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“For a time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.” II Timothy 4:3-4
Dear friends,
From Nov.12 to 26, I accompanied a group of twenty Catholics from France on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. We met up in Cairo where, after visiting the pyramids and Cairo museum, we drove through the Sinai desert with a memorable stop at Ste. Catherine’s monastery for a nighttime climb of Mt. Moses (Sinai) to see the sun rise. From there it was on to Israel, across the Negev. We walked in the traces of the Exodus and the requisite sites of biblical lore, including the traditional site of Mara (Exodus 15) in the Sinai desert, and various Canaanite ruins: Qumran, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Caesarea, etc.
All along the way our guide, M.T., an affable, articulate, scholarly Roman Catholic priest from Belgium with doctorates in both archeology and religious sociology and 127 visits to Israel under his belt, bombarded us with volumes of information on the various historical sites—much more than one could possibly assimilate. But if M.T. was incomparable for his knowledge of the terrain, he was equally off-base with regards to the reliability of the biblical record. In fact, he espoused every liberal theory which would undermine the Bible’s authority, somewhat to the disillusionment of my fellow travelers. To paraphrase former President Reagan: “It’s not that he doesn’t know much. It’s just that much of what he knows isn’t so.”
Naturally, I did my best to muster a spirited defense of the biblical record. But M.T. had the microphone and a wealth of archeological expertise. Still, with the Lord’s grace and the help of my well-annotated French study Bible, I was occasionally able to offer more traditional explanations for some of the so-called ‘inaccuracies’ of the biblical record pointed-out by our loquacious, erudite guide.
Curiously, we celebrated “La Messe” (Mass) every day (minus the R.C. doctrine of transubstantiation in which the priest did not believe either), using a Roman Catholic liturgy, far more conservative (closer to the Bible) than the priest’s own convictions. Our mutual belief in the “spiritual presence” in the Eucharist was one of the few areas of agreement between me and the priest. He was a universalist with regards to salvation, skeptical of the virgin birth (I scored some points here with my fellow travelers in defending this beloved doctrine), and unsure of Jesus’ divinity! Only once—at a celebration in the church of the Annunciation in Nazareth—did I actually walk out on the “Messe” as M.T.’s “homélie” (sermon) unacceptably distorted the sense of the text from Luke’s gospel by glorifying Mary, ironically twisting her very words (“My soul magnifies the Lord…”) by which she would bring all glory to God her Savior! But even this incident afforded me an opportunity to elaborate on the Christocentric emphasis of the Scriptures to some of the others who came to me privately for an explanation.
More encouraging than the frequent theological jousting of the priest was my daily interaction with Patrice M., a 57-year-old physical therapist from La Rochelle and my roommate for the entire trip. Patrice, a member of a Masonic lodge, had previously traveled to Tibet in search of spiritual peace. After a fortnight of daily discussion, he consented to pray with me the sinner’s prayer of repentance. Alleluia! His decision came in spite of the “religious circus” atmosphere of some of the places we visited (where pilgrims from around the world prostrate themselves in front of various statues and relics etc.) and the priest’s thinly veiled scorn for ‘fundamentalist’ theology which calls for repentance and faith in Jesus. M.T. affirmed the more politically correct belief that “God is love and therefore all men [without exception] are saved, regardless of what they think of Jesus.
In a private discussion with our priest/guide, I attempted to show him to the logical conclusions of his presuppositions with regards to the Scriptures by asking him to tell me one true thing about God and how one could know it. It didn’t work. He retorted that he did not believe in Aristotelian logic [A is not equal to Non-A] nor the classical conceptions of a Thomas Aquinas etc. In fact, he preferred the more nebulous “spiritual truths” over adhesion to historical facts. His “faith”—divorced from historical reality—is clearly what Francis Schaeffer would have called an “upper-story” experience as well as intellectual suicide. In other words, unlike my Haitian students, he’s a victim of Hume, Kant, and Hegel like many (most?) of the post-Enlightenment western intelligentsia for whom “truth” is a strictly relative concept.
I chided my priest friend, pointing out the irony that my position (with regards to the doctrine of Scripture) was surely closer to the current Pope’s than was his own, an observation to which he begrudgingly consented. Meanwhile, the less theologically informed fellow travelers were probably closer to reality of the biblical view than was our guide. I left them with French copies of Dr. Kennedy’s “Pourquoi Je Crois” (Why I believe) which they graciously accepted. I was delighted to hear from them favorable comments, including one from a woman from Normandy who admitted that she needed to become more familiar with the Bible as the Protestants clearly were. Alleluia.
We parted on good terms—even with MT—grateful to have trodden the same soil as the historical Jesus. This experience has left me more convinced than ever with the need to study the Word more diligently, the Word which I now read “in color” so to speak, having been ‘on location’ in some of the places where the action took place.
Marc
PRAISE: 1. For a safe journey to the Holy Land and Lord’s protection on my family. 2. For multiple opportunities to defend the faith before numerous French seekers including Patrice . 3. For the incomparable privilege of being numbered amongst the
Marc+Patrice in Jerusalem
elect! PRAYER: 1.For the next semester at our Ft. Lauderdale Haitian Bible school; finances, enrollment, wisdom in choice of teaching material etc. 2-For the spiritual welfare of our families; my mom (three strokes in the past three months), and son Calix in France. 3-For the continuation of our Radio ministry as the Quebecois “snow-birds” arrive in S. Florida.
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