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Recognition
is hereby given to Pamela Ewen author of Faith on Trial for
her ideas.
To Believe
The problem
Even though a person may desire to
believe in God, you cannot honestly do this by your will
alone. For instance, if thinking rationally you are
convinced that Santa Claus is a fake, you will have many
obstacles to overcome before you believe he is real. Suppose
I showed you all the advantages in believing; “You will
get many valuable Christmas presents if you believe!”
Still, no sane adult is going to believe in Santa Claus. The
reason we do not believe is not the lack of benefits, we do
not believe because the evidence points to him being a myth.
However this paper is not about Santa
Claus. There is a much more important question, perhaps the
most important question of all; did Jesus Christ rise from
the dead? “If you believe in Jesus you will get many
benefits, including eternal life!” However wouldn't the
evidence have to be conclusive before a righteous God would
hold you accountable to believe it? The good news is that
the evidence does exist, it’s complete and compulsive.
Willful ignorance is no excuse
Galileo, a brilliant astronomer, thought
that the earth orbited the sun. Before that time the popular
belief was that the earth was the center of the universe.
The Roman Catholic Church demanded that he repent of such
foolish beliefs or he would be burned at the stake. These
church leaders ignorance could not be helped. However, their
willful determination to be stupid was so extreme, they
would murder a man to keep themselves and others ignorant.
For this, God can hold them accountable.
Our willful ignorance will look just as
foolish someday. The solution is to listen, try to
understand what is being taught (you don’t have to agree)
then do experiments to prove or disprove the theory.
In addition, a seeker of truth will look
for his own prejudices. Recognizing them, he will make the
extra effort to let the facts point to the truth. In seeking
the truth he has nothing to be afraid of by studying the
facts.
Understanding the supernatural
Nor is it necessary for us to understand
supernatural events in order to believe in them and be held
accountable. I do not comprehend how the sun has burned at
just the right intensity for such a long time to support
life on earth. However, it is reasonable to believe it.
Scientists consider it reasonable believe in 'black holes'
yet none of them have ever seen one. There is sufficient
evidence to prove Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, even
though we personally cannot repeat the experiment. So, let
us look at some of this evidence.
Does God really expect me to believe in
miracles?
Yes, believing in miracles does not mean you
are gullible. A few years ago NASA claimed that they found a
rock that fell from Mars, not only that, the rock contained
evidence of life on Mars. Now if you believed that story I
would worry about being gullible.
- There are a lot of rocks on this planet
what lead them to this one?
- How did they know it came from Mars? Did
they have other rocks to compare it to?
- How big a natural phenomenon (explosion)
would it take to get this rock out of Mar's
gravitational pull?
- What were the chances of this rock (
actually there must have been many of them for there to
be a chance of a scientist to find one) hitting a target
as far away as earth?
- Would the reentry into the earth's
atmosphere (which usually burns these things up
completely) not have damaged the alleged life forms
beyond recognition? That is assuming that the explosion
that ejected this rock into space or the millions of
years of space travel didn't.
When this event happened most people who
were talking about it, didn't question a thing. It seems
history repeats itself as in Acts 19:35-36 the people of
Ephesus worshiped a similar stone which fell from heaven.
This was not the case with Jesus. His
miracles were substantiated, even by his enemies. The
miracles were necessary as his message was essential. Jesus
himself said: "If I had not done among them the works
which none other man did, they had not had sin: but now have
they both seen and hated both me and my Father."
What about errors in the Bible?
This is really a question of personal
bias. Let me give you an example. Suppose a man has a wife
who cannot be trusted. One day he comes home from work early
and sees a man sneaking out his back door. What will he
suspect? Now suppose a man has a wife whom he trusts with no
reservations. One day he comes home from work early and sees
a man sneaking out his back door. Though he cannot imagine
what it is, he knows there is a reasonable explanation.
Perhaps she had this man deliver a birthday present that she
was trying to keep as a surprise.
