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Do you believe in Jesus?
- Thread starter Lestat
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CENTURION44
New member
not sure ..but i do beleive in a higher being an almighty one...the creator of all things...just not the bible..
foreigngirl
New member
sure do
Word 
lestat you are a good guy never had probs with you infact i actually look forward to you and wootooms posts...but i do believe in christ and i dont believe he is a fairy tail.....we all have our own believes.....so its all good just wanted to let you know i dont think it is a fairy taleLestat said:
angel_girl said:
ironically i am saddened by the fact you get sad for people that don't believe... i say live and let live. you go Yahweh and i'll go mine.
i believe he existed but not sure he's the son of God or an allmighty leader.... hell the finite mind cannot undertsand infinity. That's why it is called blind faith.
yeah, your parents created you and your family, you and your wife will soon create family of your own.Wootoom said:
I know my views are my own, and I don't intend to change other's or force my views upon them.
I really wish people would do more thinking for themselves though, and not just take what established authority tells them.
Most people are the religion that their parents were, or find it because a respected friend or position of power leads them to it.
Every culture invents their own religion, philosophers and anthropologists have done amazing research on it. Religion is something that people NEEDED to stop themselves from going crazy.
Unfortunate side effect of it is that it has lead to millions of people dying needlessly as well.
But people take what they want from it.
foreigngirl
New member
Wootoom said:
yeah, this can go back and forth with no ending
Someone or something had to create the first person?Wootoom said:
Well then I say someone or something had to create the being that created the first person.
And guess what, someone or something had to create that being too!
So you could really go back infinitely.
Some things cannot be explain, I am comfortable with that. People who sit in church every Sunday are not.
Its like if back in the early times, we couldn't explain how the sun and moon worked, does the earth circle the sun? or does the sun circle the earth? The reality was, we did not KNOW!
But people choose to believe that the sun circled the earth, they taught that as the TRUTH.
How very wrong they were.
You see this same thing happening over and over today. People can't just be comfortable with the unknown. It unnerves them. They'd rather believe in SOMETHING, ANYTHING really.. even if it was terribly wrong and lead to suffering, death and torture for many people INSTEAD of just realizing that humans have limits, we don't know EVERYTHING and likely never will.
Humans have been around for thousands of years. You would have thought that if there was some after life, some heaven, some god or jesus, that one person by now would have come back to confirm it...
i agree with you there. although i have no direspect or do i think its wrong to go to church. some people just want to learn more about Jesus. i believe in him and that enough for me i think. and Jesus understands that if im like that also. maybe when i have children things will be different but till then i would not ike to attend church.Lestat said:
M
musclemuscle
Guest
Amen vote here
there are still a lot of things i do not understand about christianity
I do believe in Jesus
there are still a lot of things i do not understand about christianity
I do believe in Jesus
foreigngirl
New member
Lestat said:
what would you say about the Jehova Witness people that beleive that only a certain number ( like 140 or something) will go to heaven? I think its bunch of BS including other stuff that they beleive in
i believe in jesus and what he said and taught. 100%
awittyusername
New member
Lestats and Woots first lovers quarrel
AristotleBC
New member
Lestat said:
Ironically after that tirade against assigning a 'belief to the unkown' you seem to be implying that you know about the ultimate unknown: what happens after people die.
There is actually considerable evidence of an afterlife in the form of near-death experiences.
awittyusername
New member
Actually, I never believed in God. Until, I found out a tool like Woot could land a great girl like Daisy.
Lestat said:
Wow. That is sheer genius. I never thought of those things. Haha. Just messin' with you because you are in your 20's and I use to think about that kind of stuff all the time. THought I was much smarter than other people and that all Christians were either dumb or desperate. Yep I thought of those things when you were in diapers. For every geographical boundary that you cross, you have a different God. I thought I was sheer genius and that very few other people could think for themselves like me.
Everyones belief should be carefully thought out with lots of prayer & meditation. I do not believe the Bible verbatim because it is a book that was written with many authors & has gone through many translations. However I do believe it is an inspired book, so I look for the lessons inside. Witness the extensive use of parables. I think churches are a good idea because people need to hear other opinions & other perspectives to apply in their thoughts.
I also believe most of the religious turmoil from extremists, holy rollers, & holier than though type people comes from a human need to feel superior to others. All the killings come from power struggles, not Godly struggles.
True Christians realize they are faulty & work to correct it, as opposed to trying to fix everyone else before looking within. Stones & glass houses, eh?
I also believe most of the religious turmoil from extremists, holy rollers, & holier than though type people comes from a human need to feel superior to others. All the killings come from power struggles, not Godly struggles.
True Christians realize they are faulty & work to correct it, as opposed to trying to fix everyone else before looking within. Stones & glass houses, eh?
Saintinistic
New member
I am sure there was a Jesus in history, but dont believe the bogus stuff he pretended to be or do.
its marketing , and back then, people believed in dragons, devils and gods. so go figure.
dragons and faerys of the dark ages came about because of the mouldy grains the poor were given for bread while the rich got the premium grains, the mould is high in ergot on these grains, the precursor to our saviour "LSD". So superstition and folklore met hallucinations and verbal convincing. wine is also an intoxicant, would you believe a drunks story telling? so why the bible?
and damn, Jesus sure did hand out alot of bread and wine...
its marketing , and back then, people believed in dragons, devils and gods. so go figure.
dragons and faerys of the dark ages came about because of the mouldy grains the poor were given for bread while the rich got the premium grains, the mould is high in ergot on these grains, the precursor to our saviour "LSD". So superstition and folklore met hallucinations and verbal convincing. wine is also an intoxicant, would you believe a drunks story telling? so why the bible?
and damn, Jesus sure did hand out alot of bread and wine...
I don't claim to have any proof of what happens in the afterlife.AristotleBC said:
I base my beliefs on what I know of the world, science, etc. It is limited, yes, but it is all I have. I refuse to just put "faith" in someone that some other MAN says.
Near death experiences have been debunked time and time again. They can be recreated by starving the brain of blood. They do it in G-force jet training centers. Make people pass out due to lack of blood to the brain and they all experience similar type situations.
Basically when the brain is starved of blood and oxygen it starts to freak out, you see bright lights, colors, you hear things, its your brain sputtering out.. like a car running out of gas. Its complete and total bullshit.
So, some people think they die and go to heaven after they die.. that is just great. There is just as much evidence to support that is to say you die and immediate join a huge roman orgy where men, women, and animals all fuck each other for eternity.
I'm not sure 100% what happens when you die, but its most likely the same thing that happens to your pet goldfish or dog when they die, they cease to excist.
lol @ humans having the audacity to think they are somehow "special" and better then other animals, they THEY have this thing called a sole. What about a mouse? or an ameoba? Can't they have souls too?
B
BrothaBill
Guest
I do and he is real to me and the only thing that scares me is GOD. lolol
U
UA_Iron
Guest
AristotleBC said:
Qualitative excerpts and experiences are not science. I dont think near-death experiences prove anything except your body does some f'd up shit when you're near death.
A lot of people have 'seen' big foot too...
big_bad_buff
New member
Lestat said:
deltreefitness
New member
Wootoom said:
Who created the creator? And how do you think this first person(s) reproduce?
deltreefitness
New member
foreigngirl said:
What makes your religion, that you probably were born into, right and others wrong? How are you so sure what your religion claims is not BS? A bit ignorant don't you think?
foreigngirl
New member
deltreefitness said:
you ask the questions, do you have the answers as well?
Who Could Have Invented Jesus?
Now we have left the evidence of fulfilled prophecy behind, and must go on to look at a very different kind of evidence. This will involve making a study of Jesus Christ Himself.
"Ah," you may say, "but this begs the question. How do we know that there ever was such a person? Whats the use of assuming that the gospels tell the truth about Jesus, and then building conclusions on such a shaky foundation?"
Quite so. Very true. And I have no intention of doing any such thing. All I shall assume is that the gospels are either fact, or fiction, or a mixture of the two. (You wont disagree with that, will you?) Then we shall examine the gospels critically to see which of those three alternatives seems most likely. Fair enough?
But before we begin, it is worth noting that even unbelievers generally recognise that the gospels are not pure fiction. One of the most learned of all unbelievers was Sir James Frazer. His classic history of magic and religion, The Golden Bough, was a landmark in twentieth century scholarship. He wrote:
"My theory assumes the historical reality of Jesus of Nazareth as a great religious and moral teacher [not, you will notice, as the Son of God] who founded Christianity and was crucified at Jerusalem under the governorship of Pontius Pilate. The testimony of the gospels, confirmed by the hostile evidence of Tacitus (Ann. 15,44) and the younger Pliny (Epist. 10,96) appears amply sufficient to establish these facts to the satisfaction of all unprejudiced enquirers. It is only the details of the life and death of Christ that remain, and will probably always remain, shrouded in the mists of uncertainty. The doubts which have been cast upon the historical reality of Jesus are, in my judgment, unworthy of serious attention. Quite apart from the positive evidence of history and tradition, the origin of a great religious and moral reform is inexplicable without the personal existence of a great reformer."1 (The italics are mine.)
