Truth Challenge » Jesus Christ

THE CERTAINTY OF RESURRECTION

admin — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 07:16:23 +0000

A study of I Corinthians 15:12-34 (NIV)

A few days before my friend, Allan Cooper, died in late 1989 in Bundaberg Qld., Australia, I was sitting beside his bed in Ward 2 at the Bundaberg Base Hospital. I was speaking with him and reading the Scriptures to him.

He was barely coherent. I held his hand and told him to squeeze it if he understood what I was reading. One of the passages I read was Romans 8:37-39

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,

neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

He squeezed my hand on at least two occasions. I looked at Allan’s human frame:

¨ bloated face (he was dying of cancer);

¨ eyes glazed and staring at me;

¨ he jumped with pain on at least 4 occasions while I was there.

I thought: Why am I here? What’s the point of it all? He’s in excruciating pain, knocking on death’s door. Why don’t the doctors give him an extra dose of morphine to end his misery? Euthanise him!

I asked myself some straight questions:

Why bother with the Christian life?

As a Christian, am I inflicting some magic on somebody that has no basis in fact?

Is religion, as the founder of Communism, Karl Marx, said, “The opiate of the people”? Is it a drug to stop us from facing the horrible reality of the world around us?

How can I talk of new life, eternal life in Christ, when here, for my friend Allan, is death–vicious death?

In the midst of these penetrating questions came the thunderous reply from God to my heart: RESURRECTION!

Then I turn on the TV at Easter or Christmas time, or I read books and newspapers and this is what I hear or read:

¨ To make the resurrection acceptable to modern, sceptical people, some preachers want to get rid of the supernatural. At Easter 1989, the Anglican Bishop of Durham in England, Rev. David Jenkins, said that Christ’s resurrection was a “spiritual resurrection.” It didn’t literally happen. It was only symbolic, he said.[1]

¨ Rudolph Bultmann, a liberal German, Lutheran scholar within the church (died 1976), wrote: “Jesus rose into the kerygma [i.e. the first formulations of the Christian gospel]“[2] – that is, into the faith of the first believers. Their conviction that Jesus was still with them was itself his resurrection.”[3]

¨ John Shelby Spong, former Episcopalian bishop of Newark, N.J.: The resurrection of Jesus and his appearances after the resurrection are “legends and myths that cannot be literalized. . . Resurrection may mean many things, but these details are not literally a part of that reality.”[4]

¨ Lloyd Geering, Presbyterian & University Professor in N.Z.: The resurrection phenomena are those of a “legend” and are not “historical”.[5]

More recently, we have theologically liberal scholars from the Jesus Seminar saying this:

¨ John Dominic Crossan: “When the evangelists [i.e. Matt., Mark, Luke, John] spoke about the resurrection of Jesus, they told stories about apparitions [i.e. ghosts or phantoms] or visions.”[6]

¨ Crossan again: “In I Corinthians 15 Paul begins by enumerating all the apparitions of the risen Jesus. . . Bodily resurrection has nothing to do with a resuscitated body coming out of the tomb.”[7]

¨ Robert Funk (founder of the Jesus Seminar in 1985): “The original [resurrection] appearances did not depend on the view that Jesus rose bodily from the grave. Jesus appeared in ecstatic revelations, in visions and in dreams.”[8]

¨ Marcus Borg of the Jesus Seminar: “Easter need not involve the claim that God supernaturally intervened to raise the corpse of Jesus from the tomb. Rather, the core meaning of Easter is that Jesus continued to be experienced after his death, but in a radically new way: as a spiritual and divine reality.”[9]

¨ Borg writes, “It seems to me that whether something happened to the corpse of Jesus is irrelevant to the truth of Easter.”[10]

Brothers & sisters: Take the literal resurrection of Jesus away and you may have a religion, liberal religion, but it is not the Christian faith. Let’s just pause for a few moments to confirm that Jesus did die and rise from the dead as events in human history and that this is not metaphor, myth, apparition or spiritual resurrection. A few points to establish that the resurrection of Jesus happened in history and the tomb was empty on Easter Sunday with Jesus walking and talking on earth:

First Corinthians was written by Paul in about A.D. 53-55.[11] Jesus was crucified about A.D. 30. So, “Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 15 within twenty-five years of Jesus’ death, while various of the original eyewitnesses were still around to correct him” if he got it wrong.[12]
In Luke’s Gospel, you find the description of Jesus’ resurrection and the empty tomb in ch. 24. Sir William M. Ramsay, a prominent British archaeologist of about 100 years ago, “examined the sites of Paul’s journeys firsthand and comparing them with the testimony of [the Book of] Acts.” He began as a sceptic and became a Christian after his investigation.[13] Ramsay concluded: “Luke is a historian of the first rank . . . this author deserves to be placed among the very greatest of historians.”[14] From the evidence we have about Luke, the historian, we have no reason to doubt the truth and historical fact of what he wrote about Jesus’ resurrection, including the empty tomb.
These are the historical facts:[15]

Fact 1: After his crucifixion, Jesus was buried in Joseph of Arimathea’s personal tomb [Luke 23:50ff].

Fact 2: On the first day of the week after the crucifixion (we call it Sunday), the tomb of Jesus was found to be empty by a group of his female followers (see Luke 24:1-3; Luke 23:55 identifies these as women).

Fact 3: On a number of occasions and under different circumstances, different groups of people experienced Jesus being alive from the dead after his resurrection (see Luke 24: 13ff).

Fact 4: The original disciples of Jesus were convinced that Jesus had risen from the dead and were prepared to go to their deaths based on Jesus’ resurrection. (see Luke 24:44ff.). They didn’t leave to do that until they were “clothed with power from on high” by the Holy Spirit (Luke 24:49).

Fact 5: You must believe in the resurrection, as it happened, to be saved. Romans 10: 9-10 (NIV): “That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.”

Fact 6: 1 Cor. 15:12 says something very clearly in the Greek langauge that is somethimes lost in the English translation: ek nekrÇn eg‘gertai. “Paul says that the preaching of the early church was that Christ was raised from out of the realm of the dead ones. The word nekrÇn does not merely mean death or the grave, but surely refers to the dead persons or corpses.”[16] This is confirmed by the second half of v. 12. “Resurrection has to do with the persons Jesus left behind when he was raised, not the relationship he had subsequently with his followers!”[17]

Fact 7: Prophecy

“How can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” (I Cor. 15:12)

So “what actually and historically happened to the body of Jesus”? According to John Dominic Crossan: “His body [was] left on the cross or in a shallow grave barely covered with dirt and stones, the dogs were waiting.”[18] So, “Jesus’ corpse was thrown into the common graveyard reserved for criminals and was probably eaten by dogs.”[19]

Here in I Corinthians we have it declared plainly.

IF THERE IS NO RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD (ch. 15:13). . .

1. Not even Christ has been raised (v. 13)

But Paul, the apostle, has just given us the eyewitness testimony (vv. 5-8) that Christ was seen by:

Peter;

The Twelve was a general term used to refer to the group of disciples, even though Judas wasn’t there, but Matthias was the replacement (see Acts 1:26);

More than 500 brothers at the same time, most of them are still alive (for people to check with if they wanted);

James; and

All of the apostles.

But if Christ has not been raised from the dead,

2. My preaching today is useless, empty, without basis, I am wasting my time (v. 14).

If Christ is dead in the grave and has not been raised, or it is a myth, ,

3. Your faith in Christ and my trust in Him are useless.

V. 17 uses an even stronger word. Your faith and mine are futile, frivolous, trivial. Your faith is a lie if Christ is not resurrected. You and I are conning ourselves and others if Christ is still dead.

The obvious implication is in v.15:

4. We are false witnesses about God

if Jesus has not been raised.

We are telling lies in the Christian church if Jesus is still dead. It is a lie carried out in the name of God. We are accusing God of something He did not do. We are false witnesses if there is no resurrection of the dead; if Jesus has not been raised.

Do you understand how critical it is that Jesus is alive, he did rise from the dead. If Christ has not been raised, what does that mean for us who are living now?

5. You are still in your sins (v. 17).

Perhaps the Lord saved you from drunkenness. If Jesus is not alive, you are still an alcoholic. There is no hope.

Sister, you were running from God, doing things “your own way.” You are still damned in your humanism, if Jesus is not raised.

I, Spencer Gear, would be still wrapped up in his sinful self-righteousness. I’m lost forever, if there is no empty tomb.

King David is still an unforgiven adulterer and murderer.

The apostle Paul told the Corinthians who were sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, homosexual offenders, thieves, greedy, drunkards, slanderers and swindlers. He told these sinners, “That is what some of you were. But you were washed [by the blood of Christ]…” (I Cor 6:9-11).

This is all hog-wash, a sham; we are still in our sin and on our way to hell if Jesus is not raised. It is bleak indeed for the living, but it is just as devastating for the dead.

6. Those who have died as Christians are lost (v. 18).

Why? Because, as with the living, they are still in their sins. They have no future of any kind because their sins have not been cleansed.

My friend, Allan, is lost;

My godly dad, Roy Gear, and my Christian mother, Enid, are eternally damned.

Your friends who died as true believers in Christ, you will never see again. They are condemned forever, if there is no resurrection of Jesus.

V. 19 sums up the devastation: “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all [people].” If Christ is not raised from the dead, we not only don’t have present forgiveness but have lost our hope for the future as well. If we have believed in a future resurrection and there is no future, then of all human beings we are most to be pitied.

The point: To deny Christ’s resurrection is to deny Christian existence altogether. Some preachers and theologians want to deny the literal resurrection of Jesus. If you had been there, you would have seen the empty tomb and you would have been able to see the real, live Jesus and touch him–even though 3 days before he had died a cruel death on a cross.

If you deny the resurrection you must face the consequences:

All preaching in all churches all over the world is useless;

Faith in Christ in the past, present and future is futile;

We are all still unforgiven sinners going to hell and there is no hope.

BUT… BUT… BUT!! CHRIST INDEED HAS BEEN RAISED FROM THE DEAD (V. 20).

Nothing else but the literal resurrection of Jesus is what the Christian faith stands for. The apostle has just given us the eyewitness evidence. He names the people. Those who saw the resurrected Christ.

Professor Thomas Arnold, formerly chairman of the Modern History Department at Oxford University, England, says, “I know of no one fact in the history of mankind which is proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort, to the understanding of a fair inquirer, than the great sign which God has given us that Christ died and rose again from the dead.”[20]

One of the greatest legal minds ever known, Dr. Simon Greenleaf, formerly Royall Professor of Law at Harvard University, examined the legal value of the apostles’ testimony to the resurrection of Jesus. He concluded that the resurrection of Christ was one of the best supported events in history, according to the laws of legal evidence administered in courts of justice.[21]

Lord Darling, former Chief Justice of England, concluded that “there exists such overwhelming evidence, positive and negative, factual and circumstantial, that no intelligent jury in the world could fail to bring in a verdict that the resurrection story is true.”[22]

CHRIST INDEED HAS BEEN RAISED FROM THE DEAD. God declares it as true in His word, the Bible. Other evidence has proved that it is true.

Since he has been raised, I Cor. 15: 20 says he is

1. The firstfruits of those who have died.

He is the first of the harvest, serving as a guarantee of the full harvest to follow. When I see the first watermelons in the fruit stores about October, I know that around Christmas there should be plenty of them, even a glut. That’s like it is with Christ. His resurrection is the firstfruits, a down payment. The full harvest is coming.

Fully harvest of what? Acts 24:15 says there will be a future “resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked.” What will happen to these people? Matt. 25:46: “Then they [the wicked] will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” Your resurrection is guaranteed. If you have repented of your sin and trusted Jesus Christ alone as your Saviour and Lord, yours will be a resurrection to heaven. If you haven’t, it will be a resurrection to hell. Punishment, forever.

Because Christ died and rose again, the events of the end of the world are set in motion. DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHY CHRIST’S RESURRECTION IS CRUCIAL? In vv. 23-24 we have the order of events that lead to “the End.”

(1) Christ’s resurrection, the firstfruits;

(2) Then, Christ’s second coming with those who belong to Christ;

(3) Then the end (the finale):

(a) Jesus hands over the kingdom to God the Father;

(b) Then he brings to an end all other dominions, authority and power.

By raising Christ from the dead, God has in fact triumphed over death. Christ now rules, but despite this rule, the enemy is still at work since people still die.

That’s why the resurrection of the dead is a divine necessity. It alone is the evidence of the final overthrow of the last enemy — death itself.

Verse 26 says literally, “The last enemy is being destroyed, namely death.” As long as people die, God’s sovereign purposes are not yet fully realised. When the final enemy is defeated through the resurrection of the dead, then God becomes “all in all” (v. 28). That’s the point of vv. 23-28.

The work of Christ is the key to everything:

the resurrection of believers;

the consummation of the saving acts of God;

the defeat of all of God’s enemies.

Somebody has called this passage of Scripture, “EPIC GRANDEUR.”

In vv. 29-34, Paul, the apostle, has one last go at those in Corinth who say there is no resurrection of the dead:

IF THERE IS NO RESURRECTION… (V. 29)

1. What will those do who are baptised for the dead?

What does this mean? At least 40 different solutions have been suggested by biblical scholars. No one knows what in fact was going on. The best we can do is point to the most viable options, but finally admit we do not know. Whatever it was that was going on was a contradiction to the position that there was no resurrection of the dead.

This is one of the rare times in the book of I Corinthians where Paul addresses the Christian community in the third person plural (”those people,” v. 29), which suggests that there was a group, possibly only a few in the church, who were being baptised on behalf of some people who had already died.

Who was being baptised?

For whom?

Why were they doing it?

What effects did they think it had for those it was being done for?

We have a theological problem. How can Paul appeal, without disapproving of the action, to a practice that is in opposition to his own understanding of justification by grace through faith? Especially when faith always implies a response by the believer, and baptism is a personal response to the grace received.

We do not know. But we do know what it does not teach. It does not teach proxy baptism for the dead that was practised by the ancient gnostic heretics such as Marcion and by the Mormon church today.

“Paul did not teach that a person who has died can be saved or helped in any way, by another person’s being baptized in his behalf. Baptismal regeneration, the idea that one is saved by being baptized, or that baptism is in some way necessary for salvation, is unscriptural.”[23]

If you cannot be saved yourself by baptism, it cannot be biblical truth that you could save another vicariously by being baptised on their behalf. The Bible is clear in Eph. 2:8-9, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith–and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God–not by works, so that no one can boast.” Nobody is saved by baptism–not even living persons, much less dead ones. In fact, the Bible is very clear: “Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment” (Heb. 9:27).

However, Paul used this argument only in passing. His point is this: If there is no resurrection of the dead, what’s the point of this baptism for the dead that some of you are engaging in? If there is no resurrection, what’s the point of this nonsense of being baptised for the dead?

Also, v. 30:

2. Why endanger ourselves?

Why fight with the “wild beasts in Ephesus” (v. 32) if it is for purely human reasons? The “wild beasts” are probably a metaphor for those who opposed Paul and his gospel. In other words: why confront, engage in debate, with the opposition, if there is no resurrection. It’s a lost cause and a wasted cause.

II Corinthians 11:23-28:

23 Are they servants of Christ? (I am out of my mind to talk like this.) I am more. I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again.

24 Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one.

25 Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea,

26 I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers.

27 I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked.

28 Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches.

If there is no resurrection, then instead of fighting those who oppose the gospel, we might as well whoop it up.

Look at v. 32:

3. “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die”

The pleasure loving Epicureans in the time of the apostle Paul taught and lived this philosophy. Sounds like Australia today. I recommend that this be your lifestyle and mine–to the pub, the club, Sizzler & Pizza Hut, day in and day out, if there is no resurrection. If there is no life after death, this is all there is, so let’s party and party BIG!!

Let’s apply this to us:

1. If there is no resurrection of Jesus Christ, there will be no life after death and resurrection for you and me. We are accountable to nobody. SO!!

2. Why bother with standing for Christ in the workplace?

3. Why be called a fanatical bigot and wowser because you stand for biblical truth? Why stand for right and wrong, God’s absolutes for morality when the world around wants to “do its own thing”? Why be a fool and be ostracised? Why not join the mob, get drunk, get off my face on drugs, sleep around, rebel against parents, abuse your kids, run wild and care less about anybody? Sounds like the kids and parents I work with every day.

