Tag: History;

There are over 100 references of the word “gospel” mentioned by several authors in the New Testament.  But it wasn’t a new word that they made up to describe what was accomplished and offered by Jesus.  It was a well-known word in classical Greek (euangelion) referring to a message of victory, or other political or personal news, that caused joy!  It was a word that was commonly used by people in the Roman Empire.

When Julius Caesar was assassinated on March 15, 44BC in the Theatre of Pompey, a period of political unrest followed.  The Roman Republic struggled for a time in civil war until Julius Caesar’s nephew Octavian (later called Augustus) took the throne in 31BC.  Caesar Augustus is the earliest figure of the Roman Empire mentioned in the New Testament as he was the emperor during the time of Jesus’ birth (Luke 2).

Caesar Augustus was called the “son of god” who was the great “Saviour” of the whole earth through bringing an end to civil war and ushering in the Pax Romana (200 years of “peace” to Rome).  The themes of freedom, justice, peace and salvation permeated his reign. Whenever the great deeds of Augustus were proclaimed, they were presented with the Greek term euangelion.  His deeds were celebrated with poems and inscriptions, coins and images, statues, altars and structures.

An imperial quote stated, “All the cities unanimously adopt the birthday of the divine Caesar as the new beginning of the year … the birthday of the god [Augustus] has been for the whole world the beginning of good news (euangelion) concerning him [therefore let a new era begin from his birth].”

Caesar is depicted as having been born, and therefore as human, but also in some mysterious way, he is also divine.  The poet Horace put it this way: “upon you [Augustus] however, while still among us, we already bestow honours, set up altars to swear by in our name, and confess that nothing like you will arise hereafter or has ever arisen before now” (Epistles 2.1.15-17)

So to summarise: Augustus was seen as a god in human form who ushered in a new era of peace. He was called the son of god and the Saviour. His birth changed the calendar and his deeds were celebrated as good news, or gospel, that brought joy to people.  In the midst of this, Jesus was born – the one referred to as the Saviour, the Son of God who would bring peace and good news that will cause great joy for all the people (see Luke 1:35; 2:10-14).

No wonder the introduction of the Christian faith brought such a clash of cultures that resulted in Rome persecuting Christians for the best part of 300 years.  Author Edward Gibbon put it this way: “By embracing the faith of the Gospel the Christians incurred the supposed guilt of an unnatural and unpardonable offence. They dissolved the sacred ties of custom and education, violated the religious institutions of their country, and presumptuously despised whatever their fathers had believed as true, or had reverenced as sacred.”

Throughout the centuries the radical teaching of grace and love by Jesus and His followers has continued to create a clash with the culture of the day – and life today is no different.  In this age of entitlement, the “like me” generation that is looking for its “best life” clashes severely with the teaching of Jesus to “love your neighbor as yourself.”  Emphasising only the internal aspects of the gospel has raised up a generation of selfish consumer-Christians who stop at Jesus being their “own personal Saviour,” while neglecting the fact that the gospel is not just something you experience – it’s something you live!  The gospel of Jesus is not just about “me” – it’s about “us” and it’s about “others.”

When Jesus began His ministry He did so by reading from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah in a synagogue on the Sabbath Day.  He presented the gospel – a message of victory that caused joy!  Jesus said, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

Jesus taught that living the gospel message would mean that He and His people would bring:

  • Good news to the poor
  • Freedom for the prisoners
  • Sight for the blind
  • Freedom for the oppressed

He finished the reading by saying that the gospel was a proclamation of the year of the Lord’s favour.  Interestingly enough Jesus stopped reading halfway through a sentence.  The next line says, “and the day of vengeance of our God.”  Jesus announced that this was the time when God is willing to accept people.  The original word refers to an amnesty – a general pardon for offenses, often granted before any trial or conviction, as well as an act of forgiveness for, and the forgetting or overlooking of any past offense.  What wonderful news Jesus proclaimed for all people.  All of us who have been changed by the gospel are carriers of good news that should bring great joy to others.

Ash Wednesday, a day of fasting, is the first day of Lent in Western Christianity.  It occurs 40 days before Easter (excluding Sundays).  Ash Wednesday is observed by many Christians.