Inventing the Uninventable
About 500 years ago there lived in Italy one of the greatest geniuses of all time, Leonardo da Vinci. Besides painting some of the worlds greatest pictures, he was a research scientist of the first rank. He is often said to have "invented" the aeroplane, the steamship, and the submarine.
Perhaps "invented" is too strong a word, because he never built any such machines. He did, however, first hatch out the ideas that hundreds of years later led to the development of those modern marvels. So we can give him the benefit of the doubt and say that, in a sense, he did invent them.
His inventions were brilliant, but not impossible. All the background knowledge that he needed was to hand. But there were certain things that he did not invent, because in his day they were uninventable. He could not invent a heart-lung machine, because he did not know about the circulation of the blood; more than a century was to elapse before Harvey discovered that. Nor could Leonardo invent an atom bomb, because he regarded matter as solid stuff; until modern scientists discovered that atoms were not solid lumps after all, but hollow spheres peppered with electric particles, the atom bomb was uninventable.
Now the argument I shall put forward in this chapter is this: the Jesus of whom we read in the gospels was, at the time the gospels were written, uninventable. Consequently the Jesus of the gospels must have been a historical character, not a fictional one.
The first thing to note is that nobody wanted a person like the Jesus of the New Testament. (To avoid repetition I shall not keep saying "the Jesus of the New Testament" but simply "Jesus" - while, for the time being, leaving completely open the question whether He was a historical character or a fictitious one.) Paul summed up the situation when he wrote:
"But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness."2
Nearly all the Jews had no time for Him. They were bigots, completely set in their religious ways. This man turned all their religious ideas upside down. He was nothing like the conquering king of a Messiah that they wanted. No Jew would have wanted to invent such an improbable, unacceptable kind of Messiah.
Nearly all the Gentiles had no use for Him, either. He was altogether unlike the kind of men they admired. Theirs was a cruel, selfish, lustful world. Human life was cheap. They would leave unwanted babies (girls, usually) to die with as little compunction as we drown unwanted kittens.
Their pleasures were mostly immoral ones: watching gladiators fighting to the death, or worshipping at idolatrous temples which were often only glorified brothels. It is hard to imagine any Gentile inventing a Jesus whose teaching was so full of condemnation for the Gentile way of life.
Into this harsh world came Jesus, teaching things that made men marvel. He preached the necessity of unselfish love, love that stopped at nothing, love that led men to lay down their lives rather than use force against others. He preached it, and He set the example Himself. He refused to defend Himself, or even to let His disciples defend Him.3 Instead, He went meekly to a horrible death.
We are not now concerned with the weighty question of whether Christians today should be pacifists. My personal opinion is in favour of Christian pacifism today, but that is beside the point. At the moment we are not concerned with opinions but with facts. The relevant facts are:
That Jesus introduced to a hostile world the entirely new teaching of "Love to the uttermost".
In keeping with this, He and His apostles preached pacifism. 4
He constantly lived up to His own teaching, even though it led Him to a cruel death.
There is plenty of historical evidence that the early Christian Church followed His difficult teaching, including pacifism.5
It is not surprising that the originator of these unpopular teachings made few converts at first. In the very early days Christianity was a small sect "everywhere spoken against".6 It was an unpopular minority religion.
True, by the fourth century it had grown great. But only because the standards had been lowered, the fine new teaching had been watered down. Yet even despite this watering down, despite the wickedness that has been done in the name of Christ by millions of unworthy professors of Christianity-despite everything, the teaching of Jesus has met the worlds need.
Where men have truly followed the teaching of the gospels, all that is best in the sad story of mankind has followed. Even unbelievers admit that. Here are the words of a famous American who did not believe that Jesus was the Son of God, Theodore Parker:
"Consider what a work his [Christ's] words and deeds have wrought in the world. Remember that the greatest minds, the richest hearts, have set no loftier aim, no truer method than his of perfect love to God and man. Shall we be told that such a man never lived - the whole story is a lie! Suppose that Plato and Newton never lived. But who did their wonders, and thought their thought? It takes a Newton to forge a Newton. What man could have fabricated a Jesus?"7
Besides paying tribute to all that the Christian message has done for mankind, Parker takes up the question with which we began: could anyone have invented Jesus? And although he regarded Jesus as a mere man, he answered with a resounding, "No!"
Another famous writer who was a complete unbeliever, John Stuart Mill, backs him up:
"It is of no use to say that Christ as exhibited in the gospels is not historical, and that we know not how much of what is admirable has been superadded by the tradition of his followers. Who among his disciples or among their proselytes was capable of inventing the sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining the life and character revealed in the gospels? Certainly not the fishermen of Galilee, still less the early Christian writers."8
His Sublime character
So far so good. The idea that any lesser men could have "invented" Jesus begins to look unlikely. But the evidence is not yet conclusive. We must go a little further, and study more closely the character of this Jesus.
To save space, we shall only be able to consider the last twenty-four hours of His life. As we do this, it is important that you bear two things in mind:
We shall be dodging about between all four gospels, because this is the only way we can build up a complete picture of Him. So, if Jesus was invented, He had not one inventor but four, all skilfully co-operating to produce a realistic result.
Many of the facets of His character that we shall examine are not on the surface of the record. We have to look very carefully, to dig them out from where they lie, half-buried in the text. Does this look like fiction, or fact? Novelists do not usually hide all their best points, so that only a diligent student can find them!
We enter the gospel story on the evening before He is crucified. He is in an upstairs room with the twelve apostles, where they are about to have supper. He knows that this will be the last meal of His mortal life, and He intends to make it a memorable one. Two passages summarise one aspect of this meal:
" When Jesus knew that His hour was come . . . having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end."9
"And He said unto them, With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer ... And He took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is My body which is given for you; this do in remembrance of Me. Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you." 10
From these two passages, we can deduce:
That He knew what was coming to Him. He had often said that one day He would be crucified,11 and now the time had arrived.
Nevertheless, He was not thinking of the frightful pain that would soon be racking His own body. His only concern was love for His disciples: "He loved them unto the end."
By comparing similar expressions in the Old Testament, we can see that "with desire I have desired" is a Jewish way of saying, "with a very intense desire". For their sakes He was terribly keen to hold that ceremonial meal with them.
He turned that meal into a dramatised parable. He broke bread, and used it to represent the next days tearing of His own flesh. He poured wine, and made it a symbol of His blood that would soon be flowing from a multitude of wounds.
Any other man would have wanted to forget about the torture that was coming to him tomorrow. But Jesus was prepared to bring it vividly to mind. Although it was so painful to Himself, He knew that this simple ceremony would benefit His disciples for centuries to come. And so He performed it with eager desire.
A further group of verses shows up another aspect of that meal:
" He poureth water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith He was girded... So after He had washed their feet, and had taken His garments, and was set down again, He said unto them, Know ye what I have done to you? Ye call me Master and Lord, and ye say well, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one anothers feet. 12
" And as they did eat, He said, Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall betray Me. And they were exceeding sorrowful, and began every one to say unto Him, Lord, is it I?"13
One aspect of His character lies right on the surface here. He was an exceedingly humble man. He was willing to do a very tiring and unpleasant job. But why did He do it? Couldn't they all wash their own feet?
He was not the sort of man to show off. Nor was He doing an unnecessary chore just so that He could give them a lecture about helping one another. There was a very good reason for His action, but it takes a careful student of the gospels to discover it.
We learn the reason from another gospel. Soon after supper the disciples found themselves unable to stay awake.14 Evidently they were all utterly weary with overwork and lack of sleep. So the Masters work upon their tired feet was a real and necessary act of loving kindness.
But there is yet another lesson lying under the surface. It lies behind that chorus of astonishment, "Is it I?" which rose up when He said, "One of you shall betray Me."
Obviously they had not the slightest idea who the traitor was. But Jesus knew. John says so, explicitly.15 A few minutes before, Jesus had washed the feet of Judas. And He must have washed the traitors feet with the same loving care that He bestowed upon the other eleven. Otherwise someone would have noticed, and said, "Have you seen how the Master is looking at Judas? I wonder whats wrong."
But nobody noticed any difference-hence that repeated question, "Is it I?"
What superhuman love, if these records really are true and Jesus really did behave like that!
But what superhuman artistry if Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were four deceivers, weaving together the most elaborately hidden pen portrait in the history of fiction!
Gethsemane
Supper is over. Judas Iscariot has gone off alone to earn his blood money. Jesus and the faithful eleven go out into the darkness of the Garden of Gethsemane. In one part of the garden the disciples drop to the earth exhausted, and sleep.
In another part, Jesus begins His last great struggle against His mortal body.
"He kneeled down, and prayed, saying Father if Thou be willing, remove this cup from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Thine, be done. And there appeared an angel unto Him from heaven, strengthening Him. And being in an agony He prayed more earnestly, and His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground."16
This does not read like fiction. No gospel writer would want to invent an incident like that. Inventors of propaganda might have told a tale about Jesus facing death with unruffled calm. But the gospel writers were not inventors of propaganda. They record how the Son of God admitted that one side of Him would have liked to escape crucifixion. They portray Him as fighting a terrific battle to overcome His human desire-a battle so great that He was in agony, while the sweat poured off Him like blood.
