of course those aren't the only faces of christianity then an angel of the lord came and said a new king was being born in bethlehem and then this happened and then the shepherds rushed off to find a new king was being born meanwhile back in the manger the virgin mary gave birth without complications and the word of this new king named jesus had spread all across the land and three matches showed up with gifts and everybody celebrated the birth of the bab herod had heard about this new king was being born he sent his troops out to kill all the male babies in the area so an angel of the lord came to warn joseph and he was able to get his family out of the country and into egypt when jesus was twelve years old found sitting among the teachers listening to them and asking them questions and all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers son why have you treated us so your father and i have been looking for you anxiously how is it that you sought me did you not know i must be about my father's business and then jesus went missing eighteen years when he appears again he was thirty years old and in need of baptism so he went to john the baptist service and after he was baptized jesus spent forty days and forty nights in the wilderness been tempted by say and then it was on t you do a great service by helping us to rid the nation of this false prophet jesus knew he was going to die the next day so he prepared one last meal with his  why is it that christians can be so specific about the life of christ but they are vague about what happened after eleven aren't christian leaders telling them the story do you know much about how christianity spread in those early days would let's go back in time to see what really did happen not too far let's go back to the first century in the year of our lord jesus christ is said to have lived this life here in the first three decades of the century dying somewhere around the year thirty three the gospels all came later mark was the first one written and the other three are clearly derived from mark mark mentions the destruction of the jewish temple which happened in the year seventy so the gospels all came later probably much l there's a gap of four decades or more most of what we know about this period comes from a man who says he saw jesus christ come to him in a vision he was the apostle paul formerly known as saul of tarsus paul says the lord told him to start spreading the word of offered the god he called christ jesus was very popular he travelled widely and in his wake left behind groups of new christians who form the early christian church lots of letters about christianity in fact he wrote eighty thousand words about the christian religion these documents represent almost all we have of the history of christianity during this decades long gap and here's the interesting thing if jesus was a human who had recently lived nobody told know about any entrance into truth he never mentions conscious pilot or jewish mob or any trials at all paul doesn't know any of what we would call the story of jesus except for these last three events and even these  the idea and he's the link between the time frame given for the life of jesus and the appearance of the first gospel account  this is why you don't hear many christian leaders talking about the early days of christianity because once you assemble the facts the story is that jesus lived everyone  and probably did not believe he was writing history he was writing a symbolic message he was writing a gospel you know the good news and symbolizing it using you know biblical parallels using parallels to pagan religions and so forth there are these other gospels and there are the apocrypha after all there are apocryphal new testament stories that were frankly were too folkloristic and they got thrown out because people thought these are these couldn't have happened therefore we're rid of them  intellectuals who say who are upset by the in a sense the folklore if you like and they say we've got it let's make this more intellectual let's get rid of the folklore let's get rid of virgin birth which is seems unlikely to get rid of all the stuff of course if you take away the folklore away from the bible you don't have a heck of a lot left except you got to get bigger well in the case of someone like caesar augustus around so many of the same myths clustered we know there are nonetheless was a caesar augustus because he's intricately tied into the hook this if he has to have a vote on it it just defies any kind of historical verisimilitude and then when you realize well you know there were other ancient jews and jewish christians that believe jesus had been killed a century before remember it it just begins to make you wonder is this man really part of the discard timestream or does it doesn't begin to look like someone has tried to put a figure of originally mythical into and nobody thinks that these characters are anything but mythical and their stories are so similar most of them in fact having some kind of resurrection or another sometimes even with celebrations after three days and so forth the early church fathers understood this is a problem because they were already getting the same objections from pagans i said what you say about jesus we've been saying about the diet nice and hercules all the time what's the big deal and they don't believe in and that tells you two things right there that even they did deny that these other jesus like you know characters were before jesus or they never would have resorted to something like that and say knew what would happen and how to fit it in advance except that they are adjusted for inflation the singing jesus made fifty five million dollars at the u s box office the horny jesus made thirteen million dollars but the bloody jesus three hundred and seventy million dollars and still c prayers mel gibson was right to portray the jews as evil these must be the most despicable people on earth unless this book is wrong and if this