Living Water of Washington DC. A Christian Outreach Ministry.

Another gospel: The Da Vinci Code

Introduction

“Son of man, you are living among a rebellious people. They have eyes to see but do not see and ears to hear but do not hear, for they are a rebellious people.” (Ezekiel.12:2)

A person’s worldview filters information and shapes understanding. Holding a secular worldview creates a condition of misperception tantamount to the blindness and deafness spoken of in Ezekiel 12:2 and other passages of the Bible (cf. Matt. 13:13-15). Furthermore, for many who hold the popular (secular) worldview, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a rock of offense.¹ That is one of many reasons why false gospels are often more readily accepted than the Gospel Truth: to a person who holds the popular worldview, the false gospel just seems to make more sense.

A person’s worldview is the result of years of upbringing, schooling, and culture. It is the framework by which the person sees and understands the world. One premise of the popular worldview is the belief that all men, including Christians and the Church, are motivated only by lust for power—a postmodern perspective. It says also that truth is relative; truth is only “what works for me”. But we know as Christians that God’s Truth is absolute and universal: this is the Biblical worldview. We know that the world is fallen and sinful, but that the eternal Word of God bears glorious fruits of the Spirit contrary to the dictates of corrupt human nature. The Bible says that human wisdom “does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, demonic. For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.”² Christian truth exists on a different, higher plane from human wisdom. But by appealing to human wisdom, anti-Christian lies propagate throughout the world.

When a gospel agrees with a person’s worldview, retention of that gospel is facilitated. That is a major reason (perhaps the main reason) why the spirit of Antichrist³ has worked hard to shape people’s worldview with conceptual frameworks such as humanism, atheism, and paganism (i.e. Nature worship). These are all facets of a single, unified, and decidedly anti-Christian religion that prepares the mind to accept the deadly particulars of an anti-Christian “gospel” and reject the life-giving particulars of the Gospel of Christ. Just as the culture of Baal worship that infected Israel thousands of years ago was an obstacle to the appreciation of the word of the LORD, today’s popular worldview is an enormous obstacle to the appreciation of the true Gospel of Christ. The foundations of the popular worldview that facilitate acceptance of false gospels are lies, and you can be certain that the Father of Lies has been behind it all from the very Beginning.

One of the challenges of the Christian is to break through a person’s worldview, which erects barriers and prevents a listener from accepting the true Christian message. The secular worldview is so influential to perception that we must rely on the Holy Spirit and the discernment that He provides to allow for the unadulterated message of God’s word to be properly received. Otherwise, the message reaches ears that do not hear and eyes that are closed.

The Da Vinci Code (TDVC), a work of fiction by Dan Brown, is in accord with the worldview prefabricated and instilled by the instruments of the Prince of this World⁴ into the minds of a generation of readers, whose filters carefully guard against the true Gospel of Christ, but welcome pagan and humanistic deception. Only the Holy Spirit can truly penetrate this bulwark and renew the mind.⁵ TDVC coincides with the postmodern, relativistic, and politically-correct worldview. It appeals to prejudices learned in the formation of such worldview, so that its lies, fed to the mind governed by this worldview, are swallowed wholesale. Wouldn’t most people, one might ask, just write off the many assertions in TDVC as a product of fiction and nothing else? The answer is categorically “No”, for a critical element of TDVC is that it claims to contain facts, even though it is a work of fiction.

What is TDVC all about? TDVC gives readers an eyeful of a spiritual war—presented in very worldly terms and viewed through readers’ worldly filters—as it tickles readers’ itching ears and intrigues them. It then takes advantage of their interest and heightened receptivity to feed them lies that match-up with their worldview. It deftly propagates half-truths that are less detectable than its bald-faced lies and manifest errors. Although TDVC gives people a glimpse of the true spiritual battlefield on which servants of God and servants of the Devil have fought for millennia, this glimpse is full of counterfeits, smokescreens, decoys, and lies that are readily absorbed by the arrogant and prejudiced minds of those who have developed the politically-correct worldview. This popular worldview paves the way for the introduction and acceptance of arcane tenets of the kingdom of darkness that have been hidden for centuries. Most disturbingly, TDVC portrays those who adhere to such long-buried evilness as the “heroes” and those who hold fast to Biblical doctrine as the “villains”. TDVC reflects the world today where that which is good in God’s eyes is called evil, and that which is evil in God’s eyes is called good.⁶

In previous articles, I’ve written about what I call the “Babylonian religion”, and how it is manifested today as the quintessential anti-Christian religion. TDVC offers ample illustration of many of the central ideas of such anti-Christian religion with remarkable force. This pagan religion has been around for millennia, as TDVC correctly asserts, but now its poison streams unstanched into our popular culture. This article will help show how TDVC, a piece of poor fiction, illustrates the working of the religion of ancient Babylon in the world today.

