. All right? So no one talked about those three stars as three kings following a lead star to a birth of a cosmic messiah until two or 300 years ago. The second issue is Christianity.
Mark Clark [00:22:39]:
Again, I don't want to ruin anyone's Christmas doesn't teach that three kings followed a star and arrived at the birth of Jesus. That's not what Christianity teaches. I know, we dress our kids up in their little robes and we go, go out there, Tommy, be a king. And he's like, hey, I'm at the birth of Jesus. That's not actually what happened. You have to understand, the only story about anyone arriving at the birth of Jesus in the gospels is in Luke's gospel and their shepherd, that where the angels come and they arrive at the birth of Jesus. The Matthew narrative is about a group of people who arrive when Jesus is probably two years old, because they arrive in the house and they come to see the child not the baby in the greek, it was probably a toddler. And it doesn't say there was three of them.
Mark Clark [00:23:24]:
And it doesn't say they were kings. It says they were magi, which were babylonian and persian magicians. And it says that they brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh. So us and all our creativity go, well, one guy must have been carrying the gold, the other guy had the frankincense, and the other guy had the myrrh. And so there must have been three. The Bible never tells us how many there were. There could have been five, there could have been 40. We have no idea.
Mark Clark [00:23:51]:
And they weren't at the birth of Jesus anyway. And so these aren't even parallels. December 25, not a parallel. Three kings at the birth of Jesus, not a parallel. So what we got to start to understand is they actually get their facts wrong. What about Horus being crucified and resurrected on the third day? You get into the story of Horus. Most of the stories of Horus don't have him dying at all. The one that does, he dies and he falls into the water.
Mark Clark [00:24:16]:
He gets chopped up. Seems to be a theme back in these old stories. They like chopping people up, falls into the water, and then he gets fished out by some crocodiles. And that's considered a resurrection parallel. So that's what we're talking about right now in people's brains when they say Jesus has a parallel with Horus. That's what they're talking about now. Secondly, let's look at Mithras for a couple minutes. Born on December 25.
Mark Clark [00:24:43]:
Obviously not a parallel with Jesus. Shepherds attended his birth, and he's virgin born. The reality is Mithras was actually born fully formed out of a rock. And so I'm not necessarily saying anything about the sexual activity of a rock. I'm just saying I'm not sure the rock was a virgin to give birth to Mithras. Right, but this is the kind of dumb parallels we're talking about. Why was the. Why would that be a virgin birth? Because he was born from a rock.
Mark Clark [00:25:08]:
Oh, good point, Tony. Anyway, the whole Mithras idea was dated 200 years after the gospels were written anyway, so most historians say that the whole Mithras cult was borrowing from Christianity. Let's deal with the last one here, and then we'll move on. They cite Attis, and Attis died. They said he had a death and a resurrection. But here was the nature of Attis resurrection. After Aegistus, his father, caused his son to die. I won't tell you how you can look it up later.
Mark Clark [00:25:39]:
It's too pg 13 for church. He died, and then his father went to Zeus and said, can you resurrect my son from the dead? And Zeus said, of course not, because resurrection is not a thing, but I will let Addis Pinky finger move eternally and his hair will grow forever. That's considered resurrection in their parallels. So that's what we're talking about once you get into the data. Now, I've rhymed this off before, but I'll do it for you. And it's in my book as well. But it's something called Craig Evans, who's a historian, talks about parallelomania. And he says, if you just hone in on certain information, you can equate two things that have nothing to do with each other very easily.
Mark Clark [00:26:18]:
And he talks about the contrast of JFK and Abraham Lincoln. So I'll give it to you. He says this. Both men were concerned with civil rights. Both were elected to Congress in 40, 618, 46, and 1946. Lincoln was elected president in 1860. Kennedy in 1960. Both were slain on a Friday before a major holiday.
Mark Clark [00:26:38]:
Both were shot in the presence of their wives and in the presence of another couple of. Of the other couple. The man was wounded. The man was wounded, but neither wife was. Both were shot from behind in the head. Lincoln was shot in the Ford theater in box seven. Kennedy was shot in car seven of the Dallas motorcade. Both were pronounced dead at a location with the initials Ph.