4. Why send missionaries, like Jackie Hamill to the Philippines, or Jim Eliot to Ecuador, to be slaughtered for their faith?

Paul’s concern in vv. 29-34 is simple: We are to behave in a way that is expected of those for whom the future is both:

ALREADY — we are washed from our sins through Christ’s death. The future is both already, but

NOT YET — we wait for the final destruction of death and the final resurrection.

Ladies and gentlemen: I urge you to know Christ personally. Live as people who have a future because:

CHRIST INDEED HAS BEEN RAISED FROM THE DEAD.

WE WILL BE RAISED FROM THE DEAD IN THE FUTURE. IT IS AS SURE AS CHRIST’S RESURRECTION.

FOR EVERYTHING WE DO, WE ARE ACCOUNTABLE TO THE LIVING GOD.

THE FUTURE IS MARVELLOUS IF YOU KNOW CHRIST PERSONALLY.

THE PRESENT IS CHALLENGING AND DYNAMIC.

ALL BECAUSE OF CHRIST’S RESURRECTION.

“A Russian lecturer, a member of the Communist party, was addressing a packed audience on the subject of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He spoke at considerable length, seeking to discredit it. At the end, a [Russian] Orthodox priest rose and asked if he might reply. He was warned that he could have only five minutes. `Five seconds is all I shall need’ was his reply. He turned to the audience, and gave the delightful Easter greeting, characteristic of the Eastern church, `Christos aneste‘, he cried, `Christ is risen.’ Back with a deafening roar came the traditional reply from the crowded hall, `Alethos aneste‘, `Truly he is risen.’[24]

What happened on the morning that Jesus Christ was resurrected changed history and changes your future.

Islam denies the resurrection of Christ. Judaism states that the resurrection of Jesus Christ did not happen. Jehovah’s Witnesses claim Jesus’ body was discarded, destroyed, or dissolved into gasses. Jesus Seminar fellows claim it was a supposed spiritual resurrection or just wishful thinking. Are they correct? What happens if this is a hoax and Jesus was never raised from the dead?

If there were no resurrection of Christ, there is no Christianity; it’s a fable. There is no hope and certainly no future. What happened on that first Easter Sunday changed the world and your future.

Let’s conclude with this refrain from the early church. I’ll say, “Christ is risen.” You respond together with, “He is risen indeed.”

Spencer: Christ is risen.

The Congregation: He is risen indeed.

Endnotes:

[1] In “An Interview with The Most Reverend George Carey”, former Archbishop of Canterbury, by the Episcopal News Service, Carey said, “I think if you take the issue of resurrection for example, yes you can have diverse interpretations reflected within the Church, but at the end of the day one could say very clearly that the physical resurrection has always been the normal one, the tradition of the Church and the spiritual resurrection has not been anything more than a minority view within it. And so one could always say as a leader, as I did say against David Jenkins [Bishop of Durham], the faith of the Church says ‘this’” Retrieved from: http://gc2003.episcopalchurch.org/ens/3577_23633_ENG_HTM.htm [19 March 2004]. Also at The Church of England Newspaper, “England on Sunday” : http://www.churchnewspaper.com/?go=eos&read=on&number_key=5693&title=Sinister+developments+in+the+Communion%2C+part+2 [19 March 2004].

[2] Rudolph Bultmann 1964, “The Primitive Christian Kerygma and the Historical Jesus,” in Carl E. Braaten and Roy A. Harrisville (trans. & eds.), The historical Jesus and the Kerygmatic Christ: Essays on the New Quest of the Historical Jesus, Abingson Press, New York, Nashville, p. 42.

[3] In Funk, R. W. 1996, Honest to Jesus, Hodder & Stoughton (A Polebridge Press Book), Rydalmere, NSW [Australia], p. 257.

[4] John Shelby Spong 1994, Resurrection: Myth or Reality? A Bishop’s Search for the Origins of Christianity, HarperSanFrancisco, San Franciscom pp. 235-236.

[5] Lloyd Geering 1971, Resurrection: A Symbol of Hope, Hodder and Stoughton, London, pp.58-59. The exact words were: “The later Gospels present just the phonomena we would expect if a legend were to arise shortly after the death of Paul.” He states that Hugh Anderson’s “excellent survey of the state of New Testament studies today speaks of ‘the almost complete failure of historical criticism to authenticate and establish for us the ‘history’ of Easter’” (pp. 58-59).

[6] J. D. Crossan, 2000, A Long Way from Tipperary: A Memoir, HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco, p. 164.

[7] J. D. Crossan, 1998, The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately after the Execution of Jesus, HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco, pp. xxviii, xxxi. The quote on p. xxxi goes on: “And neither is bodily resurrection just another term for Christian faith itself. Bodily resurrection means that the embodied life and death of the historical Jesus continues to be experienced, by believers, as powerfully efficacious and salvifically present in this world.”

[8]Funk, 1996, Honest to Jesus, p. 273.

[9] Marcus J. Borg 1997, The God We Never Knew, HarperSan Francisco, San Francisco, p. 93.

[10] Marcus Borg 1998, “The Irrelevancy of the Empty Tomb,” in Copan, P. (ed). 1998, Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? (debate between William Lane Craig and John Dominic Crossan) [pp. 117-128], Baker Books, Grand Rapids, Michigan, p. 122.

[11] Gordon D. Fee 1987, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (F.F. Bruce ed., The New International Commentary on the New Testament), William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan, p. 15.

[12] Ben Witherington III, “Resurrection Redux,” in Copan, P. (ed). 1998, Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? (debate between William Lane Craig and John Dominic Crossan) [pp. 129-145], Baker Books, Grand Rapids, Michigan, p. 140.

[13] William Lane Craig 1994, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, Crossway Books, Wheaton, Illinois, p. 220.

[14] William Ramsay 1915, The Bearing of Recent Discovery on the Trustworthiness of the New Testament, Hodder and Stoughton, London, p. 222, cited in William Lane Craig 1998, “William Lane Craig’s Rebuttal,” in Copan, P. (ed). 1998, Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? (debate between William Lane Craig and John Dominic Crossan) [pp. 40-44], Baker Books, Grand Rapids, Michigan, p. 41. Another of William Ramsay’s books was: St. Paul the Traveller and the Roman Citizen, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1895.

[15] Based on William Lane Craig 1998, “The Debate: Opening Addresses” in Copan 1998 [pp. 25-32], pp. 26-28.

[16] Witherington 1998, “Resurrection Redux” in Copan 1998, p. 132.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Crossan, J. D. 1994, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco, p. 154.

[19] William Lane Craig 1998, “Opening Addresses” in Copan (ed.) 1998, p. 29.

[20]Josh McDowell, More Than a Carpenter. Eastbourne, Sussex: Kingsway Publications, 1977, 93.

[21]An Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists by the Rules of Evidence Administered in the Courts of Justice. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1965, 29, in McDowell, 93-94.

[22]In McDowell, 95.

[23]John MacArthur, Jr., The New Testament Commentary, I Corinthians. Chicago: Moody Press, 1984, 425.

[24]In Michael Green, The Day Death Died. Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 1982, 64.

Jesus is not unique: An assessment of the ABC TV “Compass” program

admin — Sat, 02 May 2009 07:29:31 +0000

A. Introduction

What would be your response if you turned on your TV at Easter time to a documentary and heard this[1]

1. The Jesus story is supposed to be exclusive to Christianity. That’s what we have been told for 2,000 years.

2. But it’s not unique. The ancient god, Krishna, was 800 years before Christ and he had a miraculous birth and was attended by angels.

3. Buddha performed miracles and fed 5,000 people;

4. Jesus didn’t die on a cross in Jerusalem, but is buried in India.

5. The Muslims expect Jesus to return to be in a tomb next to Muhammad’s.

6. The Christian’s christos (Christ) comes from the same root as Krishna.

7. The second line of the Lord’s prayer, “Hallowed be thy name,” has almost the same idea as Krishna’s.

8. In the Gospel of John, Jesus said: “And I have other sheep that are not of this fold” (John 10:16). When Jesus said this “he was speaking of other religions and their teachings.”

9. Buddha’s continuum of life and the perfecting of life are very similar to that proclaimed by Jesus.

10. The pagan religion of Mithras parallels the rise of Jesus. Mithras offered life after death. Did Christianity steal these ideas as Mithras lived before Christ?

11. Christianity borrowed some of its ideas from the Osiris, an ancient god of the Egyptians that went back as far as 2,500BC. That’s why Christianity spread so quickly in Egypt.

12. Why do Christians reject these parallels? That’s because Mithras and Osiris are too close to the Christian story.

I walked into this barrage of statements about the alleged parallels between Jesus and world religions when I turned on ABC TV’s Compass program, Sunday night, 5th April 2009. This was the first part of the program called, “The Hidden Story of Jesus,” and it was prepared and narrated by a liberal theologian [2] from the UK by the name of Robert Beckford, who teaches at Oxford Brookes University. Part 2 was on Easter Sunday, 12 April 2009 and I did not see it.

This program had been shown in the UK in December 2007 on Channel 4 – around Christmas time. I wonder why?

This Australian ABC TV attack on the fundamentals of the Christian faith was telecast to coincide with the Christian’s celebration of Christ’s death and resurrection at Easter 2009. Could this be a coincidence?

Could you imagine ABC TV attacking Islam like this during the holy month of Ramadan which is usually in September?[3]

I want to use this background to investigate how we as Christians are to assess attacks against Christ and Christianity. I will begin with some preliminary questions before I get to a broad outline of how we should be assessing any worldview – not just Christianity.

What does this kind of TV attack do to a new Christian?
Is it a human right not to attack Christianity or any other religion?

Let’s look at these 2 questions:

B. Firstly, what does this kind of TV attack do to a new Christian?

How do you think a new Christian or an immature Christian would respond to this information? He or she has learned that Jesus said: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).[4] This makes Jesus very unique and the exclusive way to eternal life. But that’s not what the TV commentary said.

The new Christian may very well have been exposed to the teaching of Acts 4:12, “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

Then along comes somebody from within the church, a theologian, Dr. Robert Beckford, who says that what he heard when he was being raised as a child in the Sunday School, is not what he believes now – based on his research. He says that Christ is not unique. You can find Christ’s teachings in many of the world’s religions.

Where does that leave the Christians?
Have we been lied to for the last 2,000 years?
Can we Bible-believing Christians continue to believe what we were taught in Sunday School when the new information contradicts it?
Or, do we have to agree with and follow the supposed latest research of Dr. Beckford that blows the exclusive claims of Jesus out of the water?
If Jesus’ message can be found in any of the world’s religions, then surely it’s a fundamentalist farce to impose the exclusive claims of Jesus on unsuspecting people – that’s what Beckford said.
Should we be suggesting that there are many ways to experience the ultimate in religious experience and to enter the Kingdom (whatever that means).
In this TV program there was an interview with Egyptologist, Dr. Bonjana Mojsov[5], who would not accept that Christianity stole these ideas from Osiris but she was diplomatic in claiming that Christianity borrowed these ideas. She said that this could be one of the reasons why Christianity spread so quickly in the early days in Egypt.

What does this do to new-found Christian faith? It could have a very negative impact on new faith unless Christian discipleship includes this kind of Bible teaching from John 15.

Jesus said according to John 15:18-21:

“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. ¹⁹If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. ²⁰Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. ²¹But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me.”

From Jesus again: “A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household” (That’s Matt. 10:24-25).

Let’s turn to the apostle Paul in Rom. 12:14:”Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.” This parallels what Jesus said: “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:44-45).

What did Paul say to the Corinthian church? “When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things” (I Cor. 4:12-13).

Paul to Timothy said: “All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim. 3:12).

Christians, this is Bible! Christians will be persecuted by the ungodly and it is essential in discipleship of new Christians that this dimension is included. People who come to Jesus for an easy, free ride, have missed the Saviour and what he taught.

When you come to Christ, your inner world is radically changed because you have been born again. You are now in a dynamic, correct relationship with God. But don’t expect the world to be excited about this.

What I viewed on that television program is typical of what to expect from secular TV or from a non-Christian with whom you may work. Antagonism is the order of the day from some people.

The first question I had was: What will this kind of program do to new Christians? I am of the view that it will hit them for a spiritual sixer unless you disciple them to follow Jesus in this way: “If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.”

So do we have to sit back and take persecution as the expected. No! No! Expect it, but the Bible’s teaching is also: “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light” (Eph. 5:11-14).

That is, expose the darkness and the “unfruitful works of darkness” as you continue to experience the shameful behaviour of unbelievers.

Firstly, what do statements of doubt in the mass media or from any other person, do to the new Christians? It could devastate them unless you prepare them to expect it.

C. Secondly, is it a human right not to attack Christianity or any other religion?

Or, to put it another way, should Australia be passing legislation to make it illegal to attack or expose any religion?

For those interested, I recommend an article in the University of Queensland Law Journal, December 2007 edition, where there is an excellent analysis by Rex Tauati Ahdar titled, “Religious vilification: Confused policy, unsound principle and unfortunate law.”[6] It’s available online.

Rex Ahdar shows how the UK and three states of Australia[7] (Queensland, Tasmania & Victoria) have “enacted laws banning incitement to religious hatred.”[8] He points out that

“the best argument against religious vilification is . . . the Catch the Fire case [in Victoria]. This decision, the first major litigation on the subject, bears out the concerns of many that religious vilification laws are conceptually unsound and produce results antithetical to the religious tolerance its promoters hope for. . . . The justifications for the introduction of religious vilification laws have never been persuasive.”[9]

There is another excellent article by a lawyer in the Sydney Morning Herald of 18 April 2009,[10] in which he states:

This week we have heard about an increasing international trend to prosecute religious issues in the courts.

In Britain cases are being brought under laws such as the Religious Hatred Act, which makes it a crime to “stir up” “religious hatred”. British police have even warned that insulting Scientology would be treated as a crime.

Such legislation may soon be heading to a statute book near you.

The Australian Human Rights Commission is finalising a report almost certain to recommend legislation on religion – on freedom of religion or religious vilification – that would mean similar prosecutions being launched under national law.

Why do we need this? The last time Australians were asked whether they wanted freedom of religion embodied in the constitution was in 1988. Showing a robust common sense, they voted a resounding “no”. It lost in every state and territory, with up to 74 per cent against.

Citizens knew in their bones that Australia was one of the freest countries in the world and that we wouldn’t make ourselves freer by inventing new offences.

So why are we even having this debate? The commission says on its website it’s because of “an increased presence of Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews and other religious communities”.

This is an extraordinary statement; it undermines the need for any change in the law. If Australia were a nightmare realm of vilification and persecution, a dystopia of religious angst, I doubt that Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and Jews would settle here in growing numbers. The growth of these communities is proof positive Australia enjoys freedom of religion. . .

The Human Rights Commission hints it would only recommend civil penalties. This is bogus.

Those statements were made by a lawyer and former Premier of New South Wales, Bob Carr.

There has been a further development in the vilification of religion stakes. A non-binding resolution, put forward by the Islamic states in March 2009, was adopted recently by the United Nations Human Rights Council. It “calls for the ‘defamation of religion’ to be considered a human rights violation – a crime.”[11], [12]

How should we respond to such an initiative? Let me suggest to you that since the time of Christ & the beginning of the church, the “offence of the cross” has been borne by Christians. Jesus was despised, rejected, ridiculed & scorned. This also happened to his immediate disciples. It has happened and will continue to happen to all who faithfully follow Christ.

It was the early church father, Tertullian, who made this pointed and true observation:

“We are not a new philosophy but a divine revelation. That’s why you can’t just exterminate us; the more you kill the more we are. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. You praise those who endured pain and death – so long as they aren’t Christians! Your cruelties merely prove our innocence of the crimes you charge against us.”[13]

In an antagonistic world, we are called upon to defend the Gospel. We are not called to defend our own honour. We should be confident of this: When we defend the Gospel, God will see to it that His name is vindicated. Christ will judge all nations and all people with absolute justice & righteousness.

Until that time at the consummation of the age, I do not believe that governments should set laws that prevent defamation of religion – as the “Catch the Fire” case demonstrated.

Instead, in this Australian democracy, I recommend that we ask governments to make laws that protect our right to preach & share the Gospel.

Such laws will bring with them the right for other religions to proclaim their beliefs. And the laws also will give Christians and other religions the right to critique each others’ beliefs & practices.