book is wrong  idea that jesus is in this generation likely to come down out of the clouds and save the day when we imagine that this is not its conviction it really isn't the rapture is described in the bible in  this chapter four verses sixteen and seventeen as being when jesus christ comes back to earth and takes his church to heaven and the church is all the people that are believe end and not the building twenty two percent of americans claim to be certain that jesus going to come back to earth and judge the living in the dead sometime in the next fifty years another twenty two percent think he probably will so that's a forty four percent of the electorate who are basically convinced that he's coming back in their lifetime now when you unpack what that conviction and tails if it is perfectly maladaptive to planning for  future for the human race it's not it's maladaptive certainly when it comes time to avoid global conflict because by the by the lights of these prophecies global conflict is actually the precursor to jesus coming back hearing different bible scholars saying the things that are going on into the in the world today pretty much everything has happened that the bible said has to  happen before the return of jesus christ so if it's all happening though we're pretty much ready to go on to say that there is some significant percentage of the american electorate which if they turned on their television today and saw that a a mushroom cloud had replaced jerusalem they would see a silver lining in that cloud about six years ago upon inspiration by god i believe i started a website called rapture letters dot com the website is provided for people that have spoken with their relatives and loved ones about the kingdom of heaven and haven't been able to witness to them properly or they just weren't convinced of anything so they can go on a website and put a name in an email address and the people will get sent a letter after the rapture takes place the letter will hope will hopefully provide some comfort to those people that receive it and let them know their loved ones are in heaven now and that it also gives them a message allows them to say a prayer to become  saved in hopefully get into heaven themselves in so far as people like that elects are our presidents and congressmen and insofar as they get elected as presidents and congressmen terribly dangerous state of affairs under one last day prophecies just some of the things that are supposed to happen literal babylon formerly called babel would reemerge in the land of  conversation there's no you can't challenge someone further and treat them as though they're drawing their ethics out of the iliad and the odyssey which is really what i think we should be able to do when when when the present in a state says i i planned to  point common sense judges who know that our rights are derived from god i think someone in the white house press corps should be able to stand up and say how is that different from thinking you're going to appoint commonsense judges who think our rights are derived from zeus and th 's clearly an impertinent question but it's a totally reasonable question unfortunately it says in the bible that there will be a multitude of people that go to heaven after the rapture as well as the one hundred forty four thousand male virgin jews the multitude will be wearing white robes it's mentioned in the book of revelation and the number is two numerous to count it says but those people are also martyred most of them will lose their heads over their faith so it's much better to accept jesus as your savior now and get taken up in the rapture than it would be to wait till afterwards and  to lose your head over something like that you know here's the thing about scott i like him he's a nice guy he's a productive member of his community contractor with his own business he supports his wife and kids yes i used to be a fundamentalist christian i learned the doctrine of my school christian school in sun valley california our school mascot was a crusader because our mission battle with secular work but not just the secular world we also knew that states were your other versions of christianity and we fought those to each aapl every friday we learned the only way to salvation was to have a personal hell is a real place where you really do go if you have not been forgiven by jesus christ when the school says that each student will be free to develop a personal relationship with jesus christ this is what i encourage you to be forgiven but apparently just to make things interesting jesus did add one extra rule to the mix there actually is one unforgivable sin in denial of the holy spirit if you do that you are eternally  it says so right there in the bible twice it's a double e infallible rule deny the holy spirit and you can never ever go anywhere and as luck holy spirit is the easiest thing in the entire doctrine to doubt god is out of three stooges was two thousand years ago but the holy spirit is with you right here right now so you'd better really actually feel the holy spirit if you can't tonight in your thoughts because jesus is in your box and if your mind starts to wander to the fact that there's no more evidence for the existence of this holy spirit than there is for the existence of unicorns guess what you may have done the greatest crime in fundamentalist christianity and when i was a village christian i was terrified that i'd accidentally done this fortunately i had a personal relationship with jesus christ so i could talk to him about this stuff and in private chapel i often did this is the chapel where i accepted jesus christ as my personal savior sorry here on this bench launc that sad over here and did it again because i had back slid and then in a later grade i sat back there and did it yet again when i was born again at least three times i think i got a hold of the camera itself here in this chapel where i first accepted jesus as my personal savior i just want to say one thing