In the early-20th century, all of academia thought that historians of the past were liars. For time, it almost didn’t need to be said that there was no historical city of Troy, that so many of the battles and speeches recorded by Thucydides were fabrications, that there is no way that the Mayans were massacring so many of their people as was reported by western explorers. It definitely didn’t need to be said that the history of the bible was bunk. People who chose to believe the histories passed along by those of the past were roundly and contemptuously scorned by those in authority. The enlightened of our culture knew that surely the past was not nearly so noble and supernatural as what the ancients described. These men, the explanation went, were so desperate to valorize themselves and their actions, that they constructed these stories entirely out of thin air, or else exaggerated beyond recognition what actually happened.
Thank God for archaeology, one of the many sciences he has made possible. The ancients have been slowly but surely vindicated as we have dug up the remains of ancient civilizations. For more than a century, it was believed that the Hebrews had never actually be enslaved in Egypt. Then we dug up Avaris. They said there was never any Kingdom of Israel. Then we dug up the Merneptah Steele. One could write a book thousands of pages long, detailing all of the accounts of the bible borne out by modern archaeology. The mockery of the elites for over a hundred years could not cancel out the truth encased in stone under the ground.
When Moses was about to die, he instructed the Israelites to go into the Promised Land, and there reaffirm the covenant established between God and his people. As instructed, in Joshua 8, they assembled between two mountains, Mount Gerazim and Mount Ebal, to receive the blessings and curses of Moses as they heard the reading aloud of the law of God. The mountains were there as witnesses. When the people might choose to forget their promise, the land would remember, and would testify against God’s people in the last day. One cannot cancel the truth. It cannot be destroyed, nor buried for eternity. One day the Lord will judge all who have ever lived, and we will be held accountable to the Truth. The Truth does not bend or augment in the face of mockery. Rather, it is mockers who will be broken.
Though the world will mock us, we will not be ashamed. We walk on the same earth, we breathe the same air, as our fathers and mothers who vowed to stay in faithful covenant with the Lord. “Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come, let this blest assurance control: That Christ hath regarded my sinful estate and hath shed his own blood for my soul!”
Those who stand by Christ will be mocked in this life. It will be most unpleasant. There will be different truths adopted by the world around us, which we will be expected to adopt and acknowledge. We don’t do it. Though they mock, we will stand tall and be clear that our trust is in Christ, not in the elite thinkers of our age. Though we will look like fools to the world, we will be vindicated when Christ is revealed!
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” -Romans 1:16