In our generation, as in days immediately following the advent of Christ, the spiritual alternatives favored over Biblical Truth include the Gnostic gospels, which are a foundation for TDVC. Books such as TDVC are just symptomatic of the clear and present danger of Gnosticism afoot today. The TDVC per se is not the problem, but Gnosticism definitely is.

Gnosticism is an outgrowth of the Babylonian religion that had a sizable following during the era of the early Church. The Gnostics took the genuine Gospel of Jesus and twisted it to suit their own religion. The end-result was a form of paganism masquerading as Christianity. The Gnostics have always claimed that their version of “Christianity” is real, authentic Christianity. But such claims could not be further from the truth.

The Apostles and their Disciples such as Polycarp and Irenaeus fought vigorously against Gnosticism, which in the cosmopolitan centers of the Roman Empire was a most fitting anti-Christian religion practiced by the sophisticated pagans, since it was agreeable to worldly philosophies and human wisdom. Gnosticism often appears today in “New Age” circles. It is clearly identifiable in TDVC.

TDVC is a “primer” on the manifestations of the true spirit war⁷: although it gets some of its “facts” wrong, the discerning Christian reader can plainly observe the weapons of the war, including half-truths (lies) and the politically-correct worldview. Because Brown asserts at the beginning of the book that certain presumptions in the book are facts rather than fiction, many people will be gulled into the belief that certain lies are facts. After all, Brown doesn’t leave clues as to how to distinguish between actual facts and the many fabrications that are blended into his convoluted yarn.

TDVC is not an introduction of startling new ideas, but a confirmation of explosive ideas ancient and dormant, quietly seething for centuries, poised to erupt into public consciousness in a way that the Bible prophecies. In other words, TDVC is a visible indicator of worse things occurring and yet to come.

Anyone who is familiar with the Scripture would see quickly enough that the Bible is a book that Dan Brown has opened rarely, if ever. The minimization of the Bible is the cornerstone of the Enemy's strategy in the greater Spirit War. It would have helped Dan Brown’s case if he knew a thing or two about the Bible, then he could at least pretend to be some sort of an expert, and his mouthpiece, the character Robert Langdon from TDVC, would not appear so silly. But Brown trips over his own ignorance of the Bible and its contents. Sadly however, such ignorance and silliness is imperceptible to many of the readers of TDVC since they, like Brown, are unfamiliar with the word of God.

The arguments of TDVC fall apart on their own: not only are they contradicted by the Bible, but they are internally inconsistent and fail on their own weakness. The assertions of TDVC alone, taken as a whole, just don’t add up. But unfortunately, through the postmodern filter of “relative truth”, a “half-truth” appears as good as whole. Moreover, truth and lies cannot be absolutely distinguished when the postmodern worldview holds that all facts are a matter of personal preference; the politically-correct view becomes the correct view.

There are many books and articles available to debunk the outright lies and errors in TDVC. I will focus on more subtle matters. For this discussion, you don’t need an encyclopedia or history books. You need none of those things to see the logical inconsistencies that are contained in TDVC itself—the book’s inherent contradictions. In this article, a synopsis of the novel’s plot and a frank discussion of pagan mystery religions will precede explanation of TDVC’s intrinsic contradictions. All you need to do is to think rationally in order to see the novel’s inherent contradictions. They include:

1. TDVC says that Constantine created modern Christianity, a radical new religion totally at odds with paganism, and converted the world from matriarchal paganism to his brand-new religion. But then TDVC also says that Christianity is essentially a pagan religion and that Constantine, “a lifelong pagan”, only modified paganism to make it acceptable to both “Christians” and pagans.
2. TDVC says that the Catholic Church sought to eradicate veneration of the sacred feminine, but the Catholic veneration for the Virgin Mary indicates the exact opposite.
3. TDVC says that the Church has made a concerted effort to suppress the “truth”, but then says that it is the sworn oath of a group antagonistic to the Church—the Priory of Sion—to keep the “truth” hidden. Well, which is it? More importantly, if it is vital “truth”, then what is the motive to hide it at all? It cannot be the Gospel Truth, which we are commanded to proclaim.

