The Truth Project: Lesson 6

Lesson 6 – History: Whose Story?
Remembering…Isaiah 46:9-11. Israel would get in trouble, God would rescue them, and He would tell them to remember His great works. God is in control – He is sovereign over the affairs of men! God has a plan and He is carrying it out. Galatians 4:4-5

The Past: Events which have already happened
The Future: Events which have not yet happened
The Present: “the very thin, nanosecond line converting the future into the past”
What you believe in the present is determined by the past. Thus remembering is very important and history is extremely critical!
The story of “I, Rigoberta Menchu”: a very sad autobiography about life under Guatemalan gorillas which won the author a Nobel Peace prize. It was placed on many school’s reading lists. However, David Stoll discovered that many of the incidents in the story had not occurred. When questioned about this, another professor said it didn’t matter whether or not the book was true…it could be used to teach students about abuse of women. This is a very troubling idea – that something which did not actually happen could be taught as fact in order to make a point.
The Mayflower Compact – Version taught in schools leaves out the references to God which are in the original…thus it loses the whole reason they pilgrims came!

“If I can change your historical context, I can change your present beliefs.”
There have been lies about history since the serpent in the Garden of Eden!!! It didn’t take long for lies about the resurrection to spread! Matthew 28:11-15
Lies = historical revisionism (which is very prevalent today)
When you rewrite the past, you can make people believe whatever you want.
Guess which book comes under the greatest historical attack?? The Bible! People say it has been changed, that it isn’t accurate, etc. etc. In reality, the historical data for the Bible is overwhelming! Of all the ancient books, the Bible has the greatest amount of manuscript evidence. Compare the New Testament, for example, to the Iliad by Homer (which no one questions!). Plato wrote in 900 BC. The earliest manuscripts we have of his works were copied in 400 BC, 500 years later! Furthermore, we only have 643 manuscript copies! With the New Testament, however, the earliest copy was written only 25 years after the original, and we have around 24,000 manuscripts.
Why is it, then, that no one seriously questions the Iliad yet everyone questions the New Testament?
George Orwell – He who controls the past controls the future!!!

Israel’s Memorial Stones: Joshua 4:17 – But they didn’t do too well at remembering, so God would have to rescue them, then they would forget and sin again – Judges 2:16-17.
Why did they tassels, the Passover, etc.? To remind them of God’s work in their history.
The problem with us: forgetting what we should remember (God’s providence, etc.) and remembering what we should forget (sin which we have confessed and which as been forgiven).
Dairyample: Without History, life had no meaning.
Os Guinness: Where we have come from is a key to who we are – we have no identity without our past.
Deuteronomy 8:10-20 – God warned the people of Israel: be careful and remember, otherwise you will forget and become proud. That is exactly what happened! As a result, the Lord sent them a famine of hearing His word: Amos 8:11. That is a picture of a destroyed nation…one that is without God’s word. To avoid that, we must filter history the same as any other subject – by taking every thought captive: 2 Corinthians 10:3-5.

A false picture of God by H.G. Wells: God is like a frantic director of a play who’s stage has just caught fire, running around and unable to do anything about it.
That is not true. Rather, God is sovereign!!! Acts 4:27-28
The problem is that I want to be the one in control…
So did Ahab in 1 Kings 22, but guess what happened? Ahab’s plan failed. God uses even “chance” to accomplish His will, sometimes despite our best efforts!

Antinomy and Paradox in Scripture
First – Last; Weak – Strong; Live – Die; Free Agents – God’s Sovereignty

Jean-Francois Lyotard: postmodernism = an incredulity towards metanarratives. (a Metanarrative is any large story giving an all-encompassing plan to history)
Gordon Pennington from Burning Media: Modernism placed Reason above Religion, while Postmodernism rejects both. In postmodernism, everyone tells their own story however they want to tell it.

Photo albums – filled with stories of our lives. God’s grand story is like a photo album of His work. Hebrews 11
Myopia is near-sightedness – everyone has natural myopia at times…we get so focused on our own story that we lose sight of God’s big picture. The Bible is God’s larger story. History is not about ME…we must be caught up into God’s larger story rather than stay focused on our little lives.