Lent had its origins in Jesus’ 40 days of fasting in the desert, where he overcame three key areas of temptation (Matt 4:1-11): denying Himself with instant gratification, the approval of people and a shortcut to the plan of God.  John the apostle summarizsed these temptations as “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 John 2:16).  Jesus’ fast was in preparation of the ministry He was on earth to complete – the salvation of all.  The purpose of Lent is to fast for 40 days as preparation for Easter.  Sundays are not included because Sunday is seen as a commemoration of the Day of Christ’s resurrection and so it should be a feast day and not a fast day.

Ash Wednesday derives its name from the practice of blessing ashes made from palm branches blessed on the previous year’s Palm Sunday, and placing them on the heads of participants to the accompaniment of the words “Repent, and believe in the Gospel” or “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  Both of these statements are vital truths in the Christian faith in which we are reminded of our sinfulness and mortality, and thus our need to repent and get right with God before it is too late.  The simple good news is that through Jesus’ death and resurrection there is forgiveness for all sins, all guilt and all punishment.

Ash Wednesday was originally called “the day of ashes”.  It is first mentioned in the earliest copies of the Gregorian Sacramentary and probably dates back to at least the 8th Century.  One of the earliest descriptions of Ash Wednesday is found in the writings of the Anglo-Saxon abbot Aelfric (955-1020).  In his “Lives of the Saints” he writes, “We read in the books both in the Old Law and in the New that the men who repented of their sins bestrewed themselves with ashes and clothed their bodies with sackcloth.  Now let us do this little at the beginning of our Lent that we strew ashes upon our heads to signify that we ought to repent of our sins during the Lenten fast.”

Sackcloth and ashes (or dirt/dust) are mentioned 23 times in the Hebrew Scriptures and four times in the New Testament.  As Aelfric suggests, the pouring of ashes on one’s body (and dressing in sackcloth, a very rough material made from goats’ hair) was an ancient practice as an outer manifestation of inner repentance or mourning.  In the New Testament, Jesus mentions the practice in Matthew 11:21: “Woe to you, Korazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! If the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.”

The practice of the Ash Wednesday tradition – or the season of Lent – is meaningless, even hypocritical, unless there is a corresponding inner repentance and change of behavior. This is made clear in Isaiah 58:5-7 when God says,

“Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for a man to humble himself? Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed and for lying on sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD? “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter– when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?”

The true fasting that God requires is that His people would go without something in order to give to others who have little or nothing.  Fasting is not just self-denial but rather a way of bringing equality into a world where the gap between the rich and the poor is getting wider.

And so with that in mind I encourage you at this time of year to remember what Jesus has done for each one of us.  He has paid the death penalty on the cross; He took the punishment for our wrongdoing upon Himself; He rose again – defeating death, giving eternal life and offering a full pardon to all who place their faith in Him.

During this 40 Days of Prayer and Fasting draw close to Jesus and look for ways in which you – by denying yourself – can bring some life and joy into the lives of others and provide for those who are doing it tough.  As Jesus said, “when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters [the hungry, the thirsty, the sick, the prisoner, the foreigner] you were doing it to me!’ (Matt 25 :40)

The birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus are well documented by the first century eyewitnesses Matthew, Peter (Mark’s gospel) and John, as well as a very thorough doctor by the name of Luke. These are the first four books of the New Testament.

But I realise that not everyone trusts the Bible or believes it to be an accurate account of actual events. So let’s take a look at what is said about Jesus in secular historical sources of the time.

First Century historian, Josephus, wrote of Jesus in his Jewish Antiquities in AD 93, “Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct to this day.”

The Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus in one of his most acclaimed works the Annals which covers the period from Augustus Caesar’s death in AD14 to the death of the Emperor Nero in AD68, alludes to the death of Christ and to the existence of Christians at Rome: “But not all the relief that could come from man … availed to relieve Nero from the infamy of being believed to have ordered … the fire of Rome. Hence to suppress the rumour, he falsely charged with the guilt, and punished with most exquisite tortures, the persons commonly called Christians, who were hated for their enormities. Christus (Christ), the founder of the name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign of Tiberius: but the pernicious superstition, repressed for a time, broke out again, not only through Judea, where the mischief originated, but through the city of Rome also” (Annals XV: 44).