How easily this story could have been (yes, and has been) misinterpreted by the immature as something unworthy of the Son of God. But the apostles wrote it just the same. They wrote with the candour of men who have nothing to hide, who are only concerned to record the plain, unvarnished facts.
No sooner has Jesus won His battle than lights appear, coming through the olive trees towards His little band. They hear the clink of steel, and the tramp of many men. Unless something is done quickly there will be twelve arrests instead of one, and eleven extra crosses on Calvary tomorrow.
The next act of Jesus always reminds me of Captain Oates of the Antarctic, who said goodbye to his friends and walked off into the blizzard to die, hoping that through his sacrifice they might survive. "It was the act of a brave man and an English gentleman," wrote Captain Scott in his diary.
When Scotts diary was found, he and his fellows were all dead. Yet everybody takes it for granted that Scott was telling the truth. His account bears all the marks of a true record. And similarly Johns gospel reads like sober fact, not glamourised fiction.
"Jesus therefore, knowing all things that should come upon Him, went forth and said unto them, Whom seek ye? They answered Him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus saith unto them, I am He. And Judas also, which betrayed Him, stood with them. As soon then as He had said unto them, I am He, they went backward, and fell to the ground. Then asked He them again, Whom seek ye? And they said, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus answered, I have told you that I am He: if therefore ye seek Me, let these go their way."17
But what lies behind that strange statement in the middle of the passage, "they went backward and fell to the ground"? The reader inevitably wonders what made a strong force of armed men do that. If John had been writing fiction, would he have left that question unanswered? Surely not. By stating the fact, and leaving us to draw our own conclusions, John shows that he is no embroiderer of fancy tales
As so often happens, another book of the Bible supplies the probable explanation for us. When Christs first martyr, Stephen, was in a somewhat similar position, his executioners "saw his face as it had been the face of an angel".18 If the face of Jesus similarly shone with angelic glory for a moment, it is not surprising that His enemies staggered backwards in terror.
To the Cross
So the innocent man was led away, to be sentenced on a trumped-up charge with the aid of bribed witnesses. Yet He would not argue in His own defence.19 When He spoke it was for the sake of others.
He even showed a measure of sympathy for Pilate, to whom He said: "Thou couldest have no power at all against Me, except it were given thee from above. Therefore he that delivered Me unto thee hath the greater sin."20
With the rough heavy cross upon His shoulder, He struggled along the road to Calvary. Even then, His thoughts were upon others rather than Himself.
"And there followed Him a great company of people, and of women, which also bewailed and lamented Him. But Jesus turning unto them said, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for Me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children. For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, "Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the breasts which never gave suck.""21
It was to be thirty-odd years before the Roman armies came to destroy Jerusalem. But to Jesus, that dreadful day to come was even more tragic than His own immediate plight.
Even while He hung on the cross, in His final awful pain, He could still help others.
He cried with a loud voice, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?"22 Though at first sight this looks like weakness or despair it was nothing of the kind. Those words are actually the first line of Psalm 22, which, as we saw in Chapter 4 is a wonderfully detailed prophecy of the events on that dreadful day. By reciting this title-line of a well-known Jewish hymn, Jesus was as good as saying, "Look everybody! See how Messianic prophecy is being fulfilled today. See, and believe!"
He prayed for His executioners to be forgiven, because they did not understand the enormity of their offence.23
He arranged for a faithful disciple to take care of His heartbroken mother.24
He comforted the dying thief who had come to believe in Him at the eleventh hour.25
When there was nothing else left for Him to do, He gave a shout of triumph-"It is finished!"26 Then, with quiet dignity, He died:
"He said, Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit. And having said thus, He gave up the ghost."27
We have not been able to look at more than a fraction of the gospel records of the crucifixion. But what we have seen is a picture of a man like no other man, a man that no first-century legend-spinner could possibly have invented. No wonder that the centurion who watched it all said, "Truly, this man was the Son of God!"28
Did the Gospel Writers Exaggerate?
We have disposed of one possibility. The gospels are not pure fiction. But there is that other possibility, that they might be a mixture of fact and fiction. Could the gospel writers have described an "ordinary" good man, and then added all sorts of imaginary sayings and events, just as a modern writer might write a novel about Napoleon or Julius Caesar?
This suggestion also runs against the facts. Here are four solid reasons for believing that the gospels are all fact, not a mixture of fact and fiction.
The gospel writers sound like reliable men. You will need to read all four gospels for yourself to appreciate that this is so. Then you will see that these books were obviously not written by men out to create a sensation. They each tell their tale in a simple, straightforward way. Where it is appropriate they point out how Old Testament prophecy was fulfilled in Jesus. Apart from this, they write like men reporting facts, not like men determined to impress their readers.
They are not afraid to mention things that, to a casual reader, may seem unfavourable to their cause. They report some surprising acts and sayings of Jesus which, at first glance, seem to show Him in an unfavourable light. We have to study these passages very closely, often by comparing one gospel with another, before we can see that Jesus did in fact have good reason for everything He said and did. (We have seen several examples of this already in this chapter.)
Again, they are not at all like four dishonest witnesses determined to present a united front. Each tells his story from his own point of view, regardless of what the others have said. Sometimes it even looks as if they contradict each other. Only when you study the records closely can you see that there is real harmony behind the apparent contradictions, as Chapter 19 shows.
All these things are the marks of honest men, telling a true story.
Their stories hang together as a whole. If the gospels are a mixture of fact and fiction, then which bits are the factual bits? Hundreds of unbelievers and half-believers have tried to answer this question to their own satisfaction.
But no two have ever reached exactly the same conclusion. They have been attempting the impossible. It cant be done. The gospels do not read like a patchwork album. They read like a consistent, unified record. (If you should think that modern scholars have shown that the gospels are in fact a patchwork album, please reserve your judgment until you have read Part Two of this book.)
Our character study showed that the Jesus of the gospels had a character far above that of any other man. Take away all the passages that indicate a superhuman character for Jesus, and there is very little left. The four gospels are absolutely consistent in their message that Jesus was a uniquely righteous person; consequently, it makes sense to accept that He was.
Once you grant this, everything else in the gospels follows naturally. Despite His quiet humility He had a serene confidence that He was sinless, that He was Messiah, that He was Son of God. All this ties up with His perfect character; it is what we might have expected.
So are the stories of His miracles. The very presence of the Son of God on earth was itself a miracle. Nothing could be more natural than that He should work some miracles for the good of mankind while He was here.
If you have an old, worn-out Bible to spare, try this little experiment. Blot out all the miracles from your four gospels, and see what is left. You will find that the remaining fragments often fail to make sense. This clearly shows that the miracle stories are not something added as an afterthought, but are an integral part of the original record.
(Please dont shut your mind to these facts because some people argue that it is unscientific to believe in miracles. We shall be looking at miracles from a scientific viewpoint in Chapter 21.)
They did not keep on writing. These four books are the best sellers of a ll the worlds literature. Yet they are extremely brief. They occupy only twenty or thirty pages each, in the average printed Bible. No other writings by Matthew or Mark are known, and only about another thirty pages by Luke and twenty by John.
If their writing were the product of their own genius, why didnt they keep on writing? Creative geniuses cannot bear to stop after one short outburst. But since the gospel writers did stop so soon, they were evidently not men of genius eager to express themselves in creative work. Nor could they have been spurred on by the desire for fame.
Some unbelievers suggest that they did keep on writing, but that their other works were not preserved. But this only creates another problem: why did their readers not bother to keep the other works of these brilliant authors? Hundreds of pages of the writings of less gifted Jews and Greeks of that period have survived, but only a handful of pages by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Why?
If we regard these men as mere literary geniuses the problem is insoluble. Bestseller writers have seldom or never been known to burst into full flower with one brief work of superb artistry, and then stop. If only one gospel writer had done so, we might perhaps explain it as a remarkable exception to the general rule. But since two have done it, and the other two have added only a few more pages by way of sequel,29 we need some better explanation.
There is only one explanation that makes psychological sense. They must have been single-minded men with one purpose: to set down a few facts of tremendous importance. They told their tale briefly and accurately-and then stopped.
They do not tell us what Jesus looked like. Fiction writers almost always give us some sort of picture of their great heroes. If Matthew, Mark, Luke and John really were adding fiction to fact, surely one of them would have dropped some hint about the appearance of Jesus. Yet none of them gives us a clue.
We have no idea whether He was short or tall, fat or thin, dark or fair, handsome or ugly. Why not? There is one obvious explanation which fits the facts. God said to an Old Testament prophet:
"The Lord seeth not as man seeth, for man looketh on the Outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart."30
The evidence before us suggests that Jesus really was the Son of God. How very fitting that God should guide the pens of the four men who described His Son, to ensure that they gave us a perfect picture of His "heart", but not the slightest idea of His "outward appearance".
