ENDTIME ISSUES NEWSLETTER No. 156

“Readiness for the Second Advent”

John Paulien, Ph. D.,

Chairman, New Testament Department

Andrews University Theological Seminary

“The Resurrection of the Body”

Samuele Bacchiocchi, Ph. D.,

Retired Professor of Church History and Theology

This newsletter consists of two major Bible studies and three update reports. The first Bible study is by Prof. Jon Paulien, who is familiar to most of our readers, having contributed several insightful essays to our newsletter. For the past 20 years Prof. Paulien has been serving as the chairman of the NT Department of Andrews University Theological Seminary. His books, articles, and lectures have been a blessing to thousand of people in many countries.

Paulien’s essay is entitled “Readiness for the Second Advent.” In a most perceptive way, he highlights both the “healthy” and “unhealthy” ways to live in the expectancy of Christ’s soon-Coming. This Bible study is excerpted from his book, The Millennium Bug, published by Pacific Press. Most likely this essay will wet your appetite to read the whole book available at your ABCs.

The second Bible study, entitled “The Resurrection of the Body,” is excerpted from my own book Immortality or Resurrection? For the sake of brevity, I have excerpted only 10 pages of the 50 pages chapter. This short essay addresses the fundamental question of the nature of the resurrected body. In Paul’s day the notion of the resurrection of the body was absurd to the dualistic thinking of most people who viewed the body as the prison house of the soul to be discarded at death. Even today, most Christians think of salvation in terms of ascension of the the soul to heaven, rather than in terms of the resurrection of the body. Yet Scripture explicity teaches the resurrection of the body at Christ’s Coming.

The question is: What does Paul mean when he speaks of the resurrection of the body? And, What will the resurrection body be like? Will it be a physical or a spiritual body? Will it be similar to or radically different from the present one? How will our personal identity be preserved? Will I look 70 years old with a shining top like now, or 25 years old with the nice wavy hair I used to have? Will you recognize me by my look or by my common expression “MAMMA MIA”? In what sense will we be “like the angels”? These are some of the questions that I am addressing. I anticipate that some of you may not agree with everything I wrote. That is to be expected. The aim of my short essay is to stimulate our thinking. If we end up disagreeing on some points, let us be mature enough to disagree without becoming disagreeable to one another.

If you like this Bible study, you may wish to order the book Immortality or Resurrection? The book has been favorably reviewed by dozen of scholars of different persuasions and has been adopted as a text book by some theological seminaries. It provides a much needed response to the widespread deception of conscious life after death. You can order your copy online at http://www.biblicalperspectives.com/books/immortality_resurrection/ or by calling us at 269-471-2915.

Besides the two major essays, you will find in this newsletter a report on the video recording of the lecture CRACKING THE DA VINCI CODE, and a brief analysis of the controversial lecture delivered by Pope Benedict XVI on September 12, 2006, at the University of Regensburg in Germany. As you well know a quote from the lecture about Islam, has generated violent reactions in Muslim countries.

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UPDATE ON CRACKING THE DA VINCI CODE

This newsletter comes to you with considerable delay, not because I was secretly “raptured” away (as someone suggested), but because I devoted the past three weeks to complete the powerpoint lecture entitled CRACKING THE DA VINCI CODE. This has been a major project on which I have worked on and off for the past 5 months. Last Monday evening, September 25, 2006, the project came to a successful completion, when Leonard Brown, Prof. of Filming at Andrews University, video-taped the two hours lecture in the media studio of the university.

I am looking forward with eager anticipation to see the edited version of the lecture. The reason is that the setting of the lecture is a very modern virtual studio with a wide screen surrounded by several TV monitors. It looks as if I am delivering the lecture from a multi-million dollars modern studio, when in reality the taping was done in the modest studio of Andrews University. Prof. Brown reassures me that this will be the best-looking recording that I have ever done. He will drop manually each of the 135 slides that I have used for the powerpoint presentation. The slides will appear in an impressive wide virtual screen. The editing process should be completed in about 10 days. By October 10, 2006 we should be ready to mail this DVD album with the live lecture on CRACKING THE DA VINCI CODE. In a couple of days you will be able to view a three minutes trailer of the lecture by clicking here: http://www.biblicalperspectives.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=bookstore&Product_Code=AV-DaVinci&Category_Code=audio_video

It is hard to describe the deep sense of relief I experienced at the end of the video-taping session. For the past five months I have been reading and reflecting (even while sleeping at night) on the significance of Dan Brown’s best selling novel, The Da Vinci Code (Henceforth DVC). As of May 2006 more than 60.5 million copies have been sold in 45 lnaguages.