Synopsis of TDVC

The novel’s plot centers around the intrigues of a secret group called the Priory of Sion and a rival group, the Catholic Church’s prelature of Opus Dei. The novel begins with a murder in Paris’ Louvre Museum Grand Gallery. Robert Langdon, the Harvard University “symbologist”, and Sophie Neveu, a French cryptographer, follow a long and elaborate thread of clues and realize that they are not dealing with just an isolated murder, but a centuries-old plot to try to uncover carefully guarded secret “truth” about Jesus and Mary Magdalene, specifically, that Magdalene is the Holy Grail that carried Jesus’ offspring in her womb. The “truth” has been in the safe-keeping of the Priory of Sion. The Priory is a “goddess worship society, keepers of the [Holy] Grail, and guardians of ancient documents” (TDVC p.291). The symbologist and the cryptographer discover that this “truth” has been suppressed by the Catholic Church, which was, as TDVC incorrectly asserts, founded by Constantine at the Council of Nicaea for no other purpose than as a sweeping power-grab. The thesis of TDVC can be summed up thus: “Constantine and his male successors successfully converted the world from matriarchal paganism to patriarchal Christianity by waging a campaign of propaganda that demonized the sacred feminine, obliterating the goddess from modern religion forever” (TDVC p.124).

Is there a Da Vinci Code about Jesus and Mary Magdalene?
Above: The Last Supper by Leonardo Da Vinci. TDVC says that Mary Magdalene is seated to Jesus’ right. However, the person to Jesus’ right is John the Apostle, a younger disciple at the time who, according to the Leonardo’s rendition, was not yet old enough to have grown a beard (see also explanation below) . If the figure is Mary Magdalene as TDVC alleges, then where is John? Surely, Leonardo was not so stupid to have simply forgotten the Apostle in his masterpiece, leaving only eleven of the Twelve Apostles. Leonardo also made sure that Judas Iscariot is identified in the painting as the fourth from the left side. The painting famously shows Judas’ arm knocking over a salt container, a sign of broken trust, and misfortune. Judas' other arm is reaching toward a dish, because he is the betrayer who dips his hand in the dish. Peter is shown holding a knife because it is Peter who later that night attempts to defend Jesus using a sword when Jesus is arrested. Right: John the Baptist by Leonardo Da Vinci. Leonardo always painted young men as effeminate. This is Leonardo’s painting of the preacher and prophet who ate locusts and wild honey.

Background: Paganism, Babylonian Mystery, and Secret Societies

“You’re telling me this group [the Priory] is a pagan goddess worship cult?”
“More like the pagan goddess worship cult. But more important they are known as the guardians of an ancient secret. One that made them immeasurably powerful.” (TDVC p.113, emphasis in the original)

“the act through which male and female experienced God…the male was spiritually incomplete until he had carnal knowledge of the sacred feminine. Physical union with the female remained the sole means through which man could…achieve gnosis—knowledge of the divine. Since the days of Isis, sex rites had been considered man’s only bridge from earth to heaven.” (TDVC pp.308-309)

You get the idea where this is going. It gets even more outrageous, in fact, unsuitable to print in this paper. Think about that if you or anyone in your family is considering viewing the upcoming Hollywood movie.

The word gnosis, which means “knowledge”, is the word from which we derive the term Gnosticism, which is in my opinion, the only Antichristian belief system that is subtle enough, virulent enough, and disparaging enough of our Lord Jesus to rise to the magnitude of Biblical prophecy. Obviously the “god” that TDVC is referring to is not our beloved God who is the one and only true God. And our bridge from earth to heaven is through faith in Christ alone. Gnosticism is just one relatively recent manifestation of the ancient Babylonian religion. Although Gnosticism has been around for centuries, it has in the last few decades—in our own lifetimes—begun to broadly to reveal itself by name. But paganism in general, particularly the forms rooted in Babylonian mysticism, are all enjoying widespread resurgence. The Western preoccupation with sexual expression in all forms and the “sexual liberation” of our generation is a fact, and our indignation at today’s license for perversion is not merely because of the proverbial generation gap. The fact is, God’s purpose for sex between husband and wife is to nurture the strength of the marriage bond and provide the means for bearing godly children for His glory (Malachi 2:15, 1 Corinthians 7:3-5). Sexual union between husband and wife is also designed to point to the ultimate consummation of the union of the Lamb and His bride, which is the Church (Revelation 21:9).

