My dear Friends.

It was only in the year 2000 that I had my first passport so I'm hardly a seasoned traveller. However, I'm experienced enough to know that the 'in-plane' entertainment was not likely to satisfy me as we made a 13 hour flight to Singapore followed by a 7 hour one to Melbourne. I'm too tall to see the screen clearly (especially if the person in front puts the seat back) and the audio channels are not usually my taste. Again I'm too tall to have a decent sleep and so I decided to take a couple of audio tapes, one an Agatha Christie thriller. But I also reckoned I needed a book or two.

Now I have plenty of books that I haven't yet read but what caught my eye as I was in Southend one day was a book which I understand has been translated into some 42 languages, sold in excess of 29 million copies and has made its author a multi-millionaire. I decided to make it one more!

After an hour or two into the journey I picked up the novel and started reading. It's a thriller and it kept my interest for a couple of hundred pages. So far, so good. It was quite a good book but certainly no better than several others I have read in the past, so I wondered at its popularity. However, this decent thriller then descended into lousy theology and I began to appreciate why it had caused such a stir in religious circles.

The book in question is 'The Da Vinci Code' written by Dan Brown and put very simply it says that Jesus Christ married Mary Magdalene and their descendants became Kings of ancient France. The book claims that Jesus was not the Son of God and it was only under Emperor Constantine that Jesus was upgraded to become the Son of God and then only by a narrow vote! So, according to Dan Brown, the Church has been hiding the real truth about Jesus for the past 2000 years. Even so, rumours of this conspiracy have surfaced from time to time in art, music, literature and especially in the paintings of Leonardo Da Vinci. Basically what I have preached about over the past seven years in Shoebury is largely untrue!!

Here is not the place to give a considered reply to Dan Brown's hypothesis which he appears to claim as fact at the beginning of his book. Nicky Gumble has done a far better job than I could ever do in his booklet 'The Da Vinci Code - a response'. This is available at the Southend Christian Bookshop priced just £1.00.

I continued to read the book but my heart was no longer in it. The author clearly misunderstands what the gospel is really about and has bulit a work of fiction on very little indeed. The vast weight of historical evidence goes right against him, but of course, people love such works of fiction especially when controversy has given the book even more publicity.

If you have already read it (or are thinking of doing so) let me give you a copy of Nicky Gumble's booklet to go alongside it. Then you can enjoy Dan Brown's thriller as the work of fiction which it is and yet still have your faith firmly in the living God and all that He has revealed of Himself through his Son Jesus and in the pages of the Bible.

God bless you
Yours sincerely

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