If you believe the Bible has errors you
will be like the first husband who cannot trust his wife.
When you read a verse like: "Which shaketh the earth
out of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble." Job
9:6 you will think, “It teaches the earth is on pillars,
there is another error” and become more affirmed in your
opinion.
If you trust the Bible with no
reservation, you will be like the second husband. You may
not have an immediate explanation but your faith will not
waiver. After reading the Bible and enjoying it’s
transforming power in my life, I have become like the second
husband. As a result, most of my ‘apparent
contradictions’ have been answered, in another verse:
"He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and
hangeth the earth upon nothing." Job 26:7, is in the
same book and Job knew the world wasn't on pillars after
all. As I seek the truth I have no doubt, that in time, all
my questions will be answered.
It is important for these reasons that
you do not learn about the Bible from a skeptic. Why receive
any instruction from a person who hated the subject he was
teaching. They are more likely to be poorly educated
themselves. They create straw-man arguments. Their goal will
be to make you like them.
Couldn't myths have been added later?
One of the most common arguments against
the reliability of the Gospel accounts is that they were
written centuries after the life of Jesus. Thus the
Christians, during this long time, forgot the facts and
because of their superstitious nature, made up the fables.
Until fairly recently our oldest complete
manuscript was dated to the fifteenth century. Now we have
two complete manuscripts of the New Testament that are dated
to the third century. Was this enough time for the myths to
creep into the scriptures? The skeptics will argue that 300
years is plenty of time for error and myths to creep into
scripture.
This all begs the question. When was the
New Testament written? For those who are open to the facts
they will prove that the Gospels were written shortly after
Jesus' death. Within thirty six years , if this was so,
there was no time for myths to creep in.
If during this time someone started to
make up stories, like Jesus feeding four thousand people,
the very people who were alive at the time would have
refuted those writings as a lie. Archeological and
historical research has provided no such writings. The early
church would have had a vested interest in refuting the
Gospel accounts if they were mythology. Even the critics of
Jesus at the time did not deny the events, rather they
tried, as they do to this day, to find natural explanations,
or they attributed his miracles to the devil. The latest
date you can honestly attribute to any of the four Gospels
is 68 AD. Is there any proof the gospels were written so
soon after Jesus death?
I admit there are no complete manuscripts
from the first century, however there are over a thousand
partial manuscripts and fragments dated to the first century
not to mention letters that quote from the New
Testament.Could these authors quote scripture when it was
not yet written yet?
This brings up a question. How do you
date ancient documents anyway? One way documents are dated
is by looking at how they describe major events. For
example, suppose you found an old piece of paper in your
cellar. If you read the words "World War One" you
would know that this document was written sometime after
World War Two (W.W.II) was off to a good start. If your
document had said: "The Great War" It would have
been written after W.W.I and it may have been written before
the end of W.W.II.
How could we use this method to date the
Gospels? In the year 70 AD the Romans crushed Israel.
Jerusalem was destroyed. The temple did not have one stone
left upon another. The last holdout for the Jews was in a
Roman Fortress called Masadah. When the Romans finally broke
through the walls they found that all the Jews, nearly one
thousand of them, had committed suicide. Thus the
destruction of the nation of Israel was complete.
Nor was life better for the Christians in
Rome. Nero, who for his atrocities toward the Christians
during his reign is now famous, died in 68 AD.
There is not even the least hint of life
after these events in the Gospels or any of the epistles.
They were left out with no hint, not even a Freudian slip.
Instead an accurate and detailed account of how life was
before the destruction of Israel. Their precise accounts of
life in Israel during Jesus time would have been just as
impossible for third century monks to fabricate as it would
be for you and me to.
Other ways to date your paper would be
for an expert to compare paper, ink, fonts and writing
styles used.
There is no reason to believe the authors
were not eyewitnesses to the accounts they describe in the
New Testament.