TDVC makes frequent allusions to Babylonian temple prostitution, an abominable practice that is referenced and excoriated by God in the Bible, perhaps most strikingly in Revelation 17 where it is revealed that Babylonian harlotry prefigures a world religio-economic system. TDVC asserts that the Babylonian practice of temple prostitution was practiced in the ancient Temple(s) in Jerusalem:

“Early Jews believed that the Holy of Holies in Solomon’s Temple housed not only God but also His powerful female equal, Shekinah. Men seeking spiritual wholeness came to the Temple to visit priestesses—or hierodules—with whom they made love and experienced the divine through physical union.” (TDVC p.309)

“The next time you find yourself with a woman, look in your heart and see if you cannot approach sex as a mystical, spiritual act. Challenge yourself to find that spark of divinity that man can only achieve through union with the sacred feminine.” (TDVC p.310, my emphasis)

“…the term pagan had become almost synonymous with devil worship—a gross misconception…The pentacle…is a pre-Christian symbol that relates to Nature worship……the pentacle symbolizes Venus—the goddess of female sexual love and beauty…Early religion was based on the divine order of Nature. The goddess Venus and the planet Venus were one and the same. The goddess had a place in the nighttime sky and was known by many names—Venus, the Eastern Star, Ishtar, Astarte—all of them powerful female concepts with ties to Nature and Mother Earth.” (TDVC p.36)

Venus is, as TDVC accurately points out, the Roman equivalent of the goddess Astarte (Hebrew Ashtoreth; some translations of the Bible even translate the Hebrew as “Astartes” ). Ashtoreth (or Astartes, depending on the Bible version), is identified as a devil and the consort to the devil Baal, throughout the entire Bible!⁸ Even King Solomon, the wisest and wealthiest man in the world, worshipped this pagan goddess (1 Kings 11:5). Biblically speaking, Venus (Ashtoreth) is a devil. Goddess worship, or worship of any “god” other than the God of the Bible, has always been the same as devil worship: “They sacrificed to demons, which are not God—gods they had not known, gods that recently appeared, gods your fathers did not fear.” (Deuteronomy 32:17)

Christianity, far from being suddenly at odds with matriarchal paganism, followed directly from the millennia-old teaching of the Old Testament. The book of Jeremiah, written long before the Catholic Church, long before the Council of Nicaea, long before even the advent of Christ, says:

“None of the remnant of Judah who have gone to live in Egypt will escape or survive to return to the land of Judah, to which they long to return and live; none will return except a few fugitives. Then all the men who knew that their wives were burning incense to other gods, along with all the women who were present—a large assembly—and all the people living in Lower and Upper Egypt, said to Jeremiah, ‘We will not listen to the message you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD’…We will burn incense to the Queen of Heaven and will pour out drink offerings to her just as we and our fathers, our kings and our officials did in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem.” (Jeremiah 44:14-17)

The Knights Templar

Allegedly, the Templars also did a lot of undercover work at the behest of the Priory, including unearthing secret documents hidden beneath the remains of the great Temple in Jerusalem: “The Knights believed the documents the Priory sought were buried deep under the ruins—beneath the Holy of Holies, a sacred chamber where God Himself was believed to reside. Literally, the very center of the Jewish faith.” (TDVC p.159) This is a reference to the demolished second Temple in Jerusalem, the one that was built after the Babylonian captivity of the Jews. During the time when the second Temple was standing, a new priestly caste, the Pharisees, emerged in the Holy Land, bringing traditions and secrets of the Babylonian mysteries with them. The Temple became their headquarters. Based on what TDVC says, when Rome sacked Jerusalem and razed the Temple, the occupants of the Temple departed but left behind some important documents and/or relics. Presumably these documents or relics ended up in the hands of the Templars and possibly the Priory.

In fact Babylon (Babel in Hebrew), as the world’s first truly cosmopolitan civilization (Genesis 11) and center of trade and commerce, likely invented many basics of what has become modern banking. The Templars used these principles of banking for their own benefit and became wealthy and powerful.

