-- Num ---- Username ---- Category ------------- Posted -- Expires 
| 41140 | STU_MBREEDY  | RELIGION             | 01/21/92 | 01/28/92 |
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| Description: Some evidence to consider. . .                        
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Ok.  Everyone wants evidence.  This may not be the evidence you're
looking for,but it is something to think about.
 
     Christianity centers around none other than Jesus Christ, of
     course.  So lets look at who this Jesus is.
 
     Who is Jesus to you?  Many people are ready to accept Jesus as
     a great moral teacher, but not as Lord.  Jesus claimed to be God
     --he left open no other options.  Let's consider that his claim
     was false.  If it was false then we have two options:  He either
     knew it was false or he did not know it was false. Let's examine
     each separately.
 
     If Jesus knew his claims were false, he would be a liar.  And if
     he was a liar, he was also a hypocrite because he told his
     followers to be honest, while he lived a lie.  He would also have
     been a fool because his claims led to his crucifixion.
     How could a great moral teacher knowingly mislead people at the
     most crucial point of his teaching--his identity?  You would have
     to conclude that he was a deliberate liar.  This view doesn't
     coincide with what we know of Him or the results of his teaching.
     Wherever Jesus has been proclaimed, lives have changed for the
     better, alcoholics are cured, thieves made honest.  I have seen
     some of this work personally.
     Historian Philip Schaff says: "This testimony, if not true, must
     be downright blasphemy or madness.  The former hypothesis cannot
     stand a moment before the moral purity and dignity of Jesus,
     revealed in his every word and work, and acknowledged by
     universal consent.  Self-deception in a matter so momentous, and
     with an intellect in all respects so clear and so sound, is
     equally out of the question.  How could he be an enthusiast or a
     madman who never lost the even balance of his mind, who sailed
     serenly over all the troubles and persecutions, who always returned
     the wisest answer to tempting questions, who calmly and
     deliberately predicted his death on the cross and his ressurrection
     on the third day, the founding of his church, the destruction of
     Jerusalem--predictions which have been literally fulfilled?  It
     would take more than a Jesus to invent a Jesus." ("History of the
     Christian Church", p. 109).
     If Jesus wanted people to llow him, why did he go to a Jewish
     nation? Why wouldn't he have gone to a larger nation, or to one
     where people worshipped numerous gods, like Greece?
     Someone who lived as Jesus lived, taught as he taught and died
     as he died could not have been a liar.  What other alternatives
     are there?
     Well, he could have been lying and not realized it--in which case
     he was a lunatic.  Maybe Jesus really thought he was G, but was
     mistaken.  In Jesus we don't observe the abnormalities and
     imbalance that go along with being deranged.  And his poise and
     composure under tremendous pressure would be amazing if he were
     insane.  Christ has said some of the most profoud things in
     history, and his teachings of 2,000 years ago still apply today.
     It certainly would be amazing for an insane man to seem so
     consistent.
     Psychiatrist J.T. Fisher stated that if you took all the articles
     written by the most qualified psychologists and have them refined
     by the most capable poets, you would have an awkward an incomplete
     summation of the Sermon on the Mount.  And it would suffer
     immeasurably in comparison (J.T. Fisher--"A Few Buttons Missing",
     p. 273).
     Was Jesus Lord?  There is a choice to be made: liar, lunatic, or
     lord. This choice should not be an idle intellectual exercise;
     Jesus cannot be shelved as simply a moral teacher.  All choices
     are possible, but which is the more probable?
 
     This is probably not the evidence many of you were hoping for.
     But it is something to think about.
 
Matt