Mark Clark [00:26:58]:
Peterson House and Parkland Hospital. The successors of both men were named Johnson. Andrew Johnson was born in 1808. Lyndon Johnson was born in 1908. Both assassins were privates in the military. John Wilkes Booth, three names was born in 1839. Lee Harvey Oswald, three names was born in 1939. Booth fled from a theater to a library.
Mark Clark [00:27:18]:
Oswald fled from a library to a theater. Both assassins were taken into custody by a police officer named Baker. Lincoln was shot in the Ford theater. Kennedy was shot in a Ford car. The model of the Ford was a Lincoln. How is that possible? Now, nobody says that JFK didn't exist because of all these parallels. It's a dumb argument, because here's what we have to do. We have to start understanding.
Mark Clark [00:27:53]:
You can isolate certain information and probably get anything out of it. A friend of mine looks exactly like my wife, and she said a couple months ago she was out for dinner with her husband, and the waitress was acting very weird to her and she didn't understand why. And she later found out that the waitress had been texting all night and the story was that my wife Aaron was out for dinner with another man because they looked that similar. And so the story started to spread around her friends. The pastor's wife is sitting here with a man. I can't believe she's out with another man, much less good looking man, much less strong, bulked up man. I can't believe. Why would she do this? Trade.
Mark Clark [00:28:47]:
You can isolate information and get anything you want out of it. So here's the deal. We got to start to look at if. Now, this is not to claim, and here's a very important point, what do christians do with this? This is not to claim that there weren't some parallels to Christianity that predate Christianity. Of course there were now. But what we got to understand is how we approach those. Justin Martyr, who was writing way back in the day, he was talking about Christianity, and he says this. He said, when we say that the word who was the firstborn birth of God was produced without sexual union and that he, Jesus Christ our teacher, was crucified and died and rose again and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter.
Mark Clark [00:29:32]:
So he's talking to people who are involved in paganism, and he says, listen, Christianity came along after you. And I understand there are parallels to it. One of the ideas, actually, Saint Augustine, he wrote this. He said the very thing which is now, sorry, I'm just trying to move a quote here. The very thing which is now called the christian religion existed before. It was not absent from the beginning of the human race until Christ himself came in the flesh. But it was then that, that the true religion that already existed began to be called Christian. It's this concept of a pre christian Christianity.
Mark Clark [00:30:09]:
In Colossians chapter two, Paul says this, therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Basically, what he's saying is there were anticipations of the Christ story in human history built into the fabric of the kinds of stories we told long before Christianity and the gospel actually came on the world. But it was so God had built it into cultures. We told this story to ourselves until it became true, until we could say, now, this actually happened in history. Historically, it's not an esoteric story. It's not a metaphor. This is what you got to understand when the apostle Paul, Paul is writing in one corinthians 15, and he's saying, listen, if the resurrection didn't happen, we are to be the most pitied of people because we're all getting killed for this thing.
Mark Clark [00:31:03]:
We're all getting ripped apart for this thing. He's not sitting around coming up with a religion about esoteric philosophical ideas. He's saying, this really happened. This was a historical person. And if he didn't exist, then we're to be the most pitied of people in the world because we're dying for nothing. There are Christ myth proponents who say, oh, the apostle Paul, he didn't care about history. That's why he doesn't ever talk about the birth of Jesus. He only talks about Jesus, the Christ, the mystical one, the one you can connect to spiritually.
Mark Clark [00:31:34]:
That's why he never talks about the birth. He never talks about how many disciples he had. Listen, that is to misunderstand Paul's whole point. He says, if this guy didn't really live, really die, and really raise from death, we're to be the most pitied of all people. The apostle Paul cared about history more than anybody. If this guy was, if we just came up with him, we're in a lot of trouble. And so here's what CS Lewis said, who studied all of these myths before he became a Christian, and then he became a Christian. Here's what he says.