I believe that this is the greatest opportunity for this Australian democracy to remain open to the proclamation of the Gospel and the defence of the faith. [14]

We must teach all Christians and especially new believers, to expect persecution. Until Jesus comes, the offence of the cross means that your faith will be under attack from everyday human beings as well as by the mass media.

What the ABC Compass program broadcast should be expected from any who do not accept the authority of the Scriptures. Those attacks, as exemplified by this program, are also coming from within the church by liberal theologians such as Robert Beckford.

That gets to some core principles for assessing any teaching from whatever the source, ABC TV or any other antagonist to the faith. How do you know what is true and what is false?

D. How do believers tackle any resistance to Christ and Christians?

The New Living Translation puts it simply and beautifully: “Instead, you must worship Christ as Lord of your life. And if someone asks about your Christian hope, always be ready to explain it. But do this in a gentle and respectful way. Keep your conscience clear. Then if people speak against you, they will be ashamed when they see what a good life you live because you belong to Christ” (I Peter 3:15-16). “Be ready to explain it.” “To explain” is the Greek apologia, which means to give an apologetic, a defense of the faith.

This applies to the ABC Compass program AND to every other assault on the faith. How do we assess any worldview?

What is a worldview? James Sire says that “a world view is a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic make-up of our world.”[15]

It is like looking at the world through a pair of coloured belief glasses. Those glasses represent meaning and value in life. They cover everything that we believe, but they also include what we say and do. What you believe always leads to your actions in word and deed.

All of us have presuppositions. Are they fixed and where do they come from? What do you consider to be the presuppositions or assumptions that a person brings to a TV program or to listen to me today? Presuppositions are very often firmly held by the person.

I want to suggest seven categories of assessing any world and life view. They can be used to assess, what I will call, “The Religious Copycat Theory”[16] that was promoted by the Compass TV program. This is the view that Christianity is a copy of some fundamentals of other religions. We’ll check out this theory briefly.

What categories can we use to assess any worldview? These are some of the fundamentals of assessment. I’m going to use the outline of Norman Geisler and William Watkins in their book, Perspectives.[17] This outline includes seven questions:

1. What’s your view of God or ultimate reality?[18]

2. What’s the nature of the world?

3. Does God intervene in the world? Or, are miracles possible?

4. What’s the nature of human beings?

5. Evil is real. Where did it come from?

6. Ethics. Are there right and wrong thoughts and actions in our universe?

7. What’s the nature of history? Where is history going?

I’ll only have time to investigate the first three of these as applied to this TV program:

What’s the view of God or ultimate reality?
What’s the nature of the world? and
Does God intervene in the world? That is, are miracles possible?

Let’s examine the content of Dr. Beckford’s documentary under these headings. Remember, I have only seen the first episode. I will not have the time to examine each of these points in depth.

1. What’s his view of God or ultimate reality?[19]

Beckford says that Jesus, Krishna & Buddha have remarkable similarities and they have parallels with the religions of ancient Egypt & Persia.

He says that Jesus is supposed to be exclusive to Christianity and this story has been promoted for 2,000 years, but that’s not the case.

He claimed that for the Hare Krishna, Christos [Christ] and Krishna came from the same root word. Krishna is one of the prominent gods of Hinduism.

He spoke of a follower of Krishna who said that Jesus was an incarnation of god. I ask: What’s the difference between a Hindu incarnation of a god and Jesus Christ’s incarnation?

He claims that the words from the Lord’s prayer, “Hallowed be thy name” are “almost the same” for Krishna. But the exact quote was not given to prove that this parallel exists.

Beckford interviewed a Hindu Brahmin priest who said: “Talking to God — whoever God is.” He was a Hindu priest but he did not know who God is. He sounded like an agnostic.

This is Beckford’s understanding of the nature of God. When Jesus said, according to the Gospel of John, “I have other sheep that are not in this fold” (John 10:16), he was speaking of other religions and acceptance of their teachings. Beckford spoke of Hindus celebrating the inner light and it bothers him that Christians have big problems with Hindus because Hindus experience the kingdom of God by whatever means are best to them.

Also, Beckford said that when Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life,” it was parallel to Buddha’s understanding of enlightenment.

a. How should I respond as a Christian to these statements?

(1) Was Jesus an incarnation of a god or was he God Himself?

A Hindu website provided this explanation of what the Hindus mean by somebody or something being an incarnation of god:

Avatar means to appear, to descend, to take birth or manifest. In Hinduism, an avatar means the form of a deity and usually refers to an incarnation of God or His aspects such as Vishnu on planet earth, either as a man or an animal or some mythical creature. An avatar is not mere materialization or appearance of God in physical form for the sake of his devotees. It is neither a disguise nor a trick played upon our senses. God has been appearing to people from time to time either to pass on some message or accomplishing some task through the beholder. His voice has been heard by countless people upon earth either internally through the subtle channels or externally through actual hearing.[20]

So, in Hinduism, an incarnation is “the form of a deity” as an “appearing to people from time to time” to give a message that can come through people hearing a voice internally or externally.

How does this compare with the incarnation of Jesus Christ?

Philippians 2:5-8 says this of Jesus Christ when he came to earth as a human being.

The KJV puts it:

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:

Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:

But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:

And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

The English Standard Version reads:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

When Jesus Christ became a man on earth he was God. The language, “form of God” means “equality with God.” Also he was taking the form of a servant in the likeness of human beings. We know that Jesus did not give up his divine attributes. We know that “he knew all people” and “he knew himself what was in man” (John 2:24-25 ESV). That is, he had divine foreknowledge on earth.

John 18:4 speaks of Jesus, that he “knowing all that would happen to him” (ESV).

He had omnipotent power to rebuke the wind, miraculously feed the hungry, heal the sick, cast out demons, raise the dead. Christ performed miracles because of his own inherent power as God on earth.

Surely the miraculous works of Elijah and Elisha didn’t indicate that they were God incarnate because they performed them in the power of the Spirit. However, of Jesus it is stated: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:30-31). Jesus miracles point to his being the Son of God, God on earth.

Theologian Charles Hodge put it this way:

“Christ, however, wrought miracles by His own inherent power . . . Christ never referred this miraculous power to any source outside of Himself; He claimed it as His own prerogative; and He conferred the power upon others. . . He was God in fashion as a man. He therefore appealed directly to His works.”[21]

Therefore,

(2) The NT identifies Jesus as God.

The TV program was short on exact quotes. When Beckford makes momentous claims about Jesus, Krishna and Buddha having such remarkable similarities, it is incumbent on him to present the exact quotes to confirm this. Otherwise, I will treat his remarkable similarities as remarkable presuppositions.

What about this idea that Jesus is not exclusive to Christianity?

(3) Jesus said, according to John 14:6, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (NIV).

Beckford says that this is the equivalent of Buddha’s “enlightenment.” What was Buddha’s enlightenment?

One Buddhist website[22] described Buddha’s Enlightenment like this: “One happy Vesak night, as he was seated under the famous Pippala tree at Buddha Gaya, with mind tranquilized and purified, in the first watch he developed that supernormal knowledge which enable[d] him to remember his past lives.[23] In the middle watch he developed vision dealing with the death and rebirth of beings.”[24]

Buddha had an experience of personal transformation where he came to consider others as himself.

For the Buddhist, this comes through experiencing the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path.[25]

The Four Noble Truths are:

1. First Noble Truth: The existence of suffering;

2. Second Noble Truth: The cause of suffering is the “craving desire for the pleasures of the senses. . .”;

3. Third Noble Truth: The ending of suffering happens by giving up, getting rid of, extinguishing this very craving, so that no passion and no desire remain.[26]

4. Fourth Noble Truth: The ending of all pain through the Eightfold Path.

The Eightfold Path is:

1. First step: Right views (accept the four noble truths);

2. Second step: Right resolve (renounce the pleasures of the senses);

3. Third step: Right speech (”do not lie, do not slander or abuse anyone. Do not indulge in idle talk”[27]);

4. Fourth step: Right behaviour (”do not destroy any living creature; take only what is given to you; do not commit any unlawful sexual act.”[28]

5. Fifth step: Right occupation, which is to earn your living in a way that will harm no-one.

6. Sixth step: Right effort: “You must resolve and strive heroically to prevent any evil qualities from arising . . .”[29]

7. Seventh step: Right contemplation, “Be observant, strenuous, alert, contemplative, free of desire and of sorrow.”[30]

8. Eighth step: Right meditation, “When you have abandoned all sensuous pleasures, all evil qualities, both joy and sorrow, you must then enter the four degrees of meditation, which are produced by concentration.”[31]

One Buddhist priest on this TV program said that there were a “lot of similarities” with Christianity. A Tibetan Buddhist leader was asked how he would explain Jesus as a Buddhist. He said that Jesus is a “holy being” and his thoughts and motivations were similar to Buddha.

From what I have already expounded on the truth of Jesus Christ, Jesus is more than a holy being who helps people with rebirth. Jesus is God Himself as the Bible declares. Jesus’ words are: “I and the father are one” (John 10:30).

If Jesus is only a “holy being”, is this similar to what Jesus meant when he said that he was the way, the truth and the life in John 14:6 and that he was the only way to God the Father? You need an imagination to say that these are parallels.

Jesus was not describing anything to do with past lives and rebirth as Buddha was. He was not talking about human effort to achieve entrance into the Kingdom of God and thus eternal life.

Jesus was the way to God according to the Gospel of John because of these facts:[32]

Jesus is the truth of God, “full of grace and truth” (1:14);
Jesus is the life of God (1:4; 3:15; 11:25);
Jesus “has made God known” or he narrates God (1:18);
Jesus is the way to God because He does exactly what the Father gives him to say and so (5:19ff; 8:29);
Jesus is called God because he is God (1:1, 18; 20:28); These verses say that “the Word was God” (1:1). Of Jesus Christ it states that “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known” (1:18). Of Jesus, “Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God’” (20:28).
Also, Jesus “is God’s gracious self-disclosure, his ‘Word’, made flesh (1:14)”[33];
Jesus is the life (also 1:4) as he is the one who has “life in himself” (5:26);
He is “the resurrection and the life” (11:25);
1 John 5:20 says that Jesus is (get this): “the true God and eternal life.”

D. A. Carson provides this beautiful summary of Jesus’ exclusive claims:

“Only because he is the truth and the life can Jesus be the way for others to come to God, the way for his disciples to attain the many dwelling-places in the Father’s house (14:2-3), and therefore the answer to Thomas’s question (14:5). In this context Jesus does not simply blaze a trail, commanding others to take the way that he himself takes; rather, he is the way. . . He is himself the Saviour (4:42), the Lamb of God (1:20, 34), the one who so speaks that those who are in the graves hear his voice and come forth (5:28-20). He so mediates God’s truth and God’s life that he is the very way to God . . , the one who alone can say, No-one comes to the Father except through me.”[34]

These claims are exclusive to the claims of Christ and Christianity. They are contrary to the claims of Robert Beckford that Jesus is not unique. Beckford on “Compass” said that “as a Christian I am not just following Jesus but also following Buddha.” No other religious leader comes close to the uniqueness of the claims of Jesus Christ.

It was Thomas a Kempis in his book, Of the Imitation of Christ, who gave this meditation on what Jesus said in John 14:6. A Kempis says that this is what Jesus emphasised:

“Follow thou me: I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. Without the Way there is no going; without the Truth there is no knowing; without the Life there is no living. I AM the Way which thou oughtest follow; the Truth, which thou oughtest to trust; the life which though oughtest to hope for. I am the inviolable way; the infallible truth, the never-ending life. I AM the straightest Way, the infallible Truth, the endless Life. I AM the straightest Way, the supreme Truth, the blessed, the uncreated Life.”[35]

When we examine any worldview, we ask: What’s your view of God or ultimate reality?

Secondly we ask:

2. What’s the nature of the universe?

I didn’t see anything in the first episode of this program that gave me a clear picture of what Beckford was saying about the nature of the universe. But when you listen to others expounding on this theme, watch for themes such as:

Is there evidence that the universe is changing and is caused?
Are there order and design in the universe?
Who caused this order and design?
From where did evil and violence come?

In checking out any belief system, including those on TV, how do they answer the question about the nature of the universe?

There’s a third question to ask of every worldview:

3. Does God intervene in the world? Or, are miracles possible?

Beckford says that the ancient Hindu god, Krishna, had a miraculous birth including an immaculate conception, and this birth was attended by angels. Krishna was placed in a swing at his birth.
Beckford said that Buddha performed miracles, including feeding 5,000. Thus Beckford believed in supernatural intervention by Buddha. But he provided no quotes from Buddha’s writings to confirm that these miracles happened. This kind of information was provided to try to show that Jesus was not unique.
Beckford spoke of Lord Krishna and his many miracles but quotes from Krishna confirming that these miracles had happened in space and time were absent. I’m speaking about the lack of exact quotes.
Beckford raised the issue of Buddha’s miraculous birth and the miracles he performed that were similar to those of Jesus, like walking on the water.

a. How should we as Christians respond to this information?

Again, Beckford was short on quotes from Krishna and Buddha so I was not able to check out the miracles to which he might be referring. Time does not permit us to look in detail at all of these statements, so I’ll respond to his statements about the so-called miraculous birth of the Buddha.

One Buddhist website said: “As legend would have it, Siddhartha Guatama (the Buddha), was born in 623 BC, “a blatantly precocious prince,” to his mother Queen Mahamaya in Lumbini, now modern Rumindei in Nepal (about 250km south-west of Katmandu), where he “was reportedly born out of her right side while she remained standing.”[36]

Others say that “the time of his birth and death are uncertain: most early 20th-century historians date his lifetime from c. 563 BCE to 483 BCE; more recently, however, at a specialist symposium on this question,[37] the majority of those scholars who presented definite opinions gave dates within 20 years either side of 400 BCE for the Buddha’s death, with others supporting earlier or later dates.”[38]

Alexandra David-Neel wrote this of Buddha: “Archaeological discoveries have proved, beyond a doubt, his historical character, but apart from the legends we know very little about the circumstances of his life.”[39]

This is very different to the virgin conception and birth of Jesus Christ, which have clear documentation in the New Testament and the writings of the early church fathers. The Scriptures state that

^“26In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, ²⁷to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”

²⁹Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. ³⁰But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. ³¹You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. ³²He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David” (Luke 1:26-32 NIV).

We know what happened. The Virgin Mary conceived miraculously by God’s intervention without a man’s involvement and Jesus was born in Bethlehem.

Jesus other miracles recorded in the NT were seen and recorded by eyewitnesses or by interviewing those who “could speak from firsthand knowledge and whom they could interview.”[40]

I recommend to you Richard Bauckham’s new book, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony, which provides an outstanding exposition of this fact that “the four Gospels are closely based on the eyewitness testimony of those who personally knew Jesus.”[41]

What do those who know other religions well, say about the Hindu religion? For example, Christian apologist, Ravi Zacharias, writes: “I came [to Christ] amid the thunderous cries of a culture that has three hundred and thirty million deities. I remain with Him knowing that truth cannot be all-inclusive. Truth by definition excludes.”[42] Ravi was a Hindu living in India before he came to Christ in his teens.

If you are testing any worldview, as James Sire states, it needs to have:

Firstly, Inner coherence.

Professor Keith Yandell of the University of Wisconsin put it concisely: “If a conceptual system contains as an essential element (one or more membered) set of propositions which is logically inconsistent, it is false.”[43]

Secondly, it needs to understand all of the data of reality of all types that we gain from our conscious experience of daily lives.
Thirdly, it “should explain what it claims to explain.” E.g. If it says something is right or wrong, on what basis is that judgment made? If it says that Krishna, Buddha & Jesus were miraculously conceived or born, is this explained in exactly the same way for each religion? Are we dealing with the same kinds of facts for Krishna, Buddha and Jesus?
Finally, it needs to be personally, subjectively satisfactory in human experience. It needs to meet our sense of personal need. As James Sire puts it: “Truth is ultimately the only thing that will satisfy. But to determine the truth of a world view, we are cast back on the first three characteristics . . . internal consistency, adequate handling of data and ability to explain what is claimed to be explained.”[44]

Conclusion

Ravi Zacharias had a book published in 2008 that is titled, New Birth or Rebirth? Jesus Talks with Krishna.[45] In it, he has created a narrative discussion because Jesus and Krishna, based on these two different belief systems – Christianity and Hinduism. Jesus & Krishna never actually had an historical conversation. In an interview about that book, Ravi Zacharias said:

The one notion to which all religions subscribe (either explicitly or implicitly) is the notion of exclusive truth. Populists like to deny that premise, but all religions either make this claim or try to covertly smuggle it in. My premise is that the popular aphorism that “all religions are fundamentally the same and only superficially different” simply is not true. It is more correct to say that all religions are, at best, superficially similar but fundamentally different.[46]

In an earlier book, Jesus Among Other Gods: The Absolute Claims of the Christian Message, Ravi Zacharias wrote:

All religions are not the same. All religions do not point to God. All religions do not say that all religions are the same. At the heart of every religion is an uncompromising commitment to a particular way of defining who God is or is not and accordingly, of defining life’s purpose.

