The Da Vinci Code will be released as a major motion picture May 19. Ron Howard and Akiva Goldsman, the Oscar-winning director and writer of A Beautiful Mind, have teamed up again for the movie, starring two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks. For those who love mysteries, The Da Vinci Code makes for interesting reading. However, those who are niave about the historical Jesus might find that author Dan Brown’s “Jesus” can simply be made into what they want him to be.In his novel, Brown drinks deep from the wells of the “Gnostic Gospels,” false accounts of Christ’s life. Gnosticism in its early forms was repudiated by Paul (especially in Colossians) and by John (see 1 John). Gnostics claimed that the divine could be reached through special knowledge, usually through mystical experiences. God’s coming in the flesh would not fit the Gnostics’ view of reality. These fabricated gospels were written well after the apostles passed off the scene and are devoid of places, names, and chronology that you would expect in an account of Christ’s life; the early church fathers flatly rejected them as Scripture.

Erwin Lutzer has done a service for those who do not want to read Brown’s novel. In The Da Vinci Deception, Lutzer sees Brown’s work as an attack upon the historical Jesus as revealed in the Bible. Brown’s novel suggests that Jesus and Mary were married, that the apostle John in Da Vinci’s The Last Supper painting is actually Mary Magdalene, and that Mary Magdalene is, therefore, the true Holy Grail because she carried the holy bloodline of Christ by bearing His child. If Brown’s speculations are reality, then Mary Magdalene would be considered the true mother of Christianity. And what about the quest for the Holy Grail? Do we not have a misguided search spurred on by superstitions of the Middle Ages? We have no encouragement from the early church to even begin such a quest.

Brown’s fiction tells of a great conspiracy that has taken place in the Catholic Church to keep documents and evidence under wraps. The “other gospels,” Brown says, have been banned from the Bible.

If people want to be “Christians” without the Jesus of the Bible, they can possibly find the Jesus they want in Brown’s work. But Biblically only one Jesus, the Jesus as revealed in the Scriptures, saves! “I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:3). “Even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed” (Galatians 1:8).

Let’s be ready May 19; many people will be confused by other “Jesuses.” Let’s hope that Ron Howard’s The Da Vinci Code is as bad his adaptation of the “Grinch.” Regardless, may we be ready in season and out of season to share Christ! Spring 2006 may very well be one of those “in season” times.

Excerpted and edited from “The Wednesday Night Article: a Biblical Response to Church and Cultural Trends,” a regular paper by Pastor Brian Humphreys for his congregation at Dryden Baptist Church, Dryden New York; October 5, 2005 edition. For his original article or for other Wednesday Night Articles, visit www.drydenbaptist.org/content/blogsection