History – That… Which Matters Most

The Gospels were written much sooner than we’ve been told.

When Were the Gospels Written?

When were the gospels written? Decades after the ascension of Christ, later, or actually, earlier?

Let’s walk through this together.

First thing to understand concerning the dates of the Gospels is that it is all speculation and consensus, depending on where you stand. From the liberal camp, they will say that the gospels were written after 70 AD because Jesus speaks of the destruction of the temple, which took place in 70 AD. For them, Jesus could only speak of something like that if it had already happened. So their decision is based upon unbelief. They don’t believe that Jesus was a prophet, or knew the future. For them, He was just a good man.

For the conservatives, they always seem to claim that the gospels were written at the earliest, in the 50s or late 60s. Their reason for this is actually the opposite of the liberals. They actually believe that Jesus was and is a Prophet. This is why Jesus speaks of the destruction of the temple in the future tense. And since the gospel, book of Acts, or the rest of the NT speak of the temple actually being destroyed, they hold that all were written before 70 A.D.

I completely agree with this assessment. Jesus was THE Prophet. He foretold of His death, resurrection, and ascension. Foretelling the future of the Temple was child’s play. If He was right on the former, which He was, then the prophesies of the temple’s destruction were nothing for Him. He did ascend to the right hand of the Father. He also came again in judgment in 70 A.D. to carry out what He said would happen.

(Obviously, I’ve gone to preaching.)

Back to the date of Matthew, which is my main goal.

I hope you have seen that we have placed the Synoptic Gospels before the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D. But why do we claim that the gospels were written in the 50s or 60s?

This is what I was told while in seminary. The reasoning given was that it takes a while to gather the money to buy the paper, which was rare and expensive. The paper that could be had, was only used on the most important things in the world, like… grocery lists, love notes, and reminders to wash chariot, taxes, court records, contracts, leases, wills, and other such things.

We know all those things were written down in the days of Christ because of the great treasure trove of papyri found in Egypt in the late 1800s, and early 1900s. That discovery was a gift that showed us the life of the average Greco-Roman citizen.

This destroys the false notion that paper was hard to come by and so expensive that the disciples had to save their pennies in order to get enough paper before they started writing.

This is where the faith of the conservatives falls flat. They are trying so hard to be acceptable, scholarly, and responsible in their discussions of such a topic, that they rule out the possibility that our King already had a plan on how the gospels would be written, who would write them, and where the money would come from to do so. It is almost as if they think that the King of kings, the omniscient Second Person of the Trinity was sort of winging it, and only thought to have the guys start writing all that happened down during the 40-day stretch between the resurrection and His ascension.

The truth is that Jesus knew that the events of His ministry needed to be written down, and would have had His disciples doing just that during His ministry. We know this, because the same Person of the Trinity was having the prophets write things down before His incarnation. Every time YHWH moved in the lives of His covenantal people, He would raise up a prophet to write those things down.

For example, YHWH told Moses to write things down, Exodus 24:4. Moses writes down all the words of YHWH, so that he can read them back to the Israelites all that they had agreed to do.

In Exodus 34:27, YHWH instructs Moses to write down the covenant He just made with the Israelites after the golden calf incident.

YHWH Himself, actually writes the Ten Commandments: Exodus 31:18, 32:16, 34:1, 34:28.

This would continue with Joshua and the Prophets. It was done during the period of Joshua, Judges, and Kings. Even David had access to paper and was in the habit of writing things down to record the Psalms.

All this shows us that God established a pattern of writing down what He was doing in history. God always ensures that there is someone to record these events when He begins to move, forf covenant people. YHWH actually wants us to know about how He has moved in history. He wants us to remember, so that we declare His magnificent works to the nations.

So why is it, that we think that Jesus, as the incarnate YHWH, would not do the same?