Anyone who claims that all religions are the same betrays not only an ignorance of all religions but also a caricatured view of even the best-known ones. Every religion at its core is exclusive.[47]

The Compass TV program was a populist example. It wanted to make Jesus look as though he did not make exclusive claims about himself but that His claims were in other religions. The claim of Jesus not being unique and that his teachings can be found in any of the world’s religions needed to be tested. I have attempted to do that on a limited scale today.

Jesus is absolutely unique. His claim is very specific: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

Of Jesus Christ, the Bible states: “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

“All religions are, at best, superficially similar but fundamentally different.” [48]

Of Jesus, the Scriptures state in Philippians 2:9-10:”Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth” (NIV).

Of the Gentile unbelievers who lived in “debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry” (as unbelievers live today), of these I Peter 4:5 states: “But they will have to give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead” (NIV).

Until Jesus comes again, we need governments to do away with religious vilification legislation so that we can have true freedom of religion to proclaim the gospel and defend the Christian faith against all contenders.

Even if there is vilification legislation, as we have here in Qld., we need to continue to proclaim the Gospel and defend the faith because we know this: At the name of Jesus, at the end of the age, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the father (Phil. 2:9-10).

Appendix A

Religion laws don’t have a prayer in a country with robust common sense[49]

Bob Carr
April 18, 2009, Sydney Morning Herald

This week we have heard about an increasing international trend to prosecute religious issues in the courts.

Such legislation may soon be heading to a statute book near you.

Citizens knew in their bones that Australia was one of the freest countries in the world and that we wouldn’t make ourselves freer by inventing new offences.

So why are we even having this debate? The commission says on its website it’s because of “an increased presence of Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews and other religious communities”.

Another reason nominated by the commission for its inquiry is “the shift away from mainstream Christianity, and the rise of Pentacostalism”. To which I say, “So what?” Or, as the former US president Thomas Jefferson said when petitioned by a group of Methodists to stem the rising number of Baptists in newly minted America, “What business is it of government?” Why should this matter be even brought under the purview of a government-funded inquiry?

If you suspect someone’s on a mission to agitate non-existent problems to find a bigger role for himself, contemplate another reason the commission gives for having this inquiry. It says it wants to assess the effect of Commonwealth and state laws on the “war on terror”.

Leave aside the fact that the Howard government opted not to use the expression and the Rudd Government never has, anti-terrorism laws are neutral on religion. Planning to blow up a building or hijack a plane is guarded against, but the law is silent on the religion of those who might attempt it.

But Tom Calma, one of the commissioners, writes that the terrorism attacks of 9/11 have brought religion squarely back into public debate and it’s important people not be “vilified or alienated because of these beliefs”.

In fact, the Australian responses to September 11 and Bali were restrained, given the scale of the losses and the provocative hatred behind the attacks. Straight after September 11, I visited an Islamic school in western Sydney to make a plea for tolerance. Kerry Chikarovski, the then Opposition leader, rang me urging protection for Islamic women wearing the hijab. Peter Beattie attended a Brisbane mosque. John Howard met Islamic clerics. The same spirit prevailed after Bali.

Calma might ask himself whether a temporarily strained climate would have been improved by a raft of prosecutions for vilification.

Victoria has a religious vilification statute and in 2004 two evangelical pastors were prosecuted for remarks they made in a seminar about Islam. I don’t respect the views of these pastors. The seminar was a fringe event for a fringe sect. Best to ignore it. Instead, the costly and drawn-out legal rigmarole gave Pastor Danny Nalliah the chance to spout in the courts about “Sharia by stealth”. It cost more than $1 million in legal fees.

In 2004 I distributed reports of this outlandish case round the NSW cabinet table, saying to colleagues, “One day we’ll hear an argument for this state having religious vilification … well, that legislation implies prosecution. And that could go anywhere.”

Anticipating this objection, the Human Rights Commission hints it would only recommend civil penalties. This is bogus.

Say that under new laws an Islamic group opted to bring proceedings against a prominent evangelical Christian for comments about Islam. And suppose a court imposed a fine. What would happen if that person said he wouldn’t pay the fine? Put him in jail? The result would be a wave of sympathy for the martyr and hostility against his persecutors – melodrama that did not exist while Nalliah’s opinions were simply treated with benign neglect.

Retaliation would likely follow: militant Christians turning up at mosques with tape recorders to catch an imam “inciting hatred” against their faith, and an action by them in a tribunal or court.

Australia’s treaty obligations oblige us to sign up for this brave new world of religious lawsuits, the commission is arguing. On these pages this week, Jonathan Turley noted that Saudi Arabia was a leading supporter of a new international ban on religious defamation. Well, if a failure to have domestic religious vilification laws means Australians being lectured on religious freedom by Saudi Arabia, I guess we’ll have to bear it with equanimity.

Meanwhile, I stick with Jefferson, who said, “it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are 20 gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” After all, “Truth is great and will prevail if left to itself”.

Bob Carr is a former premier of NSW.

Notes:

[1]Dr. Robert Beckford, “The Hidden Story of Jesus, ” Channel 4 (UK), Faith & Belief, Debates & Controversies, available from: http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/C/can_you_believe_it/debates/hidden.html [12 April 2009]. This program was telecast on ABC TV Qld, “Compass,” Part 1 on 5 April 2009, Part 2 on 12 April 2009.

[2] He was black.

[3] “Ramadan in 2009 will start on Friday, the 21st of August and will continue for 30 days until Tuesday, the 19th of September” [From Guided Ways, available from: http://www.guidedways.com/kb/article-125.html (cited 13 April 2009)].

[4] Unless otherwise stated, all Bible quotations are from the English Standard Version.

[5] Dr. Mojsov has written the book, Bonjana Mojsov 2005, Osiris: Death and Afterlife of a God, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

[6] Rex Tauati Ahdar, available from BNET Australia at: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m6606/is_2_26/ai_n25360048/?tag=content;col1 [18 April 2009].

[7]

The three states are Queensland, Tasmania and Victoria. See respectively, the Anti-Discrimination Act 1991 (Qld) s 124A, s 131A (the religious vilification provisions were added in 2001, titled ” Anti-Discrimination Amendment Bill 2001); the Anti-Discrimination Act 1998 (Tas) s 19, and; the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001 (Vic) s 8. See generally Garth Blake, ‘Promoting Religious Tolerance in a Multifaith Society: Religious Vilification Legislation in Australia and the UK’ (2007) 81 Australian Law Journal 386, 393-6, cited as endnote 2 in the Rex Tauati Ahdar article in ibid.

[8]

Ibid., p. 1. The Anti-Discrimination Amendment Bill 2001 (Qld) s124A, s 126A states: ” A person must not, by a public act, incite hatred towards, serious contempt for, or severe ridicule of, a person or group of persons on the ground of the race or religion of the person or members of the group. . . .

[9] Ibid.

[10] Bob Carr, a lawyer & former Premier of New South Wales, “Religion laws don’t have a prayer in a country with robust common sense,” available from: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/religion-laws-dont-have-a-prayer-in-a-country-with-robust-common-sense-20090417-aa4w.html?page=-1 [cited 24 April 2009]. See the full article in Appendix A.

[11] Albert Mohler Jr., 17 April 2009, Albert Mohler Blog, “Should the United Nations protect religions from defamation?” available from: http://www.albertmohler.com/blog.php [18 April 2009].

[12] UN Watch Briefing – UN Watch, 11 March 2009, “Proposal at U.N. to criminalize defamation of Islam,” available from: http://www.unwatch.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=bdKKISNqEmG&b=1285603&content_id={AF491436-ED3D-46F5-8CC4-E14577482787}¬oc=1 [18 April 2009].

[13] Apologeticum, ch. 50, available from: http://www.tertullian.org/works/apologeticum.htm [25 April 2009].

[14] Some of the above ideas on democracy and freedom of religion are based on Mohler Jr., loc. cit.

[15] James W. Sire 1988 (rev.), The Universe Next Door: A Basic World View Catalog, Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, p. 17.

[16] Another Christian website calls it the “Pagan Copycat Theory.” See: The Divine Evidence, 31 October 2007, available from: http://www.thedevineevidence.com/jesus_similarities.html [12 April 2009].

[17] Norman L. Geisler and William Watkins 1984, Perspectives: Understanding and Evaluating Today’s World Views. San Bernadino, California: Here’s Life Publishers Inc., p. 21ff.

[18] Ultimate reality is not based on Geisler & Watkins (1984) but from James Sire (1988), p. 25.

[19] Ultimate reality is not from Geisler & Watkins (1984) but from James Sire (1988), p. 25.

[20] Hindu website, “The concepts of Hinduism – Avatar,” available from: http://www.hinduwebsite.com/hinduism/concepts/avatar.asp [18 April 2009].

[21] Charles Hodge 1979, Systematic Theology Vol. I, Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan, pp. 503-504.

[22] A Manual of Buddhism, “The Buddha’s Enlightenment,” available from: http://www.geocities.com/mkoay.rm/buddha_enlightenment.html [19 April 2009].

[23] Pubbenivasanussati Nana – Reminiscence of Past Births.

[24] Cutupapata Nana – Perception of the Disappearing and Reappearing of Beings.

[25] Based on Josh McDowell & Don Stewart 1983, Handbook of Today’s Religions, Here’s Life Publishers, Inc., San Bernardino, California, p. 307.

[26] Ibid.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Ibid.

[29] Ibid.

[30] Ibid.

[31] Ibid.

[32] With help from D. A. Carson 1991, The Gospel According to John, Inter-Varsity Press, Leicester, England and William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan, p. 491.

[33] Ibid.

[34] Ibid.

[35] Thomas A Kempis 1973, Of the Imitation of Christ, Keats Publishing Inc., New Canaan, Connecticut, pp. 175-176.

[36] Lumbini, available from: http://members.porchlight.ca/blackdog/lumbini.htm [21 April 2009].

[37] The endnote given by Wikipedia was, L. S. Cousins 1996, “The Dating of the Historical Buddha: A Review Article,”(Originally published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Series 3, 6.1 (1996): 57-63.), available from: http://indology.info:8107/papers/cousins/ [21 April 2009].

[38] Gautama Buddha, Wikipedia, available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddha#cite_note-1 [21 April 2009].

[39] Alexandra David-Neel 1977, Buddhism: Its Doctrines and Its Methods, New York: St. Martin’s Press, p. 15, in Josh McDowell & Don Stewart 1983, Handbook of Today’s Religions, Here’s Life Publishers, Inc., San Bernardino, California, p. 304.

[40] Richard Bauckham 2006, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan / Cambridge, U.K., p. 479.

[41] Ibid., inside flap.

[42] Ravi Zacharias 2000, Jesus Among Other Gods, Nashville: Word Publishing, p. 6.

[43] In James W. Sire, loc. cit., p. 214. Keith E. Yandell 1980, The Epistemology of Religious Experience, NY, p. 185. A 1994 revised edition is available from Cambridge University Press.

[44] Ibid., p. 216

[45] Multnomah Press.

[46] An interview with Ravi Zacharias concerning his book, New Birth or Rebirth? Jesus Talks with Krishna (Multnomah 2008), “Ravi Zacharias: Jesus talks with Krishna,” Christian Broadcasting Network, available from: http://www.cbn.com/entertainment/books/RaviZ-QA.aspx [18 April 2009].

[47] Ravi Zacharias 2000, Jesus Among Other Gods, Nashville: Word Publishing, p. 7.

[48] An interview with Ravi Zacharias as in footnote no. 45.

[49] Bob Carr, a lawyer & former Premier of New South Wales, “Religion laws don’t have a prayer in a country with robust common sense,” available from: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/religion-laws-dont-have-a-prayer-in-a-country-with-robust-common-sense-20090417-aa4w.html?page=-1 [cited 24 April 2009].

Christ’s resurrection: Latter-day wishful thinking?

admin — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 04:27:05 +0000

“Pastor, I don’t know what to believe about Christ anymore. I’ve just read a leading magazine and I now believe that you and my Christian parents have not been telling the truth about what happened to Jesus at the cross.” These words from a disillusioned 23-year-old in your church might knock the spiritual wind out of your theological sails. They did for me when a bright young Christian openly confessed this.

He had been reading Time magazine which stated that what happened to Jesus, as told in the Bible, is wishful thinking. He gave sceptical details that could have come from a science fiction movie.[1]

What did he learn from Time?

Jesus – a peasant nobody – was never buried, never taken by his friends to a rich man’s sepulcher. Rather, says Crossan, the tales of entombment and resurrection were latter-day wishful thinking. Instead, Jesus’ corpse went the way of all abandoned criminals’ bodies: it was probably barely covered with dirt, vulnerable to the wild dogs that roamed the wasteland of the execution grounds.[2]

What will you do pastor, Christian leader, or parent with this kind of news through the mass media? John D. Crossan goes even further. In speaking of the resurrection of Christ, he wrote that “in I Corinthians 15 Paul begins by enumerating all the apparitions of the risen Jesus.”[3] While now retired, Crossan, a fellow of the radical Jesus Seminar, taught biblical studies for 26 years at the Roman Catholic DePaul University in Chicago.[4]

What’s an apparition? It’s a phantom, a ghost. Jesus’ resurrected body was not real flesh but he claims that “the resurrection is a matter of Christian faith.”[5] Jesus “was buried, if buried at all, by his enemies, and the necessarily shallow grave would have been easy prey for scavenging animals.”[6]

For him, the resurrection of Christ is really a spiritual resurrection among believers – whatever that means!

If that person were listening to ABC radio’s, “Sunday night with John Cleary,” he would have heard an interview with a leading church figure who stated:

I live on the other side of Albert Einstein, and I know what relativity means in all of life, and so I can no longer claim that I possess objective and revealed truth and it’s infallible, or it’s inherent, those become claims out of the past that are no longer relevant for 21st century people. [7]

The interview was with John Shelby Spong, retired Episcopalian [i.e. Anglican] Bishop of Newark, New Jersey, whose diocese lost 40% of its parishioners while he was its bishop.[8]

Spong believes that

God is very real. I believe that I live my life every day inside the reality of this God. I call this God by different words. I describe God as the source of life and the source of love and the ground of being. I engage God when I live fully and love wastefully and have the courage to be who I am. That’s the God I see in Jesus of Nazareth.[9]

Yet Borg & Crossan are so provocative as to state “that probably more people have left the church because of biblical literalism than for any other reasons.”[10] The contrary is true with Spong. His liberal views seem to be associated with people leaving his diocese in droves.

With the freely available blogs on the www, Christian people are likely to encounter more doubting religious statements like those.

What evidence will you give to those who are questioning?

When it comes to Christmas or Easter times and the mass media want a controversial or alternate view of the birth, death, or resurrection of Christ, to whom will they turn? Billy Graham, John MacArthur, Peter Jensen, Bill Newman, or your pastor? Hardly!

If they want to rattle the cages of Bible-believing Christians, they turn to scholars or prominent religious people with a very different outlook. People like John Dominic Crossan, a co-founder of the unorthodox Jesus Seminar, will be in their sights. Marcus Borg & Crossan co-authored a book last year that gives a daily account of Jesus’ final week in Jerusalem.[11]

Without Easter, they admit, we could not know about Jesus. “Easter is utterly central. But what was it?”[12] It is true that God raised Jesus, but does that mean that a miracle happened? Not at all!

When you read Luke 24:13-53 (the road to Emmaus event), you discover that this is one “case that Easter stories are parabolic narratives”[13] and

it is difficult to imagine that this story is speaking about events that could have been videotaped. . . This story is the metaphoric condensation of several years of early Christian thought into one parabolic afternoon. Whether the story happened or not, Emmaus always happens Emmaus happens again and again—this is its truth as parabolic narrative.[14]

According to these expert scholars, Jesus’ appearing, after his resurrection, to two people on the road to Emmaus was not an actual event. It was metaphor of Christian thought! We could be tempted to respond, “What nonsense!” and leave it there. Where does that leave questioning young believers and older Christians who are shattered by such comments?