“[The Knights Templar were] a law unto themselves—an autonomous army independent of all interference from kings and prelates, both religious and political…the Knights Templar expanded at a staggering rate, both in numbers and political force, amassing vast estates in over a dozen countries. They began extending credit to bankrupt royals [as well as royals who were not bankrupt] and charging interest in return, thereby establishing modern banking and broadening their wealth and influence still further.” (TDVC p.159)

The Order of the Knights Templar was in fact abolished by Pope Clement in the early 1300s when allegations of unspeakably wicked behavior surrounded the powerful and secretive group. Up until that point, the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and the Templars is unclear according to TDVC, but seemed to be distinguished by an ill-defined enmity. Although many of the Templars were executed because of the charges, many survived. TDVC asserts that they’re still around today “under a variety of names” (p. 160). TDVC says that modern Freemasonry involves many Templar rituals and symbols. Among the charges leveled against the Templars was devil-worship. Dan Brown does not dispute this charge, but rather posits that the “devils” were actually benign “horned fertility gods”:

“The Templars honored Baphomet by encircling a stone replica of his head and chanting prayers…The modern belief in a horned devil known as Satan could be traced back to Baphomet and the Church’s attempts to recast the horned fertility god as a symbol of evil.” (TDVC p.316, my emphasis)

At any rate and by all accounts the Knights Templar existed, were powerful, and were a very wealthy multinational enterprise beholden to no local government or authority. TDVC says that the source of the Templars’ great wealth and power was a treasure among the ruins of the great Temple that made them very rich, a treasure that they wanted to hide from all seekers, and which was probably left in the vicinity of the Temple by its priests as they departed from embattled Jerusalem after Roman legions sacked the great city.

“Nobody knows for sure, but the one thing on which all academics agree is this: The Knights discovered something down there in the ruins…something that made them wealthy and powerful beyond anyone’s wildest imagination.” (TDVC p.158, emphasis in original)

Inherent Contradictions

1. TDVC says New Testament Christianity (pre-Constantine) was a pagan cult. Then it says that Constantine created modern Christianity, a radical new religion totally at odds with paganism. But also it says that Constantine was “a lifelong pagan” who made modifications to his Christianity so that it would be more acceptable to pagans.

“The Bible, as we know it today, was collated by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine the Great…He was a lifelong pagan who was baptized on his deathbed, too weak to protest [about converting to the Christianity he allegedly founded]…Three centuries after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, Christ’s followers had multiplied exponentially. Christians and pagans began warring, and conflict grew to such proportions that it threatened to rend Rome in two…Constantine was a very good businessman. He could see that Christianity was on the rise, and he simply backed the winning horse. By fusing pagan symbols, dates, and rituals into the growing Christian tradition, he created a kind of hybrid religion that was acceptable to both parties [including the pagans].” (TDVC 231-232, my emphasis)

TDVC says that the metamorphosis of Christianity got started with Constantine at the Council of Nicaea but it also says that the pagan Constantine did not convert to Christianity until he was on his deathbed, and did so reluctantly. TDVC says: “virtually all elements of the Catholic ritual…were taken directly from earlier pagan mystery religions…Nothing in Christianity is original” (p.232). If this were true, then it stands to reason that Constantine added nothing original to the pagan mystery religion, and his religion would be no different than it. But there is at least one critical difference—the divinity of Jesus Christ. TDVC back-peddles (contradicting itself again) to mention it:

“until that moment in history [the Council of Nicaea], Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet…a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless. A mortal.” (TDVC p.233, emphasis in original)

“It was all about power…Christ as Messiah was critical to the functioning of Church and state. Many scholars claim that the early Church literally stole Jesus from His original followers, hijacking His human message, shrouding it in an impenetrable cloak of divinity, and using it to expand their own power.” (TDVC p.233, emphasis in original)

Constantine lived hundreds of years after the Church fathers such as the Apostles John, Peter, and Paul. They, not Constantine, are actually are responsible for what TDVC calls “patriarchal Christianity”. Even the harshest critics of the Biblical canon agree that many of the Church’s New Testament books were written centuries before Constantine was born. Paganism has been around since the dawn of humanity, as has God’s hatred of paganism. In any case, a spirit war between the Church and pagans has been going on long before Constantine ever dealt with it.

“As part of the Vatican’s campaign to eradicate pagan religions and convert the masses to Christianity, the Church launched a smear campaign against pagan gods and goddesses, recasting their divine symbols as evil.” (TDVC p.37)

TDVC tries to have it two ways: it says that Constantine and the Council of Nicaea introduced the Gospel of the divine Jesus radically different from the paganism which TDVC espouses, and it says that Constantine introduced nothing new to Christianity when he fused it with Roman paganism and ascribed divinity to a mortal man who had been dead some three hundred years. If Constantine blended Christianity with paganism replete with symbols of Isis, as TDVC asserts, then Constantine was neither an innovator nor the founder of the Church. TDVC cannot have it both ways without contradiction. The fact is that these two approaches to understanding events present a false dichotomy, because neither story is correct. Through the haze of these two tortuous perspectives the Truth can be discerned; this is what happened: the Christianity that Constantine encountered before his conversion was not his own creation, but the faith of its remarkable, inspired Founders in the risen and divine Christ Jesus.

