Church Hopping

One of the more common arguments against Jesus is that all of the evidence for him is found in the Bible, which of course is going to support him. In rebuttal, you might direct them to a book written by Jewish historian Flavius Josephus called Antiquities of the Jews and a passage that has become known as the Testimonium Flavianum.

Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.

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In the 1990s, Michael W Smith released a compact disc that not only helped us find our place in this world, our place in the world…but he also told us to “Go west young man”. Even though his music makes every post-modern, sarcastic Christian blush with embarrassment now, Smitty may have stumbled onto an interesting trend found not only in the Bible, but in Christian history.

For some reason, the Bible always tends to associate going west as going towards God’s will, and of course that generally leaves going east as the opposite. For example, after Cain killed Abel he fled to the east. And when the men decided to get to heaven via the Tower of Babel, they built it in the east. When Abraham left Ur of the Chaldeans for Canaan per God’s request, he was heading west. Years later he and Lot went their separate ways and Lot chose to go east towards Sodom and Gomorrah (a bad choice), while the ever faithful Abraham went west. Isaiah 24:14-15 says those in the west are singing the joy of the Lord and they should be in the east too. Israel rebelled against God so he sent them into exile in Babylon, which is to the east.

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The record for pole-sitting, also known as sitting…on a pole…anyway, the record is 196 days set by Daniel Baraniuk. Lucky for Danny, the record allowed him breaks every 2 hours and doesn’t include the ancient hermits known as Stylites.

A man now known as Simeon Stylites or Symeon the Stylite entered a monastery early in his life and began displaying his devotion in some very strange ways. Once he was found unconscious with a girdle of palm fronds tied so tightly around his waist that he had to soak for days to remove the fibers from the wound. The rest of the monks, a little shocked, asked Simeon to leave the monastery. Simeon found a quaint little cave to call home, where he continued extensive fasting and also took to standing upright until his limbs gave out.

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The Visigoths were known as barbarians, but the only reason they were labeled this in history is because they tried to invade the Roman Empire. If Canada tried to invade the Roman Empire, they would probably be labeled barbaric. Well barbaric or not, a missionary named Ulfilas or Wulfila (whatever), crossed over the Danube because he thought that the Goths needed Jesus too.

Ulfilas saw a lot of converts in his 40 years with the Goths, but in the beginning he faced a huge obstacle that just happens to be what he is most famous for. He thought that the first step in reaching the Goths would be to translate the Bible into the Gothic language. The problem was that the Bible contained words and concepts that the Gothic language didn’t cover, mainly because there was not really a Gothic alphabet. Ulfilas basically created an alphabet for the Gothic language.

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