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 Quoted by A. R. Short, in Why Believe? Inter-Varsity Press, London, 7th edn., 1958
2 1 Cor. 1:23
3 Matt. 26:5o~53
4 For example, Matt. 5:38-48; 10:16; Rom. 12:17-21
5 See G. C. Field, Pacifism and Conscientious Objection. Cambridge University Press, 1945. Also Bertrand Russell, Power (chapter 7), George Allen and Unwin, London, 1938. These two eminent philosophers cannot have been biased in favour of Christian pacifism, since they both declared themselves to be non-Christian and non-pacifist. (It is a common mistake to think of Bertrand Russell as a pacifist. His philosophy was to support what he regarded as "just" wars, and oppose "unjust" wars. Thus he opposed the first world war and the Vietnam war, but supported the war against Hitler.) Yet both writers accepted as a fact that the early Church was, by and large, a pacifist community. For a detailed statement of the historical evidence, see C. J. Cadoux, The Early Church and the World. T. and T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1925
6 Acts 28:22
7 Life of Jesus, in Collected Works of Theodore Parker, edited by F. P. Cobbe. Trjibner, London, 1863-71
8 John Stuart Mill, Essays on Nature, the Utility of Religion and Theism. Longmans, London, 1874
9 John 13:1
10 Luke 22:15-20
11 For example, Matt. 26:2
12 John 13:5, 12-14
13 Matt. 26:21, 22
14 Mark 14:37-40
15 John 13:11
16 Luke 22:41-44
17 John 18:4-8
18 Acts 6:15
19 Mark 15:3-5
20 John 19:11
21 Luke23:27-29
22 Matt. 27:46
23 Luke 23:34
24 John 19:25-27
25 Luke 23:39-43
26 John 19:30
27 Luke 23:46
28 Mark 15:39
29 The Acts of the Apostles, by Luke; the Book of Revelation and three short letters, by John.
30 1 Sam. 16:7
Now we have left the evidence of fulfilled prophecy behind, and must go on to look at a very different kind of evidence. This will involve making a study of Jesus Christ Himself.
"Ah," you may say, "but this begs the question. How do we know that there ever was such a person? Whats the use of assuming that the gospels tell the truth about Jesus, and then building conclusions on such a shaky foundation?"
Quite so. Very true. And I have no intention of doing any such thing. All I shall assume is that the gospels are either fact, or fiction, or a mixture of the two. (You wont disagree with that, will you?) Then we shall examine the gospels critically to see which of those three alternatives seems most likely. Fair enough?
But before we begin, it is worth noting that even unbelievers generally recognise that the gospels are not pure fiction. One of the most learned of all unbelievers was Sir James Frazer. His classic history of magic and religion, The Golden Bough, was a landmark in twentieth century scholarship. He wrote:
"My theory assumes the historical reality of Jesus of Nazareth as a great religious and moral teacher [not, you will notice, as the Son of God] who founded Christianity and was crucified at Jerusalem under the governorship of Pontius Pilate. The testimony of the gospels, confirmed by the hostile evidence of Tacitus (Ann. 15,44) and the younger Pliny (Epist. 10,96) appears amply sufficient to establish these facts to the satisfaction of all unprejudiced enquirers. It is only the details of the life and death of Christ that remain, and will probably always remain, shrouded in the mists of uncertainty. The doubts which have been cast upon the historical reality of Jesus are, in my judgment, unworthy of serious attention. Quite apart from the positive evidence of history and tradition, the origin of a great religious and moral reform is inexplicable without the personal existence of a great reformer."1 (The italics are mine.)
Inventing the Uninventable
About 500 years ago there lived in Italy one of the greatest geniuses of all time, Leonardo da Vinci. Besides painting some of the worlds greatest pictures, he was a research scientist of the first rank. He is often said to have "invented" the aeroplane, the steamship, and the submarine.
Perhaps "invented" is too strong a word, because he never built any such machines. He did, however, first hatch out the ideas that hundreds of years later led to the development of those modern marvels. So we can give him the benefit of the doubt and say that, in a sense, he did invent them.
His inventions were brilliant, but not impossible. All the background knowledge that he needed was to hand. But there were certain things that he did not invent, because in his day they were uninventable. He could not invent a heart-lung machine, because he did not know about the circulation of the blood; more than a century was to elapse before Harvey discovered that. Nor could Leonardo invent an atom bomb, because he regarded matter as solid stuff; until modern scientists discovered that atoms were not solid lumps after all, but hollow spheres peppered with electric particles, the atom bomb was uninventable.
Now the argument I shall put forward in this chapter is this: the Jesus of whom we read in the gospels was, at the time the gospels were written, uninventable. Consequently the Jesus of the gospels must have been a historical character, not a fictional one.
The first thing to note is that nobody wanted a person like the Jesus of the New Testament. (To avoid repetition I shall not keep saying "the Jesus of the New Testament" but simply "Jesus" - while, for the time being, leaving completely open the question whether He was a historical character or a fictitious one.) Paul summed up the situation when he wrote:
"But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness."2
Nearly all the Jews had no time for Him. They were bigots, completely set in their religious ways. This man turned all their religious ideas upside down. He was nothing like the conquering king of a Messiah that they wanted. No Jew would have wanted to invent such an improbable, unacceptable kind of Messiah.
Nearly all the Gentiles had no use for Him, either. He was altogether unlike the kind of men they admired. Theirs was a cruel, selfish, lustful world. Human life was cheap. They would leave unwanted babies (girls, usually) to die with as little compunction as we drown unwanted kittens.
Their pleasures were mostly immoral ones: watching gladiators fighting to the death, or worshipping at idolatrous temples which were often only glorified brothels. It is hard to imagine any Gentile inventing a Jesus whose teaching was so full of condemnation for the Gentile way of life.
Into this harsh world came Jesus, teaching things that made men marvel. He preached the necessity of unselfish love, love that stopped at nothing, love that led men to lay down their lives rather than use force against others. He preached it, and He set the example Himself. He refused to defend Himself, or even to let His disciples defend Him.3 Instead, He went meekly to a horrible death.
We are not now concerned with the weighty question of whether Christians today should be pacifists. My personal opinion is in favour of Christian pacifism today, but that is beside the point. At the moment we are not concerned with opinions but with facts. The relevant facts are:
That Jesus introduced to a hostile world the entirely new teaching of "Love to the uttermost".
In keeping with this, He and His apostles preached pacifism. 4
He constantly lived up to His own teaching, even though it led Him to a cruel death.
There is plenty of historical evidence that the early Christian Church followed His difficult teaching, including pacifism.5
It is not surprising that the originator of these unpopular teachings made few converts at first. In the very early days Christianity was a small sect "everywhere spoken against".6 It was an unpopular minority religion.
True, by the fourth century it had grown great. But only because the standards had been lowered, the fine new teaching had been watered down. Yet even despite this watering down, despite the wickedness that has been done in the name of Christ by millions of unworthy professors of Christianity-despite everything, the teaching of Jesus has met the worlds need.
Where men have truly followed the teaching of the gospels, all that is best in the sad story of mankind has followed. Even unbelievers admit that. Here are the words of a famous American who did not believe that Jesus was the Son of God, Theodore Parker:
"Consider what a work his [Christ's] words and deeds have wrought in the world. Remember that the greatest minds, the richest hearts, have set no loftier aim, no truer method than his of perfect love to God and man. Shall we be told that such a man never lived - the whole story is a lie! Suppose that Plato and Newton never lived. But who did their wonders, and thought their thought? It takes a Newton to forge a Newton. What man could have fabricated a Jesus?"7
Besides paying tribute to all that the Christian message has done for mankind, Parker takes up the question with which we began: could anyone have invented Jesus? And although he regarded Jesus as a mere man, he answered with a resounding, "No!"
Another famous writer who was a complete unbeliever, John Stuart Mill, backs him up:
"It is of no use to say that Christ as exhibited in the gospels is not historical, and that we know not how much of what is admirable has been superadded by the tradition of his followers. Who among his disciples or among their proselytes was capable of inventing the sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining the life and character revealed in the gospels? Certainly not the fishermen of Galilee, still less the early Christian writers."8
His Sublime character
So far so good. The idea that any lesser men could have "invented" Jesus begins to look unlikely. But the evidence is not yet conclusive. We must go a little further, and study more closely the character of this Jesus.
To save space, we shall only be able to consider the last twenty-four hours of His life. As we do this, it is important that you bear two things in mind:
We shall be dodging about between all four gospels, because this is the only way we can build up a complete picture of Him. So, if Jesus was invented, He had not one inventor but four, all skilfully co-operating to produce a realistic result.
Many of the facets of His character that we shall examine are not on the surface of the record. We have to look very carefully, to dig them out from where they lie, half-buried in the text. Does this look like fiction, or fact? Novelists do not usually hide all their best points, so that only a diligent student can find them!