Compulsory ministry of apologetics

Following the death of the apostles, early leaders of the churches were people who were converted from paganism and needed to defend the faith (apologists) and correct false doctrine (polemicists). They included Justin Martyr (born ca. 100), Irenaeus (b. 120) , Tertullian (b. 160) and Clement of Alexandria (b. after 150).

Why was it necessary for the early church to defend the Christian faith and correct false teachings? The New Testament exhorted us that this would be the case. When the apostle Paul was in Athens, he “reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace ever day with those who happened to be there” (Acts 17:17). Why did he need to do this? The Epicurean and Stoic philosophers who engaged with him, accused him of being a “babbler” and “a preacher of foreign divinities” (v. 18). Why? “Because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection” (v. 18). Then he debated the philosophers on the Areopagus (Acts 17:22ff).

Why was this necessary? First Peter taught that all Christians should be “always prepared to make a defense (Gk. apologia) to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you” (I Pt. 3:15 ESV).[15]

Paul warned that “the time is coming when people will not endure sound [or healthy] teaching” and “will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths” (1 Tim 4:3-4).

I am convinced that Christians will be shaken by the heresy of people like Crossan, Borg, and the doubters who are reported in our mass media, if the church does not prepare them as apologists who “make a defence” of their faith. Since the ministry gifts of apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher are “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:12), church leaders have an obligation to equip believers as apologists in our hostile world.

Our topic is one of the challenges of the first and twenty-first centuries: How do we respond to people like Crossan, Borg and others who deny the bodily resurrection of Christ and want to write it off as a “metaphoric condensation of several years of early Christian thought”?[16]

I thank God for the ministry gift of Christ to the church in Richard Bauckham, who challenges the historical Jesus’ critics of the twenty-first century who are “attempting to reconstruct the historical figure of Jesus in a way that is allegedly purely historical, free of the concerns of faith and dogma”[17] and not according to the Jesus as recorded in the New Testament. Bauckham considers that this enterprise “has been highly problematic for Christian faith and theology.”[18]

What is happening here?

For some historians’ judgements today, such as Crossan, Borg, the late Robert Funk, and other Jesus’ seminar fellows, there is “a Jesus reconstructed by the historian, a Jesus attained by the attempt to go back behind the Gospels and, in effect, to provide an alternative to the Gospels’ construction of Jesus.”[19]

Crossan claims that the “Cross Gospel attempts to write, from prophetic allusions, a first ‘historical narrative about the passion of Jesus. Hide the prophecy, tell the narrative, and invent the history.’”[20] Do you understand the magnitude of what he is saying? The Cross Gospel is the Gospel material that applies to the cross of Christ and he describes it as hiding prophecy and inventing history.

Crossan’s presupposition is that “Jesus, as magician and miracle worker, was a very problematic and controversial phenomenon not only for his enemies but even for his friends.”[21] What about those whom Jesus resurrected such as Lazarus? “A story about a miraculous or physical raising from death could be used or created as a symbol for baptismal or spiritual raising from death,” according to Crossan.[22]

What are these liberal theological scholars doing with the biblical witness and evidence? Bauckham rightly believes that whenever historians consider that biblical texts are “hiding the real Jesus from us,” they at best give us a version of the historical Jesus “filtered through the spectacles of early Christian faith.”[23] At worst, they are developing “a Jesus constructed by the needs and interests of various groups in the early church.”[24] Also, I consider that they are inventing a Jesus who suits their own beliefs. They do not want the biblical texts to speak for themselves and be believed on face value. Crossan regards Christ’s empty tomb stories, not as an event that happened in past history, but as “parables of resurrection, not the Resurrection itself.”[25]

Surely it is reasonable to conclude that when people saw the risen Christ that this evidence should be enough to verify that this actually happened. That’s not how it is for those who attack Christ’s resurrection.

Crossan, for example, rejects the claim that the appearances of Jesus after his resurrection were visions because “they have no marks that you would expect—no blinding lights, no heavenly voice, nobody knocked to the ground.”[26] The stories in John 20 of the race by the two disciples to the empty tomb (Peter and the Beloved Disciple) in addition to that of Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (Matt. 28:8-10) “tell us absolutely nothing of historical value about the origins of Christian faith. But they tell us a great deal about the origins of Christian authority. . . They are dramatizations about where power and authority rest in the early Church.”[27]

This kind of conclusion causes me to question the integrity of the one who wrote it. What can we say to those who want to create a Jesus out of their own presuppositions and contrary to the Gospel content?

One of the keys to understanding the Gospels as being authentic and reliable is similar to, but not identical with, our standard for the law courts of Australia. The importance of eyewitnesses can not be over-stated in the courts and in the evidence for the credibility of the truthfulness of the Gospels.

Eyewitness testimony is best

How do we obtain reliable evidence of something that happened in the past such as the German Holocaust of World War 2, the Twin Towers catastrophe of 11th September 2001, the Fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, or the life and times of Jesus Christ and the early church? Samuel Byrskog’s assessment hits the mark:

The major Greek and Roman historians who comment on their own and/or others’ practice of inquiry and sources adhered to Heraclitus’ old dictum. Eyes were surer witnesses than ears. The ancient historians exercised autopsy [eyewitnesses] directly and/or indirectly, by being present themselves and/or by seeking out and interrogating other eyewitnesses; they related to the past visually.[28]

Instead of leaving history to be constructed according to the creative imagination of the scholar, it is better to go to the texts themselves (in this case the New Testament) to “see to what extent they provide a portrayal which identifies certain persons as capable of being eyewitnesses and informants in line of the emerging gospel tradition.”[29]

The Gospels & eyewitness evidence

Let’s check out the evidence. When we search the Gospels for eyewitness testimony to the events and interpretation of Jesus’ life, what do we find?

1. Women as witnesses of the Christ

One of the surprising pieces of eyewitness testimony for an empty tomb of Jesus is the women as witnesses. Rabbi Judah used to praise God daily that he was not created a woman.[30] In a Jewish culture which regarded the witness of a woman as insignificant, it is important to observe that some of the foremost witnesses of the resurrected Christ are women.

All four Gospels include women as witnesses but the males are given more prominence. In Luke, the women who had followed Jesus were there at the burial with spices (23:55-56) and on resurrection morning, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and other women reported the empty tomb to the apostles (24:10-12).

At Mark 15:40, particularly, he has women as eyewitnesses in focus at Christ’s crucifixion: “There were also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome.” It is important to note that this “looking” by the women is more than a gaze at a distance. The verb, “looking on” (the?re?), is not some passing glimpse but means “to look at, observe, perceive.” Their purpose as eyewitnesses is accentuated by their being mentioned by name.

2. Luke’s Gospel & eyewitnesses

On the human level, Luke explains how he compiled his Gospel under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit,

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught (Luke 1:1-4).[31]

While these verses have come in for a lot of scholarly discussion, the concept being communicated about evidence from “eyewitnesses” is not like that in the law courts of the land. Instead, the autoptai (eyewitnesses)

are simply firsthand observers of the events. (Loveday Alexander offers the translations: “those with personal/firsthand experience: those who know the facts at first hand.”) But the concept expressed in the words, “those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses” is clearly the same as in Acts 1:21-22 and John 15:27.[32]

Luke 24:33-34 confirms the importance of eyewitnesses after Christ’s resurrection: “And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem. And they found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together, saying, ‘The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!’ I Cor. 15:5 confirms that Christ “appeared to Cephas [Peter], then to the twelve.”

Peter, the apostle, was a reliable eyewitness of Christ’s resurrection and of other evidence (see Acts 1:22; 2:32; 3:15). He was a firsthand observer of the events. The Gospel reliability is confirmed by eyewitness accounts of participants in these unique events of the first century.

Since Luke was not one of the 12 apostles, it is important that one of the sources for his Gospel is that of those who had first hand knowledge of the events in Jesus’ life – the eyewitnesses.

However, let’s not overlook the fact that eyewitness testimony is only as good as the integrity of the eyewitness.

3. John’s Gospel & eyewitnesses

John’s Gospel provides special evidence for the importance of eyewitnesses through John the Baptist:

And John [the Baptist] bore witness: “I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God” (John 1:32-34).

The first followers of Jesus, including the apostle John himself, were important eyewitnesses of Jesus’ ministry (see: John 15:27; 19:35; 21:24).

In one of the most detailed recent commentaries on the Gospel of John, Andreas Köstenberger has emphasized the importance of eyewitnesses in the Gospel records:

This role of eyewitness is both vital and humble. It is vital because eyewitnesses are required to establish the truthfulness of certain facts. Yet it is humble because the eyewitness is not the center of attention. Rather, eyewitnesses must testify truthfully to what they have seen and heart—no more and no less. The Baptist fulfilled this task with distinction. The last time he is mentioned in this Gospel, it is said of him that “all that John said about this man [Jesus] is true” ([John] 10:41).[33]

4. Papias & the importance of eyewitnesses

Reading the writings of Papias may not be one of your favourite bedtime stories, but in the writings of this early Christian leader is evidence for the importance of eyewitnesses testimony.

Papias was a bishop of Hierapolis in the Roman province of Asia, close to Laodicea and Colossae, in what is Turkey today. He wrote an important work in the early second century AD, Exposition of the Oracles of the Lord, in five books. While a full copy of the works has not survived, fragments of it are preserved in one of the writings of the very earliest church historians, Eusebius of Caesarea’s, Ecclesiastical History. Notice carefully what Papias wrote:

But I shall not hesitate also to put down for you [singular] along with my interpretations whatsoever things I have at any time learned carefully from the elders and carefully remembered, guaranteeing their truth. For I did not, like the multitude, take pleasure in those that speak much, but in those that teach the truth; not in those that relate strange commandments, but in those that deliver the commandments given by the Lord to faith, and springing from the truth itself.

If, then, any one came, who had been a follower [or, goes closely with, attends][34] of the elders, I questioned him in regard to the words of the elders—[that is] what [according to the elders] Andrew or what Peter said, or what was said by Philip, or by Thomas, or by James, or by John, or by Matthew, or by any other of the disciples of the Lord, and what things Aristion and the presbyter John, the disciples of the Lord, say. For I did not think that what was to be gotten from the books would profit me as much as what came from the living and abiding voice.[35]

In order to understand what Papias is driving at, we need to note the four categories of people he mentions:

(1) those who “had been in attendance on the elders,” i.e. people who had been present at their teaching; (2) the elders themselves; (3) the Lord’s disciples, consisting of Andrew, Peter, Philip, Thomas, James, John, Matthew, and others; (4) Aristion and John the Elder, who are also called “the Lord’s disciples.”[36]

Based on Papias’ two verbs used in categories (3) and (4), aorist tense (”said”) present tense (”say”), we know that those in category (3) were dead, while Aristion and John the Elder were still teaching. This means that “Papias could learn from their disciples what they were (still) saying. These two had been personal disciples of Jesus but at the time of which Papias speaks were prominent Christian teachers in the province of Asia.”[37] The Apostle John had died but, John the Elder, was alive and teaching in the churches of Asia.

I enthusiastically recommend a read of Richard Bauckham’s, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, to refute those who are suggesting that the Gospels include “creative fiction.”

Why this emphasis on eyewitness testimony?

Perhaps you are questioning why I am placing such emphasis on the record of eyewitness testimonies in the New Testament and particularly in the Gospels.

My point is simple. Some of today’s doubters about the integrity of the Gospels are claiming that the Gospels included creations by the Gospel writers. Crossan admits, “Sometimes people are shocked at the notion that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John might have elaborated upon actual events or even created stories and sayings about Jesus from scratch” by using “creative freedom.”[38]

However, the evidence from Scripture is that the Gospels contain eyewitness accounts of the death, empty tomb, and appearances of the resurrected Jesus.

The doubters are raising considerable questions that may unsettle those who are new in the faith or those whose faith is weak. There is an obligation on Christian leaders to equip God’s people to deal with the attacks on Jesus and the Gospels.

When it is stated by prominent scholars that “eighty-two percent of the words ascribed to Jesus in the gospels were not actually spoken by him, according to the Jesus Seminar,”[39] what are Christian leaders who are concerned about God’s people to do? If only 18% of Jesus’ words in the Gospels are authentic according to these researchers, how can church leaders respond?

At the time of the writing of the Gospels, eyewitness testimony was available that could have been checked with the original apostles, such as Peter and John, and with other eyewitnesses. Generally, people are less willing to question the authenticity of writing or oral tradition if there are witnesses available to verify what has been stated.

There is also an urgent call today for Christian leaders to be engaged in equipping Christians for the ministry of apologetics (see I Peter 3:15; Acts 17:22ff).

Which one will you choose?

(1) “Hide the prophecy, tell the narrative, and invent the history,” OR,

(2) “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.”

Notes:

[1] This information is based on a conversation that I had with a person who claimed to be an evangelical Christian believer.

[2] Ostling, R. N. 1994, ‘Jesus Christ: Plain and simple’, Time, 10 January, Available from: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,979938-3,00.html [cited 7 July 2007]

[3] Crossan J. D. 1998, The Birth of Christianity, HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco, p. xxviii.

[4] See Crossan’s autobiography, John D. Crossan 2000, A Long Way from Tipperary, HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco, p. 95.

[5] Crossan J. D. 1995, Who Killed Jesus? HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco, p. 189.

[6] Crossan J. D. 1994, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco, p. 160.

[7] “Sunday Nights with John Cleary,” 17 June 2001, available from: http://www.abc.net.au/sundaynights/stories/s815368.htm [cited 7 July 2007].

[8] D. Marty Lasley 1999, "Rescuing Christianity from Bishop Kevorkian", Anglican Voice, 2 June, available from: http://listserv.episcopalian.org/wa.exe?A2=ind9906&L=virtuosity&H=1&P=272 [cited 7 July 2007].

[9] Spong in Cleary (see endnote 8).

[10] Marcus J. Borg & John Dominic Crossan 2006, The Last Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus’s Final Week in Jerusalem, HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco, p. 218 n16.

[11] Borg & Crossan 2006 (details above).

[12] Ibid., p. 190.

[13] Ibid., p. 200.

[14] Ibid., p. 201.

[15] ESV – The English Standard Version of the Bible. Unless otherwise indicated, all biblical quotations are from the ESV.

[16] See note 15.

[17] Richard Bauckham 2006, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan / Cambridge, U.K., p. 2.

[18] Ibid. p. 2.

[19] Ibid., p. 3.

[20] J. D. Crossan 1991, The Historical Jesus, HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco, p. 372.

[21] Ibid., p. 311.

[22] Ibid., p. 330.

[23] Bauckham 2006, p. 2.

[24] Ibid., p. 2.

[25] Crossan 2000, A Long Way from Tipperary, p.166.

[26] J. D. Crossan with R. G. Watts 1996, Who Is Jesus? HarperPaperbacks, New York, NY, p. 162.

[27] Ibid., p. 163.

[28] Samuel Byrskog 2002, Story as History—History as Story, Brill Academic Publishers Inc., Boston / Leiden, p. 64, emphasis in original.

[29] Ibid., p. 67.

[30] In ibid., p. 74.

[31] Emphasis added.

[32] Bauckham, p. 117.

[33] Andreas J. Köstenberger 2004, John, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, Baker Academic, Grand Rapids, Michigan, p. 33.

[34] Suggested by Bauckham, p. 15, n17.

[35] Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, vol. 3, ch. 39, vs. 3-4, available from New Advent at: http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250103.htm [cited 15 July 2007].

[36] Bauckham, p. 16.

[37] Ibid., p. 17.

[38] Crossan with Watts 1996, Who Is Jesus?, pp. 7-8.

[39] Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar 1993, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus, Macmillan Publishing Company (a Polebridge Press Book), New York, p. 5.

Torn between life and death

admin — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 02:27:19 +0000

Why is it that many of us will do many things to live longer but others want to end life now?

We go on diets to reduce the strain on our hearts and the cholesterol from the fatty foods that we eat.

A recent study in the USA found that if people want to be healthy and live longer, they should consume less red and processed meat.[1]

The research of half a million American middle-aged and elderly people who consumed four ounces of red meat a day (an amount equivalent to a small hamburger), found that there was a 30% higher chance that they would die in the next 10 years.