The location of the scriptures
Finding documents in the right place does
not prove they are authentic but it helps provide
circumstantial evidence. If you found a will that was
purported to be mine in my safe deposit box, the location
would help confirm its authenticity. When billionaire Howard Hughes died it was rumored that about
three thousand wills showed up. I think that determining the
location where the supposed wills were found could easily
eliminate most of them.
Deciding where scripture and letters from
the church fathers should be found may be a little harder to
do. Yet the principle is the same, and the documents live up
to the scrutiny. One example to illustrate this would be the
location of some ancient Qumran manuscripts, popularly known
as the Dead Sea Scrolls. If we were going to use the
location where they were found to test their authenticity.
Where would we expect to find them? Exactly where they were
found, in the mountains of Israel about eight miles south of
Jericho, in an old Qumran community. Maybe for
contrast you could compare this to where the ancient
manuscripts supporting The Book of
Mormon are found.
The archeological discoveries and the
ancient documents found in monasteries all provide
convincing evidence that would hold up in court. The
underlying documents are what they claim themselves to be.
There are many witnesses
There are four gospel accounts, Matthew,
Mark, Luke and John. These are four separate accounts. Many
skeptics believe that Matthew and Luke plagiarized from
Mark. This is more wishful than rational thinking.
When two people record the same event
they will usually give very different accounts. When two
witnesses in a courtroom give the same account, detail for
detail, of an event it means they were coached. From
different locations we hear different sounds, see different
things. Different things catch our attention or seem
important, sometimes distractions cause us to miss
significant facts. All these things put together will cause
us to often see the same events very differently.
A careful study of the same narratives in
the different Gospels will show these differences. The marks
of corroboration or plagiarism are completely missing. Was
there two lepers or ten? How many blind men were there? How
many demoniacs were there who were possessed by Legion? What
was the name of that countryside? What was written on Jesus’
accusation? This is just a
tiny sample, all the events truly appear to be
written by different witnesses.
Again for some contrast, let us look at The
Book of Mormon, written less than two hundred years
ago. Read the account in The Book of
that parallels the Sermon on the Mount. I rest my case.
Corroborating evidence
Testimony gains credibility when you can
produce corroborating evidence. The Jewish cannon of
scripture (Old Testament) has many prophecies of their
Messiah all pointing to Jesus. He was to be born in
Bethlehem of the Tribe of Judah, the son of David. The
timing of his appearance was predicted in Daniel Chapter 9.
His betrayal for 30 pieces of silver, the manor of his
death, hands and feet pierced and yet not a bone of his was
broken. Finally He would be placed in the tomb of a rich
man. All these and many other things were predicted by the
Jewish prophets.
Proof that (most of) these prophecies
were made before Jesus time is verified by Dead Sea Scrolls
and other ancient documents. A book could be written how the
Jews copied and preserved their scripture. They were so
meticulous, the copy was considered more accurate then the
original since it would have no folds or scuff marks.
Any person who is not completely ignorant
of Jewish history understands that the Jewish Nation has
rejected Jesus as their Messiah. No serious argument (It
would be far easier to believe in Santa Clause) can be
produced to prove that the Old Testament was tampered with.
If it had been they would have removed the prophecies of
Jesus not added them.
The Old Testament prophecies of Jesus
prove that the supernatural exists, removing all excuses for
not believing. However, more importantly, they make it clear
that Jesus is to be listened to.
Can we prove the apostles didn't lie?
Did the apostles lie? Our first test for
a lie will be checking its vagueness. For example, if a liar
were to tell me about an event that he experienced in a
modern machine shop. If he were never in a machine shop the
description of it would be by necessity very vague.
The more details he put in his lie, the
more errors in its description. This is one of the easiest
tests for telling a liar. Lets suppose an example with a
mother and wayward child.
Mother:
"Did you go to school today?"
Wayward Child: "Yes Mommy."
Mother: "What did your teacher
assign for homework?"
Wayward Child: "Ah... Some math and
some grammer."
