Posted on 03/26/2002 4:00:55 AM PST by xzins
Did Jesus live? Though there are thousands of miracles from the time of Jesus till today, there is much evidence within the last 50 years that prove Jesus existence.
The Miracle of Luciano, Italy (about 800 AD) would give you the blood type and has tissue from the heart of Jesus.
Padre Pio, who will be canonized on June 16, 2002, was living proof of the existence of Jesus.
The acts of levitation and many of other spectacular miracles all indicate those who have followed Jesus for 2000 years.
Finally, there were about 1 million martyrs -- dying very horrible deaths -- in the first 400 years of the Christian Church. What made them believe enough to be feed to Wild Beasts, crucified or die other horrible deaths?
Perhaps the Acts of the Apostles gives insight -- the many healings and even raising from the dead that the Apostles performed. There were Magicians interested in these miracles at that time (also in the Acts of the Apostles).
There are also the "Incorruptibles" -- saints whose body never have decomposed. We still have the bones of St Peter and many of the Apostles. St Rita is one of the most Famous of the Incorruptibles along with St Bernadette of Lourdes and St Catherine of the Miraculous Medal.
Finally, there is the great miracle of Guadalupe in Mexico in 1531 that helped to convert the native Americans (North and South of Mexico) to Christianity. Even after the miracle of Guadalupe, there was an Indian who was dying who was healed miraculously by the image of Guadalupe.
There is scientific proof to back Guadalupe.
Finally, there is the "Shroud of Turin". The original scientific team resulted in many of them being converted because of the research.
The media, being the normal idiots they are, gave only negative information from the result, and PAGAN and LIBERAL BIAS that we have come to associate with the media (the great baby killers of the 20th and 21st centuries).
One may recognize this style of writing as being a staple of the World Weekly News -- they are experts because the author says they are. As for the various claims, we're given no means by which to test them.
Note, however, this little gem: Schmiedel says that there are only nine passages in the Gospels that we can depend upon as being the sayings of Jesus. Which is to say, Gauvin's own source affirms that Jesus did indeed exist. Gauvin fails to address this beyond citing a biased source who suggests that they might have been made up. Then again, they might not have been -- he offers no facts to back the claim.
If Paul really wrote them, they were written by a man who lived in Jerusalem when Christ is supposed to have been teaching there. Now, if the facts of the life of Christ were known in the first century of Christianity, Paul was one of the men who should have known them fully. Yet Paul acknowledges that he never saw Jesus; and his Epistles prove that he knew nothing about his life, his works, or his teachings.
He's presumably speaking of Paul of Tarsus -- not Paul of Jerusalem. The earliest mention of a young Saul/Paul is at the stoning of St. Stephen, ca. AD35. Given his city of origin, his Roman citizenship, and the fact that he lived another 30 years prior to his premature death, one can create a quite reasonable timeline in which Paul never saw Jesus -- and indeed, in which he never saw Jerusalem until after the crucifixion.
Not only is Paul silent about the virgin birth and the miracles of Jesus, he is without the slightest knowledge of the teaching of Jesus.
This is a preposterous stretch. For one thing, Paul is writing to established churches! There is no need for him to rehash Christian basics in letters meant to address specific problems in specific churches. The epistles instead focus on the Risen Christ, on the meaning of Jesus and His Resurrection, and on how that fact affects Christians and their behavior. The omission of pre-resurrection quotes is quite simply immaterial -- that part of the Gospel message can be expected to have been known already.
In all of his thirteen Epistles he does not quote a single saying of Jesus.... The Christ of Paul is little more than an idea. He has no life story. He was not followed by the multitude.... The Christ Paul knew was the Christ he was in a vision while on his way to Damascus.
Gauvin conveniently neglects to notice that because Paul met the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus, and learned from Him, and is presumably speaking from that singular perspective, that there's little need for him to be talk about Jesus' earthly presence.
Still, Paul does mention enough to let us conclude that he was well aware of the life of Jesus. In Phillipians, for example, Paul says: 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 emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, 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. (Phil. 2:5-11)
Here we have Paul telling us the basic elements of the things Gauvin says he did not discuss. Instead, it tells us two things: that Paul was familiar with the story of Jesus' life, and also that the church in Phillipi was sufficiently familiar with the story that Paul saw no need to provide additional details!
And we're apparently supposed to ignore the fact that Paul's writings are entirely consistent with the Gospels themselves.
Cordially,
"If the Christ of God, in His sorrowful life below, be but a specimen of suffering humanity, or a model of patient calmness under wrong, not one of these things is manifested or secured. He is but one fragment more of a confused and disordered world, where everything has broken loose from its anchorage, and each is dashing against the other in unmanageable chaos, without any prospect of a holy or tranquil issue. He is an example of the complete triumph of evil over goodness, of wrong over right, of Satan over God,-one from whose history we can draw only this terrific conclusion, that God has lost the control of His own world; that sin has become too great a power for God either to regulate or extirpate; that the utmost that God can do is to produce a rare example of suffering holiness, which He allows the world to tread upon without being able effectually to interfere; that righteousness, after ages of buffeting and scorn, must retire from the field in utter helplessness, and permit the unchecked reign of evil. If the cross be the mere exhibition of self-sacrifice and patient meekness, then the hope of the world is gone. We had always thought that there was a potent purpose of God at work in connection with the sin- bearing work of the holy Sufferer, which, allowing sin for a season to develop itself, was preparing and evolving a power which would utterly overthrow it, and... sweep earth clean of evil---moral and physical. But if the crucified Christ be the mere self-denying man, we have nothing more at work for the overthrow of evil than has again and again been witnessed, when some hero or martyr rose above the level of his age to protest against evils which he could not eradicate, and to bear witness in life and death for truth and righteousness,-in vain."