Peter Leithart

Now please understand where all this begins. I confess that it is not from me. It was a short article by Peter Leithart that opened my mind to this truth. Blame him. Yet, what he writes, has a ring of truth to it. I never liked the idea that the gospel writers sat around for decades before putting pen to paper. This makes no sense. See his article here, where he writes:

Late dating of the gospels is historically preposterous. Even the most “conservative” dating assumes that Jewish Christians, who believed that the long-awaited salvation had finally occurred in Jesus, would wait over a decade before putting an ordered account on paper. On the contrary: The very first thing a Jew would do if convinced that Jesus was Messiah would be to pick up a quill and papyrus and start writing. Matthew, who wrote the book cleverly called “Matthew,” was a literate tax collectors who in all likelihood jotted down sermon notes as he followed Jesus around Galilee and Judea. Whyever would he keep those hidden for a decade before writing his gospel?

Why would he? We don’t. When something happens of significance, we write it down. This is because we know the importance of something that is written down. This was true of the Bible as well. Especially given… that the Messiah, whom the Jews had waiting for thousands of years, finally showed up.

Our scholars seem to think the gospel writers waited like modern historians do, waiting to get the full picture, which takes a few decades. For example, William Shirer, who wrote The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, was heavily criticized by academia because he put his book out so quickly after World War II. But why? Shirer was a witness to many of the events. He knew many of the people who lived under the Third Reich. He was writing down the events of history as they unfolded. And because of this, his book is one of the premier books on Hitler and the war.

I point this out to show it’s part of human nature to record great events in history. We should expect the same when the long-awaited Messiah shows up.

The Chosen Recorder

As for Matthew, I believe Jesus chooses him specifically to write down the things that Jesus is doing. Why is this? In general, we know that that all the disciples were chosen by Jesus for a specific reason. We may not know those reasons, but Christ does.

The best example of this is Paul. Jesus called him while he was on the Road to Damascus for the purpose of taking the gospel to the Gentiles, and to suffer many things for Christ. But Paul was also chosen because he was a Pharisee of Pharisees. He was trained in the Old Testament. He would go on to write much of the New Testament in his letters to the churches explaining the Christian life (I include Hebrews among his letters). But he wasn’t just writing them simple letters. Paul was writing to the explaining the Old Testament in light of the New Covenant, and Christ. His background as a Pharisee helped him explain life as a Christian.

Jesus choosing of Matthew was no less specific. Matthew was chosen because he was a man who paid attention to details. He was a tax collector and was educated. He knew how to write. He also knew how to get paper. It was a part of the trade to keep records of the work he did as a tax collector. So the need to wait 10, 15, 20 years before writing what Jesus did, was not necessary.

As Leithart suggests, Matthew probably started writing down things the moment of his calling, and may have even wrote things down before he was called. We don’t know with any certainty, but Matthew may have been part of the multitudes who actually heard the Sermon on the Mount, or witnessed the miracles of Christ. He may have known the Centurion, or others, who experienced the mercy and power of Christ.

I don’t believe for a moment that when Jesus said, “Follow Me,” that this was the first time Matthew had seen Jesus. But then again, I don’t want to take away from the possibility that it was the first time Matthew saw Jesus. Jesus could command as much. His calling on a man is effectual whether the man has seen Jesus or not.

What we do know is Matthew did follow Jesus, and immediately threw a banquet for his friends, the other tax collectors and sinners. Luke’s gospel gives us more details than Matthew’s does.

And Levi gave a big reception for Him in his house; and there was a great crowd of tax collectors and other people who were reclining at the table with them (Luke 5:29).

This lack of the term banquet in Matthew’s gospel may be a testimony to his humility. He didn’t want to boast in being able to throw a banquet. Yet, he did just that. As a tax collector, he had the money to throw a banquet.

Why?

He threw the banquet so his friends could meet Jesus as he had done. He wanted them to know Jesus as He knew Jesus.

It is interesting how little we know of Matthew. His name is mentioned about five times in the Gospels and Acts, and his other name, Levi, three times. His name is found in the accounts of his calling, and in the list of the disciples. But no where else.

There are no recorded words between Matthew and Jesus. He never asks any questions that we know of. He is, silent…

But we do know he wants people to know Christ. The banquet shows us this. He invites everyone he knows to the banquet… and he writes. He records, and writes, so that people will know about Christ.

And it is after the Day of Pentecost, that Matthew sees the real need for all that he has written. There are all these Jews who have just come to know Christ who need to be informed. The Spirit has moved in them, but they need instruction. And Matthew is ready. He takes all his notes, put them in book form, and starts sharing so those who have come to know Jesus through the preaching of the word, can read the gospel for themselves. Matthew fulfills the purpose for his calling.