Mark Clark [00:32:03]:
He said the old myth of the dying God comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens at a particular date, in a particular place. From Osiris dying, nobody knows when or where, to a historical person crucified, it's all in order. Under Pontius Pilate, it says, Christ is more than Osiris, not less. We must not be ashamed of the parallels. They ought to be there. It would be a stumbling block if they weren't. Those who do not know that this great myth became fact when the virgin conceived are indeed to be picked pitied.
Mark Clark [00:32:40]:
So here's what we got to understand. It makes sense that these stories had rhythms and patterns before Christianity ever came about. So if the Christ myth isn't true, that clears the way for the Bible to be true. And here's what you and I have to start to understand, that historically speaking, skeptics come at the Bible and say, no, no, no, the Bible's not true. And I'll tell you why. It was changed too much. It was written too far. When I'm sitting with people and they're challenging the Bible, this is what they claim, right? It was made up.
Mark Clark [00:33:08]:
It was legend. It was written too far. After the fact it was changed all over the place. Here's what we got to understand first. Most historians recognize that the Old Testament and the New Testament are the most trusted documents in antiquity. Out of any documents that were going around spreading ideas, Christianity, the Old Testament, the New Testament was founded, and it's to be the most trusted document actually in history. Were the documents ever changed? That's a question. They weren't.
Mark Clark [00:33:37]:
And here's how we know. There's been documents of Isaiah. There's all kinds of pagan documents. Where you find one and it was written 200 years after that one, it's found in another geographical location. And they're just totally different stories, totally different teachings. And so what they found is scrolls of Isaiah written 800 years apart in two totally different geographic regions of the world. World. And what they were, what blew them away is that it was exactly the same.
Mark Clark [00:34:02]:
95% of the text was exactly the same, which actually caused Gleason Archer, who's a, who's a historian, to say that this is actually the most. I can't believe that there were no changes. He says when they found the scrolls and the Dead Sea in 1947, it was a thousand years earlier than the oldest dated manuscripts previously known. And they proved to be word for word, identical with our standard Hebrew Bible in more than 95% of the text. And so there's people who go, okay, fine, I get it. Old Testament was intact because you got to understand, these guys cared about the writing of the text, right? You know when you're reading the gospels and it said, there's scribes and pharisees. You know what the scribes job was? To sit around and copy text. But they weren't doing it alone in a room.
Mark Clark [00:34:47]:
They had two guys over their shoulders. And every time they made a little mistake, they would have to mark it and initial it and then move forward. It wasn't some guy in a dark room who just walked out. He's like, okay, here's Isaiah, everyone. Anyone want to read it? I just wrote it. It's like there was script. And this is why the Old Testament and New Testament, there's no differences between these things. Now, there's some skeptics who say, yeah, yeah, but what about all the disputed passages? The new Testament's not legitimate.
Mark Clark [00:35:14]:
I can't read that. All the disputed passages, all the contradictions, all the mistakes all over the new testament, you can't trust it. There's people who build a life on going around lecturing this stuff. Here's what you got to understand. There are literally two passages in your New Testament that scholars actually say probably weren't part of the original manuscripts. All right, one of them is at the end of the Gospel of Mark, mark 16. And you can kind of tell because Jesus starts talking about people being bitten by snakes, and it's like, man, I don't know, really sounds like Jesus. And the other one is actually John eight, one to eleven, which is kind of sad for most people because it's the story of the woman caught in adultery.
Mark Clark [00:35:53]:
You know, the story where they bring her and he starts drawing on the ground. The reality is, is most scholars, conservative scholars, would say that was not originally part of the Gospel of John at all. Now, Christianity is not trying to hide this. Any bible, you open it, says it right above the story. This was not part of the original manuscripts. I talked to skeptics like, hey, I found, because I was on the Internet the other day because I live in my parents basement and I spent a lot of time on Reddit in my PJ's, and I found out that John eight was an original. Ha. I've got you.
