Previous | Next 

CURRENTLY IN TELEVISION
The real Jesus

Wilf Hein

In the Dec. 8, 2001 issue of the Vancouver Sun, reporter Douglas Todd rightly pointed out the shortcomings of a recent BBC documentary called “Jesus: The Complete Story”. Like an earlier ABC documentary by Peter Jennings called “The Search for Jesus”, the BBC documentary selected people to interview that either claimed to be non-religious or belonged to the Jesus Seminar. The Jesus Seminar is a small group of extremely liberal scholars who aim to discredit the teachings of orthodox Christianity. They confidently proclaim themselves to be the standard bearers of scholarly consensus. In reality, they are far away from the vast majority of biblical scholars. Their claims to represent a consensus view are simply false. They reject 80% of Christ’s teachings and want to re-create the Christian faith by undercutting the authority of Scripture and the historicity of the founder of the Christian faith, Jesus Christ. They deny that Christ was born in Bethlehem, that He was born of a virgin, that He was celibate and that He ever intended to return. They insist that the Jesus proclaimed by Christians around the world never existed and that there is no risen Christ, no resurrection and no coming kingdom. Their findings are frequently speculative, sacrilegious and arrogant.

Under the guise of credible historical scholarship, this team of self-appointed “experts” was given a platform to dismiss well-established facts of history in favour of subjective storytelling. It is no surprise then that “Jesus: The Complete Story” and “The Search for Jesus” presented an incomplete and distorted story. If the TV media had really been interested in creating a TV documentary on “The real Jesus”, they would have done better to draw on the well-researched book The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel (Zondervan). Strobel, an award winning investigative journalist with a Master of Studies in Law degree from Yale Law School, is now a teaching pastor at Willow Creek Community Church near Chicago.

Wilf Hein is a member of Bakerview MB Church in Abbotsford, B.C.

Previous | Next 

Last modified April 17, 2002.

© 2002 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
Masthead and usage information.