We enter the gospel story on the evening before He is crucified. He is in an upstairs room with the twelve apostles, where they are about to have supper. He knows that this will be the last meal of His mortal life, and He intends to make it a memorable one. Two passages summarise one aspect of this meal:
" When Jesus knew that His hour was come . . . having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end."9
"And He said unto them, With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer ... And He took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is My body which is given for you; this do in remembrance of Me. Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you." 10
From these two passages, we can deduce:
That He knew what was coming to Him. He had often said that one day He would be crucified,11 and now the time had arrived.
Nevertheless, He was not thinking of the frightful pain that would soon be racking His own body. His only concern was love for His disciples: "He loved them unto the end."
By comparing similar expressions in the Old Testament, we can see that "with desire I have desired" is a Jewish way of saying, "with a very intense desire". For their sakes He was terribly keen to hold that ceremonial meal with them.
He turned that meal into a dramatised parable. He broke bread, and used it to represent the next days tearing of His own flesh. He poured wine, and made it a symbol of His blood that would soon be flowing from a multitude of wounds.
Any other man would have wanted to forget about the torture that was coming to him tomorrow. But Jesus was prepared to bring it vividly to mind. Although it was so painful to Himself, He knew that this simple ceremony would benefit His disciples for centuries to come. And so He performed it with eager desire.
A further group of verses shows up another aspect of that meal:
" He poureth water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith He was girded... So after He had washed their feet, and had taken His garments, and was set down again, He said unto them, Know ye what I have done to you? Ye call me Master and Lord, and ye say well, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one anothers feet. 12
" And as they did eat, He said, Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall betray Me. And they were exceeding sorrowful, and began every one to say unto Him, Lord, is it I?"13
One aspect of His character lies right on the surface here. He was an exceedingly humble man. He was willing to do a very tiring and unpleasant job. But why did He do it? Couldn't they all wash their own feet?
He was not the sort of man to show off. Nor was He doing an unnecessary chore just so that He could give them a lecture about helping one another. There was a very good reason for His action, but it takes a careful student of the gospels to discover it.
We learn the reason from another gospel. Soon after supper the disciples found themselves unable to stay awake.14 Evidently they were all utterly weary with overwork and lack of sleep. So the Masters work upon their tired feet was a real and necessary act of loving kindness.
But there is yet another lesson lying under the surface. It lies behind that chorus of astonishment, "Is it I?" which rose up when He said, "One of you shall betray Me."
Obviously they had not the slightest idea who the traitor was. But Jesus knew. John says so, explicitly.15 A few minutes before, Jesus had washed the feet of Judas. And He must have washed the traitors feet with the same loving care that He bestowed upon the other eleven. Otherwise someone would have noticed, and said, "Have you seen how the Master is looking at Judas? I wonder whats wrong."
But nobody noticed any difference-hence that repeated question, "Is it I?"
What superhuman love, if these records really are true and Jesus really did behave like that!
But what superhuman artistry if Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were four deceivers, weaving together the most elaborately hidden pen portrait in the history of fiction!
Gethsemane
Supper is over. Judas Iscariot has gone off alone to earn his blood money. Jesus and the faithful eleven go out into the darkness of the Garden of Gethsemane. In one part of the garden the disciples drop to the earth exhausted, and sleep.
In another part, Jesus begins His last great struggle against His mortal body.
"He kneeled down, and prayed, saying Father if Thou be willing, remove this cup from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Thine, be done. And there appeared an angel unto Him from heaven, strengthening Him. And being in an agony He prayed more earnestly, and His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground."16
This does not read like fiction. No gospel writer would want to invent an incident like that. Inventors of propaganda might have told a tale about Jesus facing death with unruffled calm. But the gospel writers were not inventors of propaganda. They record how the Son of God admitted that one side of Him would have liked to escape crucifixion. They portray Him as fighting a terrific battle to overcome His human desire-a battle so great that He was in agony, while the sweat poured off Him like blood.
How easily this story could have been (yes, and has been) misinterpreted by the immature as something unworthy of the Son of God. But the apostles wrote it just the same. They wrote with the candour of men who have nothing to hide, who are only concerned to record the plain, unvarnished facts.
No sooner has Jesus won His battle than lights appear, coming through the olive trees towards His little band. They hear the clink of steel, and the tramp of many men. Unless something is done quickly there will be twelve arrests instead of one, and eleven extra crosses on Calvary tomorrow.
The next act of Jesus always reminds me of Captain Oates of the Antarctic, who said goodbye to his friends and walked off into the blizzard to die, hoping that through his sacrifice they might survive. "It was the act of a brave man and an English gentleman," wrote Captain Scott in his diary.
When Scotts diary was found, he and his fellows were all dead. Yet everybody takes it for granted that Scott was telling the truth. His account bears all the marks of a true record. And similarly Johns gospel reads like sober fact, not glamourised fiction.
"Jesus therefore, knowing all things that should come upon Him, went forth and said unto them, Whom seek ye? They answered Him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus saith unto them, I am He. And Judas also, which betrayed Him, stood with them. As soon then as He had said unto them, I am He, they went backward, and fell to the ground. Then asked He them again, Whom seek ye? And they said, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus answered, I have told you that I am He: if therefore ye seek Me, let these go their way."17
But what lies behind that strange statement in the middle of the passage, "they went backward and fell to the ground"? The reader inevitably wonders what made a strong force of armed men do that. If John had been writing fiction, would he have left that question unanswered? Surely not. By stating the fact, and leaving us to draw our own conclusions, John shows that he is no embroiderer of fancy tales
As so often happens, another book of the Bible supplies the probable explanation for us. When Christs first martyr, Stephen, was in a somewhat similar position, his executioners "saw his face as it had been the face of an angel".18 If the face of Jesus similarly shone with angelic glory for a moment, it is not surprising that His enemies staggered backwards in terror.
To the Cross
So the innocent man was led away, to be sentenced on a trumped-up charge with the aid of bribed witnesses. Yet He would not argue in His own defence.19 When He spoke it was for the sake of others.
He even showed a measure of sympathy for Pilate, to whom He said: "Thou couldest have no power at all against Me, except it were given thee from above. Therefore he that delivered Me unto thee hath the greater sin."20
With the rough heavy cross upon His shoulder, He struggled along the road to Calvary. Even then, His thoughts were upon others rather than Himself.
"And there followed Him a great company of people, and of women, which also bewailed and lamented Him. But Jesus turning unto them said, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for Me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children. For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, "Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the breasts which never gave suck.""21
It was to be thirty-odd years before the Roman armies came to destroy Jerusalem. But to Jesus, that dreadful day to come was even more tragic than His own immediate plight.
Even while He hung on the cross, in His final awful pain, He could still help others.
He cried with a loud voice, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?"22 Though at first sight this looks like weakness or despair it was nothing of the kind. Those words are actually the first line of Psalm 22, which, as we saw in Chapter 4 is a wonderfully detailed prophecy of the events on that dreadful day. By reciting this title-line of a well-known Jewish hymn, Jesus was as good as saying, "Look everybody! See how Messianic prophecy is being fulfilled today. See, and believe!"
He prayed for His executioners to be forgiven, because they did not understand the enormity of their offence.23
He arranged for a faithful disciple to take care of His heartbroken mother.24
He comforted the dying thief who had come to believe in Him at the eleventh hour.25
When there was nothing else left for Him to do, He gave a shout of triumph-"It is finished!"26 Then, with quiet dignity, He died:
"He said, Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit. And having said thus, He gave up the ghost."27
We have not been able to look at more than a fraction of the gospel records of the crucifixion. But what we have seen is a picture of a man like no other man, a man that no first-century legend-spinner could possibly have invented. No wonder that the centurion who watched it all said, "Truly, this man was the Son of God!"28
Did the Gospel Writers Exaggerate?
We have disposed of one possibility. The gospels are not pure fiction. But there is that other possibility, that they might be a mixture of fact and fiction. Could the gospel writers have described an "ordinary" good man, and then added all sorts of imaginary sayings and events, just as a modern writer might write a novel about Napoleon or Julius Caesar?
This suggestion also runs against the facts. Here are four solid reasons for believing that the gospels are all fact, not a mixture of fact and fiction.
The gospel writers sound like reliable men. You will need to read all four gospels for yourself to appreciate that this is so. Then you will see that these books were obviously not written by men out to create a sensation. They each tell their tale in a simple, straightforward way. Where it is appropriate they point out how Old Testament prophecy was fulfilled in Jesus. Apart from this, they write like men reporting facts, not like men determined to impress their readers.
They are not afraid to mention things that, to a casual reader, may seem unfavourable to their cause. They report some surprising acts and sayings of Jesus which, at first glance, seem to show Him in an unfavourable light. We have to study these passages very closely, often by comparing one gospel with another, before we can see that Jesus did in fact have good reason for everything He said and did. (We have seen several examples of this already in this chapter.)
Again, they are not at all like four dishonest witnesses determined to present a united front. Each tells his story from his own point of view, regardless of what the others have said. Sometimes it even looks as if they contradict each other. Only when you study the records closely can you see that there is real harmony behind the apparent contradictions, as Chapter 19 shows.
All these things are the marks of honest men, telling a true story.
