Kingdom's Keys Fellowship
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An Easter Faith in an Age of Good Fridays
Worried about the attacks on the Gospel in the popular media? At the moment, the attacks center on the implicit or explicit claim that the Gospels are highly fictional, and that the Church, especially the Roman Catholic Church has been suppressing the real truth about Jesus. Apparently, new attacks will soon be coming that will even deny that Jesus ever existed at all!
While they are hard for us to hear, these are really very old accusations, and from long ago to the present they have been rebutted first by the church fathers and then by multiple generations of apologists for the faith. The only really new thing is that now large numbers of people are actually believing these accusations – primarily because they want to..
Take heart! Contrary to the coming attacks, there is indeed evidence of Jesus in both Jewish rabbinic and in secular documents from around the time of Jesus. Evidence for Jesus outside of the New Testament records really does exist.
What is more, the life of Jesus of Nazareth is actually far better attested in ancient documents than are the lives of other famous people who lived around the same time. By that I mean that we have many times more ancient scrolls of the Gospels than we have of other ancient records, and that the scrolls we have are much closer to the time of Jesus than are the scrolls that describe the other ancient people and events.
As I have thought about Scripture, I have become more and more convinced by the ring of authenticity within the New Testament itself, especially in how it portrays the disciples – the men who were the leaders of the early church. This is especially important to understand because the current accusers claim that the early church created most if not all of the stories about Jesus and even what Jesus taught!
But this raises a lot of questions. First, what would be the motive for fabricating the Gospel story? The apostles and the early church were persecuted by all sides, and not applauded by any. If they were looking for a reward in this life, they should have stuck to fishing and tax collecting. Then, considering human nature, if these stories were so freely made up, why would the early church have painted their leaders to look so dense, and to show them as consistently needing to be rebuked by Jesus?
For instance, if this incident did not in fact happen, why would the Gospels picture Jesus as saying to the Apostle Peter - “Get thee behind me Satan”? Or what about the story of Peter's sinking into the waves when he tried to walk on the water out to where Jesus was? Wouldn't these stories have undermined Peter's authority in the Church? And why would the Gospels show the disciples, the leaders of the church, as being so very slow to understand that Jesus was the Son of God, unless the events really happened that way?
If the Gospels were made up by the early church (and how did the Church even form were there no “Gospel,” no Good News calling it into existence?), why would the disciples, the church leaders, have allowed the inclusion of so many stories describing their having been chided by Jesus for their lack of faith, for their pride, for their love of status, and for their bickering? Why should a made-up record include the story about the disciples being helpless to cast out a demon, unless it really happened that way?
Or think of the disciples' role in the Easter story. Remember how Jesus had plainly told them that he would be crucified, and then he would rise from the dead on the third day. But after the crucifixion, when the women come to tell the disciples that the tomb was empty and that an angel told that that Jesus had risen from the dead, the disciples would not believe them until they had seen the empty tomb for themselves. If you were among the disciples, would you have included this little gem about your unbelief in a fabricated story? Why not instead make up a story about all the disciples waiting around outside the tomb on Sunday morning, and then asking Jesus what took Him so long when he finally appears? Indeed, if the whole story of Jesus was made up by the church, why not depict the leaders of the church as being men of great perception and faith even in their earliest days with Jesus?
What captains of industry would allow such negative stories to be told about them in their own company's literature? Could you in your strangest imagination imagine anything like official Microsoft corporate literature including several stories of Bill Gates' accusing his division heads of various forms of gross incompetence and a lack of true vision and confidence in their product? No matter how good it might make Bill Gates look personally, it would not boost anyone's faith in Microsoft as a company, especially if the people Bill Gates had been criticizing were now the ones in charge during his extended absence!
In almost every incident recorded in the Gospels, the disciples – the leaders of the Church, come off looking so very bad, that one could wonder whether the Gospels were written by the friends or the enemies of the Church! That is, of course, unless the incidents are recorded in part because they really happened.
But even if one was to believe that the story of Jesus was completely made up, how can anyone explain the willingness of the disciples to be beaten, imprisoned, and to finally be painfully executed for what they would all have known was a lie? Chuck Colson, whose role in the Watergate conspiracy got him sentenced to prison, has noted that not even one of the Watergate conspirators were willing to go to jail to protect a lie. Colson concluded that it is not logical to assume that all of the disciples of Jesus would willingly have died for what they would have known was a lie. The fact that they were, to a man, willing to die a martyr’s death indicates that they believed that their accounts were true.
It takes a greater leap of faith to believe all the current attacks on the Gospels than it does to believe that the Gospels, are Holy Spirit inspired records that simply report what sincere people saw, heard, and then reflected upon.
Yes, it is a Good Friday world out there. Yes, the Gospel is under attack in every public forum. Yes, our faith is being tested – but Christ IS risen! The Gospel IS true! New opportunities to tell the Gospel to others will come out of this, if we have ears to hear, hearts to love, and mouths to speak God's truth.