Most of these would die of heart disease and cancer. The risk was increased through eating sausage, cold meats and other processed meats.

But this desire to try to avoid death, is also seen in some treatments of cancer. In spite of severe side effects of chemotherapy, such as fever, chills & sweats, abnormal bleeding, severe vomiting, constipation, diarrhoea and abdominal pain, patients want to live longer to spend more time with their relatives and friends.

Why is it that we have this love of life and need to prolong the date of death? Could it be connected with our culture’s deep fear of death?

“I want to be with my loved ones who have gone before, but I’m not sure about that,” are among the comments I hear.

For others, life has become a burden and ending life sooner than later sounds like a good release. The euthanasia movement in Australia, Europe and the USA is pushing this line. “To die with dignity” sounds like a reasonable and responsible way of thinking until one sees how euthanasia is happening in countries such as Holland.

The recent series of articles in The Times (UK) demonstrates this continuing push for euthanasia and assisted suicide.[2] The Dutch experience shows that this push will not be limited to the terminally ill. After a three year inquiry, the Dutch Medical Association (as reported in the British Medical Journal) wants more freedom to kill. The report stated that “doctors can help patients who ask for help to die even though they may not be ill but ’suffering through living.’”[3]

Some experience this ambivalence: Extend life as much as possible but end life if it becomes unbearable.

This is where the Easter message of the resurrected Christ has particular application. We do not have to guess about what happens at death. Here there is an opportunity of knowing why life must end and what lies beyond the grave. The physical resurrection of all human beings after death is firmly grounded in Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, which we celebrate on Easter Sunday.

Jesus Christ himself affirms this. After raising a man the dead, he said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”[4]

He demonstrated the reality of this through his own resurrection from the dead, which was a turning point in human history.

Because of Christ’s physical resurrection from the dead, there is a solid biblical, theological and historical basis for the belief that the souls of both believers and unbelievers survive death andwill be raised again.

There is no reason for the believers in Christ to fear death as they are eternally redeemed. Are those who push for euthanasia certain of the destiny of those for whom they push for “death with dignity”?

Notes:

[1] Rob Stein, The Washington Post, 24 March 2009, “Daily red meat raises chances of dying early,” available from: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/23/AR2009032301626.html [4 April 2009].

[2] A. C. Grayling, The Times (UK), 31 March 2009, “Allowing people to arrange their death is a simple act of kindness”, available from: Timesonline at: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6005023.ece [3 April 2009]. See other euthanasia & assisted suicide stories linked to this article.

[3] Tony Sheldon, British Medical Journal News roundup, Extract, 18 January 2005, “Dutch euthanasia law should apply to patients ’suffering through living’ report says,” available from: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/330/7482/61 [4 April 2009]. Sheldon’s full article may be viewed at: http://www.lists.opn.org/pipermail/right-to-die_lists.opn.org/2005-January/000555.html [4 April 2009]. I was alerted to this information by Weblog: Christianity Today, “Dutch doctors want to kill the healthy,” 13 March 2006, available from: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/januaryweb-only/51.0.html [4 April 2009].

[4] John 11:25-26.

Who is Jesus & why did He die?

admin — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 08:56:15 +0000

A thoughtful person with whom I dialogued on a www blog site and through email said to me: “If you would like to know why I have rejected Christianity, I will be glad to tell you. Here are some [of my] reasons:” His questions are located HERE and I’ve used his questions below in bold and marked as Q.1, Q.2, etc.

As a prerequesite to understanding my evangelical Christian worldview, I ask you to read my three part series, Can you trust the Bible? Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

For a continuation of my responses to these excellent questions from an unbeliever, go to:

Problems with Jesus (this article),

Problems with the Trinity,

Facts about hell,

Why the need for apologetics?

Religion and beliefs

A. Who is Jesus and why did He die?

1. See “the Evidence for Jesus“ by Dr. William Lane Craig.

2. What’s the evidence for Jesus outside of the Bible?

In Roman historian, Cornelius Tacitus (ca. A.D. 55-120), The Annals, he wrote:

Such indeed were the precautions of human wisdom. The next thing was to seek means of propitiating the gods, and recourse was had to the Sibylline books, by the direction of which prayers were offered to Vulcanus, Ceres, and Proserpina. Juno, too, was entreated by the matrons, first, in the Capitol, then on the nearest part of the coast, whence water was procured to sprinkle the fane and image of the goddess. And there were sacred banquets and nightly vigils celebrated by married women. But all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor, and the propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order. Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.

Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man’s cruelty, that they were being destroyed (ch. 15).

Another Roman historian, Suetonius, lived ca. A.D. 120 wrote: “Punishment was inflicted on the Christians, a class of men given to a new and mischievous superstition” (The Twelve Caesars: The Life of Nero, ch. 16).

Suetonius also wrote in his The Twelve Caesars: Life of Claudius he wrote: “Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome” (ch. 25).

Pliny, the Younger, writing to the emperor telling of his achievements as the governor of Bithynia, wrote (ca. A. D. 112):

they were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to partake of food‹but food of an ordinary and innocent kind (Epistles, book 10, letter 96, To the Emperor Trajan).

There are other quotes from the Greek satirist, Lucian, in the second century. Samaritan-born historian, Thallus (ca. A.D. 52, quoted in Julius Africanus ca. A.D. 221) has something to say about the darkness at the time of the crucifixion.

There is a letter of Mara Bar-Serapion, written after A.D. 73, which is in the British Museum, which is a father writing to his son in prison. He compares the deaths of Socrates, Pythagoras, and Jesus.

The death of Jesus Christ

On the physical death of Jesus, see, “On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ” (Journal of the American Medical Association).

The following are my answers to some of the questions (Questions are in bold) from this thoughtful, but doubting, person who engaged me in discussion on lots of issues about Christianity. [1]

B. Problems with Jesus

1. Jesus being God

Q. 1 The Jewish people, who started all of this, NEVER expected that the Messiah, when he came, to be the Almighty God.

This is an untrue statement. Let’s take a look at the OT evidence:

Psalm 110:1, “The Lord says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.” Jesus confirmed that this referred to him in Matt. 22:41-46.

In Ps. 110:1, two different words are used for “Lord.” The first is Yahweh (Jehovah) and the second is Adhoni. The latter could mean “lord” (as in Gen. 23:6; 1 Sam. 22:12; 2 Sam. 12:32) when it is a “respectful form of address between man and man, or a word that may refer to the Lord in the highest sense of the term. . . In what sense it is to be understood must be determined from the connection” (Leupold 1959, p. 775).

In what sense is it in Ps. 110? “Sit at my right hand” indicates Adhoni ranks as an equal with the Lord and is thus regarded as divine. Adhoni’s sceptre will be extended “from Zion” and he “will rule in the midst of [his] enemies” (v. 2). “You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.” If the Jews did not see this as a reference to Messiah’s deity, they were blind and devoid of spiritual wisdom.

Hundreds of years before Christ’s birth, Isaiah declared that the Messiah would be uniquely the Son of God (deity): “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isa. 9:6).

“That the divine character of the “child” is here asserted appears also from the fact that Isaiah uses the same title unequivocally for God in 10:21. . . The Hebrew literally, ‘God’s hero,’ using a title for God (’el) that signifies “the Strong-one” (Leupold 1971, p. 186).

Isa. 7:14, “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.” This verse is a more controversial example because Immanuel, even though it means, “God with us,” does not necessarily mean that the child is divine.

This name could merely stress that in the prevailing emergency God would not forsake his people. Yet the other possibility must be cheerfully conceded, namely this, that in his own person this child could embody this truth [of divinity]. He himself would be God among his people. It is impossible to say with any certainty in which direction the word points. No explanation of v. 14 will ever be entirely satisfactory (Leupold 1971, p. 158).

However, Matt. 1:22-23 confirms that Immanuel refers to Jesus Christ, the Messiah.

Q. 2 Most Christians have made a god out of Jesus and in so doing realise that they have forfeited the unique monotheism of the OT . . .

Jesus proclaimed himself as God

Jesus Himself jettisons the idea that his deity is a fabrication of Christians. Listen to the words from Jesus’ mouth:

“I and the Father are one” (John 10:30);

“Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9);
“Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?” (John 14:10);
“Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (John 14:11);
“If you knew me, you would know my Father also” (John 8:19);
“He who hates me hates my Father as well” (John 15:23);
“That all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him” (John 5:23).
“Whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me” (Mark 9:37);
“Before Abraham was born, I am” (John 8:58);
Jesus took on himself the title of “Son of man” (Mark 14:62), which was an accepted Messianic title from one of Daniel’s visions.
He accepted the description of “Son of God” when challenged by the high priest (Mark 14:61);

Others confessed Christ as God.

When Simon Peter confessed his faith in Jesus, he said, “You are the Christ” (Mark 8:29);
After Christ’s resurrection, Thomas said to Jesus, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28);
John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:14 confirms that this Word was Jesus because he “became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”
John 5:18 records how the Jews were trying all the harder to kill him, “Not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.”
Note that in John 8:58, the identical terms are used by Christ as are used by Jehovah in God’s discourse with Moses (Ex. 3:14, “I am who I am.”). Cf. John 8:24 where Jesus said, “I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be, you will indeed die in your sins.”
The Jews stated clearly what they understood Jesus was saying about himself: “‘We are not stoning you for any of these,’ replied the Jews, ‘but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God’” (John 10:33).
Heb. 1:3, “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being.” Heb. 1:2: “Through the Son he made the universe.”
Paul to the Colossians said, “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form” (Col. 2:9);
Phil. 2:10-11, “That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

It is, therefore, an invention to say that “most Christians have made a god out of Jesus.” Jesus clearly declared himself to be God. Others, including his enemies, understood he was stating his divinity. The OT Jews expected the Messiah to be God.

There have been plenty of detractors who have tried to reconstruct the above evidence, but it will not wash. The evidence is in.

C.S. Lewis got to the guts of the challenge for a logically thinking person:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool; you can spit at him and kill him for a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to (Lewis 1952, pp. 55-56).

3. Jesus as the Messiah/Second Coming

Q.3 Jesus could not have been the Messiah, for the OT clearly states that the Messiah would usher in world peace etc. The opposite happened.

Yes, the OT does state that the Messiah is the “Prince of Peace” (Isa. 9:6). But what does that mean and how will it be fulfilled? We tend to think of peace as tranquility, an absence of hostility. The basic idea of the biblical word, “peace’ (OT Hebrew shalom; NT Greek, eirene) is

completeness, soundness, wholeness… Peace has reference to health, prosperity, well-being, security, as well as quiet from war (Eccles. 3:8; Isa. 45:7). . . Peace is a condition of freedom from strife whether internal or external. . . In the NT the word has reference to the peace which is the gift of Christ (John 14:27; 16:33; Rom. 5:1; Phil. 4:7. The word is used many times to express the truths of the mission, character, and gospel of Christ. The purpose of Christ’s [first] coming into the world was to bring spiritual peace with God (Luke 1:79; 2:14; 24:36; Mark 5:34; 9:50). There is a sense in which he came not to bring peace, but a sword (Matt. 10:34). This has reference to the struggle with every form of sin. Christ’s life depicted in the gospels is one of majestic calm and serenity (Matt. 11:28; John 14:27). The essence of the gospel may be expressed in the term ‘peace’ (Acts 10:36; Eph. 6:15), including the peace of reconciliation with God (Rom. 5:1) and the peace of fellowship with God (Gal. 5:22; Phil. 4:7) [Feinberg 1984, p. 833].

The gospel is one of peace (Eph. 6:15). Christ is our peace (Eph. 2:14-15). God the Father is the God of peace (I Thess. 5:23). It’s the tremendous privilege of every Christian to experience the peace of God ((Phil. 4:9). This is because Christ’s death on the cross left a legacy of peace (John 14:27; 16:33).

The benefits of this kind of peace are experienced by the believer NOW as well as in the eternal glory to come (see Rom. 8:6; Col. 3:15).

This led Greek lexicon (dictionary) compiler, Joseph Thayer, to say that peace in the Greek accusative case is “a conception distinctly peculiar to Christianity, the tranquil state of a soul assured of its salvation through Christ, and so fearing nothing from God and content with its earthly lot, of whatever sort that is” (Thayer 1885/1962, p. 182). See Rom. 8:6.

The unbeliever fails to see that the Messiah’s coming means peace in two stages. His first coming and death on the cross provided peace with God for the believer.(Rom. 5:1). In fact, one can have peace with God and still experience a sword (Matt. 10:34) and persecution (John 15:20).

With Christ’s first coming into the world, there is a sense in which he brought division and strife between one person and another, one race and another, one church and another, even between family members. This is because faith in Christ causes people to support or denigrate Christ and Christians. This can divide one from another. The life of the believer is often filled with storm and stress and for some it ends in martyrdom, as for missionary Graham Staines and his two young sons, Philip, aged 10, and Timothy, aged 6, in the east Indian state of Orissa in January 1999 (The Courier Mail 1999, p. 1).

In this [20^th] century, an average of 300,000 Christians has been martyred each year, according to David Barrett, editor of the World Christian Encyclopedia. . . Martyrdom, Barrett wants to show, is not an “outrageous exception, but a part of a surprisingly regular 2,000-year pattern where persecution and suffering are the normal lot of the body of Christ” (Christianity Today 1990, p. 12).

Ultimate peace will only happen at Christ’s second coming when “the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Isa. 11:9). At that time, “the wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. . .” (Isa. 11:6). This will be fulfilled in the millennium (Rev. 20) to be followed by “a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness” (2 Peter 3:13; Rev. 21).

At that time, when Christ shall reign on the earth, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death, or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new” (Rev. 21:4-5).

There are two stages of peace that the Messiah will bring, At his first coming, it was peace with God through Christ’s death and resurrection. At his second coming, there will be peace over all the earth forever.

Q. 4 But Christians thought they had saved the day with their doctrine of the “second coming.” Without it, Christianity would have died long ago. The parousia teaching is simply that we are to be patient, all the things that Jesus never fulfilled will be taken care of when he comes again. And there is clear evidence that Jesus and his followers thought that he would return in the lifetime of his followers. 2000 years have just about passed and they’re still expecting it!!!

I consider that this is fanciful thinking. Christianity would have died in the water without the death and resurrection of Christ. The Bible is crystal clear:

If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so it your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God. . . If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. . . If only in this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men” (I Cor. 15:13-15, 17, 19).

Christians are encouraged by the message of the second coming of Christ because it will be the consummation of their salvation: “So we will be with the Lord forever” (I Thess. 4:17), but ultimate hope for the believer comes through Christ’s resurrection which guarantees their own resurrection.

So that we will not be “ignorant” about life-after-death issues, God inspired the apostle Paul to write about what happens at death for believers (I Thess. 4:13 ff). The second coming of Christ is based on the surety that “Jesus died and rose again” (I Thess. 4:14). For the Christian the future is glorious with the promise of Christ’s second coming, but the crux is the death and resurrection of Christ. There could be no “second coming” hope without this foundation.

There could have been an anticipation of Christ’s imminent second coming by early Christians, but Peter corrected this. In fact, it was the scoffers who were taunting the believers, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised?” (2 Peter 3:4). So, it was the message of the scoffers in the first century and the scoffers today who are sceptical about Christ’s second coming. The taunts are as contemporary as ever.

There’s a definite reason for the delay in Christ’s coming: “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

It is the Lord’s patience, not the believers’ patience, that delays his second coming!

The line from questioners today, “2000 years have just about passed and they’re still expecting it!!!” is similar to the message of scoffers of the first century. They need to get serious with the real reason for the delay – Christ’s patience in reaching scoffing rebels.

The historical evidence is that the early church lived in expectation of Christ’s return, as I do today. Clement of Rome, an early church father after the close of the NT, wrote in his First Letter to the Corinthians (dated about A.D. 96):You perceive how in a little time the fruit of a tree comes to maturity. Of a truth, soon and suddenly shall His will be accomplished, as the Scripture also bears witness, saying, “Speedily will He come, and will not tarry;” and, “The Lord shall suddenly come to His temple, even the Holy One, for whom you look (Clement I.23).

However, according to the NT, the early church did not live in anticipation of an any-moment coming of Christ.

The expectation of the coming of Christ included the events which would attend and precede His coming. The early fathers who emphasized an attitude of expectancy believed that this entire complex of events – Antichrist, tribulation, return of Christ, would soon occur. This is not the same as an any-moment coming of Christ (Ladd 1956, p. 20, emphasis in original).