Mother: "Was Bobby Smith in school
today?"
Wayward Child: "Ah... I don't
remember"
Mother: "Did you like (some special
event that happened that day.)"
Wayward Child: "Yes I liked it a
lot."
Mother: "What was it like?"
Wayward Child: "Ah.. Ah.. (trying to
change subject) I don't feel well"
A few years ago there was a famous
politician on trial. What made this event the topic of talk
radio was this elected official’s memory. Repeatedly he
gave the same answers as he was asked different questions:
"I don't remember..." " I can't
recall..."
Compare this to the Gospel of Jesus
Christ, recorded by four different people (Matthew, Mark,
Luke and John). They were not written in vagueness but were
very specific with times, dates the names of people places
and their descriptions. The Gospels record local belief
systems and superstitions. To no surprise, archeological
discoveries have only verified the details right down to the
names and dates for kings, governors, priests, and the
proclamations made by them.
While not every name or date has been
proved by archeology, I do not know of a single
contradiction. Some liberals use arguments like: “The
Bible has been proven false because archeology never found
evidence of the Hittites, an ancient people mentioned in the
Bible.” This is not the Bible’s fault; it is just a
deficiency of archeology. Many skeptics have used this type
of reasoning to reject the Bible. However, not to my
surprise, recently some archeologists did find the Hittites.
The bottom line is plain. The writers of
the Gospels who called us to honest and holy living were
telling the truth. They were not being elusive or hard to
pin down. Contrariwise they were informed and very specific
in their statements.
Early Christians were killed for their
beliefs.
Many people will die for a cause they
believe in. On the other hand nobody will die for something
they believe is a lie. The religious leaders burned William
Tindale at the stake, for translating the Bible into the
common language. He would not have died if he did not
believe from his heart the Gospel was true. What is this
Gospel that people will commit the act of murder, just to
keep you from reading it?
Many Christians suffered dreadful
tortures and were killed mercilessly at the hands of Nero
(who died in 68 ad). Many of these were disciples who sat at
Jesus’ feet. Many were personal witnesses of His
resurrection. This is a terrible witness to the accuracy and
importance of the Gospel that we would do well not to
ignore.
The witness’s credibility must be
looked at.
The Credibility of a witness is important
in deciding weather you are listening to fact of fiction.
The Gospel writers call believers to repent from sin. To
stop hating (even your enemies), stealing, coveting, and of
course to stop lying. Jesus condemned the religious leaders,
because that they did not believe the words of John the
Baptist. Even when they saw evil people turn from their
sins, they still did not believe. Jesus called his disciples
to holiness. Today, people are still turning from their sins
by believing the Gospel.
There are five ancient manuscripts from
Aristotle and no one questions his existence or the validity
of his writings. We have over 5000 ancient manuscripts from
the New Testament. So why is there any skepticism? The call
of the New Testament writers is to turn from our sins, this
in my experience, is the leading reason people reject the
Gospel.
Some people may point to today’s
religious leaders who do not believe the scripture, those
who have not repented of their sin. Sadly, this has been a
true statement through all time. Yet the Gospel writers were
not the religious leaders. We are not talking about people
who used peoples superstitious beliefs to make themselves
rich. We are talking about people who were following the
teachings of Jesus and who gave all they had and were
willing to die for them.
Jesus’ teachings are only moral to
those who believe.
The moral integrity of a witness is
important. A witness, having a history of being completely
honest, and whose moral integrity is beyond question, has
given you a critical message. Whose fault will it be if you
do not believe?
However, were Jesus’ teachings moral?
He taught that nobody comes to the Father except through
him. He taught his death would pay for the sins of the
world. He taught that you must believe in him in order to be
saved. If you do not believe these things are true, how
could you call Jesus a moral teacher?
Everything is at stake here. Read the
Gospel of Jesus Christ for yourself, seek the truth, there
is no excuse not to believe and be saved.
If I can be any help email me
Jeff Barnes
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