Conclusion

What I’m hoping you see, is that there would be absolutely no reason at all to wait a decade or two in order to put down on paper the events of the long-awaited Messiah. There was an immediate need for the gospel of Matthew. And Matthew filled that need for his countrymen. He was the first because he was on the scene for many of the events. He was THE eyewitness for the job. It was exactly why Jesus called Him.

If you like, you can listen to the sermon I preached on the calling of Matthew here. This post was the background work for that sermon.

Hitler, True Evil, and Post-War Consensus

I admit that I struggled with the idea of post-war consensus. When I first heard the term, I was baffled.

Fortunately, Doug Wilson connected the dots for me. Post-war consensus is the idea that we need to proceed in society, after World War II, without any absolute beliefs. Those who put this forth, did so with the idea that it was hard-core beliefs that got us into the mess of World War I and World War II.

In moving away from this mistake, as they saw it, they made a play for the definition of true evil. Instead of looking to Scripture for that definition, they looked to Hitler. They set Adolf up as the standard for the greatest of all evil beings. This was, to warp what God’s word had said about that which is most evil. For Christians, the heart of unbelief in God, and His word, is the height of all evil. Not Hitler. Not Polpot. Not even Donald Trump, or even Douglas Wilson (for those of you who suffer from Wilson Derangement Syndrome). It is simply unbelief in God’s word.

¹²Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God; ¹³but exhort one another daily, while it is called “Today,” lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. Hebrews 3:12-13.

True evil is the simple heart of unbelief. While we can look to Hitler as the embodiment of unchecked evil, then we can fool ourselves into thinking we are not that evil, so we must be pretty good. But Hitler, while evil, is not the standard of evil. Unbelief is the standard.

I admit, that I bought into their definition for a number of years. It wasn’t until I was preaching through the book of Hebrews that I realized my mistake and repented from thinking error. Hitler was evil. But so is the sweet little old lady who sits in the pews, week after week, with a heart of unbelief.

By the way, just so I’m clear, Hitler was in no way, shape, form or fashion a Christian. He sent enough Christian pastors to the concentration camps as well as Jews. His religion was was based on himself. He was a god to himself, and the Triune God gave him, and those who followed him, over to themselves.

Wilson’s Post Here

Other thoughts on Hitler and World War II can be read here.

When Herod was Dead: The Gospel of Matthew Sermon No. 11

The simple phrase “when Herod was dead,” ties the events of Christ’s birth to history, reminding us, that the world Jesus was born into was fallen and sinful. This helps keep our view of the nativity rooted in reality, removing our views of a Hallmark birth, which is more fantasy than reality.

About the photo in the header: it was taken down in Galveston and is simply a sand castle that we discovered walking on the beach on Christmas Eve. We loved it, and kept coming back to it through the day. It survived the next high tide, and you cans see it in the sunset picture on the post about Sexual Immorality if you look hard enough.

Standing on the Seawall

How many thousands upon thousands of people have strolled along the Galveston Seawall since it was first constructed in 1902 is hard to imagine. We would probably be surprised at the numbers, or the celebrities, or even villains who have strolled along the wall, looking out over the sand and the sea.

But for me, walking with Heidi was a moment that I desired for a long time. I wanted to stand there, look out over the sea with her, just as my grandfather had once done with my grandmother. And perhaps, as my father had done with my mother. The sea wall, the soft sand, the pitiful waves, are part of my family history. Not a huge part, but a part nonetheless.

We stood, looking over the pitiful waves, feeling the wind on our faces, watching the sun set. It was a moment, where history came together, along with the love the LORD had given us. Words fail me…

Gaido’s in Galveston

I was almost like a kid last week as we crossed over the bridge in I-45 driving into Galveston. We were getting there before our check-in time at a VRBO down close to the Strand, and Heidi suggested we head on to Gaido’s for an early dinner. It had been almost 50 years since my last visit there, back in the late 1970s. My family often spent weekends in Galveston while living in Houston, either to go spend time on my father’s boats or to stay at my mother’s beach house out at Jamaica Beach.

