Dinah and I like the TV show “Code Black”.

A recent episode included a teenage girl brought to the ER who had a badly broken leg and needed immediate surgery. The father storms into the ER shouting “No Surgery!” because his family believes God will heal in every situation if you have enough faith.  This was a little tough on the girl, whose leg is swelling and not having surgery may end her life.

The girl is 16 years old meaning she can make her own decision if she can be persuaded.

So a young resident volunteers, introduces herself, and states she comes from a church background and then says: “Even Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John couldn’t always agree.” 

Do you ever yell at your TV?

I did that night!

Now if you’re not a Christian/church attender, the four gospel writers not agreeing sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?  After all, you’ve been told most of your life (in words and by example) that church isn’t important and Jesus was just another religious teacher. The writers of shows like this must pride themselves in not doing one ounce of research, otherwise they would know:

• The four gospels are referred to as the “synoptic” gospels (meaning a bird’s eye view; seeing and viewing together; to see together with a common view). Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit about their perspective of the birth, life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
• Matthew speaks of the birth of Christ while John says nothing of the nativity.
• Only Matthew and John were disciples of Jesus.
• Matthew, Mark and John were Jews. As Jews, they would not have used the phrases “kingdom of God” or “son of God”, as Jews didn’t say the word God – so they wrote “kingdom of heaven” and “son of man”.
• Luke was a Gentile/Greek who travelled with St. Paul and also wrote the book of Acts – the history book of the New Testament. His primary audience was non-Jewish so he used the “kingdom of heaven/son of God”, as did St. Paul in his epistles or letters.
• The writing of these four books wasn’t like updating Facebook. Matthew very likely didn’t sit down each day and journal what would become the first book of the New Testament. After the death and resurrection of Jesus the writing begins and the four books were probably written/completed before A.D. 70 because none of the gospel writers mention the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.
• Mark was written first, John last.

While any good agnostic or atheist will say what’s stated above is reason number 674 for not believing anything the bible says and there are people a LOT smarter than me who have written about this – what I’ve written here is easily found on the internet.

While the line in Code Black sounds reasonable and believable – it’s neither.

Pastor Mark