By Neil Earle
"If Jesus were not God then he deserved an Oscar." Such a bold contention has been made by those who urge non-Christian and Christian alike to reconsider the evidence for the divinity of Jesus Christ.
Recent discussion about the book, The Da Vinci Code, may make these quotes more relevant.
Bernard Ramm in Protestant Christian Evidences writes:
"Statistically speaking, the Gospels are the greatest literature ever written. They are read by more people, quoted by more authors, translated into more tongues, represented in more art, set to more music, than any other book or books written by any man I any century in any land. [In fact, the Gospels are such a treasure that if they should disappear tomorrow we would be able to construct all but 8 verses from the writings of those in the 2nd and 3rd centuries who quoted them as if they were words of life – which they are!].
"But the words of Christ are not great on the grounds that they have such a statistical edge – they are quoted more, read more because [they deal} clearly and authoritatively with the greatest problems that throb in the human breast: namely, Who is God? Does He love me? What should I do to please him? How does He look at my sin? How can I be forgiven?
"No other man's words have the appeal of Jesus' words because no other man can answer these fundamental human questions as Jesus answered them. They are the kind of words and the kind of answers we would expect God to give."
W.S Peake: "How was it that a carpenter of no special training, ignorant of the culture and learning of the Greeks, born of a people whose great teachers were [often] narrow, sour, intolerant legalists, was the supreme religious Teacher the world has known?
John Stuart Mill: "But who among his disciples or among their proselytes was capable of inventing the saying ascribed to Jesus or imagining the life and character revealed in the Gospels?"
I am the Bread of Life
If you have seen me you have seen the Father
If a man is thirsty, let him come to me and drink
I came that they might have life, and have it more abundantly
Peace I leave with you, My Peace I give to you, not as the world gives
O ye of little faith, why did you doubt?
I am the Resurrection and the Life
Come to me all you who are troubled and carrying a heavy load
Take up the Cross and follow me
McDowell: Go to Hebron and you see the tomb of Abraham and Sarah. Go to Medina in Saudi Arabia and you find the tomb of Mohammed, built when he died on June 8, 632 at the age of 61. Go to Jerusalem and they show you the spot where Mohammed was supposed to have jumped to heaven on a horse. In the Orient the tree where the Buddha taught is supposedly still there. But the exact location of Jesus tomb is either disputed, hard to find or lost to us.
The place of Jesus burial only mattered to the disciples while his body was there. After the Sunday following Jesus last Passover it was pointless to look any more for the master's body. It was not there. He was not there.
That is exactly what you would expect to find if the Gospels were right. Jesus body was no longer there, therefore there was no overwhelmingly sentimental desire to mark out the exact spot and turn it into a religious shrine, for Jesus was not there. He had risen as He said. Herod could not destroy him, the Romans could not find him, the Sanhedrin could not explain him and the grave could not hold him.
What makes Jesus different? Simply this – all the millions and millions of Jews, Buddhists, and Mohammedans agree in this: they have never claimed that their founder have come up out of the tomb in a resurrection.
Jesus claimed to have power to lay down his life and take it up again. This is not inconsistent with the fact that He was raised by the power of the father, because what the Father does the Son does likewise.
Bible teacher Wilbur Smith said: "The burden of the good news of the gospel was not 'follow this Teacher and do your best,' but 'Jesus and the Resurrection.'" You cannot take that away from Christianity without destroying its very identity. That is why Robertson Nicholl stated: "The empty tomb of Christ has been the cradle of the Church...."
We know more about the details of the hours immediately before and the actual death of Jesus in and near Jerusalem, than we know about the death of any other one man in all the ancient world. The place we know, Judaea; the characters we read about were real, listed in plenty of historical documents of the Jews and Romans – Pilate, Anas, Caiaphas, Herod, Pilate's wife, the elders of the Sanhedrin.
But could it all have been a fabrication? A series of hallucinations? An exercise in wish-fulfillment? Jesus himself faking the whole thing and them living an existence so elsewhere else? All of these ideas have been propagated since the Resurrection Event.
The guards who were scared off by the angelic visitor went to the priests who bribed them to spread the lie that the disciples stole the body while we slept?
But that cover-up breaks down. For one thing the penalty for sleeping on duty was death. For another, if the guards were asleep how could they know the disciples had stole the body? What judge would listen to you of you offered as evidence the claim that while you were asleep your neighbor came in and stole you television set?
In his vital little book, "Basic Christianity", John Stott demolished these arguments with sheer common sense:
"Are we to believe that after the rigors and pains of flogging and crucifixion he could survive 36 hours in a stone sepulchre with neither warmth nor food nor medical care? That he could the rally to perform the superhuman feat of shifting the boulder without disturbing the Roman guard? That then weak and sickly and hungry he could appear to the disciples in such a way to give them the impression that he had vanquished death? That he could live somewhere in hiding for forty days, making occasional appearances and then finally disappear without any explanation? Such credulity is more incredible than Thomas's unbelief."
No, the evidence is in. This stuff has been debated by the keenest minds of our world for 1900 years. The result is that no argument forged against the Resurrection based on historical and logical evidence has ever prevailed.
George Hanson wrote in The Resurrection and the Life: "The simple faith of the Christian who believes in the Resurrection is nothing compared to the credulity of the skeptic who will accept the wildest and most improbable romances rather than admit the plain witness of historical certainties. The difficulties of belief may be great; the absurdities of unbelief are greater."
The famous essay, "One Solitary Life," puts it all in perspective:
Here is a man who was born in an obscure Palestinian village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village. He worked in a carpenter shop until he was 30,and then for 3 1/2 years was an itinerant preacher. He never wrote a book, He never held an office, He never had a family. He never went to college. He never traveled 200 miles from the place where He was born. He had no credentials but himself.
While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied him, another betrayed him. He was turned over to his enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed upon a cross between two thieves. While he was dying his executors gambled for the only piece of property he had. When he was dead he was taken down and laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.
Nineteen long centuries have come and gone and today he is the centerpiece of the human race. Even the Muslims hail him a Prophet and the Jews have gone a long way to coming to grips with his legacy. In infancy He startled a king; in childhood He puzzled doctors; in manhood He ruled the course of nature, walked upon the billows as if they were pavements and hushed the sea to sleep. He healed without medicine and made no charge for his services.
The names of the past statesmen of Greece and Rome have come and gone. The names of the past scientists, philosophers and theologians have come and gone; but the name of this Man abounds more and more. Though time has spread 1900 years between the people of this generation and the scene of his crucifixion, yet He lives.
He stands forth upon the highest pinnacle of human achievement, proclaimed of God, acknowledged by angels, adored by the saints, and feared by devils – the living very much alive and personal Word of God who is the Christian's Friend and Champion and the Protector of all who trust in him, our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ!