Is this science? A bad joke? Or part of an intensifying battle against unchanging truths -- a despicable mockery of the God of the Bible and the significance of His death, burial and resurrection?

It doesn't take much discernment to see through the hollow "theories" used to validate these "scientific" fabrications. But, sad to say, in today's atmosphere of politically correct "open-mindedness," there is little resistance to riveting misinformation! And those who are driven by manipulative marketing are likely to buy the tempting illusions about God as well.

The producer (James Cameron) and director (Simcha Jacobovici) of Discovery Channel's "Jesus Tomb" documentary featured misleading evidence, false conclusions and a phony tomb -- a more accessible and "convincing" tomb than the actual one.

"Jacobovici shows pictures taken by a camera that was sent down a pipe into the tomb. The majority of the viewers won't understand that this is not the same cave, said Professor Kloner."[4] He ought to know, since he supervised the original work back in 1980!

"Much of the movie was filmed on sets recreated from the drawings and photographs taken from those [false] works, he said. In one scene, the ossuaries [limestone bone boxes] are shown covered with dust that is being brushed away to reveal the inscriptions.... But that's not the way they were found.... The documentary was made according to the 'imagination of people.'... I don't accept the claim that this tomb was the burial place for the family of Jesus."[4]

The two filmmakers may have been motivated primarily by fame and fortune.  But the change agents that supported them have more revolutionary missions. So, before we rebut the Discovery Channel's absurd suggestions, let's remember that the vast majority of today's media masters have joined the crusade for global transformation. They share a stake in the destruction of Christianity -- the main obstacle to the UN vision of social solidarity and spiritual synthesis.

Since Biblical certainties stand as a bulwark against crowd thinking and dialectical delusions, what could better serve the globalist purpose than undermining the heart of the Christian gospel: the purity, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord? The timing of this travesty is no accident. This new "revelation" -- riding in the wake of The Secret -- surfaced just in time to corrupt the celebration of Christ's resurrection in many minds around the world.

It all makes sense when we remember that Discovery Channel is part of the global media conglomerate, Discovery Communications. The last few years, its senior vice president for Public Policy & Communications has been Donald A. Baer, an influential member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a "former Assistant to President Clinton for Strategic Planning and Communications."[5]  [See CFR: Task Force Members]

Strategic communication -- whether outright propaganda, media censorship, or "convenient" facts -- is vital to the CFR's plan for a New World Order.[6] As Aldous Huxley warned in Brave New World Revisited (his 1958 update on Brave New World), the emphasis on  psycho-social manipulation was set in place long ago.

"There are two kinds of propaganda -- rational propaganda in favor of action that is consonant with the enlightened self-interest of those who make it and those to whom it is addressed, and non-rational propaganda that is not consonant with anybody's enlightened self-interest, but is dictated by, and appeals to, passion....

"Propaganda in favor of action that is consonant with enlightened self-interest appeals to reason by means of logical arguments based upon the best available evidence fully and honestly set forth. Propaganda in favor of action dictated by the impulses that are below self-interest offers false, garbled or incomplete evidence, avoids logical argument and seeks to influence its victims by the mere repetition of catchwords, by the furious denunciation of foreign or domestic scape­goats, and by cunningly associating the lowest passions with the highest ideals, so that atrocities come to be perpetrated in the name of God....

"The power to respond to reason and truth exists in all of us. But so, unfortunately, does the tendency to respond to unreason and falsehood -- particularly in those cases where the falsehood evokes some enjoyable emotion, or where the appeal to unreason strikes some answering chord in the primitive, subhuman depths of our being....

"Mass communication, in a word, is neither good nor bad; it is simply a force and, like any other force, it can be used either well or ill. Used in one way, the press, the radio and the cinema are indispensable to the survival of democracy. Used in another way, they are among the most powerful weapons in the dictator's armory....

