In2Freedom: A Journal Journey with Brad Jersak’s “Different” Jesus

Examining "A More Christlike Word" by Brad Jersak

Day 21

“For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.” (Paul’s concern from 2 Corinthians 11:4)

The False Filter	The Biblical Filter
The word OR the Word	The Word THROUGH the word

People who need the Bible to be faulty claim that because we do not have the original documents the biblical writers penned, we can’t be certain what they wrote. They then point out that in all the manuscripts we have of the New Testament, there are so many variant readings that it is impossible to know what God breathed out in his own words. I always hear such things as, “says who?” because those people are just as much claiming to be an authority over the Scriptures as I would claim that the Scriptures are still in authority over them. Obviously, we need something more than “they said, I said”.

However, let me pose a question that was asked of me decades ago (I think in my Bible School days): what would people do with the original manuscripts of the Scriptures if we had them?

Now, I would love to leave a big enough space here for you to write down all your answers before I continue because the brain-stretching would be a good way to limber up before today’s hike. If you would stop reading to do that, you simply get the bonus of how you discovered some of these things for yourself.

One thing we can do to imagine what the world would have done with the original copies of the Bible is look at what the world has done with other religious artifacts. For example, think of movies that have made big money portraying adventurers on the quest to find the Ark of the Covenant. What were they admitting would have happened if people really found Noah’s ark, or the ark of the covenant, or the goblet from which Jesus drank the wine of the last supper (the wine that was both the final drink of the Passover under the old covenant and the first drink of communion under the new covenant!).

Now this one sounds funny, so I wasn’t sure if it really was a thing, but I looked it up and there are many sources saying it is true (hmmm… sounds like a familiar way we discover what the original Scriptures said!). When I was thinking through with my class what worldlings would have done with the original manuscripts, the professor said that the Roman Catholic Church had sold or given away so many slivers of the “real” cross Jesus died on that if we could put them all back together there would be enough to build Noah’s ark! What I just read about these “shards” of the cross Jesus died on was that “Pope Francis has given King Charles III two shards of wood that the Vatican says are from the ‘True Cross’ on which Jesus Christ was crucified, to be included in the British monarch's upcoming coronation ceremony.”[1]

In reading of the history of the RCC’s money-making scheme of selling slivers from Jesus’ cross, I found this in the Britannica website:

“Adoration of the True Cross gave rise to the sale of its fragments, which were sought as relics. John Calvin pointed out that all the extant fragments, if put together, would fill a large ship. His objection was regarded as invalid by some Roman Catholic theologians, who claimed that the blood of Christ gave to the True Cross a kind of material indestructibility, so that it could be divided indefinitely without being diminished.”[2]

Both sides admitted that the RC church had sold far more fragments of the cross than a single cross could have contained. Which tells us something of what the world does with religious relics and artifacts, they try to make money off them!

Now think of what kind of money-making schemes worldlings could come up with if it could be certified that we had the original documents of Scripture that were written down by the men who received the breathed-out words of God. We may not be able to agree on what it would look like for some person or group to own them, how much money people would make from selling them throughout the centuries, and how groups like the RC church would fabricate claims about the Scriptures that would justify their money-making ventures.

My point on this is simple: while skeptics who do not know Christ claim it is a disadvantage that we do not have the original documents because we can’t know for certain what God breathed out, believers who do know Christ see quite a different picture. It is a fact that we do not have the original documents. No one is denying that. However, it is also a fact that we have more copies of the New Testament writings than any other work from the distant past. There are so many sources that explain this that I simply share one from CARM (Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry)[3].

My point is that we not only have 8.7 times the manuscripts than the next in line (5600 for the New Testament; 643 for Homer’s Iliad), but some of these manuscripts are less than 100 years after writing compared to hundreds (some more than a thousand) of years after writing for the others. Along with this, we have so many quotes of the New Testament in the first century that, if my memory serves me correctly from that Bible class, the whole New Testament could be put together from these quotes with only a small handful of verses missing.

I will leave it to you to do more research on this yourself if you need to, but I present this to contradict the “another Jesus” people in their claim that without the original documents, we can’t know for certain what words God breathed out. God not only “got around” the problem of a kind of idolatry called “bibliolatry” (the worship of the Bible documents) but he also provided a way to lead his people to know what those documents said: he flooded the world with so many copies that we can determine what those originals contained with tremendous accuracy.

In fact, last night after finishing my day’s journal journey, I watched a video where J. Warner Wallace addresses these very things. I share in the footnote the synopsis video I watched, and a link to his playlist of videos addressing, “Is the Bible Reliable? Is Christianity True?”[4] It really puts to shame the false claims BJ is making.

Wallace calls his ministry “Cold-case Christianity” because he was a cold-case detective when he began grappling with the claims of Christianity as a cold case! Skeptics may be blind to this, but I already knew about Josh McDowell who, as a young lawyer, set out to write a book called, “Evidence That Demands a Verdict” to prove that the evidence was against the Bible’s claims. Along the way, he discovered that all the evidence supported the Christian teachings about the Bible and he became a Christian through his lawyer-minded journey of trying to prove the Bible false.

Then there was the newspaper man, Lee Strobel, who was horrified when his wife announced that she had trusted in Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior. He was so incensed by this that he used all his reporter-skills to research the evidence for the Christian faith so he could prove to his wife that it was a farce. Along the way (you guessed it) he discovered that treating all the evidence with the same tools and principles he used in reporting news stories demanded that he admit it was all true and he also became a disciple of Jesus Christ.