Their stories hang together as a whole. If the gospels are a mixture of fact and fiction, then which bits are the factual bits? Hundreds of unbelievers and half-believers have tried to answer this question to their own satisfaction.
But no two have ever reached exactly the same conclusion. They have been attempting the impossible. It cant be done. The gospels do not read like a patchwork album. They read like a consistent, unified record. (If you should think that modern scholars have shown that the gospels are in fact a patchwork album, please reserve your judgment until you have read Part Two of this book.)
Our character study showed that the Jesus of the gospels had a character far above that of any other man. Take away all the passages that indicate a superhuman character for Jesus, and there is very little left. The four gospels are absolutely consistent in their message that Jesus was a uniquely righteous person; consequently, it makes sense to accept that He was.
Once you grant this, everything else in the gospels follows naturally. Despite His quiet humility He had a serene confidence that He was sinless, that He was Messiah, that He was Son of God. All this ties up with His perfect character; it is what we might have expected.
So are the stories of His miracles. The very presence of the Son of God on earth was itself a miracle. Nothing could be more natural than that He should work some miracles for the good of mankind while He was here.
If you have an old, worn-out Bible to spare, try this little experiment. Blot out all the miracles from your four gospels, and see what is left. You will find that the remaining fragments often fail to make sense. This clearly shows that the miracle stories are not something added as an afterthought, but are an integral part of the original record.
(Please dont shut your mind to these facts because some people argue that it is unscientific to believe in miracles. We shall be looking at miracles from a scientific viewpoint in Chapter 21.)
They did not keep on writing. These four books are the best sellers of a ll the worlds literature. Yet they are extremely brief. They occupy only twenty or thirty pages each, in the average printed Bible. No other writings by Matthew or Mark are known, and only about another thirty pages by Luke and twenty by John.
If their writing were the product of their own genius, why didnt they keep on writing? Creative geniuses cannot bear to stop after one short outburst. But since the gospel writers did stop so soon, they were evidently not men of genius eager to express themselves in creative work. Nor could they have been spurred on by the desire for fame.
Some unbelievers suggest that they did keep on writing, but that their other works were not preserved. But this only creates another problem: why did their readers not bother to keep the other works of these brilliant authors? Hundreds of pages of the writings of less gifted Jews and Greeks of that period have survived, but only a handful of pages by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Why?
If we regard these men as mere literary geniuses the problem is insoluble. Bestseller writers have seldom or never been known to burst into full flower with one brief work of superb artistry, and then stop. If only one gospel writer had done so, we might perhaps explain it as a remarkable exception to the general rule. But since two have done it, and the other two have added only a few more pages by way of sequel,29 we need some better explanation.
There is only one explanation that makes psychological sense. They must have been single-minded men with one purpose: to set down a few facts of tremendous importance. They told their tale briefly and accurately-and then stopped.
They do not tell us what Jesus looked like. Fiction writers almost always give us some sort of picture of their great heroes. If Matthew, Mark, Luke and John really were adding fiction to fact, surely one of them would have dropped some hint about the appearance of Jesus. Yet none of them gives us a clue.
We have no idea whether He was short or tall, fat or thin, dark or fair, handsome or ugly. Why not? There is one obvious explanation which fits the facts. God said to an Old Testament prophet:
"The Lord seeth not as man seeth, for man looketh on the Outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart."30
The evidence before us suggests that Jesus really was the Son of God. How very fitting that God should guide the pens of the four men who described His Son, to ensure that they gave us a perfect picture of His "heart", but not the slightest idea of His "outward appearance".
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 Quoted by A. R. Short, in Why Believe? Inter-Varsity Press, London, 7th edn., 1958
2 1 Cor. 1:23
3 Matt. 26:5o~53
4 For example, Matt. 5:38-48; 10:16; Rom. 12:17-21
5 See G. C. Field, Pacifism and Conscientious Objection. Cambridge University Press, 1945. Also Bertrand Russell, Power (chapter 7), George Allen and Unwin, London, 1938. These two eminent philosophers cannot have been biased in favour of Christian pacifism, since they both declared themselves to be non-Christian and non-pacifist. (It is a common mistake to think of Bertrand Russell as a pacifist. His philosophy was to support what he regarded as "just" wars, and oppose "unjust" wars. Thus he opposed the first world war and the Vietnam war, but supported the war against Hitler.) Yet both writers accepted as a fact that the early Church was, by and large, a pacifist community. For a detailed statement of the historical evidence, see C. J. Cadoux, The Early Church and the World. T. and T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1925
6 Acts 28:22
7 Life of Jesus, in Collected Works of Theodore Parker, edited by F. P. Cobbe. Trjibner, London, 1863-71
8 John Stuart Mill, Essays on Nature, the Utility of Religion and Theism. Longmans, London, 1874
9 John 13:1
10 Luke 22:15-20
11 For example, Matt. 26:2
12 John 13:5, 12-14
13 Matt. 26:21, 22
14 Mark 14:37-40
15 John 13:11
16 Luke 22:41-44
17 John 18:4-8
18 Acts 6:15
19 Mark 15:3-5
20 John 19:11
21 Luke23:27-29
22 Matt. 27:46
23 Luke 23:34
24 John 19:25-27
25 Luke 23:39-43
26 John 19:30
27 Luke 23:46
28 Mark 15:39
29 The Acts of the Apostles, by Luke; the Book of Revelation and three short letters, by John.
30 1 Sam. 16:7
big_bad_buff
New member
Lestat said:
No, my main man JC was the son of god, the lord and savior. JC was god in Incarnate somehow, I’ am not capable of completely comprehending this to the full extent. nor do i think anyone is able too.
Yes. And God, Mary, Joseph, the Holy Spirit and all the saints and all the sinners.
Not a 'roller ... just a believer.
Not a 'roller ... just a believer.
Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!
+In the name of God the Creator, of Jesus the Risen Christ and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
As my brother Curtis said during the Vigil this morning, for the forty days of Lent we hold fast from uttering the magnificent word of praise “Alleluia” during worship. The word itself is very simple and has a straightforward meaning. It derives from the Hebrew meaning, “praise Yahweh” or “praise God” or “praise the Lord” and there are versions of the word in Old English, Old Latin and Greek. But to me it takes on a much grander connotation in the context of worship than just simply “praise God.” To me it implies an openness and offering to God. In one utterance it expresses thanksgiving and awe; blessing and humility; worship and praise. For me it is the only word that begins to capture some of the non-verbal mystical reverence I hold for God. For those of you who worship with us in Eastertide this year, we will make up for our Lenten “Alleluia fast” three-fold. You will be hearing the word a lot. And I am very relieved to have it back in my daily routine both publicly and privately.
Today is such a great day of joyous celebration. Today is a day, the day for praising and glorifying God. Around the world bells will peel, trumpets will blare and choirs will sing their Alleluias. This is all because of an empty tomb and the glorified body of Christ risen from the dead.
There are many who do not believe in this part of our Christian faith. Some scoff at the notion that any thinking person could accept the facts that we proclaim here this morning. No one, they say, with a modicum of intellectual integrity could possibly accept the ridiculous notion that a man being fully dead came back to life. It's just not possible. Perhaps you know someone who thinks this way. It's fairly common these days. In fact that argument has been published quite a lot lately. No smart person could possibly believe in the resurrection of a truly dead person back to the living. It's just not possible.
Well, I'm someone who has taken a good bit of pride over the years in my intellectual prowess and I do believe it. And I don't just “sort of” believe it either. I absolutely believe it. I believe that Jesus of Nazareth was crucifed until dead by the Romans in Jerusalem and I believe he was laid in a tomb and I believe his dead corpse lay there until the third day when his glorified body emerged from that tomb and appeared to large numbers of people, many of whom knew him and recognized him before he finally ascended into heaven. I believe it. I believe it without equivocation or apology. There are powerful symbolic and metaphorical forces at work in the Resurrection, it's a potent sign, but I want to be very clear I also believe these accounts to be plain facts, historical events. It happened.
On Saint Thomas Day I said in a sermon that I thought it was OK to have doubts about our faith. That Jesus was OK with that. I do believe that. And I also believe it's OK to be confident in our faith. Jesus is OK with that too! I believe what I believe and I live in community that has taken the name of “Evangelist.” So on this most holy morning let me try to follow Jesus' commission to me and explain at least a little bit of what I have seen with my eyes and heard with my ears and why I believe in the Resurrection of Our Lord.
Now if you are a skeptic who happens to have wandered into this monastery church on Easter morning and you think I'm about to convince you of something, you will probably be disappointed. Even if I had videotape of a glowing Jesus emerging from the tomb, I probably couldn't convince you.
The Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne, the mathematician and physicist who later in life became an Anglican priest, says in his very fine book The Faith of a Physicist there are two ways to look at the Resurrection: from the bottom up, building a case on empirical evidence, and there is some evidence to be examined; and from the top down, looking for God's purposes in sending Jesus into the world. Theologians call this an eschatological approach or looking to the “end of things.”