"In the totalitarian East there is political censorship, and the media of mass communication are controlled by the State. In the democratic West there is economic censorship and the media of mass communication are controlled by members of the Power Elite...."[6]

No small part of that "Power Elite," Discovery Communications wields its mind-changing influence through its vast network of global operations which include Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, Discovery Health Channel, Discovery Kids, Discovery Times Channel, TLC, Travel Channel,  The Science Channel, Military Channel, Discovery Home Channel, Discovery en Español and dozens more. Do you wonder what kinds of facts and worldviews this massive media system promotes? Or what it censors?

Let's turn to its page on "The Lost Tomb of Jesus." Here we are told that "hundreds of tombs and thousands of ossuaries (limestone bone boxes) have been discovered in the Jerusalem area.... One of these tombs was found to contain ten ossuaries. Six of the ossuaries in this tomb have inscriptions on them. As it turns out, every inscription in this particular tomb relates to the Gospels."[7]  

But it's not true! Consider its claims and the contrary evidence:

● "All leading epigraphers agree about the inscriptions." [7]  

Not true! Steve Caruso, a professional translator at Aramaic Designs, has been studying the Aramaic language for nearly a decade. Decoding the imprecise script and scratches is neither easy nor conclusive:

"Out of all of the inscriptions, the one attributed to Jesus is the most difficult to make out, and as a result the most difficult to interpret.... I  honestly could see how בר Bar or 'son (of)' was implied, but it was not at all clear or coherent. With ישוע Yeshua` or 'Jesus,' however, I had a great amount of difficulty...."[8]

"It is not scholarly and not scientific," said Professor Kloner, the original research manager. Dismissing Discovery Channel's claims altogether, he "noted that the documentary spends about 10 minutes talking about 'the missing ossuary,' suggesting it could be the same ossuary that turned up several years ago in the hands of an antique dealer." Then he reminds us that "Experts later discredited the ossuary (which bore the inscription 'James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus') as a forgery and fraud."[4]

David Mavorah, a curator at Jerusalem's Israel museum in Jerusalem, shares Dr. Kloner's disbelief. "We know that Joseph, Jesus and Mariamene were all among the most common names of the period. To start with all these names being together in a single tomb and leap from there to say this is the tomb of Jesus is a little far-fetched, to put it politely."[9]

● "All archaeologists confirm the nature of the find."[7]  

Not true!  "I've known about these ossuaries for many years and so have many other archaeologists," says retired Professor William Dever, whom many U.S. scholars consider "the dean of biblical archaeology." "None of us thought it was much of a story because these are rather common Jewish names from that period," he explained. "It's a publicity stunt, and it will make these guys very rich, and it will upset millions of innocent people because they don't know enough to separate fact from fiction."[10]

Others agree. "Leading archaeologists in Israel and the United States are denouncing the purported discovery of the tomb of Jesus as a publicity stunt," writes Alan Cooperman in his article, "Jesus tomb claim denounced." He continues:

"Scorn for the Discovery Channel's claim to have found the burial place of Jesus, Mary Magdalene and — most explosively — their possible son came not just from Christian scholars but also from Jewish and secular experts who said their judgments were unaffected by any desire to uphold Christian orthodoxy."[10]

"This whole case (for the tomb of Jesus) is flawed from beginning to end," said Jodi Magness, an archaeologist at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. "By going directly to the media, she said, the filmmakers 'have set it up as if it's a legitimate academic debate, when the vast majority of scholars who specialize in archaeology of this period have flatly rejected this.'"[10]

● "The film also documents DNA extraction from human residue found in two of the ossuaries and reveals new evidence that throws light on Jesus' relationship with Mary Magdalene."[7]  

Not true! This absurd claim hides the fact that no one checked or recorded the DNA of Jesus 2000 years ago! DNA testing for identity -- even in the most prestigious laboratory -- means nothing if there's no original sample to compare it with. Matching the DNA of individuals or unknown family members may sound "scholarly" or "scientific," but it proves nothing about our Lord! [See Mocking God]

Not only does Discovery Channel market its blasphemous message under the prestigious banner of "science," it also invokes the occult mysteries behind Gnosticism. The following statement by Director Simcha Jacobovici (posted on Discovery's website) shows how important those long-hidden heresies were to the filmmakers.