Why I Examined The Da Vinci Code

You may be wondering, why would a Church Historian like me, invest much time and money in examining a novel? The answer is simple. The DVC is much more than a novel. It is a social phenomenon that is shattering the faith of millions of Christians by blatantly attacking the fundamental beliefs of the Christian faith. In many ways this is a blasphemious and sacrelegious novel that insults God, Christ, the Gospels, the Bible, and fundamental Christian teachings.

The problem with the DVC is that it is fiction presented as fact. On page 1, called the “FACT” page, Dan Brown, states: “All descriptions of art work, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate” (DVC 1). On several interviews, Dan Brown repeated the same claim. When asked by Matt Lauer in the Today Show how much of the book was based on actual events, Dan Brown replied, “Absolutely all of it.”

Surprisingly, the DVC has been favorably reviewed in several newspapers and journals. The New York Daily News says: “The research impeccable.” The Library Journal writes: “This masterpiece should be mandatory reading.” The Washington Post states: “Read the book and be enlightened.”

I read the book but I was not enlightened at all. On the contrary, I was greatly distressed by the sheer absurdity of the following false claims:

• Christ married Mary Magdalene and they had a daughter Sarah.

• Christ chose Mary Magdalene to lead His church, not the twelve apostles as the Gospels tell us.

• Constantine chose our 4 Gospels out of 80, because they promote Christ’s divinity. He rejected the Gnostic Gospels because they stress the human traits of Christ.

• The early Christians worshipped the “sacred feminine” with ritual sex in order to experience the knowledge of God.

• The Catholic Church has conspired to suppress the secret of Christ’s marriage by using murderous organizations like Opus Dei.

As an Early Church historian, I can assure you that there is not a shred of historical evidence for any of these absurd claims. Yet million of gullible Christians are accepting as truth Dan Brown’s false claims about the origin of Christianity. The reason is that they are biblically and historically illiterate.

The Da Vinci Code Undermines the Faith

Polls conducted in different countries clearly indicate that DVC is undermining the faith of million of people. For example, a British poll conducted by Opinion Research Business found that that 60% of people who read the DVC, believe that Jesus had children by Mary Magdalene– compared with 30% of those who had not read the book.

A French survey conducted by IPSOS, shows that 48% of the readers of DVC believe that Jesus was a mere man who married Mary Magdalene–compared to 29% of those who had not read the book. A survey of 1005 Canadian conducted by Decima Research shows that 32% of those who have read the DVC believe that the book offers a factual presentation of the origin of Christianity.

The devastating impact of the DVC upon the fundamental Christian beliefs of millions of people, calls for an examination of its false claims. To ignore Dan Brown’s deceptive attempts to discredit the Christian faith, means to fail to help the million of confused Christians, who are unable to distinguish between the DVC’s facts and the fiction.

The Aim of the Lecture

The aim of the lecture is to expose, not the UNREAL Catholic conspiracy to cover up Christ’s marital status, but the REAL conspiracy of Dan Brown himself, that is, the deceptive methods he uses to discredit Christianity, in order to promote his neo-pagan forms of worship.

The ultimate aim is to seek to understand how the neo-pagan false worship promoted by the DVC, fulfills the prophetic scenario of the endtime showdown between true and false worship, as predicted by Jesus, Paul, and expanded in Revelation.

The numerous books that I have read on the DVC and the 20 plus powerpoint presentations that I have reviewed, largely ignore the prophetic significance of the neo-pagan false worship promoted by Dan Brown. This is true even of the Adventist powerpoint presentations that I have seen. The primary concern of these authors is to respond to such false allegations as: Constantine chose and manipulated the Four Gospels in order to prove Christ’s divinity; Constantine rejected 80 Gnostic Gospels because they stress Christ’s humanity; the Council of Nicaea in AD 325 voted on the divinity of Christ; Leonardo Da Vinci knew the secret of Christ’s marriage to Mary Magdalene and left clues in The Last Supper, the Catholic Church has attempted during the past 17 centuries to conduct a massive cover up the secret of Christ’s marriage to Mary Magdalene, through murderous organizations like Opus Dei.

In my lecture I do briefly examine these absurd allegations, but my concern is to understand where is Dan Brown leading people? What is his secret agenda? What are his strategies to lead many people away from the true worship of God into his neo-pagan forms of worship?