I wanted to take Heidi so that we could enjoy the restaurant together. We certainly did, because it is an old-style restaurant with white table clothes, carpet, and no loud music. It had music, but throwback music to the 1940s or maybe 1950s jazz.

AS you can see, it has a wonderful set up, like something from the 1960s or before. Restaurants likes Gaido’s use to be the norm, but so many of them have opted for the Spaghetti Warehouse model, concrete, wide-open spaces, with loud music, so that if you want to have a conversation, you have to yell to be heard.

We started our dinner with a plate of oysters. Since it was November, that is an acceptable month of oysters. You never order them in May, June, or July, only in months that have an ‘R’ in the name.

Our oysters were covered with a hollandaise sauce that has bacon bits and green onions mixed in for extra flavor. Delicious.

Heidi had one of the specials of the day, blacked snapper, which just melted in our mouths. Yes, she let me have a bite.

I opted for a combo plate with charbroiled snapper, fried shrimp, and scallops. As usual, hers was better, but mine was still excellent.

Did I mention the bread the brought with our appetizer? It too, was extremely delicious. By the time we finished, I think our waitress (yes, that is the gender proper form), knew better than to offer us dessert. We were stuffed.

Another neat aspect of Gaido’s is that they are also part museum since they have been there so long.

This is one of my favorite pictures, the construction of the sea wall from the early 1900s. The only problem with the sea wall is that it doesn’t circumnavigate the city. Otherwise, it was a great idea.

World War II and Hitler

I don’t really know where to begin. Over the past year, there have been hundreds of challenges to the things that I grew up knowing and understanding about the world we live in, the world we were given after World War II. Some will immediately point out that this disqualifies me from saying anything at all, because I’m a Boomer. But I throw that back at you, what qualifies you from knowing anything at all if you cannot trust the eyewitness testimony of the generation that preceded you?

For the atheist, that question will mean nothing. But for the Christian, that means everything. If you cannot believe eyewitness testimony, then you cannot believe anything at all, for the Christian faith is built upon, and rests upon the testimony of eyewitnesses, and witnesses to those eyewitnesses (think of the gospel of Luke.) Yes, we also have the testimony of the Holy Spirit. I get that. Yet, even then, we still believe the testimonies of those who have had the Spirit testify to them. Our faith is built upon witnesses.

But my discussion here isn’t focused on the Christian faith, but the simple realities of World War II and Hitler.

This started about a year ago, when someone put forth the view point that Churchill was the true enemy in World War II, and that Hitler was really the good guy because he really wanted peace. (See Tucker Carlson intrerview).

For those of us who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, hearing the stories from our fathers, about the war, we know just how absurd this was. We knew, from eyewitness testimony, what Hitler was. We didn’t believe what we believed because it was official news from the State Department, or from CBS News, although the latter was much more trustworthy back then that it has been in the last 30 years.

For instance, during the mid-1970s when I would visit my step-mother who worked in the Galleria in Houston, I met the secretary in her office who was a refugee from Germany. She went through the war as a German citizen experiencing the rise of Hitler and the war itself. She told us of the speeches that Hitler gave. My step-mother asked the woman why she went along with it. The woman couldn’t explain it, but said it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Please note two things that didn’t need to be said: the secretary knew what Hitler had said and done, were wrong. She made no excuses for Hitler. She understood what he was. She also accepted her own culpability in it as well. She wasn’t proud of the fact.

(I believe there was a spiritual element to Hitler, and this is why he was able to sway so many. We also have reports of his religious beliefs. He really believed he was something of a savior for Germany. And no, he was not a Christian. To say that he was is to show complete ignorance of the man, and the Nazis as well as Christ.)

There was a woman in my first church as a pastor in the mid 1990s who had the tattoos on our her forearm. She was Jewish. She had been taken captive by the Germans and put in a concentration camp with the rest of her family. She made it out. Her family did not. She would only speak in vague ways of the horrors. What she went through still brought her to tears.

I would like to say that she was also a Christian. She never accepted Christ as far as I knew. She came to our church because she was lonely. We did the best we could to love her. But despite our efforts, she drifted off in another direction.