[For more information on this topic, I can recommend reading Who Moved the Stone, by Frank Morison, or A Case for Christ: a Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus by Lee Strobel.]
While they are hard for us to hear, these are really very old accusations, and from long ago to the present they have been rebutted first by the church fathers and then by multiple generations of apologists for the faith. The only really new thing is that now large numbers of people are actually believing these accusations – primarily because they want to..
Take heart! Contrary to the coming attacks, there is indeed evidence of Jesus in both Jewish rabbinic and in secular documents from around the time of Jesus. Evidence for Jesus outside of the New Testament records really does exist.
What is more, the life of Jesus of Nazareth is actually far better attested in ancient documents than are the lives of other famous people who lived around the same time. By that I mean that we have many times more ancient scrolls of the Gospels than we have of other ancient records, and that the scrolls we have are much closer to the time of Jesus than are the scrolls that describe the other ancient people and events.
As I have thought about Scripture, I have become more and more convinced by the ring of authenticity within the New Testament itself, especially in how it portrays the disciples – the men who were the leaders of the early church. This is especially important to understand because the current accusers claim that the early church created most if not all of the stories about Jesus and even what Jesus taught!
But this raises a lot of questions. First, what would be the motive for fabricating the Gospel story? The apostles and the early church were persecuted by all sides, and not applauded by any. If they were looking for a reward in this life, they should have stuck to fishing and tax collecting. Then, considering human nature, if these stories were so freely made up, why would the early church have painted their leaders to look so dense, and to show them as consistently needing to be rebuked by Jesus?
For instance, if this incident did not in fact happen, why would the Gospels picture Jesus as saying to the Apostle Peter - “Get thee behind me Satan”? Or what about the story of Peter's sinking into the waves when he tried to walk on the water out to where Jesus was? Wouldn't these stories have undermined Peter's authority in the Church? And why would the Gospels show the disciples, the leaders of the church, as being so very slow to understand that Jesus was the Son of God, unless the events really happened that way?
If the Gospels were made up by the early church (and how did the Church even form were there no “Gospel,” no Good News calling it into existence?), why would the disciples, the church leaders, have allowed the inclusion of so many stories describing their having been chided by Jesus for their lack of faith, for their pride, for their love of status, and for their bickering? Why should a made-up record include the story about the disciples being helpless to cast out a demon, unless it really happened that way?
Or think of the disciples' role in the Easter story. Remember how Jesus had plainly told them that he would be crucified, and then he would rise from the dead on the third day. But after the crucifixion, when the women come to tell the disciples that the tomb was empty and that an angel told that that Jesus had risen from the dead, the disciples would not believe them until they had seen the empty tomb for themselves. If you were among the disciples, would you have included this little gem about your unbelief in a fabricated story? Why not instead make up a story about all the disciples waiting around outside the tomb on Sunday morning, and then asking Jesus what took Him so long when he finally appears? Indeed, if the whole story of Jesus was made up by the church, why not depict the leaders of the church as being men of great perception and faith even in their earliest days with Jesus?
What captains of industry would allow such negative stories to be told about them in their own company's literature? Could you in your strangest imagination imagine anything like official Microsoft corporate literature including several stories of Bill Gates' accusing his division heads of various forms of gross incompetence and a lack of true vision and confidence in their product? No matter how good it might make Bill Gates look personally, it would not boost anyone's faith in Microsoft as a company, especially if the people Bill Gates had been criticizing were now the ones in charge during his extended absence!
In almost every incident recorded in the Gospels, the disciples – the leaders of the Church, come off looking so very bad, that one could wonder whether the Gospels were written by the friends or the enemies of the Church! That is, of course, unless the incidents are recorded in part because they really happened.
But even if one was to believe that the story of Jesus was completely made up, how can anyone explain the willingness of the disciples to be beaten, imprisoned, and to finally be painfully executed for what they would all have known was a lie? Chuck Colson, whose role in the Watergate conspiracy got him sentenced to prison, has noted that not even one of the Watergate conspirators were willing to go to jail to protect a lie. Colson concluded that it is not logical to assume that all of the disciples of Jesus would willingly have died for what they would have known was a lie. The fact that they were, to a man, willing to die a martyr’s death indicates that they believed that their accounts were true.
It takes a greater leap of faith to believe all the current attacks on the Gospels than it does to believe that the Gospels, are Holy Spirit inspired records that simply report what sincere people saw, heard, and then reflected upon.
Yes, it is a Good Friday world out there. Yes, the Gospel is under attack in every public forum. Yes, our faith is being tested – but Christ IS risen! The Gospel IS true! New opportunities to tell the Gospel to others will come out of this, if we have ears to hear, hearts to love, and mouths to speak God's truth.
[For more information on this topic, I can recommend reading Who Moved the Stone, by Frank Morison, or A Case for Christ: a Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus by Lee Strobel.]
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