Do you remember where you were on September 11, 2001?
I’m sure my parents still remember where they were the day President Kennedy was shot back in 1963 even though it happened 61 years ago. I remember having breakfast with two pastor friends in downtown Grand Forks at a restaurant that doesn’t exist any more. CNN was playing with no volume on the TV mounted high in the corner. We saw the live feed of the WTC North Tower, out of which billowed black clouds of ominous smoke. We theorized that perhaps a small plane veered off course and crashed into the building.
We continued on with breakfast, but were somehow intuitively aware that important "history" was being made. Between bites of ham and cheese omelets and hash browns, we each kept a single eye on the television. When the second tower was hit, we immediately began to pray together in our booth. We paid our bills quickly and drove away even quicker to find more information and to open our churches for prayer.
While it may be true that some of our memories are muddied or modified by our present experiences, still other memories are set in stone.
Why is this?
Oftentimes, our recollections of past events are more vivid because they are attached to powerful emotions, or important places that always trigger those memories.
Critics of the New Testament Scriptures have often insisted that the decades-long separation between the events and the writing down of those events immediately calls their veracity into question. But if Luke and Acts were written in the 60’s or even as late as the 80’s or 90’s, that is no reason to believe that the events recorded in the Gospel and Acts are spurious because too much time elapsed.
Also, ancient peoples were much better at committing important events to memory through various techniques, even those who possessed no written language. Professor Duane Hamacher of Monash University cites the research of a Dr. Lynn Kelly who discovered that; “Aboriginal people demonstrate that their oral traditions are not only highly detailed and complex, but they can survive – accurately – for thousands, even tens of thousands, of years!”
Dr. Kelly identified several techniques used by these “primitive” civilizations to memorize massive amounts of information about important events, accurately recite that information, and effectively relate it to each successive generation.
One technique is called “the method of loci”. Loci just means “place” in Latin, and also sounds more sophisticated than “the method of place.” Just a little levity in this serious blog post. But seriously, Professor Hamacher continues:
“This means that we associate memory with a location. How often do memories come flooding back to us when we visit our childhood haunt?"
"It may explain how Aboriginal memories of land that existed before it was flooded by rising sea levels during the last Ice Age survived in oral tradition for more than 7,000 years.
To test it herself, Dr. Kelly used the technique to memorize all of the world’s countries in order of population by linking them with features around her neighborhood, including buildings and gardens – making up her own stories for each one. And she can now recite them flawlessly.”
Now let's once again consider the book of Acts and how many real “places” are listed there and think of all the real memories linked to those real places…for real! Here’s a list by chapter:
Acts 1 (6 places)
Acts 2 (14 places)
Acts 3 (3 places)
Acts 4 (3 places)
Acts 5 (3 places)
Acts 6 (7 places)
Acts 7 (11 places)
Acts 8 (7 places)
Acts 9 (11 places)
Acts 10 (6 places)
Acts 11 (9 places)
Acts 12 (5 places)
Acts 13 (15 places)
Acts 14 (10 places)
Acts 15 (9 places)
Acts 16 (16 places)
Acts 17 (6 places)
Acts 18 (17 places)
Acts 19 (7 places)
Acts 20 (17 places)
Acts 21 (15 places)
Acts 22 (5 places)
Acts 23 (5 places)
Acts 24 (3 places)
Acts 25 (3 places)
Acts 26 (4 places)
Acts 27 (20 places)
Acts 28 (10 places)
(from OpenBible.info)
So, 23 years ago…nearly a quarter of a century in the past…the events of “9-11” happened, and we still remember them all too well. So too, the eyewitnesses interviewed to write “an orderly account” of the events in the book of Acts and the accompanying Gospel remembered accurately, and Dr. Luke faithfully recorded their powerfully ingrained memories, no doubt, associated with important geographic locations.
Finally, because those eyewitness accounts testify to the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ and our need for saving faith in His redemptive works, we must commit ourselves to a lifelong pursuit of knowing Jesus and making Him known.
PRN: Lord Jesus, you call us to remember you by partaking of the bread and the cup each Sunday as we gather together. Help us to return over and over to the written record of faithful Christians who recorded their eyewitness accounts of your marvelous works of Salvation. Help us by the power of the Holy Spirit to remember your story and to make it known to those who do not yet know you. In Jesus name, amen.
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