"The key moment in the investigation was the identification of the second Mary," he says. And in our "Post DaVinci Code" era, everyone knows Mary Magdalene." Then he shares an old secret:

"...her real name is Mariamne, which is the Greek version of Mary Magdalene. I found out that Scholars don't argue about that, because of the Gnostic gospels, because of the Acts of Phillip, several ancient texts that have recently been discovered.... And guess what, that's what it says on the ossuary -- the coffin -- found next to Jesus son of Joseph.

"So at that moment the light bulb went on.... The very thing that people were using to dismiss this tomb was the very thing that at the end of the day would prove... that this tomb may indeed be the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth."[11]

Was Gnosticism the key that unlocked the tomb's mysteries? According to the documentary, those occult legends tell us that Mariamne and her son moved to France (which didn't become a nation until centuries later). Discovery Channel's chosen myth brings her back to Jerusalem before her death. Otherwise, how could her bones be added to the tomb?

The visual dramatization of Mary, Jesus, and the fake tomb makes it all the more believable. And to a world seeking spiritual thrills, this Gnostic version of "history"may seem too real to resist.

Conclusion

Today's assaults on Christianity are well timed and increasingly blatant. But they shouldn't surprise us. Blinded by the world's never-ending stream of entertaining distractions, the masses have little time for the vital truths, facts and logic that would enable them to resist deception.

That fact hasn't escaped our global leaders, including the mainstream media within the Council on Foreign relations. The mood of the nations has been surveyed, assessed and manipulated for decades awaiting that "opportune" time [Luke 4:13] for speeding the transformation. What the International Congress on Mental Health concluded in its 1948 report has now become reality:

"Change will be strongly resisted unless an attitude of acceptance has first been engendered."[12]

Today, more than half a century later, that general "attitude of acceptance" has been established! Nations around the world are fast conforming to the pattern set by UN founders in the 1940s. And the global networks of "mental health" and pluralistic partners are working to prevent  any uncompromising Truths or moral guidelines that would hinder "positive" or "collective thinking" around the world.

We don't know the nature of the next assaults on God and His people, but we know the God who reigns in the midst of them. Are you ready to stand firm in Him when they come?

"...the whole world is under the sway of the evil one." 1 John 5:19

"...though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God...." 2 Corinthians 10:3-5

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 See The Secret - Christianity or New Age

Clothed with His Truth (First lesson in a Bible study on the Armor)

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Endnotes:

1.Ben Witherington III, "Tomb of the (Still) Unknown Ancients," Wall Street Journal, March 2, 2007.  http://online.wsj.com/article_email/article_print/SB117280634570824457-lMyQjAxMDE3NzAyMjgwMDI2Wj.html

2. "Has the tomb of Jesus Christ been found?" Discovery Channel at http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/tomb/about/about.html

3. David Horovitz, "New film claims Jesus buried in Talpiot," February 25, 2007, http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1171894508893&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

4. Julie Stahl, "Jesus Tomb' Filmmakers Should Be Ashamed, Archeologist Says," CNSNews.com (Jerusalem Bureau Chief), March 1, 2007.

5. www.cfr.org/publication/6261/finding_americas_voice.html#author and www.cfr.org/publication/3130/mock_national_security_council_meeting_on_north_korea.html

6.  Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited (New York: Perennial Library, 1958), pages 32-35

7. "The Lost Tomb of Jesus,"  http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/tomb/about/about.html

8. Steve Caruso, Aramaic Designs, http://www.aramaicdesigns.com/?title=Page:The_Lost_Tomb_of_Jesus

9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Tomb_of_Jesus

10. Alan Cooperman, "Jesus tomb claim denounced," The Honolulu Advertiser, March 3, 2007. http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2007/Mar/03/il/FP703030318.html

11. http://dsc.discovery.com/beyond/player.html?playerId=203711706&bclid=537085188

12. "Mental Health and World Citizenship," founding document of the World Federation for Mental Health, pages 7 and 8. Distributed by the National Association For Mental Health, Inc., 1790 Broadway, New York 19, N.Y.

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