Suetonius, the Roman historian and court official during the reign of the Emperor Hadrian wrote in his Life of Claudius: “As the Jews were making constant disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus (Christ), he expelled them from Rome” (Life of Claudius 25.4). Claudius’ expulsion of the Christians from Rome is mentioned in the Bible in Acts 18:2. This event took place in AD49. Assuming Jesus was crucified in the early thirties, Suetonius places Christians in the Roman capital less than 20 years later and he reports that they were suffering for their faith and dying for their conviction that Jesus had really lived, died and that He had risen from the dead.

Pliny the Younger who was Roman governor in Bithynia AD112 wrote to Emperor Trajan to seek advice as to how to treat the Christians. He recounts that he had been killing Christian men, women, and children. He is concerned that so many have chosen death over simply bowing down to a statue of the emperor or being made to “curse Christ, which a genuine Christian cannot be induced to do” (Epistles X, 96)
.

Tallus was a secular historian who, in AD52, wrote a history of the Eastern Mediterranean from the Trojan War to his own time. The document no longer exists but other writers like Julius Africanus, who wrote around AD221, quoted it. He quotes Tallus’ comments about the darkness that enveloped the land during the late afternoon hours when Jesus died on the cross. Julius wrote: “Tallus, in the third book of his histories, explains away this darkness as an eclipse of the sun unreasonably, as it seems to me (unreasonably of course, because a solar eclipse could not take place at the time of the full moon, and it was at the season of the Paschal full moon that Christ died” (Julius Africanus, Chronography, 18.1). The importance of Tallus’ comments is that the reference shows that the Gospel account of the darkness that fell across the earth during Christ’s crucifixion was a well-known event.

Another secular scholar, Phlegon, wrote a history called Chronicles in which he also comments on the darkness at the time of Christ’s crucifixion: “During the time of Tiberius Caesar an eclipse of the sun occurred during the full moon.”

Mara Bar-Serapion was a Syrian stoic philosopher who wrote a letter from prison to his son about AD70. He compares Jesus to the philosophers Socrates and Pythagoras.

Lucian the Greek satirist later half of 2nd century spoke scornfully of Christ and the Christians but never argued that Jesus never existed. “The Christians, you know, worship a man to this day the distinguished personage who introduced their novel rites, and was crucified on that account …” (The Death of Peregrine, 11-13).

The Babylonian Talmud states: “It has been taught: On the eve of Passover they hanged Yeshu … they hanged him on the eve of Passover.” Yeshu (or Yeshua) is the Hebrew name that is translated as Joshua or Jesus. “Hanged” is another way of referring to a crucifixion (Luke 23:39 and Galatians 3:13).

A fascinating news item dated 27th November 2013 details a very significant discovery from the 1st century AD Historical archaeologist Ronald Stewart is stating that he has possibly uncovered hand-struck coins minted sometime between 33-47AD which have images and depictions of Jesus Christ – many which correlate to well-known Biblical events including Jesus healing the blind man, Jesus raising Jairus’ daughter from the dead, and Jesus being bound and dragged on His way to Pontius Pilate.

And so there we have it – lots of secular evidence of the birth, life, death, resurrection and power of Jesus Christ: He’s still alive today and He’s still changing lives, and His life-changing power is available to all – including you!

“To you, the mothers who were betrayed by a system that gave you no choice and subjected you to manipulation, mistreatment and malpractice, we apologise.  We say sorry to you, the mothers who were denied knowledge of your rights, which meant you could not provide informed consent.  You were given false assurances. You were forced to endure the coercion and brutality of practices that were unethical, dishonest and in many cases illegal." 

The apology also acknowledged "the profound effects" on fathers and the sons and daughters who grew up not knowing how much they were wanted and loved.

In the apology, Julia Gillard said, "no collection of words alone can undo all this damage.  But by saying sorry we can correct the historical record.  We can declare that these mothers did nothing wrong.”

Some of the submissions to the report into the practice of forced adoptions are heartbreaking:

My mother became hysterical, when she realised I was pregnant, she was bereft about the neighbours, the relatives, and the church members, finding out her daughter was pregnant out-of wedlock … I had to hide in the house, she had contempt for me … It was decided that I go to a home for unmarried mothers, “for a few weeks” so I would not been seen by others who would make judgement (Ms Marilyn Murphy, Submission 150, p. 2).