Dan Brown Uses Two Strategies to Promote His Neo-pagan Worship

Simply stated, I found that Dan Brown uses two major strategies. On the one hand, he attack all the fundamental beliefs of Christianity, and on the other hand, he promotes his neo-pagan forms of worship. Let us briefly summarize each of these strategies.

First, Dan Brown promotes false worship by attacking such fundamental Christian beliefs as these:

1) Jesus was not the Son of God, but a mortal man.

2) Emperor Constantine declared Jesus to be God at the Council of Nicaea in 325, by rejecting 80 Gospels and rewriting the four Gospels of the NT.

3) Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had a child Sarah, whose royal bloodline survives to this very day.

4) “The Bible is the product of man … not of God … and it has evolved through countless translations, additions and revisions” (DVC 312).

5) Salvation is not through Christ’s atoning death, but through the worship of the “sacred feminine” with ritual sex.

Second, Dan Brown promotes false worship by teachings such heresies as these:

1) We need to liberate ourselves from the monotheistic worship of one God– the male God of the Bible.

2) We are free to worship several Gods and Goddesses on any day, because the Sabbath is Jewish and Sunday is pagan.

3) We need to liberate ourselves from the worship of Jesus as the Son of God, because He was a mere mortal man, who was declared divine by Constantine in AD 325 at the Council of Nicaea.

4) We need to liberate ourselves from the ignorant belief that the Bible is inspired and authoritative, because it has evolved through countless revisions done by men.

5) Ritual sex “is not a perversion. It is a deeply sacrosanct ceremony” practiced by early Christians (DVC 309).

6) We can become “spiritually complete” and achieve knowledge of God through ritual sex (DVC 308).

7) We must worship the “Sacred Feminine” because Goddesses have unusual powers to give wisdom and saving knowledge.

Prophetic Significance of The Da Vinci Code

Dan Brown’s neo-pagan false worship is popular because it appeals to our secular, postmodern, humanistic, new age culture which rejects moral absolutes–such as the Ten Commandments, creation, no sex outside marriage–accepting instead moral relativism. Truth, as Dan Brown puts it, is “whatever you believe it to be.”

Surprisingly, the prophetic significance of Dan Brown’s neo-pagan false worship, is largely ignored in the critical reviews and powerpoint presentations that I have read and seen. The major concern is to expose the flaws of Dan Brown’s allegations. This seems to be true even for the Adventist reviews and powerpoint presentations that I have seen. But as Adventists who claim to have a prophetic understanding of the endtime showdown over worship, we can hardly ignore the prophetic significance of The Da Vinci Code. Our past tendency to place all our eggs in the basket of the papacy, may blind us to the fact that Satan is using a variety of agencies to lead the world into idolatrous forms of worship.

The false worship being promoted by the DVC represents in my view a key player in the prophetic endtime battle between true and false worship. God’s final appeal in Revelation is to come out of the false worship promoted by spiritual Babylon: “Come out of her my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues” (Rev 18:4).

Revelation portrays Satan like a monster with many tentacles, using different strategies (beasts) to win the battle over worship. The DVC is one of the significant strategies. Our calling is to proclaim to the world God’s final warning message: “Fear God and give him glory, for the hour of his judgment has come; and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the funtain of the water” (Rev 14:7).

You will find the DVD recording of CRACKING THE DA VINCI CODE, intriguing, informative and challenging. It addresses a host of questions, including the alleged role of Constantine in changing the Sabbath to Sunday. Since we live in a visual society, I invested a lot of time and efforts looking for pictures related to each topic discussed.

To make it possible for many to benefic from this timely visual lecture, we are offering the DVD album on CRACKING THE DA VINCI CODE at the pre-publication price of only $35.00, airmailing expenses included even overseas, instead of the regular price of $100.00. This special price is extended until October 31, 2006. The album includes also a separate file with the 135 powerpoint slides that I used for the lecture. You are free to use the slides for your own presentations. We guarantee to process your order as soon as the DVD album is released, by October 10, 2006.

You can order the DVD album on CRACKING THE DA VINCI CODE at the special pre-publication price of $35.00, instead of $100.00, in four different ways:

(1) Online: By clicking here: http://www.biblicalperspectives.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=bookstore&Product_Code=AV-DaVinci&Category_Code=audio_video

(2) Phone: By calling us at (269) 471-2915 to give us your credit card number and postal address.

(3) Email: By emailing your order to <sbacchiocchi@biblicalperspectives.com>. Be sure to provide your  postal address, credit card number, and expiration date.     

