WHY DO WE BELIEVE IN THE RESURRECTION?

There are many reasons. However, I will just focus on one set of reasons. The only way to explain the growth of the Christian Faith in the very place that the crucifixion took place is by the resurrection. If the resurrection hadn't taken place, no one would have believed:

The Apostles had all abandoned their faith and were on the run. Their faith was only renewed by Jesus' post-resurrection appearances.

Many who hadn't previously believed subsequently came to faith, like Jesus' family. They couldn't possibly have believed after the cross had there not been a great miracle of the resurrection to have changed their mind. 

Many of the religious leadership of Jerusalem came to believe. Had there been evidence contrary to the resurrection, it would have been available to them there in Jerusalem, the very place Jesus had been crucified. They, therefore, would never have believed and risked both life and career.

In fact, thousands came to faith almost immediately there in Jerusalem. There must have been sufficient evidence for them to have done so.

Had there not been a resurrection, there could not have been a Christian Faith. Jesus had suffered the most dishonoring and humiliating death. No one would have wanted to have been associated with it.

The Mysterious Revelations of our Lord

Many of the Hebrew prophetic passages were purposely obscure. The Apostle Paul revealed one reason why this was so:

• No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. (1 Corinthians 2:7-8)

Nevertheless, the message of the Cross was present in cryptic glory:

• For this is what the LORD says: "You [Israel] were sold for nothing, and without money you will be redeemed." (Isaiah 52:3)

Of what could this redemption consist? It had cost money to procure the sacrificial animal. However, the redemption that the Lord promised through Isaiah would be without cost. How could this be?

The redemption would consist of a message and a Messiah, and God would shoulder the entire cost:

• How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace [with God], who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, "Your God reigns!" Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices; together they shout for joy. When the LORD returns to Zion, they will see it with their own eyes. Burst into songs of joy together, you ruins of Jerusalem, for the LORD has comforted his people, he [God] has redeemed Jerusalem. The LORD will lay bare his holy arm in the sight of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God. (Isaiah 52:7-10) 

How would Israel possibly be able to see “the LORD [when He] returns to Zion?” He was un-seeable. In fact, anyone who saw Him would be struck dead! This is answered by “his holy arm [revealed] in the sight of all the nations!” Well, what is His “holy arm?” Isaiah explains:

• Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. (Isaiah 53:1-5) 

Sound familiar? More than familiar! This is our Savior, hidden in plain sight by His Father until the appointed time:

• Listen to me, you islands; hear this, you distant nations: Before I was born the LORD called me; from my birth he has made mention of my name. He made my mouth like a sharpened sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me into a polished arrow and concealed me in his quiver. He said to me, "You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will display my splendor." (Isaiah 49:1-3)

I love these portraits! They were given for us who are weak in faith. In fact, even the Hebrew prophets were unable to fathom the depths of what they had prophesied. Instead, it was revealed that they were prophesying for us:

• Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things. (1 Peter 1:10-12) 

Thank You, Lord, for revealing these glories to us! We need them!

Do the Hebrew Scriptures Mention a Second Return of the Messiah

 

A rabbi on a Facebook page - Why Jews don't accept Jesu as the Meshiach -challenged me to provide evidence that the Messiah will return for a second time. Here’s my response:

You asked me if I could produce a verse from the Hebrew Scriptures that mentioned a second coming. There are many verses that hint at a second coming, although Scripture is purposely cryptic about the grace of God. Here is one:

•  “He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray,    each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. For he was cut off from the land of the living… for the transgression of my people he was punished… Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, HE WILL SEE HIS OFFSPRING AND PROLONG HIS DAYS, AND THE WILL OF THE LORD WILL PROSPER IN HIS HAND. After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities.” (Isaiah 53:3-11)

Here is the description of a sinless man who died for the sins of Israel. Nevertheless, it seems that He will live again, and the LORD’s plan “will prosper in His hand.” Evidently, He must RETURN in order to accomplish this.

The Prophecies of the End: Gloom or Glory?