2. TDVC says that the Church sought to eradicate veneration of the sacred feminine, but the Catholic reverence for the Virgin Mary indicates the exact opposite.

TDVC says that the Church got rid of all vestiges of the sacred feminine, but then says on page 232 that the image of the goddess Isis nursing her son Horus was “transmogrified” by the Church into the image of the Virgin Mary nursing Baby Jesus. As for the “patriarchy” of Constantine’s religion, why is there veneration for the Virgin Mary “Mother of God” at all? If the Catholic Church has, as TDVC alleges, taken issue with the “sacred feminine”, then why does it deem the Blessed Virgin Mary humanity’s intercessor to God, along with Jesus? Without defending Mariolatry, the Catholic Church’s reverence for the Virgin Mary demolishes Brown’s claim that the Church purposed to rid itself of the sacred feminine. From the Catholic point of view, Mary the wife of Joseph was the vessel, the chalice, or the Grail, that carried our Lord Jesus in her womb.

Furthermore, if Jesus were an ordinary man as TDVC contends, then why is Magdalene important? Why are we supposed to idolize a woman whose importance derives solely from her close association with a man? TDVC fails to answer: how exactly did Magdalene become the icon of the sacred feminine, worthy of veneration as a goddess, when her “consort” the Christ was a fraud? How was the supposed wife of Jesus promoted to goddess? TDVC gives no answer. TDVC makes a dismally weak attempt to cast Magdalene as a “Queen” on the basis of her alleged descent from the tribe of Benjamin, but what does that have to do with anything? Benjamin had many descendants. In fact, the Apostle Paul himself is among them¹¹, yet he made no claim to royalty. And Israel’s kings included descendants of Judah and Ephraim too.

Magdalene’s only role in TDVC is to diminish the role of Jesus by usurping center-stage. But the attempt fails because her historical significance comes only through Him in the first place, and TDVC does not offer an alternative explanation for her significance. TDVC says that Magdalene was the vessel for Christ’s seed—the Grail—but, as just noted, that line of thinking would serve to strengthen the Church’s position on the significance of the Virgin Mary because indeed, by the Biblical account, she in fact was the vessel carrying Him! Even if Magdalene were the Grail carrying His seed (which she is not, but for the sake of argument let’s make that assumption), then He is still God. In pagan myths, gods are always having children by humans.

“Magdalene was no such thing [a prostitute]. That unfortunate misconception is the legacy of a smear campaign launched by the early Church. The Church needed to defame Mary Magdalene in order to cover up her dangerous secret—her role as the Holy Grail.” (TDVC p.244)

“The Church, in order to defend itself against the Magdalene’s power, perpetuated her image as a whore and buried evidence of Christ’s marriage to her, thereby defusing any potential claims that Christ had a surviving bloodline and was a mortal prophet.” (TDVC p.254)

The worship of Magdalene is meaningless unless she were independently divine. But TDVC can’t even begin to show such divinity. The best TDVC can do is to make the feeble claim that Magdalene was a Benjaminite, which is hardly royalty, much less divinity.

“Mary Magdalene was the womb that carried His royal lineage. The Priory of Sion, to this day, still worships Mary Magdalene as the Goddess, the Holy Grail, the Rose, and the Divine Mother.” (TDVC p.255, my emphasis)

TDVC describes Magdalene as the “outcast one” and “wronged Queen” (p.257), but these are titles more proper for Jesus’ mother Mary whom the Catholic Church adores. It is likely that Jesus’ mother was ridiculed and slandered by the Pharisees as a prostitute (they had uglier things to say about her Son) and that she was in fact outcast, shunned, and wronged while she was on earth. Her out-of-wedlock pregnancy (though she was carrying the Son of God) was scandalous and could only have cast the Blessed Virgin into ill-repute everywhere except in the community of the first Christian believers. Many of the things that TDVC alleges happened to Magdalene more likely happened to Jesus’ mother. The Grail could not possibly be “the lost sacred feminine” as TDVC claims. Finally, from TDVC p.238:

“Christian philosophy decided to embezzle the female’s creative power by ignoring biological truth and making man the Creator [emphasis in original]…Genesis was the beginning of the end for the goddess…When Christianity came along, the old pagan religions did not die easily.”