George Eldon Ladd examined the writings of the church fathers up to the third century. He reached this conclusion:

In this survey of the early centuries we have found that the Church interpreted the book of Revelation along futurist lines; i.e., they understood the book to predict the eschatological events which would attend the end of the world. The Antichrist was understood to be an evil ruler of the end-times who would persecute the Church, afflicting her with great tribulation. Every church father who deals with the subject expects the Church to suffer at the hands of Antichrist. God would purify the Church through suffering, and Christ would save her by His return at the end of the Tribulation when He would destroy Antichrist, deliver His Church, and bring the world to an end and inaugurate His millennial kingdom. The prevailing view is a postribulation premillennialism. We can find no trace of pretribulationism in the early church; and no modern pretribulationist has successfully proved that this particular doctrine was held by any of the church fathers or students of the Word before the nineteenth century (Ladd 1956, p. 31).

Dave MacPherson documents how the pretribulation rapture position that is taught by some evangelical and fundamentalist churches today does not originate with the Scriptures, but with a Scottish lassie, Margaret Macdonald, who had a “revelation” in 1830 of a two-stage rapture. She influenced the founder of the Christian Brethren, John N. Darby, who became an ardent promoter of the pretribulation rapture (MacPherson 1983, p. 64ff). However, this view has not been the historic view of the church.

A misunderstanding often occurs over Christ’s call for “watchfulness” in light of his second coming. Christ’s own words were:

No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. . . Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. . . Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants of his household to give them their food at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns.” (Matt. 24:36-37, 42, 45-47).

The context of this passage makes it clear that Christ is not asking believers to be ready for an any-moment coming.

The true meaning of the command to watch is not to watch for Christ’s return. Scripture does not use this language. Nowhere are we told to watch for the coming of Christ. We are exhorted, rather, in view of the uncertainty of the time of the end, to watch. ‘Watching’ does not mean ‘looking for’ the event; it means spiritual and moral ‘wakefulness.’ We do not know when the end will come. Therefore, whenever it happens, we must be spiritually awake and must not sleep. If we are awake and Christ comes today, we are ready. If we are awake and Christ does not come until tomorrow, we will still be ready. Whenever it happens, we must be ready (Ladd 1956, p. 115, emphasis in original).

4. Jesus’ Death

Q. 5 Why did Jesus have to die? God’s creation turned out bad, we are told. So what to do! In order to make things right, someone had to be murdered!! If we believe the Trinity doctrine, we are left to believe that God arranged to have himself murdered in order to placate himself! Patently absurd!!

The idea of substitution of one person taking the place of another to bear pain and save life is known even today. In the 20^th century, we heard of the heroism of such an action with Polish Franciscan, Father Maximilian Kolbe, in the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II.

A number of prisoners had been chosen to be executed when one of them shouted that he was a married man with children. Father Kolbe stepped forward and offered to take the condemned man’s place. The offer was accepted by the authorities, he was placed in an underground cell and was left there to die of starvation (in Stott 1986, p. 136).

Here’s the problem: we are guilty and need forgiveness. We know it internally from our conscience which convicts us. But how is that possible when we understand the gravity of sin and the majestic holiness of God? We are faced with the realities of who we are and who God is. How can the holy love of God come to grips with the unholy lovelessness of human beings?

Because God cannot contradict himself, he must be himself and “satisfy” his just requirements – all in absolute consistency with his perfect character. The problem is not outside of God, but within his own being.

James Denney got to the point: “It is the recognition of this divine necessity, or the failure to recognise it, which ultimately divides interpreters of Christianity into evangelical and non-evangelical, those who are true to the New Testament and those who cannot digest it” (Denney 1903, p. 82, in Stott 1986, p. 133).

God in his mercy willed to forgive human beings; he wanted to forgive them but had to do it righteously so that it was obvious he wasn’t condoning sin. How did he do this? Instead of aiming the full weight of his righteous wrath against sinful human beings, in his sovereign will it was God’s purpose to direct this wrath against himself in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ. This is strange language to human beings who don’t fully understand God’s righteous nature and the abhorrence of sin.

How are we to understand this substitute?

The New Testament

The NT is unambiguous: “Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph. 5:2). In other places there are allusions such as, “gave himself” (Gal. 1:4), “offered himself” (Heb. 9:14).

The background is the OT sacrificial system. He died “to be a sin offering” (Rom. 8:3, NIV) or “for sins” (1 Peter 3:18, NIV). The Book of Hebrews in the NT shows Jesus’ sacrifice to have perfectly fulfilled the OT “shadows.”

What did the OT sacrifices signify? [2] Two basic notions stand out: first, the sense that human beings have of a right to belong to God; second, the sense of alienation we also have because of our sin and guilt.

To deal with the first, God instituted the “peace” and “fellowship” offerings (see Lev. 7:12; Ex. 23:14-17). To deal with the second, the sin offering and guilt offering were provided, thus demonstrating the need for atonement.

The clearest statement of how the blood sacrifices of the OT had a substitutionary significance is in God’s explanation of why the eating of blood was prohibited: “For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life” (Lev. 17:11).

Three things stand out about blood:

It is the symbol of life. This goes back at least to Noah (see Gen. 9:4) and was repeated in, “the blood is the life” (Deut. 12:23);

Blood makes atonement. Only because “the life of a creature is in the blood” is it possible that the blood “makes atonement for one’s life.” Life was given for life. The life of the innocent victim was given for the life of the sinful person..

It was God who gave the blood for this atoning purpose. God said, “I have given it to you.” Why? “To make atonement for yourselves.”

Q. 6 The doctrine of the atonement is nothing but a replay of pervious PAGAN religions with their angry gods, need for sacrifices and bloody altars.

Atonement from pagans??

The Christian’s insistence that the gospel of Christ’s cross is the only basis for forgiveness of sins perplexes people. Why should forgiveness depend on Christ’s death? Before we forgive each other on the personal level, no death is needed. Why the big deal about forgiveness coming through his Son’s “sacrifice for sin.” It sounds very primitive and doesn’t seem reasonable for rational modern people. It is not surprising, therefore, to see an unbeliever link the OT (and NT) sacrificial system to “pagan religions.”

Nowhere does the Bible tell us how sacrifices originated. We simply find Cain and Abel (Gen. 4) already offering sacrifices and God favouring Abel’s sacrifice (Gen. 4:4, confirmed by Heb. 11:4). Thus it is confirmation that sacrificial practices go back to the dawn of civilisation. Some of the controversy has developed because

certain schools of Biblical criticism have asserted that the ritual system embodied in the Pentateuch cannot be earlier than the postexilic period. However, archaeological discoveries pertaining to the sacrificial systems of Mesopotamia and the Levant in the 3^rd and 2^nd millenia B.C. have shown that very complex rituals were practiced all across the Fertile Crescent long before the entry of the Israelites into Canaan. Since the Biblical claim is quite explicit to the effect that the patriarchal culture esp. in the sphere of religion, sprang from the great centers of civilization, Mesopotamia and Egypt (cf. Joshua’s unequivocal statement, Josh 24:2, 14), there is no reason to doubt that even the Israelites could have known and also practiced a sophisticated order of ritual (Rainey 1976, p. 195).

Let’s briefly look at a few examples:

The parallel between the biblical account of the sacrifice after Noah’s flood and the Babylonian account is striking, but the differences are even more noticeable. Noah built an altar and sacrificed burnt offerings on it. “The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma . . .” (Gen. 8:21, NIV). It is bold indeed to speak of the “pleasing aroma” since “the Babylonian version crudely made the hunger of the gods, ravenous without man’s gifts, a reason for their ending the flood” (Kidner 1967, p. 93).

This led Kidner to conclude that

the specific similarities between the Genesis story and most others are utterly outweighed by the differences, and it is only the Babylonian legend that shows any close resemblance to the story of Noah… By common consent this [Babylonian] version of events is altogether put to shame by Genesis. Even the incidentals, the dice-shaped ark and the sequence of the birds, suffer in the comparison, while the theology flounders from one ineptitude to the next (Kidner 1967, pp. 96-97).

The parallel between the Mesopotamian ritual of the “scapegoat” and the OT can only be made in general. It breaks down when one gets to the details. “There was no act of confession for sin; instead, the expulsion of demons was the goal of this rite, as is clearly seen in the incantation that follows it” (Rainey 1976, p. 196).
Hittite rituals have suggestive parallels with OT passages. One ritual involved the

sacrifice of a dog that was cut into pieces and placed on either side of a kind-of gate, through which the participants were required to pass. Whether there is any connection between this sacrifice and that of Abraham (Gen. 15:10-11, 17) or the leaders of Judah (Jer. 34:18-20) ”is impossible to say (cf. Ezek 16:3, 45) (Rainey 1976, p. 198).

In Mesopotamia, “the sacrifices were necessary to the gods as essential food (cf. Deut 32:37, 38), the God of Israel is only said to enjoy the ‘pleasant odor’ of certain specific kinds of offering” [see Num. 28:2; Ezek. 44:7] (Rainey 1976, p. 200).

Many nations besides Israel practised sacrifices (see Judges 16:23). In Ugarit (ca. 1400 BC), there was a developed ritual system with names similar to the OT. Some scholars want to conclude that the Jewish sacrificial system owes its “origin to Babylonian, Canaanite or ancient nomadic rituals and fellowship meals. However, throughout its history, Israelite practice had many distinctive features of its own” (Williams 1989, p. 485).

The prophets reacted against abuses and pagan elements brought into Israel (see Isa. 1:11 ff; Amos 4:4 ff). This is a crucial point. The Jewish prophets, especially with Israel, condemned these foreign elements in a forthright manner. See Amos 4:4-5; Hos. 2:13-15; 4:11-13; 13:2. This was also the case for Judah (see Jer. 7:17-18; Ezek 8; etc.)

There are parallels between Israel’s sacrifices and offerings and the contemporary cultures of the ancient Near East, but this does NOT confirm that OT sacrifices are an imitation of the neighbouring pagan cultures. “It is the ideology expressed in the ritual complex as a whole that makes the Israelite religion unique” (Rainey 1976, p. 194).

Atonement FROM God

The sacrificial, substitutionary atonement, as detailed above, does not originate with people trying to appease pagan gods and transferring this ritual across to Judaism. Its origin is with Jehovah God.

The OT helps to give background for an understanding of Heb. 9:22, “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness,” and Heb. 10:4, “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” OT blood sacrifices were the “shadows.” Christ was the substance.

The OT Passover [3] demonstrated the concept of “sin-bearing.” The NT identifies Christ’s death as the fulfillment of the Passover. John the Baptist promoted Jesus as “the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29, 36).

In the original Passover story, Yahweh (God) revealed himself as:

the Judge;

the Redeemer;

Israel’s covenant God.

Since Jesus clearly fulfilled the Passover in his sacrifice, we know that:

The Judge and the Saviour are the same person;

Salvation is by substitution;

God had to “see the blood” before there could be divine provision;

Each family rescued by God is purchased for God.

There is a second major illustration of sin-bearing demonstrating the principle of substitution. 1 Peter 2:24 points to it: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree.” This refers back to the annual Day of Atonement (see Lev. 16:5 ff) when two male goats were taken as a sin offering to atone for the sins of the Israelite community. One goat was killed and its blood sprinkled in the usual way, while the high priest would “lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites – all their sins – and put them on the goat’s head” (Lev. 16: 21). The priest then drove the goat into the desert to “carry on itself all their sins to a solitary place ” (v. 22). Thus reconciliation was possible only through substitutionary sin-bearing.

The NT letter to the Hebrews makes clear that Jesus was both “a merciful and faithful high priest . . . (to) make atonement for the sins of the people” (2:17). Christ did not enter the Holy of Holies “by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption” (Heb. 9:12). For the Jews, the scapegoat who carried away the people’s sins had to be offered over and over again. While this is a “type” of Jesus’ sacrifice, Christ’s sacrifice took place “once” to take away sins (Heb. 9:28).

The non-Christian may ask, “Why did Jesus have to die?” He “died for us” (Rom. 5:8). The “one (Christ) died for all” (2 Cor. 5:14). What happened to Christ on the cross? The most outspoken statements are that “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us” (2 Cor. 5:21) and Christ has “redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Gal. 3:13).

The sinless One bore the penalty of our sin instead of us.

John Stott summarised it:

When we are united with Christ a mysterious exchange takes place: he took our curse, so that we may receive his blessing; he became sin with our sin, so that we may become righteous with his righteousness. . . What was transferred to Christ was not moral qualities but legal consequences: he voluntarily accepted liability for our sins. That is what the expressions ‘made sin’ and ‘made a curse’ mean. Similarly, the ‘righteousness of God’ which we become when we are ‘in Christ’ is not here righteousness of character and conduct (although that grows within us by the working of the Holy Spirit), but rather a righteous standing before God (Stott 1986, pp. 148-149).

When we pull all of this OT material together, we can clearly conclude that the shedding and sprinkling of blood, the sin offering, the Passover, the meaning of “sin-bearing”, the scapegoat, and Isaiah 53 (which I haven’t discussed here) are applied in the NT to the death of Christ.

The biblical material clearly draws the conclusion that the cross was a substitutionary sacrifice. Christ died for us; he died instead of us. The sacrificial imagery has the clear purpose of stating that the sinless Jesus died in substitution for our sins (Stott 1986, p. 149). This view offends many. But the Bible expected this by speaking of the “offence of the cross” (Gal. 5:11).

As for the substitutionary atonement being “a replay of pervious PAGAN religions with their angry gods, need for sacrifices and bloody altars,” that is not based on biblical evidence. As stated above, God is very clear: “For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life” (Lev. 17:11).

The one thing God could not do in the face of human rebellion was do nothing! The substitutionary atonement is “God’s demand on God, God’s meeting his own demand” (Forsyth in Stott 1986, p. 152). God had two options: he could either inflict punishment on human beings (which we deserve) or he could take the punishment himself. He chose the latter to honour his own law but save the guilty. God himself took his own judgment for those who want to receive it.

Who died? Did God die? That’s not what the Bible teaches. Suffice to say that our substitute, the one who took our place and died our death on the cross was neither Christ alone nor God alone. But it was God in Christ, who was truly and fully both God and man, and was uniquely qualified to represent both God and human beings and to mediate between them.

In order to save us in such a way as to satisfy himself, God through Christ substituted himself for us. Divine love triumphed over divine wrath by divine self-sacrifice. The cross was an act simultaneously of punishment and amnesty, severity and grace, justice and mercy (Stott 1986, p. 159).

Q. 7 The Christian religion should really be called PAULIANITY, because Paul was the one who tied in the untimely murder of Jesus with the temple sacrifices of the Hebrews.

Yes, Paul strongly associated Jesus’ death with the Hebrew sacrificial system (Rom. 5:8; 2 Cor.5:14, 21; Gal. 3:13 ). So did Peter (1 Pt. 2:24), the writer to the Hebrews (2:17; 9:22, 28; 10:4), and John the Baptist (John 1:29, 36). But there was nothing “untimely” about the killing of Jesus. It was right on schedule, according to God’s plan, “At just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly” (Rom. 5:6). “But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons” (Gal. 4:4).

“When the time had fully come”, or, “in the fulness of the time” (NRSV, NASB, KJV), refers to

the moment in which the previously determined time-limit was reached… The picture is that of a vessel that is being poured full and at a given moment is brimful. The pleroma [fulness] is not merely that last bit that fills the vessel but the whole brimful content of the container. . . This carries with it the implication that the moment of the pleroma was the most suitable for what was now about to happen. . . Nor can we prove on convincing grounds why this time was the most suitable for the coming of Christ (Ridderbos 1953, pp. 154-155).

William Hendriksen agrees with this conclusion. While this was a time when the Greek language spread throughout the civilised world, when there was a network of Roman roads, and Roman peace was enforced, thus making it a more ideal environment for the spread of the gospel, “it is God alone who fully knows why, in his inscrutable decree, he had decided that the long period of time (chronos) is which all the preparatory events were to occur would run out at that specific moment” (1968, p. 158, emphasis in original).

Paul was used by the Lord to pen a large portion of the New Testament, but there would be no “Paulianity” if it were not for the life and death of Jesus Christ. It must always be remembered that this Paul (formerly Saul) was “giving approval to [Stephen’s] death” (Acts 8:1) and “began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off men and women and put them in prison” (Acts 8:3). He had a reputation for vicious persecution of the Christian believers (see Acts 9:1, 13, 21; 22:4, 19; 26:10-11).