A being with these contradictions, these transparent unrealities in his character, could scarcely have been real.
The proffered list of "contradictions" is a case of the blind man describing the elephant. Each "contradiction" disappears when taken in context. (Not that context matters to Gauvin....)
Which brings us back to this: is it not amazing that a civilized people -- for the Jews of that age were civilized -- were so filled with murderous hate towards a kind and loving man who went about doing good, who preached forgiveness, cleansed the leprous, and raised the dead -- that they could not be appeased until they had crucified the noblest benefactor of mankind?
Is it not amazing that Mr. Gauvin can be engaged in such a venture as this and not notice how well it fits his own actions?
In all fairness, it fits our own actions as well: there's a reason why the Tenebrae service has the congregation saying, "Crucify Him!" We're all guilty -- Gauvin's just more visibly so.
Exactly. And likewise for the first claims of the resurrection. Where were these claims first made? In one place only on earth - Jerusalem. There were plenty of people there at the time (including Paul, f/k/a Saul) motivated by the desire to abort Christianity right in the womb, and all any of them had to do to disprove the claim of the resurrection was to walk over to the tomb and produce the body. They never did, and the earliest polemic of these enemies of the proclamation of the resurrection contains the tacit acknowledgment of THE EMPTY TOMB .
Cordially,
Actually, having myself played the role of "unbelieving husband," I can predict that a compiled list of arguments will have no effect until he's ready to address his cherished presuppositions.
Instead, I offer the words of Peter: Likewise you wives, be submissive to your husbands, so that some, though they do not obey the word, may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives, when they see your reverent and chaste behavior. Let not yours be the outward adorning with braiding of hair, decoration of gold, and wearing of fine clothing, but let it be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable jewel of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious. So once the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves and were submissive to their husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are now her children if you do right and let nothing terrify you. (1 Peter 3:1-6)
This is not a call to abject surrender on the part of the wife, but instead to lead a holy life, that the unbelieving husband may see the benefits. My own blessed wife is proof that this not only works, but that a woman need not give up her life to make it work.
The Gospel of John is admitted by Christian scholars to be an unhistorical document.
He left out the important word some before the phrase Christian scholars. This is certainly not a widespread belief. But Marshall Gauvin isn't at all interested in such nuances.
Generally, the question of whether Jesus really existed is only raised by people who desire to disbelieve. People will say something like "Well, I don't believe Jesus ever did such and so." But what is their evidence? The documents say that He did. They don't point to source documents that say He never did, so they are simply choosing to disbelieve.
I don't see why that should ever be called scientific inquiry.
Shalom.
Outstanding point. People demand to see evidence of the Christian faith outside the Bible. But that just shows their ignorance of the origins of the Bible. Nobody ever sat down to write a Bible and the worshippers of G-d and of His Son, Yeshua, never thought about a book called a Bible. They shared writings from eyewitnesses to help keep their facts straight.
In the fourth century The Holy Church decided that it would be a good idea to collect these documents and bless them so that the documents would be preserved for all time. So they collected whatever they could find that they could be sure were historically accurate and called that the Bible. (The Old Testament was taken rather wholesale from Judaism since the Church accepted the scholarship of the Rabbis on that subject.)
Therefore, if there were another historical document available to the church at that time that bore witness to Jesus it would have been in the Bible. The Church had the greatest libraries in the world. It is unlikely you anyone will ever find anything that The Church didn't know about at that time. If they didn't have it, we're not going to dig it up somewhere.
Now, what the unbelievers would really like is an eyewitness account of everything that Jesus did, but where the eyewitness did not become a Christian.
But I ask, is that reasonable? Could you watch Jesus feed 5000 people with 7 loaves and 2 fishes, watch him heal the blind, the sick, the lame, watch him raise Lazarus from the dead, and finally rise Himself, just as He prdicted - could anyone watch all that and not be a believer?
All the criticism of the historicity of the Gospels is only wishful thinking. John explained it all in John 3:16-21.
Shalom.
And I think it is in the book, "How Then Shall We Live." I highly recommend that book even if the quote is not there. But I believe I recognize it from that source.
Shalom.
Hmmm. Sounds familiar.
1 Cor. 15:14 (ESV)
And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.
Can you believe that. Paul actually had the courage to ask those to whom he wrote to skeptically test the truth of Christianity's claims. Who woulda thunkit?
Shalom.
Spirit led discernment, r9. You've been blessed. Thanks for this thought alone, but also for all the others, as well.
Cordially,
What I am still learning, as a woman with strong convictions, is to live with a gentle and a quiet spirit, winning the lost without words. Christ would not ask it of us if it were not possible...even if it feels impossible sometimes! ( ;
I agree with AGYG...but it is very hard to love someone so much and know that they are not saved. It is very tempting to grab them by the shirt collar and give them a good talking-to every now and then! ( ;
The wife of the unsaved needs prayer as much as the unbeliever himself, IMHO. The wife also needs a godly female counselor and confidant to come alongside her in this battle.
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