Mark Clark [00:36:26]:
It's like it says it in my Bible, dude, right above the story. Now, what about the contradictions? I've shared some of these before. People say, well, you don't understand all the contradictions. Okay, what are the contradictions? Contradictions. Did you, you know one passage says Judas killed himself. The other passage says that his bowels just spilled out all over the ground, right? Those don't contradict each other. He hung himself. Over time, the rope broke and his bowels spilled out all the ground.
Mark Clark [00:36:52]:
What's the difference? People say, okay, fine, but what about the angels? In one gospel, the gospel writer says there was two angels there, and another one says that there was one angel there. No, one gospel tells us that one spoke. The other one told us there was two there. This gospel over here was only interested in the one talking. He was not interested in how many angels were there. This one was actually interested in how many angels were there. Now let me tell you, one that I haven't really shared with you before. That I think is very fascinating.
Mark Clark [00:37:17]:
And I've had this in debates with people as well. They point out that the gospel of Mark in the first verse is actually a mistake, and that's why you shouldn't trust it. And here's the example. So the Gospel of Mark, I'm going to put this on the screen for you, mark, chapter one, verse one. One reads this way and you can look it up in your Bible later. It says the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet, behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way. Now, here's what skeptics point out when he says Isaiah the prophet, the problem is, behold, I send my messenger is actually a quote from Malachi, or as my friend likes to say, malachi, the italian prophet. That's actually, that's actually a quote from Malachi.
Mark Clark [00:38:00]:
So, uh oh, we have a mistake in the Bible. He says he's quoting Isaiah and then he quotes Malachi. Throw the Gospel of Mark out. Now that for years and years was actually recognized as a mistake in the Bible. But here's what scholars point out. Lots of scholars have done amazing work in regard to the Book of Mark. And what they realize is when you're reading the Book of Mark, the whole book is actually, there's not probably a chapter in the whole gospel of Mark that doesn't quote Isaiah. And all the themes of Mark are coming through what scholars call Isaiah's new Exodus, showing Jesus as the new Moses.
Mark Clark [00:38:35]:
Leading about the new Exodus. And what scholars point out is the better way to probably read this grammatically, because remember, there was no commas or periods or quotation marks back in the day. It's just all letters, like a big strand. That the better way to actually read Mark. Chapter one, verse one is this way, the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God, as it is written in Isaiah, the prophet. Stop. Colon. Then he starts his whole book, meaning, read the entire God, my entire gospel, as if it's presenting Jesus as the fulfillment of the Book of Isaiah.
Mark Clark [00:39:10]:
Stop. Thought. Then he starts his book and he quotes Malachi, and he starts in the Malachi, and he goes, he's not making a mistake. He's saying, read the next 16 chapters. Read them as a reframing of the Book of Isaiah. Read jesus through the filter of the prophet Isaiah. Done. My thought.
Mark Clark [00:39:34]:
That's the opening thought of the entire gospel. Now go and read the next 16 chapters. See, here's what we got to understand. The Bible over and over and over again shows itself to be true when we fund and we do fumble it. This is why archaeologists say, you don't understand. There's never been anything in a biblical claim that has been actually proven false in regard to archaeology. Sir Frederick G. Kenyon, the former director of the British Museum, says this, in no other case is the interval.
Mark Clark [00:40:06]:
Oh, no, sorry, that's the wrong quote. I was going to be talking about manuscripts. Oh, here. Nelson Glueick a renowned jewish archaeologist. It may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever contradicted a biblical reference. Out of all the study, out of all the archaeological things that can be said, I remember there were years in the early 19, hundreds at universities where they would teach that John chapter five wasn't real, because it said that there were five roofed colonnades in this particular area and they'd done their digging and they never found any. And so they just made fun of the Bible, punched it and said, don't. And people graduated and lived their life and died and said, I don't believe in the Bible.
