In my last blog post, I briefly discussed how historians are faced with the difficult task of unravelling true historical facts from the embellishments that creep in over time. However, the threat of legend overtaking fact is mitigated by the gap between the actual event and the earliest record.
The Gospel Saves Posts
One of my favorite movies in recent time is The Fellowship of the Ring. This adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic, The Lord of the Rings, is by far the best of the cinematic series. The filmmakers introduce us to Tokien’s Middle Earth with a brief history of Sauron’s One Ring. When the ring was lost and forgotten, the prologue’s voice-over says, “History became legend. Legend became myth.” Tolkien shows a keen understanding of human nature in this statement.
It is a common practice among many groups today to perform a collection during the worship assembly. More often than not, this takes the form of a communal plate that is circulated among the attendees in the sight of all. Some groups are more discreet (a small box near an entrance or envelopes conveniently placed in the pew). Where did this practice come from?
In his book, The Nature of Historical Explanation, Patrick Gardiner asked a worthwhile question:
“In what sense can I be said to know an event which is in principle unobservable, having vanished behind the mysterious frontier which divides the present from the past? And how can we be sure that anything really happened in the past at all, that the whole story is not an elaborate fabrication, as untrustworthy as a dream or a work of fiction?”
There are two types of people who struggle with the big bang cosmology:
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Those who embrace materialism and exclude God from the equation, and
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Those whose religious teachings present the universe as eternal.
The bodily resurrection of Jesus lies at the heart of Christian theology. If the body of Christ did not rise from the dead, the Christian faith means nothing. Since belief in the resurrection relies on the evidence, it’s worth our time as either believers or skeptics to evaluate the quality of the evidence.
I was on your official website today, and read the following:
…the Bible teaches that Jesus was created by God.
and
Jesus’ early followers did not view him as being equal to Almighty God.
Admittedly, I knew you believed this before I visited your site. In fact, previous research had revealed to me that you believe Jesus to actually be one and the same as Michael the archangel.
I can’t agree with this.
“Jesus of Nazareth is easily the dominant figure in history…the historian disregarding the theological significance of his life, writes the name of Jesus of Nazareth at the top of the list of the world’s greatest characters.” ~ H. G. Wells
Few can say that they have never heard of Jesus Christ. In a 2010 TIME Magazine article entitled, “Who’s Biggest? The 100 Most Significant Figures in History,” in which the authors attempted to rank “historical figures just as Google ranks web pages, by integrating a diverse set of measurements about their reputation into a single consensus value,” Jesus came out first1. Loved or hated, the name of Jesus Christ is a “household name,” and has been for centuries. Everybody’s heard of Jesus.
“He came to this low ground of sin, sickness, and sorrow. . .” Here is a beautiful slice of poetry which a brother incorporated into his prayer. Low ground . . . the world of man; “You have made him a little lower than the angels; You have crowned him with glory and honor, And set him over the works of Your hands.”(Heb. 2:7 / Ps.8:5-6) Low ground . . . Jesus’ world; “But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone.” (Heb. 2:9) Though angels could dine with mortals (as when they met with Abraham at Mamre), they were not made lower than their station.
In the previous two posts we established that everyone has sinned. We also determined that our sin has significant consequences. It leads to spiritual death, and it causes us to be separated from God. The key is that by sinning we have entered into an inescapable situation. We cannot save ourselves! Some claim that a righteous deed will erase a bad deed. But that simply is not true. Isaiah 64:6-7 reads; “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.