In 1965 I was sent to “Carramar” Church of England Home for Unwed Mothers … I did not go there on my own freewill.  I was woken that morning apparently, I must have been drugged by my mother with a sleeping pill or similar, as I did not come around till I was shaken awake by a Preacher … As we were parked in the driveway facing a two-storey older style building I asked him, “Where are we?” and he said, “This is a home for girls who are pregnant like you to stay till they have their babies”. I was terrified as he led me to the door to be met by a stern looking woman who led me inside (Mrs. Beverley Redlich, Submission 112, p. 1).

If we went into the shops for personal items we were only allowed to go in twos, so as not to upset the home owners in the area who had complained about us ‘walking the streets in our state’, we were a large blot on their pleasant society and the church did not want any trouble. Shopkeepers commented that we were from the local ‘baby factory’ (Ms. Angela Brown, Submission 402, p. 1).

The following is an excerpt from an adopted child.

I remember a time after returning to Australia at age 14. I was being belted so hard and so many times, I remember the belt wrapping around my neck once. During my adoption I still spent most of the time in boarding schools and church hostels (Mr. Wayne Lewis, Submission 408, p. 3).

Christine Cole, the head of the Apology Alliance who lost a child through forced adoption, told ABC television the words were long overdue: “I had my baby taken from me in 1969, and I think the use of the term forced adoption polarises the actual phenomena of what was going on.  What was going on was kidnapping children, kidnapping newborn babies from their mothers at the birth, using pillows and sheets to cover their face, drugging them as I was drugged, with drugs like sodium pentothal, chloral hydrate and other mind-altering barbiturates.  It was cruel, it was punitive and then often the mother was transported like I was away from the hospital so you had no access to your baby.”

What can we learn from this blot on Australia’s history?  Firstly, to make sure the Prime Minister’s promise is kept: “We can promise that no generation of Australian will suffer the same pain and trauma that you did.”  And yet the direction Australia is moving in with surrogacy laws will break the promise – future generations will grow up not knowing who their biological father or mother is.

Secondly, the Australia of the 1950s to 1970s is described as “a conservative and predominantly Christian nation and religious groups largely drove the adoptions.” This is something that Christians and churches need to understand because it was often church groups and church-run hospitals, hostels and care facilities that were directly involved in the injustices.  Recognising this the Catholic Church apologized in July 2011.  The Uniting Church has also accepted responsibility for this practice.  Anglicare says it apologised in the 2000 “Releasing the past” report for abuse at the Carramar maternity home.

It seems to me (as a conservative Christian) that conservative Christianity has much to apologize for.  In fact one pastor in the USA taught a series called “Confessions of a sinful church”.  They included:

Apology #1 – We’re sorry for our self-righteousness and hypocrisy

Apology #2 – We’re sorry for our endorsement of slavery

Apology #3 – We’re sorry for our mistreatment of homosexuals

Apology #4 – We’re sorry for the Medieval Crusades

Apology #5 – We’re sorry for saying the earth is flat

We could add to these apologies: we’re sorry for our oppression of women; for our refusal to recognise marriage between different races; for treating divorced people as second-class Christians; for saying that we’re all sinners saved by grace and yet showing contempt for those who are still in sin.

Christians have done a lot of good though the centuries and added great value to the world in which we live, but we’ve also got it wrong on more than one occasion.  This has been highlighted by last week’s apology by our Prime Minister.  We are sorry for the things we’ve got wrong.  I’m just hoping – and praying – that we don’t have too much more to apologise for in the future.

Ash Wednesday, originally called dies cinerum (day of ashes) is mentioned in the earliest copies of the Gregorian Sacramentary, and probably dates from at least the 8th Century. One of the earliest descriptions of Ash Wednesday is found in the writings of the Anglo-Saxon abbot Aelfric (955-1020). In his Lives of the Saints, he writes, “We read in the books both in the Old Law and in the New that the men who repented of their sins bestrewed themselves with ashes and clothed their bodies with sackcloth. Now let us do this little at the beginning of our Lent that we strew ashes upon our heads to signify that we ought to repent of our sins during the Lenten fast.” This quotation confirms what we know from other sources, that throughout the Middle Ages ashes were sprinkled on the head, rather than anointed on the forehead as in our day.