Mark Clark [00:40:47]:
And then a few years later, they dug a little deeper and they found exactly what John chapter five explains. I've been there. I've stood there and touched those colonnades and almost started crying because I thought about the generations of people who punched their Bible and said, I don't believe in this stuff. And then they just dug a little deeper and they found that archaeology vindicates the Bible over and over and over again. Now, why do people actually trust it? Because there's two things. When you're looking into manuscripts, New Testament manuscripts, there's two things you look for in regard to legitimacy. The first is the number of manuscripts that you have so you can compare mistakes. And the second is how long after the events they actually took place.
Mark Clark [00:41:27]:
And so let me give you a little bit of context, and I talk about this in the book as well, if you need to reference this. So outside of the New Testament, here's the number of manuscripts that other works of antiquity had that people looked at and fully trust. Thucydides reported in his writings as historically accurate. In existence, he had eight copies, the earliest transcribed 1300 years after the events of which he wrote eight copies of his work. And historians say this is legit, this is factual. We trust Thucydides, Aristotle's poetics. There's five copies dated 1400 years after the originals. Caesar's gallic wars.
Mark Clark [00:42:03]:
There's three manuscripts from a thousand years after his death. What about the New Testament? The New Testament has 25,000 copies of it, way beyond anything that anybody trusts in the ancient world. And how long were they written after the fact? 15 to 25 years after. Which means there was not a lot of room for mythology and legendhe to actually get built into the stories. That's the beautiful part of it. The earlier they're actually written. Think about it, 25 years after the fact. Go back to 1992.
Mark Clark [00:42:35]:
See, here's why people trust it, because those documents were written in such a way that eyewitnesses were still alive. When you're writing something 25 years after the fact, everyone could have said, no, no, no, I was there. He never fed 5000 people. Those pigs never got drowned like that. He never walked on water. I had an uncle who was there. What you need to do if you're starting a religion, and this is what happened with Islam, this is what happened with Buddhism, this is what happened with Hinduism. You wait until all the eyewitnesses are dead and then you can claim anything you want.
Mark Clark [00:43:05]:
You can claim miracles all you want because no one was around. But in the New Testament, he's claiming stuff and everyone's still alive, which means those copies never would have gone anywhere. The New Testament would have been, people go, no, I was there. That never really happened. And it's dead. It never goes anywhere. These guys weren't afraid. They're like, go ask people.
Mark Clark [00:43:22]:
Go ask people whether this actually happened. The interval. Think about it. 1992. That's 25 years ago. Can you remember your life in 1990? 219 92. That's when Clinton got into office. That's when the Blue Jays won their first of two World Series in a row.
Mark Clark [00:43:39]:
Holla. Right? All right. 1992. I remember who I was dating. I remember everything about the. I remember everything about. Now imagine I wrote a book today and I said, you know, that was a really difficult nuclear war we got into in 1992 with America. But it all turned out in the end.
Mark Clark [00:43:59]:
You would go, that never happened. That's literally. What are you talking about? I remember it. I remember. I remembered Silence of the Lambs won best picture that year. Right, clarice? Right. There's like, like, I remember that. Like, you can't claim that something happened.
Mark Clark [00:44:20]:
I was just there. And this is why scholars go, man, the New Testament wouldn't move an inch because it says, go ask these people. Jesus resurrected showed himself to 500 people. Go ask them because they're still alive. The reality is people look and they go, man. The New Testament is actually the fact that there were women at the resurrection at a time when the women actually arrived first, at the most important historical moment of Christianity, at a time where a woman's testimony wasn't even allowed in a court of law. Christianity over and over and over again shows itself to be legitimate in regard to the documents. Now here's the issue.
Mark Clark [00:45:03]:
At the end of the day, personally, I think what we got to understand is this. I want you guys to trust the Bible. And if you're a skeptic and you're exploring Christianity, here's what you got to understand. Do you want to know how I encounter. You know, Augustine said, the Bible is the face of God for us. Now, here's the power of it. When I was a 17 year old kid, it took me two or three years to ever walk into a church, which means I met God in a very powerful way long before I ever came into a church. And where I met him was the Bible.