(4) Regular Mail: By mailing a check for $35.00 to BIBLICAL PERSPECTIVES, 4990 Appian Way, Berrien Springs, Michigan 4990, USA. We guarantee to process your order immediately.

SEPTEMBER 30, 2006: ORLANDO: LIVE LECTURE ON CRACKING THE DA VINCI CODE.

If you live in Orlando, FL, you are welcome to attend my live lecture on Cracking the Da Vinci Code this coming Sabbath afternoon (5:00 p. m.), September 30, 2006, at the ALTAMONTE SPRINGS SDA CHURCH. The church is located at 455 Mailand Avenue, Altamonte Springs, Florida 32701. For directions call Pastor Ron Bentzinger at (407) 767-7522. My seminar begins on Friday evening, September 29, at 7:30 p. m. It will continue on Sabbath morning at 11:00 a. m., with the final lecture scheduled for Sabbath afternoon at 5:00 p. m. Thank you for informing your friends about this special rally.

POPE BENEDICT XVI’S CONTROVERSIAL LECTURE

On 12 September 2006, Pope Benedict XVI delivered a lecture titled “Faith, Reason and the University — Memories and Reflections,” at the University of Regensburg in Germany, where he was previously a professor of theology.

The lecture has caused Muslim demonstrations, riots, and even the shooting of a Catholic nun in Somalia. Many Islamic politicians and religious leaders registered their protest against what they believe was an insulting mischaracterization of Islam, in Pope Benedict’s quotation, “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

The quote is taken from a 1391 dialogue between the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian, on such issues as forced conversion, holy war, and the relationship between faith and reason. The Pope used Emperor Manuel II’s argument in order to draw a distinction between the Christian view that “not acting reasonably is contrary to God’s nature”, and an Islamic view, as explained by Theodore Khoury and Ibn Hazm, that God transcends rationality, and his will is not constrained by any principle, including rationality.

Some of the Adventist reactions to the Pope’s lecture emailed to me, tend to be very negative. It almost seems that to be a loyal Adventist you must always find something wrong with the Pope. I do not share this view. There are times when I condemn the pope for actively promoting the idolatrous worship of Mary, but there are also times when I commend pope for addressing the socio-political issues of our time in a responsible way.

Three Crucial Points Made by Benedict XVI

I read the full text of the Benedict’’s lecture and I find that he makes three crucial points that have been overshadowed by the controversy about his alleged offensive comments about Islam.

The pope’s first point is that the way we envision God determines how we define what is good or evil and the methods we use for advancing truth. For example, if we imagine that God is a remote, transcendat majesty with whom our only possible relationship is one of blind submission (Islam=Submission), then we must accept even what seems to be irrational, like the murder of innocents.

Benedict contends that the God of Biblical revelation is a rational God, who does not cancel out or abrogate human reason. Christianity has taught that human beings can build decent societies by following the light of reason. By contrast, the Koranic God is a transcendant God who is not subject to the logic of reason.

The pope’s second point flows from the first, namely, that irrational violence aimed at innocent men, women and children “is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the [human] soul.” Muslim believers who insist that the suicide bombing of innocents is an act pleasing to God, must be told that they are mistaken in their understanding of God, of His purposes, and His moral commands.

Furthermore, Islamic leaders have a responsibily to correct these distorted views of God, but too few of them, the pope seemed to suggest, have the courage to undertake a cleansing of Islam’s conscience, as Pope John Paul II taught the Catholic Church to cleanse its historical conscience. (Crusades, inquisition).

Honest Muslim and honest Christians have the right to disagree on their respective beliefs, but they do not have the right to force the choice imposed to the two Fox News employees by their captors in Palestine: convert or die. There is a serious asymmetry which Benedict has critized before. The Saudies can build multi-million dollar mosques in Western Europe and the USA, yet Christians can be arrested in Saudi Arabia for giving out Bibles.

The Danger of Postmodern Relativism

The pope’s third point, which has largely been ignored in the heat of the controversy, is directed toward the West. The pope warns that the postmodern relativism (which I discuss in my lecture Cracking The Da Vinci Code) and irrationalism, which reduces truth to subjective beliefs or feelings, undermines the ability of the West to defend itself. “Why? Because the West won’t be able to give reasons why its commitments to civility, tolerance, human rights and the rule of law are worth defending. A Western world stripped of convictions about the truths that make Western civilization possible, cannot make a useful contribution to a genuine dialogue of civilizations, for any such dialogue must be based on a shared understanding that human beings can, however imperfectly, come to know the truth of things” (Los Angeles Times, Sept. 20, 2006).