But we don’t need to rely only on eyewitness testimony. We can know from Hitler’s own words what he believed. In fact, this is the very reason that Churchill so opposed Hitler. Churchill read his book, Mein Kampf, Hitler’s own book about his life, and his beliefs of what should happen in Germany.

I confess, I have not read Mein Kampf. But I have read William Manchester’s excellent biography of Winston Churchill, The Last Lion, all three volumes. I have read William L Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, a first edition copy that I got from my father. I have read Andrew Robert’s biography, Churchill: Walking With Destiny. And I have read Churchill’s own accounts of the war in The Gathering Storm.

Three of the four authors, actually lived during the war. They lived the war. Shirer was on the ground in Germany before the war, and was eventually kicked out when war was declared by Great Britain. He spoke both German and English. He gives firsthand accounts of what was taking place.

William L. Shirer

For example, Shirer wrote about the coming of Hitler in his chapter: The Nazification of Germany:1933-34, when 90% of the voting German population voted Hitler into power. The Nazi Party assembled on September 4th to take power.

“I watched him on the morning of the new day stride like a conquering emperor down the center aisle of the great flag-bedecked Luitpold Hall while the band blared for ‘The Badenweiler March’ and thirty thousand hand were raised in Nazi salute. A few moments later he sat proudly in the center of that vast stage with folded arms and shining eyes as Gauleiter Adolf Wagner of Bavaria read the Fuehrer’s proclamations:

The German form of life is definitely determined for the next thousand years. The Age of Nerves of the nineteenth century has found its close with us. There will be no other revolution in Germany for the next one thousand years!

Shirer continues:

“Even one returning to Germany for the first time since the death of the Republic could see that, whatever his crimes against humanity, Hitler had unleashed a dynamic force of incalculable proportions which had long been pent up in the German people. To what purpose, he had already made clear in the pages of Mein Kampf, and in a hundred speeches which had gone unnoticed or unheeded or been ridiculed by so many–by almost everyone– with and especially without the Third Reich (Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, p 230).

William Manchester

Manchester was alive during this time, and fought in the Pacific theater. What he does in writing The Last Lion is show us the man who was behind defeating Hitler: Winston Churchill. Manchester takes us meticulously through Churchill’s life, beliefs, upbringing, education, and military career in order to help us see why he was the man of the hour to stand against Hitler. Yes, Manchester also shows us Churchill’s flaws. All these writers do, including Churchill himself. He was not a perfect man, or perfect hero. But he was a hero, for he stood against popular opinion of the day, against those who would have subjugated their own people for peace, against even friends, in opposing Hitler. He understood the danger. Manchester writes the following after the fall of Czechoslovakia:

Although the full scope of Nazi atrocities in Czechoslovakia was concealed from foreign correspondents, they could not be prevented from witnessing clubbings, the persecution of Jews, and the disappearance of Czech intellectuals once concentration camps had been built, wired, and equipped with watchtowers for machine guns and searchlights. There was no blinking the fact that this time Hitler had acted not as the champion of Germans living in a neighboring country but as a Genghis Khan bent upon pillage, enslavement, slaughter, and destruction.

The Czechs were the first Slavs he had subjugated. He frequently broke his promises; his threats he always made good. In a secret Führerordnung he decreed that the Czechs were to be “assimilier,” chiefly as “Sklavenarbeit” (“slave labor”) in the Reich; the others, “besonders die Intellektuellen” (“particularly the intellectuals”), were to be “entmanntet und ausgeschaltet” (“castrated and eliminated”). All this had been set forth in Mein Kampf, the best-seller read by few and dismissed by most of them as ravings. Churchill, virtually the only public man who had taken Hitler at his word, published a collection of his own Evening Standard and Daily Telegraph columns under the title Step by Step. Clement Attle wrote him, “It must be a melancholy satisfaction to see how right you were,” and Lord Wolmer wrote: “The book is a record of perspicacity and courage on your part”‘ (Alone, p. 398).

In reading all these volumes of pages about Churchill, Hitler, and World War II, I never once came across anything that would lead me to believe that Churchill was the enemy, or that Hitler was being misrepresented, or that millions of Jews were not indeed killed by the Germans. Hitler felt anyone who was to a German, or was a Communist, was to be eliminated.