Now Dr. Polkinghorne's background as a scientist makes him predisposed to be a “bottom up” thinker, compiling evidence and facts. He does this on the Resurrection detailing eyewitness accounts and their veracity and does some pretty good detective work and analysis. But he is most convincing to me in the “top down” argument. Why did God do this thing? How does this event fit in God's plan of creation? Does it make sense for such an extraordinary sign to occur? Is this mystery OK for rational people to accept?
God reached across all space and time to make a sign of love to all generations of humans. There is no disputing that it worked. God got our attention with the Resurrection; a single event that would resonate for all time. Madison Avenue on its very best day can't touch that. It has to be God at work because we cannot control our own mortality. Only God can do that. God remembered us and loved us well enough to make this sign to us. And God will remember our essence and love us well enough to recreate us, resurrect us, in the world to come.
Now I can hear the skeptics saying, “wait a minute, you're talking about getting resurrected yourself, you still haven't even proved Jesus' Resurrection happened.” To which I reply that's right. I told you that you would be disappointed because I'm not going to prove to you the Resurrection happened. I'm going to tell you why I believe it happened. My belief is based on faith. Faith requires a willingness to trust in the mystery of God. Faith means relinquishing the modern compulsion for the illusion of total understanding and total remote control. While it is conventional wisdom in some circles these days that faith inevitably leads to a lack of intellectual integrity or passivity, and granted there may be some examples of dumb faith around these days, I actually believe when all is said and done – faith in the mystery of God is smart. Otherwise we're pretending we know everything already.
Albert Einstein was arguably one of the greatest geniuses of the 20th Century. In 1905 -- his "Annus Mirabilis" -- Einstein's "Miracle Year," his Special Theory of Relativity was born. At age 26, he applies his theory to mass and energy and formulates the simple equation e=mc2. That equation along with three other simple equations revolutionizes mathematics and physics and changes our understanding of the world forever. The effects of the shockwave created by this simple equation, understood today by most school kids better than I understand it, reverberate into this very morning.
Yet, after that amazing year, Einstein didn't contribute a great deal to the world of physics. In fact he spent the last 30 years of his life pursuing a phantom. He called it the “Theory of Everything.” He wanted to find one simple, elegant mathematic equation that would explain it all: the creation, energy, matter, even the future – the end of things.
During this period other physicists were working on something called Quantum Theory. Quantum Theory relies on the behavior of subatomic particles that are too small to be seen and they have unpredictable behaviors. Three of our brothers and many of our friends will be circumnavigating the globe in coming hours and days guided by satellites and computers that work thanks in great part to our understanding of Quantum Theory. But because of its invisible, random nature, Einstein rejected Quantum Theory even as the evidence piled up that it was valid. But it was too mysterious for Einstein, too uncontrollable, too untidy.
As he continued working fruitlessly on his Theory of Everything, on his deathbed Einstein told his nurse that Quantum Theory couldn't be true because, “God wouldn't create the Universe that way.”
“God wouldn't create the Universe that way.” Here is evidence of a man who has forgotten who God is if he ever knew. Here is a man with very little faith in the mystery and power of God and it literally blinded him to the basic truth of the Universe.
“Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed;” (John 20:8 NRSV)
We can be smarter than Einstein. We can acknowledge the mystery in God's creation. The mystery in which we rejoice today is the Paschal Mystery in which God reached across all space and time to give us a sign of eternal love for us and a sign of life that lasts forever. But to participate in this mystery God requires faith of us: good, strong, smart faith. In return we are given freedom: freedom from the need to know everything – that's God's job; freedom from the need to control everything – God takes care of that; freedom from the fear of death – God's in charge of our mortality and our immortality; freedom to live with paradox. In the Paschal Mystery I find evidence that God is remembering me and Love is available to me and the Hope of Glory waits for me.
That's why the Resurrection makes sense to me. Only a sign that great could mean so much. God raised a man from the dead for me and one day God will remember me in the same way. Why should I be so stupid as to ignore that? I am amazed at God's generosity. All that's left for me to say in response to such a precious gift is Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.
© 2005
back to the list of sermons close this window
close this windowAlleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia
Roy Cockrum, SSJE
John 20:1-10
+In the name of God the Creator, of Jesus the Risen Christ and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
As my brother Curtis said during the Vigil this morning, for the forty days of Lent we hold fast from uttering the magnificent word of praise “Alleluia” during worship. The word itself is very simple and has a straightforward meaning. It derives from the Hebrew meaning, “praise Yahweh” or “praise God” or “praise the Lord” and there are versions of the word in Old English, Old Latin and Greek. But to me it takes on a much grander connotation in the context of worship than just simply “praise God.” To me it implies an openness and offering to God. In one utterance it expresses thanksgiving and awe; blessing and humility; worship and praise. For me it is the only word that begins to capture some of the non-verbal mystical reverence I hold for God. For those of you who worship with us in Eastertide this year, we will make up for our Lenten “Alleluia fast” three-fold. You will be hearing the word a lot. And I am very relieved to have it back in my daily routine both publicly and privately.
Today is such a great day of joyous celebration. Today is a day, the day for praising and glorifying God. Around the world bells will peel, trumpets will blare and choirs will sing their Alleluias. This is all because of an empty tomb and the glorified body of Christ risen from the dead.
There are many who do not believe in this part of our Christian faith. Some scoff at the notion that any thinking person could accept the facts that we proclaim here this morning. No one, they say, with a modicum of intellectual integrity could possibly accept the ridiculous notion that a man being fully dead came back to life. It's just not possible. Perhaps you know someone who thinks this way. It's fairly common these days. In fact that argument has been published quite a lot lately. No smart person could possibly believe in the resurrection of a truly dead person back to the living. It's just not possible.
Well, I'm someone who has taken a good bit of pride over the years in my intellectual prowess and I do believe it. And I don't just “sort of” believe it either. I absolutely believe it. I believe that Jesus of Nazareth was crucifed until dead by the Romans in Jerusalem and I believe he was laid in a tomb and I believe his dead corpse lay there until the third day when his glorified body emerged from that tomb and appeared to large numbers of people, many of whom knew him and recognized him before he finally ascended into heaven. I believe it. I believe it without equivocation or apology. There are powerful symbolic and metaphorical forces at work in the Resurrection, it's a potent sign, but I want to be very clear I also believe these accounts to be plain facts, historical events. It happened.
On Saint Thomas Day I said in a sermon that I thought it was OK to have doubts about our faith. That Jesus was OK with that. I do believe that. And I also believe it's OK to be confident in our faith. Jesus is OK with that too! I believe what I believe and I live in community that has taken the name of “Evangelist.” So on this most holy morning let me try to follow Jesus' commission to me and explain at least a little bit of what I have seen with my eyes and heard with my ears and why I believe in the Resurrection of Our Lord.
Now if you are a skeptic who happens to have wandered into this monastery church on Easter morning and you think I'm about to convince you of something, you will probably be disappointed. Even if I had videotape of a glowing Jesus emerging from the tomb, I probably couldn't convince you.
The Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne, the mathematician and physicist who later in life became an Anglican priest, says in his very fine book The Faith of a Physicist there are two ways to look at the Resurrection: from the bottom up, building a case on empirical evidence, and there is some evidence to be examined; and from the top down, looking for God's purposes in sending Jesus into the world. Theologians call this an eschatological approach or looking to the “end of things.”
Now Dr. Polkinghorne's background as a scientist makes him predisposed to be a “bottom up” thinker, compiling evidence and facts. He does this on the Resurrection detailing eyewitness accounts and their veracity and does some pretty good detective work and analysis. But he is most convincing to me in the “top down” argument. Why did God do this thing? How does this event fit in God's plan of creation? Does it make sense for such an extraordinary sign to occur? Is this mystery OK for rational people to accept?
God reached across all space and time to make a sign of love to all generations of humans. There is no disputing that it worked. God got our attention with the Resurrection; a single event that would resonate for all time. Madison Avenue on its very best day can't touch that. It has to be God at work because we cannot control our own mortality. Only God can do that. God remembered us and loved us well enough to make this sign to us. And God will remember our essence and love us well enough to recreate us, resurrect us, in the world to come.
Now I can hear the skeptics saying, “wait a minute, you're talking about getting resurrected yourself, you still haven't even proved Jesus' Resurrection happened.” To which I reply that's right. I told you that you would be disappointed because I'm not going to prove to you the Resurrection happened. I'm going to tell you why I believe it happened. My belief is based on faith. Faith requires a willingness to trust in the mystery of God. Faith means relinquishing the modern compulsion for the illusion of total understanding and total remote control. While it is conventional wisdom in some circles these days that faith inevitably leads to a lack of intellectual integrity or passivity, and granted there may be some examples of dumb faith around these days, I actually believe when all is said and done – faith in the mystery of God is smart. Otherwise we're pretending we know everything already.
Albert Einstein was arguably one of the greatest geniuses of the 20th Century. In 1905 -- his "Annus Mirabilis" -- Einstein's "Miracle Year," his Special Theory of Relativity was born. At age 26, he applies his theory to mass and energy and formulates the simple equation e=mc2. That equation along with three other simple equations revolutionizes mathematics and physics and changes our understanding of the world forever. The effects of the shockwave created by this simple equation, understood today by most school kids better than I understand it, reverberate into this very morning.
