14 Words from Jesus by Ryken Philip G. & Boice James Montgomery

Author:Ryken, Philip G. & Boice, James Montgomery [Ryken, Philip G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Christian Focus Publications Ltd.
Published: 2013-12-10T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

1 Charles Haddon Spurgeon, “The Last Words of Christ on the Cross,” Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit , vol. 45 (Pasadena, TX.: Pilgrim Publications, 1977), p. 502.

Part Two

The Real Last

Words of Christ

8

A Word for the Seeker

Philip Graham Ryken

Why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?

(John 20:15)

Good Friday is the time of year when many Christians remember that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified by Roman soldiers outside Jerusalem. It is common for ministers to present messages on Christ’s words from the cross—the “seven last words of Christ,” as they are sometimes called. But when you think about it, the seven words Jesus spoke from the cross were not His last words at all. He had much more to say to His disciples after He rose from the dead. That is what the second part of this book is about. We might think of the next seven chapters as “The Real Last Words of Christ.”

Who Was Mary Magdalene?

The first person to whom Jesus spoke after He rose from the dead was Mary Magdalene. It is sometimes said that Mary was a wanton woman. This idea first appears in the Babylonian Talmud, which confuses Mary Magdalene with the Virgin Mary and depicts her as a common prostitute. In the Middle Ages the worship of Mary Magdalene became a religious cult, fueled by works such as The Golden Legend of the Lives of the Saints by Jacobus de Voragine.

The child of noble parents, Mary is said in this account to have received her name for her castle at Magdalo; her brother, Lazarus, a knight, possesses Jerusalem, and her sister, Martha, owns the town of Bethany. After her debauchery, conversion, and commission to tell of the Resurrection, she is persecuted with the disciples. Fourteen years after the Passion, she is set adrift in a rudderless boat to be drowned with Martha, Lazarus, and St. Maximin, but God brings them safely to Marseilles, where Mary astonishes the populace by her beauty and her elegant preaching and where she eventually causes a miraculous conception and raises the queen from death. She then retires to the desert for thirty years of penance, fed only by the songs of angels. 1

Obviously, Voragine’s account tells more about life in medieval Europe than the life of Mary Magdalene. There is even a medieval play (Mary Magdalen ) in which Mary sings to her “valentynes” in a tavern before being converted by an angel.

These fanciful errors have continued to the present day. They reappear in the Nikos Kazantzakis novel The Last Temptation of Christ . In that book, as well as in the infamous film later produced by Martin Scorsese that is based on it, the Magdalene is a source of sexual temptation for Jesus.

The problem with all these stories is that they have no basis in fact. The Bible does not even say Mary Magdalene was a loose woman. The story of her conversion says simply that “seven demons had come out” of her (Luke 8:2). The true story of Mary Magdalene is simpler, more beautiful, and much more important than any legend.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.