3. TDVC says that the Church has made a concerted effort to suppress the “truth”, but then says that it is the sworn oath of a group antagonistic to the Church—the Priory of Sion—to keep the “truth” hidden (p.218).

TDVC needs to make up its mind on this. On the one hand, Brown says, “[The] Church has two thousand years of experience pressuring those who threaten to unveil its lies. Since the days of Constantine, the Church has successfully hidden the truth about Mary Magdalene and Jesus.”¹² But on the other, he says, “In fact the Priory has always maintained that the Grail should never be unveiled.”¹³ If the Priory has always maintained that its Grail secrets should never be unveiled, then there’s no reason for the Church to pressure anyone to do anything. Then there is also the more important question: what is the motive for attempting to hide vital “truth” from the world for millennia in the first place?

So who’s keeping the big secret? According to TDVC, Magdalene is the Grail and it’s evident throughout the novel that the Church doesn’t even know what the so-called Grail is. Members of the Catholic Church are busily running around trying to figure out what it is and where it is so that they can get their hands on it (whatever it is), while the Priory teases and toys with them. TDVC says that the Catholic Church was worried about the Grail secrets being revealed, but the Church doesn’t seem to know what those secrets actually are. TDVC says also that the Grail secrets will only be revealed (if ever) by the Priory when the time is ripe sometime in the remote future. It’s clear that the members of the Church aren’t the ones hiding the “truth” about Mary Magdalene and Jesus—the Priory and their underhanded goons are the guardians of that secret. According to TDVC, the Priory and the Templars have been doing all of the hiding and furtive relocating of their secret “documents” while the Catholic Church was, for most of the past two millennia, just trying to figure out what was going on. At any rate, is it so bad when people are just trying to find out what the “truth” is?

The guardians of the Grail secrets do not have the interests of the public at heart, only their own self-interest. TDVC is clear that the guardians of the secret became very rich and powerful, and have never been in a hurry to share their nifty secrets with anyone. Page 426 states another theme coursing throughout the book: “Only the worthy find the Grail”. Can it be “truth” that is meant only for the “worthy” elite to know? Does this religion, intended only for an elite few, sound like a “good” religion? Based on what TDVC says, great wealth and power comes to those who know the secrets. TDVC contains frequent references to the “secret truth”.¹⁴ This “truth” is meant to be secret, known only by a few. If that isn’t a contradiction in itself, what kind of truth is that? Could these secrets comprise, as TDVC contends, God’s truth? Never. The truth of God is given to be proclaimed, not hidden under a bed.¹⁵ The secret mystery religion of Babylon is the religion of Antichrist.

In a trenchant parody of Christianity, TDVC discusses how the pagan keepers of the “truth” are trying to determine the day when they will shout the “truth” from the rooftops. They are, therefore, not Christians, because true Christians do this everyday! Christians don’t wallow in fabulous wealth and power asking themselves, “when do you suppose we should reveal the truth to the world?” In the early Church, humble men and women went willingly to their deaths for the sake of the Truth!

The Bible warns of the pagan mystery religion. This secret wisdom and art existed in ancient Babylon, Egypt, and Rome. In the Bible, the prosperous nation of Egypt had rulers who practiced this religion.¹⁶ But our LORD God, by contrast, gives us Truth that we are to preach openly in broad daylight. God doesn’t hide secrets. God reveals deep and secret things!¹⁷

Conclusion

“…the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord's table and the table of demons.” (1 Corinthians 10:20-21)

TDVC is filled with lies. In Law Enforcement, authorities look for changes, discrepancies, and contradictions of suspects’ stories to help them to convict. If Dan Brown wants to be a more effective liar, he needs to pick a story, stick with it, and get all his lies to match-up. Even with all the twists and turns in the novel’s plot, the underlying “facts” must remain constant throughout the novel for the story to be believable. Brown fails.

The TDVC stumbles on its own inconsistencies regarding Constantine. The fact is that the religion to which Constantine converted was not a pagan religion; it was radically different from the paganism Constantine formerly knew. From the start, it was as anti-pagan as paganism is anti-Christian. The religion that Constantine converted to was not paganism at all: it was Biblical Christianity. Constantine might have made some concessions to paganism, but in doing so he only made his peculiar practice of Christianity closer to paganism than the faith originated in absolute purity some three hundred years before him by our Lord Jesus Christ and His Apostles.