Now we have J. Warner Wallace exploring the documentation of Christianity as a cold-case detective and also coming to the conclusion that, using the same principles and tests as he had used many times in more recent cases, he had to admit that the evidence required a verdict of “true”.

I share all that so you can see how a real-life story comes together with God’s children. I testify to how God speaks to us on a daily basis as we meet with him in his word and prayer. He orchestrates our life experiences (like hiking along the BJ trail) so that what he is saying in his word fits what he is doing in our lives as we join this journey. To join God in his work, especially the work of testifying to the “living and abiding word of God”, is vastly superior to all the attempts to present “another Jesus” who brings “a different spirit” in order to proclaim “a different gospel”.

Now all that might sound like an intro to today’s trail, but I see it more like the first part of the trail that BJ was trying to hide from you who are hiking with me, and it has been a joyful experience to point out all these hidden viewpoints so you can have a much better idea of how to interpret what BJ says next as he guides us down the garden path.

I don’t need to comment on what he presents as the biblical definition of inerrancy. Neither do I need to hit him again with his bloody nose still bleeding. I don’t believe for one minute that believing what the Bible says about its authority, truthfulness and trustworthiness is the reason anyone has turned away from Jesus (the Bible explains why that happens). But I will pick up where he gives his alternative. He writes,

What if, instead, we admitted what is there without apology or worry? Namely, that across the entire Bible, there is a range and mixture of factual accuracy (from vague/dubious to detailed/precise) and inspired revelation (filtered through shifting religious biases). What if we account for the variance based on the worldviews and vantage points of real people who experienced or recorded the events? (p. 70).

Okay, one at a time:

BJ	MV
What if, instead,	I don’t live by “what ifs” and “maybes”
What if, instead, we admitted what is there without apology or worry?	So far, BJ has a huge failure rate in accurately describing what is “there”.
Namely, that across the entire Bible, there is a range and mixture of factual accuracy (from vague/dubious to detailed/precise)	Again, the author has presented zero proof of that claim, so what if we don’t treat the Bible as factually inaccurate (especially since science, archeology, and geology, keep affirming what is written!)
and inspired revelation (filtered through shifting religious biases).	No, we have “breathed out” revelations from God that were no more filtered by the human writers than Jesus filtered what the Father taught him to say.
What if…	What if we don’t…
What if we account for the variance based on the worldviews and vantage points of real people who experienced or recorded the events?	There is no variance to account for between what God breathed and men wrote down. And what we see in God’s revelations is the way he was constantly breathing out things that were in conflict with the worldviews of the day. So there is zero need to have mistaken people today deciding how to account for perceived variances that fit their own worldviews and the Jesus they wanted to find in the Bible.

In the four points the author presents next, I simply say that we have covered this ground already (reminds me of being lost in the woods and coming back to the same spot three times before the sun poked through the clouds and we could get our bearings). So, in summary, his claim that the differences he imagines were the result of “Developing worldviews, Historical distance, Genres, and Overt Disagreement” (p. 70), are just more ways he is suggesting problems without evidence. It is easy to find all kinds of lists his new atheists love to parade around the internet, and just as easy to find websites that take the time to explain how these are not what the unbelievers claim.

Although that only needed a summary, his concluding statement to that section feels more like another bloody nose is needed because we have covered this already. BJ says, “OR ‘The Law [of Moses] says _____,’ yet Jesus (God’s Word) says, ‘You’ve heard this. But I say to you _______’”28 (p. 71).

That is absolutely factually false! In not one of the “you have heard, but I say to you” examples in the Sermon on the Mount was Jesus correcting Moses or the Law. Each statement was in reference to what the people had heard from their religious leaders. He had just told everyone that unless their righteousness exceeded that of the religious elite they would never be able to enter the kingdom of God. He then gives a half dozen examples of the difference between the two kinds of righteousness. The “you have heard it said” summarized an area of righteousness the way their leaders taught it. The, “but I say to you” was Jesus showing what the superior righteousness of his kingdom looked like. That would give everyone opportunity to understand how their righteousness could exceed that of the religious elite. It wasn’t by trying to do more of the same, but a completely different way of looking at life.

The author then begins leading us down a new trail entitled “Authority” and his first sentence is of the fightin’-words variety, so I’ll just leave a trailer to where we’re going to head after a good night’s rest. He begins, “When I’m honest about the human element (yes, discrepancies) in the text…” (p. 71).

No, BJ is not honest about this. He is fabricating a story of discrepancies between what God breathed out and what the writers recorded. He has not presented any evidence of this, even though Jesus had plenty of time to tell us there was something wrong with all those biblical writers of the Scriptures he spoke about.

We have also seen that BJ’s reference to the “you have heard, but I say to you” section of the Sermon on the Mount was completely dishonest. He has put into print his claim to discrepancies that clearly were not there. That means that, when the measure is honesty, BJ simply does not measure up.

Okay, I’ll try to cool down overnight and make sure I’m ready for more of these fightin’ words as we face them tomorrow. For now, I have yet to read anything in this book that gives BJ the authority to tell me what to think of the authority of God’s breathed-out words. And it is still the greatest meaning in life to live by every word that comes from the mouth of God!

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

Jersak, Bradley. A More Christlike Word: Reading Scripture the Emmaus Way. Whitaker House. Kindle Edition.

Definitions from the Bible Sense Lexicon (BSL) in Logos Bible Systems