Yet, after that amazing year, Einstein didn't contribute a great deal to the world of physics. In fact he spent the last 30 years of his life pursuing a phantom. He called it the “Theory of Everything.” He wanted to find one simple, elegant mathematic equation that would explain it all: the creation, energy, matter, even the future – the end of things.
During this period other physicists were working on something called Quantum Theory. Quantum Theory relies on the behavior of subatomic particles that are too small to be seen and they have unpredictable behaviors. Three of our brothers and many of our friends will be circumnavigating the globe in coming hours and days guided by satellites and computers that work thanks in great part to our understanding of Quantum Theory. But because of its invisible, random nature, Einstein rejected Quantum Theory even as the evidence piled up that it was valid. But it was too mysterious for Einstein, too uncontrollable, too untidy.
As he continued working fruitlessly on his Theory of Everything, on his deathbed Einstein told his nurse that Quantum Theory couldn't be true because, “God wouldn't create the Universe that way.”
“God wouldn't create the Universe that way.” Here is evidence of a man who has forgotten who God is if he ever knew. Here is a man with very little faith in the mystery and power of God and it literally blinded him to the basic truth of the Universe.
“Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed;” (John 20:8 NRSV)
We can be smarter than Einstein. We can acknowledge the mystery in God's creation. The mystery in which we rejoice today is the Paschal Mystery in which God reached across all space and time to give us a sign of eternal love for us and a sign of life that lasts forever. But to participate in this mystery God requires faith of us: good, strong, smart faith. In return we are given freedom: freedom from the need to know everything – that's God's job; freedom from the need to control everything – God takes care of that; freedom from the fear of death – God's in charge of our mortality and our immortality; freedom to live with paradox. In the Paschal Mystery I find evidence that God is remembering me and Love is available to me and the Hope of Glory waits for me.
That's why the Resurrection makes sense to me. Only a sign that great could mean so much. God raised a man from the dead for me and one day God will remember me in the same way. Why should I be so stupid as to ignore that? I am amazed at God's generosity. All that's left for me to say in response to such a precious gift is Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.
© 2005
back to the list of sermons close this window
close this windowAlleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia
Roy Cockrum, SSJE
John 20:1-10
deltreefitness
New member
foreigngirl said:
I'm asking you. You're the one making the claims of knowing better and calling other relgions BS.
U
UA_Iron
Guest
Religion is hereditary.
I am 100% positive that if Einstein had not been raised jewish he would not have converted to it later on.
I am 100% positive that if Einstein had not been raised jewish he would not have converted to it later on.
foreigngirl
New member
deltreefitness said:
I said that claiming to know how many people are gonna go to heaven is BS, claming that Jesus didnt die on a cross is BS, claiming that they know that Jesus was not born at christmas but sometime in March is BS
This sect is claiming that THEY know everything. Nobody can know anything for sure, thats why I called it BS
UA_Iron said:
Well in my case, I had an open mind. After experiencing several signs because I screamed with all my strength at God, I was convinced of his existence and then I asked him who he was... he revealed this to me and also told me that he loved me. I'll leave it at that.
deltreefitness
New member
foreigngirl said:
Maybe so, but where are the hard facts backing up Christianity? Don't you see the irony?
Saintinistic
New member
and so the gravity loop of infinity continues.
we cant preach to the opposition. its fruitless.
the inner voice will close the doors once the voice hears anything contrary to its beliefs, no matter how stupid these beliefs are or how relevent the new ideas are. the dumb are certain they are clever, the clever certain they are dumb.
church is power absolute, furthest from the voice of christ. that confirms to me it doesnt work, therefore never did. mouldy ergot bread i say.
we cant preach to the opposition. its fruitless.
the inner voice will close the doors once the voice hears anything contrary to its beliefs, no matter how stupid these beliefs are or how relevent the new ideas are. the dumb are certain they are clever, the clever certain they are dumb.
church is power absolute, furthest from the voice of christ. that confirms to me it doesnt work, therefore never did. mouldy ergot bread i say.
I don't think Jesus is made up or invented...
just like Joseph smith is real
L Ron Hubbard is real
David Koresh was real
Ghandi was real
Muhammad was real..
these are all real people, people that people choose to put their faith in, people who other people claim were incarnations of some type of higher power.
People want so deserpately to believe in something, so they create the infrastructure and deities required to do so.
just like Joseph smith is real
L Ron Hubbard is real
David Koresh was real
Ghandi was real
Muhammad was real..
these are all real people, people that people choose to put their faith in, people who other people claim were incarnations of some type of higher power.
People want so deserpately to believe in something, so they create the infrastructure and deities required to do so.
U
UA_Iron
Guest
If I were jesus I would demand a los betos taco shop at every street corner.
foreigngirl
New member
deltreefitness said:
Thats the irony - that they say that they know exactly how it was and how its gonna be and there is no proven facts for any of the religions
U
UA_Iron
Guest
biteme said:
fish dont have feelings though
I'd be skeptical of seafood in the desert too...
deltreefitness
New member
foreigngirl said:
So does Christianity. If you can't see the irony in your statement of calling another religion BS (and not yours) then maybe at least you can see the hypocrisy?
foreigngirl
New member
deltreefitness said:
I dont claim I know everything and why do you assume that I even belong to a religion?
B
BrothaBill
Guest
spongebob said:
Agreeed my wingman, its always been a matter of faith, always will be. That is the only truth there is. Some things are true no matter what you believe!!.
Amen, peace out yo!!
deltreefitness
New member
foreigngirl said:
Maybe I had you confused with another "girl" user name. Do you believe in a religion?
Saintinistic
New member
The biggest fool is s/he who argues with one...
foreigngirl
New member
deltreefitness said:
I dont know what to beleive anymore with all the new stuff that they come up with, analizining the Bible, finding lost scrols, assuming that Jesus had a wife and daughter. Its all messed up
But, yeah, I beleive there is something out there, I'm not sure what
needtogetaas
New member
LESTAT YOURE COOL BUT THAT HAS GOT TO BE THE GEAGHEST THING I HAVE EVER HERD YOU SAY.WHAT ARE YOU A TREA HUGGER.Lestat said:
needtogetaas
New member
THATS A DUMB STATMENT.THERE ARE ALOUT OF PEOPLE OUT THERE WHO HAVE PARENT THAT ARE ATHEST BUT THEY HAVE FATH IN GOD AND BELEAVE IN WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS.UA_Iron said:
deltreefitness
New member
:bites lip:
U
UA_Iron
Guest
needtogetas said:
ohhhhh so you found an exception. you still havent proved me wrong dipshit. Stop typing in all caps.
deltreefitness
New member
UA_Iron said:
....and use English.
:relieves pressure from lip:
U
UA_Iron
Guest
Wootoom said:
whats up dawg
hit 305lbs on bench today - it went up pretty easy. I am happy
what are you up to?
U
UA_Iron
Guest
Wootoom said:
thanks! good work on the 350
I usually go for reps like 10,8,6... kind of pyramid - dont usually care about the 1RM but did it today.
needtogetaas
New member
this is true.the bible says that religous arguements are stuppid and a wast of time.THE THING IS SOME PEOPLE HAVE THERE NAME RITTEN IN THE BOOK OF LIFE AND SOME DONT.GOD KNOWS IS CHILDREN AND THEY KNOW HIM AND HER HIS VOUCE.YOU ETHER HER HIS VOUCE OR YOU DONT.THE PEOPLE WHO DONT HER HIS VOUCE AND CHOOSE NOT TO UNDERSTAND DISPYS THOUSE WHO DO.AFTER ALL IT IS RITTEN THAT THEY WILL HATE YOU AND CURCE YOU FOR HIS NAME SAKE.PEOPLE ARE SO QUICK TO HATE WHAT THEY DONT UNDERSTAND.YOU CAN SAY WHAT EVER YOU WONT ABOUT CRICHTIONS.BUT THE TRUTH IS THE BIBLE DOS NOT TELL PEOPLE TO GO AROUND CONDEMING PEOPLE OR THINKING YOURE BATTER OR TO GET INTO LONG ARGUEMENTS WITH PEOPLE ABOUT YOURE FAITH.WHEN PEOPLE DO THIS ITS NOT GOD.ITS THERE HUMEN FLAWS THERE PRIDE AND ALLOUT OF TIMES THEY JUST DONT KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING OR SAYING.BUT WHY IF I TELL SOME ONE GOD LOVES YOU DO THEY BLOW UP IN ME FACE AND GO INTO A ANTY GOD RANT.2 REASONS 1THEY DONT UNDERSTAND AND 2 ALL THE SO CALLED CRICHTIONS OUT THERE MAKEING A BAD NAME FOR GOD.Saintinistic said:
PS I FORGOT 3.SOME PEOPLE ARE MAD AT GOD TO.
U
UA_Iron
Guest
needtogetas said:
I'm puting that in my signature
needtogetaas
New member
MAKE ME.UA_Iron said:
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