Posted on 09/12/2014 8:55:34 AM PDT by Kaslin
Jesus' apostles and other disciples were willing to die for him. But so what? Haven't the followers of other religious leaders and even some political leaders been willing to die for them, as well? What makes Jesus' followers so unique in this regard?
I address this very question in my new book, "Jesus on Trial: A Lawyer Affirms the Truth of the Gospel," because I used to wonder about this, too. What, if anything, distinguishes the Christian martyrs?
New Testament scholar Gary Habermas offered an insight that I hadn't considered before, and I find it enormously probative.
"One grand distinction," he argues, " makes all the difference in the world. Like other examples of religious or political faith, the disciples believed and followed their leader's teachings. But unlike all others, the disciples had more than just their beliefs; they had seen the resurrected Jesus. This is a crucial distinction. Their faith was true precisely because of the Resurrection."
Habermas cements the point with a few more questions: "Which is more likely -- that an ideology we believe in is true or that we and a number of others saw a friend several times during the last month? If eternity rested on the consequences, would we rather base our assurance on the truth of a particular religious or political view, or would we rather that the consequences followed from repeated cases of seeing someone?"
This is fascinating -- and compelling -- is it not? Contrary to conventional wisdom, Christianity is based in history -- in historical facts. The faith didn't come first; the history came first, and the faith followed. In fact, many of the disciples were dejected and dispirited when Jesus died -- until they witnessed with their own eyes his bodily resurrection.
They weren't imagining they saw him. They didn't expect to see him. But when he appeared to them in his body, he proved to them he was real. He ate with them; they touched him; he talked to them; he opened up the Scriptures to them and showed them how they pointed to him, his sinless life, his suffering, his crucifixion and his substitutionary death on the cross for us.
He appeared first to a woman. Is this something the New Testament writers would have made up had they been concocting a believable story upon which to base the religion they were about to preach on his behalf? In those days, the eyewitness testimony of women was not considered nearly so credible as that of men.
He made some 12 resurrected appearances before different numbers of people at different times; in one case, it was more than 500 people. The Apostle Paul wrote about this particular appearance 20 years or so after Christ's death, when many people who would have been alive at the time could have affirmed or contradicted his account. He challenged them to contradict his account. No one did.
Would the apostles have been transformed from feckless unbelievers to bold proclaimers of the Gospel had they not witnessed Jesus Christ in his bodily resurrection? What incentive would they have had to subject themselves to abuse, ridicule, mistreatment and ultimately martyrdom if they had not seen him?
It's one thing to suggest that someone would die for an ideology he believes in even without physical evidence; it's altogether another to contemplate that men would die for something they absolutely knew to be false. For if Jesus Christ had remained in the tomb and had not appeared to them, they likely would have believed their earlier hope had been for naught, but in any case, they wouldn't have manufactured a mythical story that they had seen him alive when they hadn't just so they could have the pleasure of dying for nothing. Dwell on that for a moment -- seriously.
No, these followers did not die for an abstract ideology. They did not develop some elaborate theology around which they could base a religion for no reason. They were eyewitnesses to the most remarkable event in human history, and their faith was built around that. Their theology was grounded in the historical fact of the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, which Paul admitted is essential for the validity and authenticity of the Christian faith.
For as Paul said, "if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; for you are still in your sins. Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied" (1 Corinthians 15:14-19).
The fact of the historical Resurrection, my friends, is essential and foundational to Christianity. We Christians don't deny that our faith depends on it. We can't. This faith is not based on idle speculation. It is not based on some man-made ideology. It is grounded in the historical truth of Christ's incarnation, his sinless life, his suffering, his death and his resurrection.
The biblical records come down to us with flawless accuracy as originally written by numerous reliable eyewitnesses who had the greatest motivation imaginable to carry this "good news" to the ends of the earth. And they did.
It is indeed.
He is risen!
>> Haven’t the followers of other religious leaders ...
Given Islam is a war plan, the aggressive suicide bombers don’t qualify.
As a former boss put it to me:
"Either the dude did rise from the dead or he didn't."
According to one's belief in that "fact", one can choose their faith.
It was only years later that I learned that:
David Limbaugh ping for later
A lawyer’s perspective on facts and evidence.
When I was in law school, when I learned about eye-witnesses and the uncomfortable facts that can “screw-up” otherwise completely logical theories, it increased my Christian faith a lot. The fact of the Resurrection and Jesus’ followers’ response to it would never have been made up by people trying to create a credible, logical movement. They would have smoothed out the wrinkles and conveniently forgotten some embarrassing things. There would have been no mysteries left unexplained.
The Kingdom of Heaven is like a pearl. There’s a hard grain of reality at its center.
Actually the gospel accounts are not precisely accurate in that the four gospels have slight discrepancies. As a genealogist this is one aspect that truly excites me. What we have here are eyewitness accounts recorded in these gospels. The slight inaccuracies are proof that they are not fabricated (otherwise they would perfectly match) and are events actually witnessed by humans. If four people write down accounts of any event there will be small insignificant differences. These events actually happened. As Christians we know this but every once in a while I do marvel at it.
Self bookmark
“Who gave us the scriptures?”
Council of Carthage 397
http://www.letusreason.org/rc15.htm
Yes plus there are slight differences in some details. I have a special study bible that is pretty cool in that it lays out the gospels side by side so you see these little differences. Again - they are slight. But they are exactly the type of small differences you would see with four separate human accounts of anything. Skeptics think of it as an “ah ha” moment and they think they have found mistakes. That’s low level thinking. What it really means it these are real human accounts. Those differences are irrelevant facts that have nothing to do with the core gospel and resurrection.
The Bible was compiled by the Catholic Church and the canon of books later approved.
What Bible was printed by the Gutenberg Press?
The Catholic Vulgate — the only Bible at that time.
That is an excellent article! Thank you for posting that.
Abraham believed God and THEN it was credited to him as righteousness.
The idea that faith is believing in something that is not true or cannot be verified is wrong.
1 Corinthians 2 states that our faith rests in the power of God, not words of wisdom.
God acts, and we believe and it’s still faith.
No....Actually the Catholic Church in 397 the Council of Carthage had the 27 books considered the canon. However these books were read and distributed as Scripture for over 300 years by individual Christians and church’s long before their church councils claimed to give us the Bible.
The truth is .....We can produce almost all the New Testament from the church fathers writings and quotations before the year 150 A.D. proving that there was no church government to approve of what was in or out....
The Scripture is God breathed, its origin is with God, it is not man given (2 Pt.1:21)
(from Let Us Reason)
Thanks for ping to that article...I agree....excellent article!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.