The revival of the pagan “sacred feminine” is real today, and TDVC is clearly symptomatic of this menacing trend. Thankfully, Brown does no service to this iniquitous cause with his weak attempt to prop-up Magdalene as the poster-child for the lost sacred feminine when her significance is derived solely from her role as companion to Jesus Christ. Furthermore, the fact that the Catholic Church reveres the Virgin Mary utterly negates Brown’s contention that the Catholic Church is bent on suppressing the sacred feminine. A fan of TDVC might argue about roles reserved for men in the Church hierarchy and point out that there are no female priests. But an examination of all the names of the alleged Grand Masters of the Priory of Sion (TDVC pp.326-327) show that they are almost all men. The list reads like a good-old boys’ network of accomplished men. Also, because the Priory is the reputed predecessor of the Freemasons and other “philanthropic” men’s clubs, Brown’s argument about the importance of the sacred feminine in the “Brotherhood” (as the Priory is called) fails. However, in the Christianity of Paul and the Apostles, heroic women have played a great role. Women were always an important part of the early Church, including Mary Magdalene who was the first to see the Resurrected Christ and to share the news with the Apostles.¹⁹

Finally, p.145 sums it up: “The Priory existed for the sole purpose of protecting a secret. A secret of incredible power.” And the Templars were “secret guardians of the true identity of Christ” (TDVC p.253). Why didn’t the Priory/Templars proclaim the truth? What was their purpose for hiding it? Why all the secrecy especially about something so important to all of humanity as the “truth”? The reason they kept the secrets of power was to use them for power and profit, for their own exclusive benefit, not for the world’s betterment. TDVC describes how the Priory/Templars were enriched from the secrets. If we employ Dan Brown’s own postmodern worldview, the secrets were potently self-serving, which makes them “truth” by the postmodern definition, but hardly “truth” in the Christian sense. The powerful wealth-creating secrets of the elite could not fall into the hands of the unwashed masses, in other words, their “truth” is a permanent secret. “Only the worthy find the Grail.” The Templars and so-called Priory of Sion prospered from that which was anti-Christian. The heroes of TDVC grew rich from her excessive luxuries.²⁰ They were selfish thieves.

A fan of TDVC might argue that the Priory also wanted to protect themselves. But TDVC states the Priory is ambivalent about ever revealing the truth. “Many historians questioned why the Priory was still keeping the Sangreal documents hidden. Some felt the information should have been shared with the world long ago” (TDVC p.290). But they, according to TDVC, have gone to ridiculous lengths to keep their secrets which made them powerful. TDVC manages to spin their actions so that in the upside-down postmodern worldview their own selfishness makes them the “good guys”. This is how frighteningly far off the cliff our culture which embraces trash like TDVC has gone. The hesitation of the story’s heroes to proclaim the “truth” shows how their actions are opposite of Christians’, who have always proclaimed the truth in spite of the risk of being killed for their beliefs. The truth of the Gospel of Christ is proclaimed, not kept secret.

The religion espoused by the TDVC is anti-Christian. But the outrage is not TDVC’s adherence to this religion, because people are of course free to practice whatever religion they choose. Neither is the outrage of this book the implication of some mysterious multinational elite such as the Templars or the so-called Priory who hold ancient secrets of power. The sickening outrage of TDVC is that it gives the ancient pagan religion of this elite (whether they are real or imagined) a name: it calls this secret Babylonian religion “Christianity”, and people are buying it.

Ron Blevins

ENDNOTES

1. Isaiah 8:14.
2. James 3:15-17.
3. 1 John 4:3.
4. John 14:30.
5. John 3:5-8.
6. Isaiah 5:20.
7. Ephesians 6:12.
8. Judges 2 and 10; 1 Samuel 7 and 12; 1 Kings 11; 2 Kings 23.
9. See John 6:69, John 20:28, 1 Tim 3:16 for starters.
10. 1 John 4:3, my emphasis.
11. Romans 11:1; Philippians 3:5.
12. TDVC p.407.
13. TDVC p.444, emphasis in original.
14. For example, TDVC pp.202,322.
15. Mark 4:21; Luke 8:16.
16. Exodus 7 and 8.
17. Isaiah 45:19, 48:16; Daniel 2:22; Amos 3:7.
18. See, for example, Deuteronomy 32:17.
19. Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, John 20.
20. Revelation 18:6.