The Da Vinci Code

A friend asked me today what I would say in a brief response to the claim that "Since the canonical Gospels don't say anything about Jesus from age 12 to 30 (roughly), He conceivably could have gotten married around age 18, had two or three children, worked as a carpenter, and still gone into His ministry at age 30."

Here are my thoughts:

Luke 16:8 - "The people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light." Evil is clever! Satan is trying everything he can think of to overcome the predetermined outcome; Dan Brown is just his latest pawn. And it is sad that so many nominal Christians, that is, those not committed to consistent study of the Word, are reeled-in by the excitement that is to be found in this Jesus / Mary Magdalene conspiracy theory.

And that, too, is where sin comes in. There is a very real sense in which we'd like to disprove the Bible. As sin-natured humans, we want to avoid being accountable for our sin, and we'll do whatever it takes to avoid judgment. We'll be seen in the last days crying for rocks to fall on us to avoid the wrath of God, so it's no surprise when we find a gap in Scripture's account of Jesus' life, and we try to fill it with anything to keep Him from being Who He is.

As you can imagine, a 12-second answer is impossible, namely because an attention span of 12 hours is really required to adequately and permanently debunk Brown's assertions. That's what makes Brown's work so clever: He's done enough research and mixed enough fact with fiction to keep the layman and casual Christian from going to the effort to disprove him. And that's another reason why Christian leaders, as Shepherds, need to feed their flock - the visible church - the truth. If the flock is fed the truth, then no wolves in sheep's clothing will be able to steel them away.

Nonetheless, you asked for a 12-second answer, so here's my response, though slightly longer than 12 seconds when read aloud, to her assertion:

Regarding your thoughts that Jesus was married, you might find it interesting that the Bible does speak, quite often actually, about Jesus being married. In fact, Jesus refers to Himself as the Bridegroom (Matthew 9:15; Mark 2:19-20; Luke 5:34-35). John the Baptist referred to Jesus as the Bridegroom (John 3:28-30). Paul explained to the Corinthian believers that he promised them "to one husband, to Christ, so that [he] might present [them] as a pure virgin to Him" (2 Corinthians 11:2). And it's quite certain that Mary Magdalene will be among the Bride. She believed, by grace (Acts 18:27), that Jesus was the forgiver of her sins (Luke 8:2), the Messiah. She did not recognize His resurrected body, but upon hearing Him call her by name, Mary turned to Jesus and called Him teacher (John 20:16). You see, those who believe that Jesus died for their sins and was raised from the dead for their justification, as Romans 4:25 says, are counted as the Bride of Christ. In Revelation 19:6-8, all praise is given to the Bridegroom, for He has prepared His bride and she is ready for Him to come to her. In Revelation 21, an angel shows John "the bride, the wife of the Lamb," and she is the new Jerusalem filled with none "who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life."

There it is. Here are some resources for further study.

The best book out there for the layman on the truth about The Da Vinci Code is:
The Da Vinci Deception by Erwin Lutzer. Check it out for $ 5.94, here:
http://www.wtsbooks.com/product-exec/product_id/4412

And there's an excellent DVD resource (so popular that it's currently out-of-stock) for the non-reader as well:
http://www.monergismbooks.com/davincidvd.html

Here is a bank of articles written by New Testament scholars and cultural commentators on the subjects addressed in The Da Vinci Code:

http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/topic/davinci.html

All of them are good; James White's series is extremely in-depth and quite fabulous, but it takes lots of time invested in reading through it.

Here is an entertaining, but otherwise just okay sight explaining the truth about The Da Vinci Code:

http://www.thetruthaboutdavinci.com