Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. For we have no continuing city here, but we seek one to come.
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Every culture in history developed its own legends and myths. God visited Israel and spared them the need to do that. The revelation of truth from God to Moses and Israel made it unnecessary for the Israelites to invent creation myths, or myths about the powers and deeds of other gods. God's revelation to Israel predated most ancient myths by centuries, and often we can find in the things God revealed to His people the roots of those myths of ancient cultures. We can see how God's truth was distorted by men who heard it but did not believe.
The Flood of Noah's day was a real historical event. But when the story of the Flood was repeated in the ancient Mesopotamia, it was twisted into the legend of Gilgamesh, a story that contained vague shadows of the true story of the Flood but none of the true Spirit of God. Scholars, pointing to ancient legends that are similar to the Bible's stories, often teach that the Biblical story of the Flood is just one of many myths invented by ancient peoples in their unlearned attempts to explain things. Such scholars are the kind of men who taught in the Seminary I attended. I occasionally sat with them privately in their offices as they attempted to persuade me of their godless theories. Of course, they wanted nothing to do with my unsophisticated faith in history as the Bible presents it.
What such professors fail to see is that ancient myths similar to the Bible are mere imitations of the revelations of God and distortions of the truth God graciously gave to fallen man. The Gilgamesh Epic is nothing more than an ancient Mesopotamian distortion of the truth of Noah's Flood. And there are very many other examples.
In Deuteronomy, God through Moses prophesied that after Moses' death Israel would become "unmindful of the Rock that begat thee" (32:18). This idea of a rock producing children must have fascinated someone. It wasn't long before a myth sprang up among the Greeks that Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha (the Greek version of Noah and his wife) created men from rocks that they cast over their shoulders behind them.
When men are imitated by others, they typically feel flattered. God has had more imitators than anyone in human history, and still does, but He accepts none of the flattery of men. He gives men His simple truth as a blessing, and when His Word is twisted or painted up to appear more attractive, people suffer. The myths of the ancient world ruined the lives of countless thousands of people and led to the development of religious ideas and rites that plagued the earth for millennia. Those myths did not glorify God; they brought men into the bondage of darkness. There was only one truth; there were many imitators.
The gospel of Jesus came as a wonderful, bright light to show us the way to God and make us eternally happy. The doctrines of Christianity, with its churches, have twisted the right ways of God into religions that imitate what God gave us in Christ but that have none of God's saving power and love. Regardless of the many baptismal rites that Christians have invented over the centuries, for one example, the only baptism that will ever do anyone any good is still Jesus'.
Instead of flattering the Lord by endorsing one of Christianity's imitations of the Gospel of Christ, let us simply submit to it. That way, we please God and save ourselves. We don't need myths. We need Jesus.