20 Oct Following The Evidence #65
Over the next few weeks, I will share with you what I consider to be the cap stone of evidence for the presence of God. My prayer is that I will present it in such a way that it will capture your mind. If, after the next two weeks you are unconvinced then lay my series aside and proceed with your meaningless life to its inevitable end – nothing.
How good are you at history? Tell me, who was the Ruler of the Roman Empire in AD 27? You might be able to say, “Tiberius Caesar.” But who was his mother? If you are clever you might be able to say, “Olivia.” But could you name 3 of his closest friends? Me neither! Can you remember anything famous that he said? I would guess you cannot. Isn’t it interesting how we know so little about the most powerful man in the ancient world at the time when Christianity was born?
Now let’s go to one of the quiet backwaters of the Roman Empire at that time – Palestine; a small town called Nazareth, a carpenter’s shop; a man named Jesus. Who was His mother? Mary. What about 3 of His closest friends – Peter, James, John, Matthew, Thomas, Judas – Can you remember anything famous that He said? Of course, most of you will be able to say many things.
In case you have heard it said that there is no evidence for Jesus outside the Bible I will note at this point that there were several references to the historical Jesus in ‘secular writings.’ Comments from Flavios Josephus a first century Roman-Jewish historian. Joseph ben Mattias who wrote “The Antiquities of the Jews” and Pulius Cornelius Tacitus who examined the emperors Tiberius, Claudius and Nero, all made references to Jesus and His crucifixion.
Tacitus made the first reliable account of the crucifixion in history. Since everyone but the most-insane of scholars accept this passage as genuine, it establishes the crucifixion as a historical event—one widely known even by A.D. 64. Furthermore, recently physical evidence was found proving the existence and presence of Pilate just where the Gospels say he was.
Consider this quote from C S Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952, p. 54-56. “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 the 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 as 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. … Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.”
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