As Aelfric suggests, the pouring of ashes on one’s body (and dressing in sackcloth, a very rough material) as an outer manifestation of inner repentance or mourning is an ancient practice. It is mentioned several times in the Old Testament. What is probably the earliest occurrence is found at the very end of the book of Job. Job, having been rebuked by God, confesses, “Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6). Other examples are found in 2 Samuel 13:19, Esther 4:1,3, Isaiah 61:3, Jeremiah 6:26, Ezekiel 27:30, and Daniel 9:3. In the New Testament, Jesus alludes to the practice in Matthew 11:21: “Woe to you, Korazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! If the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.”

In the typical Ash Wednesday observance, Christians are invited to the altar to receive the imposition of ashes, prior to receiving the holy Supper. The Pastor applies ashes in the shape of the cross on the forehead of each, while speaking the words, “For dust you are and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19). This is of course what God spoke to Adam and Eve after they eaten of the forbidden fruit and fallen into sin. These words indicated to our first parents the bitterest fruit of their sin, namely death. In the context of the Ash Wednesday imposition of ashes, they remind each penitent of their sinfulness and mortality, and, thus, their need to repent and get right with God before it is too late. The cross reminds each penitent of the good news that through Jesus Christ crucified there is forgiveness for all sins, all guilt, and all punishment.

Ash Wednesday, like the season of Lent, is never mentioned in Scripture and is not commanded by God. Christians are free to either observe or not observe it. It also should be obvious that the imposition of ashes, like similar external practices, is meaningless, even hypocritical, unless there is a corresponding inner repentance and change of behaviour. This is made clear in Isaiah 58:5-7 when God says,

Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for a man to humble himself? Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed and for lying on sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD? “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter– when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

Yesterday 36 people were killed and thousands were injured in North India as an estimated 100 million people seeked to wash their sins in the holy river before the sun and moon changed – they only have 12 days every 10 years to do this.  It is expected that thousands will die as people fight to get a place – they are so desperate. With this in mind, let the 40-Days of Prayer & Fasting be a wonderful time for repentance and spiritual renewal by reminding ourselves of what has been achieved on our behalf by Jesus’ sacrifice.  It is only by Jesus’ death and resurrection that we are cleansed from sin, guilt and shame, and have the confidence of being right with God.  Let this time be a time of great rejoicing in that truth ~ and a time of prayer for others, like those in India, who need to know Jesus’ love and grace.

When the men scaled the heights they were met by merciless fire from Turkish guns, but they hung on, dug their trenches, and prepared to attack.

From April to December the allied forces held on till the order came from London for the withdrawal.  By then 7,600 Australians and nearly 2,500 New Zealanders had been killed and 19,000 Australians and nearly 5,000 New Zealanders had been wounded.  French casualties were as high as the ANZACS and Britain lost three times as many.  Turkey lost 86,000 troops.

From 1916 onwards, ANZAC Day was established on April 25 – the day the ANZACS landed at Gallipoli – as a memorial to honor and remember those servicemen who lost their lives serving their respective countries.  Since that time ANZAC Day has been extended as a memorial to all men and women who have sacrificed in order to preserve the freedom that we enjoy today.

John Simpson Kirkpatrick, a swaggie, cane cutter, miner and sailor from Australia, landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula on April 25 1915, at a place now known as ANZAC Cove.  With his donkey Duffy, he became the best-loved figure at Gallipoli as he carried the wounded to the dressing station.  Known as “the man with the donkey” he transported the wounded day after day amid fierce shrapnel fire.  He was shot dead on May 19 that year.  Kirkpatrick served in this way for just three weeks and yet we remember his heroism, courage and sacrifice almost 100 years later.

Almost 1900 years earlier another man with a donkey rode into Jerusalem also on the way to sacrifice his life for others.

ANZAC Day is a memorial lest we forget those who gave their lives to purchase our freedom in this world.  Jesus Christ established the Lord’s Supper as a memorial lest we forget his sacrifice to purchase our freedom not only in this life but also in the one to come.

“He took some bread and gave thanks to God for it. Then he broke it in pieces and gave it to the disciples, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this to remember me.”

“After supper he took another cup of wine and said, “This cup is the new covenant between God and his people—an agreement confirmed with my blood, which is poured out as a sacrifice for you” (Luke 22:18-20).