Mark Clark [00:45:42]:
I didn't know anything about Christianity. I didn't have mentors in my life. I didn't have community. I didn't have pastors. What I would do was I would go out and smoke a pack of cigarettes and read the Bible. And just. I encountered the power of it actually changed me. Like these words Isaiah says, my word will not return back to me.
Mark Clark [00:46:00]:
Void that. When you let it. Like, here's the problem. You're judging if you're a skeptic, you judge the New Testament or the Old Testament, but you haven't even read it. And when you read it, like, read the gospels, read the Gospel of Mark, read Matthew, which we've been preaching through for four years, read it. And the encounter, like, I actually encountered the God behind the Bible. When I read it, I would sit and just sit out with my. A friend named Heather, and she was a wiccan witch, all right? She would be dressed all in black, and I'd be sitting out there in my little khakis in my polo, and I would smoke a pack of cigarettes and read the Bible.
Mark Clark [00:46:36]:
And she'd be like, hey, you should, you know, you should go to Summerland. And I'm like, yeah. And I'd read the sermon on the mount, and he. And Jesus would just say something, and I'd do it. Hey, man, when somebody asks you for your cloak, give them your shirt as well. And I just, like, asked me for a cigarette. Here, take the whole pack. Let me get you a carton.
Mark Clark [00:46:54]:
Jesus wants you to have it, all right? He told me to give it to you because all I had was the Bible. I'm honestly telling you. Right? Yeah. Get through all this data, whatever. We have to do that. We had to do that in order to understand why people are compelled to come against Christianity from a historical perspective. Fine. That might not be your thing.
Mark Clark [00:47:16]:
Here's what you got to understand. Give the Bible a shot, because what you're going to find, you will meet God in it. I'm telling you this. He took me from a 17 year old kid, a drug kid, throwing rocks through windows, stealing from cars to get money to buy more drugs hanging out. Just a nonsense life. No idea where my life was going. Probably to a very bad place. And I encountered him for two years just reading this.
Mark Clark [00:47:45]:
And then I just started to get on fire. And I started walking around my town. And I would just start. I'd go, 02:00 in the morning. I'd be going, this woman would be crying on her porch now. It feels creepy, but I would just walk up to her and go, can I pray for you, lady? Boom. And I just start praying for her right now. I'd be arrested.
Mark Clark [00:48:03]:
And I just pray for her that she would take the, you know, the feel the peace and the mercy of Jesus. I remember preaching to a group of people and just having a Bible and saying, listen, you guys are half hammered, but you need to meet Jesus. A guy accepts Christ. He said, I want to be baptized right now. And I baptized him in Lake Ontario at 02:00 a.m. i wasn't even baptized yet. Like, that's not even theologically correct. There's nothing about that that should work.
Mark Clark [00:48:31]:
Everything about that had nothing to do with me and everything to do with the fact I met him. This is trusted. This is powerful. Every word of it is true. Old Testament, New Testament, from a liberal standpoint and conservative standpoint, most scholars agree this is the most trusted text in antiquity. You compare it, you trust it, feel the weight of it, give it a shot, and it will show as it does, Christ. Myth, false, the myth becoming fact in history, true and powerful. And the question becomes, do you let that then shake you and give your life to it? Let me just pray for us.
Mark Clark [00:49:14]:
Father, I am grateful for your grace. I am grateful that you actually came and fulfilled a story that seemed to be just getting written in the human heart. And human culture was crying out through these. Through these stories for God to actually come and fulfill this. A divine person who dies and rises again to redeem us. And I just pray that the reality of that fact, that you actually did it, and it's not a story that people died for it and continue to die for it today. I pray that we would actually be confronted with the reality of it, and we would give our lives to it. And you do a powerful work that we would meet you through the legitimacy of the Bible, the weight of it, your word to us, the face for us, of you now, and we let it confront us and change us, whether we've been christians our whole life or we're just exploring this thing, do that work among us? In Jesus great name, we pray.
Mark Clark [00:50:11]:
Amen.