Paul himself admitted his previous malicious history of persecution against the church and his attempts to destroy it (I Cor. 15:9; Gal. 1:13, 23; Phil 3:6). His explanation was: “Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus” (I Tim. 1:13-14).

It started when this violent sinner against God, Christ and the church, was confronted supernaturally on the road to Damascus (see Acts 9). When Jesus confronted him with, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” (Acts 9:4), Saul knew who it was who was calling him. His response was, “Who are you, Lord?” (9:5). The Lord’s response was: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting… Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do” (9:5-6).

It should not be surprising that this remarkable conversion and calling of Paul should see him embark on a special ministry. “Paulianity” is Christianity.

Every unbeliever should be confronted with this question from this very perceptive inquirer:

What if Jesus Had Never Been Born?

D. James Kennedy and Jerry Newcombe addressed this critical issue in their book by that name (Kennedy & Newcombe 1994). Chapter titles include:

· Christ and Civilisation: A Quick Overview of Christ’s Impact on World History;

In the Image of God: Christianity’s Impact on the Value of Human Life;
Passion and Mercy: Christianity’s Contribution to Helping the Poor;
Education for Everyone: Christianity’s Contribution to Education;
Government of the People, for the People, by the People: Christianity’s Impact on the Founding of America;
Freedom for All: Christianity’s Contribution to Civil Liberties;
Thinking God’s Thoughts after Him: Christianity’s Impact on Science;
Free Enterprise and the Work Ethic: Christianity’s Impact on Economics;
The Beauty of Sexuality: Christianity’s Impact on Sex and the Family;
Healing the Sick: Christianity’s Impact on Health and Medicine;
The Civilising of the Uncivilised: Christianity’s Impact on Morality;
Inspiring the World’s Greatest Art: Christianity’s Impact on the Arts and Music;
Amazing Grace: Lives Changed by Jesus Christ;
The Sins of the Church: Negative Aspects of Christianity in History;
A Cruel World: What Happens When Christian Restraints Are Removed?
Where Do We Go From Here? Fulfilling Our Purpose.

James Russell Lowell, the literary man who was Minister of State for the United States to England, was at a banquet where the Christian religion, particularly the mission enterprise, was being attacked by scoffers (this was over a century ago). He spoke up with these words:

I challenge any sceptic to find a ten-square-mile spot on this planet where they can live their lives in peace and safety and decency, where womanhood is honoured, where infancy and old age are revered, where they can educate their children, where the Gospel of Jesus Christ has not gone first to prepare the way. If they find such a place, then I would encourage them to emigrate thither and there proclaim their unbelief (Schenck 1910, p. 85, cited in Kennedy & Newcombe 1994, p. 299).

Notes:

[1] Here, NT = New Testament; OT = Old Testament. Unless otherwise stated, all Bible quotations are from The Holy Bible: New International Version (1978).

[2] For a more complete description of “sacrifice in the Old Testament,” see Stott 1986, pp. 134 ff.

[3] See the original Passover story in Exodus chs. 11-13.

References:

Boice, J. M. 1986, Foundations of the Christian Faith, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois.

ChristianityToday 1990, “Dying for Jesus,” March 19, 1990.

Clement of Rome 2004, First Letter to the Corinthians (ie I Clement) [Online], excerpted from Ante-Nicene Fathers (vol. 9), ed. A. Menzies, American Edition 1896 and 1897, Online Edition Copyright © 2004 by K. Knight, available from New Advent at: http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1010.htm [6 April 2005].

The Courier-Mail 1999, ‘Lives of charity meet a fiery end’ (January 25, 1999).

Denney, J. 1903, The Atonement and the Modern Mind, Hodder & Stoughton, London.

Feinberg, C. L. 1984, ‘Peace’, in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, ed. W. A. Elwell, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Hendriksen, W. 1968, Galatians (New Testament Commentary), The Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh.

The Holy Bible: New International Version 1978, Zondervan Bible Publishers, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Online edition available from BibleGateway.com at: http://www.biblegateway.com/.

Kennedy, D. J. & Newcombe, J. 1994, What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? Word Publishing, Milton Keynes, England.

Kidner, D. 1967, Genesis (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries), The Tyndale Press, London.

Ladd, G. E. 1956, The Blessed Hope, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Leupold, H. C. 1959, Exposition of Psalms, Evangelical Press, London.

Leupold, H. C. 1971, Exposition of Isaiah (One-Volume edition, Vol. 1), Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Lewis, C. S. 1952, Mere Christianity, Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., New York.

MacPherson D. 1983, The Great Rapture Hoax, New Puritan Library, Fletcher, N.C.

Martin, W. 1980, Essential Christianity, Regal Books, Ventura, California.

Rainey, A. F. 1976, ‘Sacrifice and Offerings’, The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible (Vol. 5), gen. ed. M. C. Tenney, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, pp. 194-211.

Ridderbos, H. N. 1953, The Epistle of Paul to the Churches of Galatia (The New International Commentary on the New Testament), Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Schenck, F. S. 1910, Christian Evidences and Ethics, Young Men’s Christian Association Press, New York.

Sproul, R.C. 1992, Essential Truths of the Christian Faith, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois.

Stott, J. R. W. 1986, The Cross of Christ, Inter-Varsity Press, Leicester, England.

Thayer, J. H. 1885, 1962, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan. (Note: The first Zondervan printing of this edition was in 1962, but Thayer’s preface in the lexicon was written in 1885.)

Williams D. (ed.) 1989, New Concise Bible Dictionary, Inter-Varsity Press, Leicester, England.

Content of the Gospel & Discipleship[1]

admin — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 02:45:28 +0000

Some people ask me questions such as these:

· What must I accept and do in order to become a Christian?

· What’s the difference between a real Christian and one who goes to church?

· What must I do to receive salvation?

· How can I get to heaven and avoid hell?

The following broad outline is designed to answer these questions.

A. You must understand God’s holiness.

“God’s holiness means that he is separated from sin and devoted to seeking his own honor.”[2]

Proverbs 9:10; Psalm 111:10; Job 28:28; Proverbs 1:7; 15:33; Micah 6:9.

1. God is utterly holy and His law, therefore, demands perfect holiness.

See Leviticus 11:44-45; Joshua 24:19; I Samuel 2:2; 6:20.

2. Even the New Testament gospel requires this holiness.

See I Peter 1:15-16; Hebrews 12:14.

3. Because the Lord God Almighty is holy, He hates sin.

Exodus 20:5.

4. Sinners cannot stand before Him

¨ What is sin? “Sin is any failure to conform to the moral law of God in act, attitude, or nature. . . Sin is more than simply painful and destructive–it is also wrong in the deepest sense of the word. . . Sin is directly opposite to all that is good in the character of God.”[3]

Psalm 1:5

B. You must understand God’s righteousness/justice.

In English, the terms “righteousness” and “justice” are different words. This is not so in the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament. There is only one word group behind these two English terms.[4]

1. What is God’s righteousness/justice?

“God always acts in accordance with what is right and is himself the final standard of what is right.”[5]
What is right or just? “Whatever conforms to God’s moral character is right.”[6]
Deuteronomy 32:4; Genesis 18:25; Psalm 19:8; Isaiah 45:19; Romans 9:20-21.

2. Christ’s sacrifice was to show God’s righteousness

When God sent Christ as a sacrifice to bear the punishment for sin, it was to show God’s righteousness. See Romans 3:25-26.

C. You must understand that you are a sinner who sins & God hates sin.

Gospel means “good news.”
What makes it truly “good news” is not only that heaven is free, but also God’s Son has conquered that sin.
Jesus said: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:17). What do you think Jesus meant by that?

1. Sin is what it is that makes true peace impossible for unbelievers.

Isaiah 57:20-21

2. All have sinned.

Romans 3:10-18

3. Sin makes the sinner worthy of death.

James 1:5; Romans 6:23

4. Sinners can do nothing to earn salvation.

Isaiah 64:6; Romans 3:20; Galatians 2:16; Revelation 21:8

D. You must understand the wrath(anger) of God.

“If God loves all that is right and good, and all that conforms to his moral character, then it should not be surprising that he would hate everything that is opposed to his moral character. God’s wrath directed against sin is therefore closely related to God’s holiness and justice.”[7]

1. What is the wrath of God?

“God’s wrath means that he intensely hates all sin.”[8]

Exodus 32:9-10; Deuteronomy 9:7-8; 29:23; 2 Kings 22:13; John 3:36; Romans 1:18; 2:5, 8; 5:9; 9:22; Colossians 3:6; 1 Thessalonians 1:10; 2:16; 5:9; Hebrews 3:11; Revelation 6:16-17; 19:15.

2. God is slow to inflict his wrath on people. Why?

See Psalm 103:8-9; Romans 2:4; 2 Peter 3:9-10.

E. How can God’s wrath be pacified/appeased?

1. God has provided a way through blood-sacrifice.

Leviticus 8:15; 17:11

2. By Christ’s death (blood-sacrifice), he appeased the wrath of God.

Hebrews 9:7, 12, 20, 22, 24.

3. God calls this “propitiation” and it makes God favourable towards sinners.

Romans 3:25; Hebrews 2:17; I John 2:2; 45:10 (atoning sacrifice/sacrifice of atonement = propitiation)

Propitiation is important “because it is the heart of the doctrine of the atonement. It means that there is an eternal, unchangeable requirement in the holiness and justice of God that sin be paid for. Furthermore, before the atonement ever could have an effect on our subjective consciousness, it first had an effect on God and his relation to the sinners he planned to redeem. Apart from this central truth, the death of Christ really cannot be adequately understood.”[9]

“The atonement is the work Christ did in his life and death to earn our salvation.”[10]

F. Who is Christ and what has He done for you?

The solution for the sinner is found in the Lord Jesus Christ.

1. Christ is eternally God

John 1:1-3, 14; Colossians 2:9

2. Christ is Lord of all

Revelation 17:14; Philippians 2:9-11; Acts 10:36

3. Christ became man

Philippians 2:6-7

4. Christ is utterly pure and sinless

Hebrews 4:15; 1 Peter 2:22-23; 1 John 3:5

5. The sinless one became a sacrifice for YOUR sin

Corinthians 5:21; Titus 2:14

6. He shed His own blood as an atonement for sin

Ephesians 1:7-8; Revelation 1:5

7. He died on the cross to provide a way of salvation for sinners

1 Peter 2:24; Colossians 1:20

8. Christ rose triumphantly from the dead

Romans 1:4; 4:25; 1 Corinthians 15:3-4

G. What does God demand of you?

“Repentant faith is the requirement. It is NOT merely a ‘decision’ to trust Christ for eternal life, but a wholesale forsaking of everything else we trust, and a turning to Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour.”[11]

1. Repent

What is repentance? “Repentance is a heartfelt sorrow for sin, a renouncing of it, and a sincere commitment to forsake it and walk in obedience to Christ.”[12]

Ezekiel 18:30, 32; Acts 17:30; 26:2

2. Turn your heart from all that you know dishonours God

Thessalonians 1:9

3. Follow Jesus

Luke 9:23, 62; John 12:26

4. Trust Jesus as your Lord and Saviour

Acts 16:31; Romans 10:9

5. Repentance and faith continue throughout your life

Repentance and faith must start together at the beginning of the Christian life. See Acts 20:21. Repentance and faith must be lived by Christians throughout their lives.

Concerning faith, see Galatians 2:20; I Corinthians 13:13.

Concerning repentance, see Revelation 3:19; 2 Corinthians 7:10

H. You must count the cost of following Jesus with much thought.

Salvation is absolutely free.
So is joining the army; you don’t have to pay to get into it. Everything you need is provided.[13]
Following Christ is like joining the army. It will cost you daily. It will cost you freedom, family, friends, doing things your own way (autonomy), and possibly even your life.[14]
I must tell you, a prospective believer, the full truth and nothing but the truth.
Read what Jesus said about this in Luke 14:26-33; Matthew 10:34-38; Romans 6:6.

A.W. Tozer wrote:

“The cross is the most revolutionary thing ever to appear among men. The cross of Roman times knew no compromise; it never made concessions. It won all its arguments by killing its opponent and silencing him for good. It spared not Christ, but slew Him the same as the rest. He was alive when they hung Him on that cross and completely dead when they took Him down six hours later. That was the cross the first time it appeared in Christian history. . . The cross effects [i.e. brings about] its ends by destroying one established pattern, the victim’s, and creating another pattern, its own. Thus it always has its way. It wins by defeating its opponent and imposing its will upon him. It always dominates. It never compromises, never dickers nor confers, never surrenders a point for the sake of peace. It cares not for peace; it cares only to end its opposition as fast as possible.

With perfect knowledge of all this, Christ said, ‘If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.’ So the cross not only brings Christ’s life to an end, it ends also the first life, the old life, of every one of His true followers. It destroys the old pattern, the Adam pattern, in the believer’s life, and brings it to an end. Then the God who raised Christ from the dead raises the believer and a new life begins.

This, and nothing less, is true Christianity. . .

We must do something about the cross, and one of two things only we can do – flee it or die upon it.”[15]

Read Mark 8:35-37.

I. I urge you to trust (have faith in) Christ alone for your salvation.

2 Corinthians 5:11, 20; Isaiah 55:7; Romans 10:9-10;

What will you do with Jesus?

J. After you trust Christ alone, what should you do? Where do good works fit in?

Good works: See Hebrews 5:9; Titus 2:14; Ephesians 2:10;

Baptism: See Acts 2:28; 8:36-39; Mark 16:16; Romans 4:10-11;

Join with a local church. See Hebrews 10:25.

K. What was the first creed of the early church?

See Romans 10:9-10; 1 Corinthians 12:3; 2 Corinthians 4:5.

L. How will you know that you are a Christian?

1. You presently continue to trust Christ for salvation

Colossians 1:23; Hebrews 3:14; 6:12; John 3:16 (”believes” means “continues believing in him.”[16])

2. There will be evidence in your heart of the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit[17]

Through the subjective testimony of the Holy Spirit within your hearts. Romans 8:14-16; 1 John 4:13.

Your life will produce the fruit of the Spirit. Galatians 5:22-23
You continue to believe and accept the sound teaching of the church. 1 John 2:23-24

You will have a continuing relationship with Jesus Christ. John 15:4, 7

You will have a life of obedience to God’s commands. 1 John 2:4-6, 10, 19; 3:9-10, 14, 17, 24; 4:7; 5:18; James 2:17-18.

You will give to needy people. Matthew 25:31-46

3. You will have a long-term pattern of growth and obedience in your Christian life

2 peter 1:5-7, 10; John 6:40

M. How will other people know that you are a Christian?

By the fruit in your lifeGalatians 5:22-23; Matthew 7:16-20; 25:31-46; James 2:17-18

N. Do you want to repent and trust Christ alone for your salvation and live eternally for and with him?

O. What happens to those who reject God’s offer of salvation?

Because God is an absolutely just God, if you reject his offer of salvation you will receive the consequences God has decided. At death, God sends you to hell.

1. Hell forever

“Hell is a place of eternal conscious punishment for the wicked.”[18] David Kingdon writes: “Sin against the Creator is heinous to a degree utterly beyond our sin-warped imaginations’ [ability] to conceive of. . . Who would have the temerity to suggest to God what the punishment . . . should be?”[19]

Matthew 25:30, 41, 46; Mark 9:43, 48; Luke 16:22-24, 28; Revelation 14:9-11; 19:3

2. Is hell just?

Revelation 19:1-3

Notes:

[1] This summary of the content of the Gospel is based on John F. MacArthur Jr., Faith Works: The Gospel According to the Apostles. Milton Keynes, England: Word Publishing, 1993, p. 247ff.

[2] Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine. Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994, p. 201

[3] Ibid., p. 490, 492.

[4] Ibid., p. 203.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid., p. 204.

[7] Ibid., pp. 205-206.

[8] Ibid., p. 206.

[9] Ibid., p. 575.

[10] Ibid., p. 568.

[11] MacArthur., p. 252.

[12] Grudem, p. 713.

[13] MacArthur, p. 253.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Ibid., pp. 254-55, from A. W. Tozer, The Root of the Righteous. Harrisburg, Pa.: Christian Publications, 1955, pp. 61-63.

[16] Grudem, p. 803.

[17] Ibid., p. 803-806.

[18] Ibid., p. 1148.

[19] In ibid., p. 1151