Operation Barbarossa itself reflected the attitude of Hitler and his command. When Germany invaded Russia, their goal was to eliminate all those they captured because they knew with the coming of winter, they would not be able to support and feed all the prisoners of war they had captured.

Shirer, if I remember correctly, brought about the fact that it was a major mistake on the part of Hitler. His hatred for the Russians was so great, that he could not see the reality that many of those who were captured, thought of Hitler as a liberator, and were willing to fight for him, against the Soviets. But Hitler’s hatred ruled the day. Had he not killed off so may Russians who were captured, or surrendered, he could have easily captured Moscow and overthrown Stalin.

Conclusion

Now some might accuse me of Post War Consensus which Rich Lusk does a great job of explaining. I think that is just a label that the younger generation has grabbed on to to foist upon Boomers in an attempt to attack Boomers. It’s not my point to win over Generation X, or Millennials, or whatever generation pops up. But all this is important, as Rich Lusk wrote, “Everything you’ve been told is a lie.”

If we continue down this road, then we can know nothing at all about history, and more importantly about Christianity. After all, everything we know, everything… is rooted in history, whether the history is personal or national. So we have to be vigilant about what we do know. Hopefully, you have discovered the following:

Hitler had evil intentions for those not Germans. Yes, we can point to the fact that he was fighting for the blood and soil of his people, but he did so in an evil manner.
Hitler told the world what he was going to do in his book Mein Kampf.
Churchill read his book, and listened to his speeches, and opposed Hitler when everyone else was refusing to do so.
Millions upon millions died because of Hitler’s maniacal quest to exalt Germany over every other nation in Europe.
History repeats itself.

This last point, we need to know because it is repeating itself today. As I read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, I couldn’t help but think about how many of the situations the Germans faced, that we face today. The beauty for us is that I believe God has spared us a maniacal dictator… for now. That may change, but up until this point in our history, He has shown us grace.

For more on the Post War Consensus, watch Man Rampant with Doug Wilson and Rusty Reno as they discuss Reno’s book, The Return of the Strong God’s.

My Favorite Bookshelf

A question that I was recently asked was, “what books do you come back to over and over?” It was in the context of a theological discussion, so I’m assuming that the man asking the question wanted to know what Christian books do I feed upon over and over. (I use the term because spiritual truth is spiritual food for the soul.)

This question always makes me uncomfortable, and I had to sit and think about the reason why. After much pondering, and trying to get to the bottom of my discomfort, I’ve come to the conclusion that I have no idea why it bothers me. But it does.

I don’t have any spiritual books that I go to over and over again. Usually, when I read a great theological book, I’m done with it except to use it for reference. These include books like John Calvin’s Institutes of Christian Religion. I spent a full year reading his great work, but have not really read it since. There are too many other great books to read. I have the Institutes on the shelf, and benefitted greatly from it, but only use it for reference now.

Outside of theology, there is one topic I do go to time and time again, and that is mostly centered around World War II. My favorite bookshelf, which isn’t really a big bookshelf, is filled with some of my favorite books on World War II.

As you can see, it includes William Manchester’s masterful The Last Lion series, as well as Winston Churchill’s series on the Second World War. Churchill loved to write about history, and expanding my bookshelf with his work would be a great achievement.

But the shelf also includes William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. This is highly recommended since so many of the things that went on under the Third Reich and going on today in our own country.

Current Reads

I also have a shelf/bench next to my bed which includes all the books I’m currently reading. This may be one reason why it takes me so long to finish a book. I’m usually reading three or four books at a time.

As you can see, it’s quite a bit. The ones on the lower portion of the bench are back burner books. So you can see what I’m currently reading. David Chilton’s The Days of Vengeance is a commentary on the book of Revelation. It is quite good, and very pastoral. Joseph Boot’s The Mission of God, is also very good. It’s about the battle between culture and the Great Commission. Hard to summarize something that is 800 pages long. Then there is Greg Bahnsen’s Victory in Jesus, which I have yet to start. And last, An Ark For All God’s Noah’s, by Thomas Brooks. A fellow pastor sent this one to me after I went through another refining fire in the church. It has been very comforting.

I can easily recommend all the books that I have discussed. If you have any questions, drop a note in the comments section.