Not all news is good news. In fact, the vast portion of it downright bad. As society further rejects its biblical roots in favor of immediate personal gratification, it is also rejecting its out-of-step source-Book. Barna.org recently announced:

• Bible skepticism is now “tied" with [faithful] Bible engagement [at 19% of respondents]. This year's research reveals that skepticism toward the Bible continues to rise. For the first time since tracking began, Bible skepticism is tied with Bible engagement. The number of those who are skeptical or agnostic toward the Bible—who believe that the Bible is "just another book of teachings written by men that contains stories and advice"—has nearly doubled from 10% to 19% in just three years. This is now equal to the number of people who are Bible engaged—who read the Bible at least four times a week and believe it is the actual or inspired Word of God.

Although these findings are deeply disturbing, they also mirror the pattern of end-times prophecy. The Book of Revelation presents a more-than-gloomy picture of the world prior to Christ’s return. Jesus’ portrait is no more encouraging:

• “Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come… For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again.” (Mat. 24:9-12, 21)

Instead of an invitation to reign in glory, He advised flight in the midst of persecution prior to His return. Paul didn’t give us any more hope about the end-times:

• But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power… everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. (2 Tim. 3:1-5, 12)

The New Testament seems to speak with one voice about the coming end-times crisis. Peter warned:

• In the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” (2 Peter 3:3-4)

Although the events of our day seem to be eagerly following in the steps of the prophetic warnings, this gives us little comfort. Some place in our mind, we had the mis-expectation of His present and tangible glory now that Christ had established His church. Instead, we await His crucifixion – something already being experienced by tens, even hundreds of thousands of our brethren in Muslim and Communist countries as many of our professing brethren have chosen the world and its strategy of silence.

We might be able to understand these events, but Lord, help us to live for You proactively, wisely and confidently in the midst of them!

Could God be a Sadist?

Recently, an atheist asked me, “How do you know that God isn’t a sadist and that his bible is not just one big deception.” Here’s my response:

There are reasons that I believe that God is love. I too, even after coming to Christ, began to wonder if I had been tricked by an evil God. I had struggled with decades of depression and panic attacks that had left me devastated. Consequently, I was having a hard time reconciling my faith in a loving God with my painful experiences.

During these long dark hours I would sometimes envision God having created us for His selfish entertainment. However, one evening, He opened my mind to see that this was not a game or entertainment. Instead, He proved His love by impressing upon me that He had actually suffered and died for my sins. After that, I was never able to regard Him as a detached and uncaring spectator. Instead, I was left with the very vivid impression that He loved me so much that He died for me.

Years later, I studied the historical evidence supporting the resurrection and wrote a little paper on it (http://mannsword.blogspot.com/2010/04/jesus-resurrection-is-historical-fact.html). However, during those years, He did other things to confirm His love for me. Even at church I had felt that I didn’t fit in. People would get up to the microphone and report on the wonderful things that God had been doing for them. During these times, I felt further tormented. My suffering informed me, “God doesn’t love you. If He did, He would have delivered you from your misery.”

Consequently, I was about to flee the church, but then heard an inaudible voice - the only time ever - saying, “just wait a minute.” After several minutes, someone came from behind and embraced with the warmest embrace. I turned around to see who it was and found, to my surprise, that there was no one there. Instantaneously, I knew it was my reassuring Savior.

God revealed Himself in many other ways during those dark years. Eventually, He delivered me from those decades of panic and intense depression, now expecting me to proceed in faith – something I delight in doing.

The Deity of Christ and why this Matters

 In the official Watchtower publication, Should You Believe in the Trinity, Jehovah’s Witnesses proclaim that:

·        Jesus had an existence in heaven before coming to the earth…the Bible plainly states that in his pre-human existence, Jesus was a created spirit being, just as the angels were spirit beings created by God.

Nevertheless, they believe that Jesus died for our sins and that we have to place our trust in Him. In light of this, is His deity worth fighting over? Doesn’t doctrine divide and create acrimony? Isn’t it enough to believe that Jesus was, at least, a form of deity?

Hopefully, without any acrimony, I’d like to try to explain why this is such a critical doctrine, one that profoundly impacts our lives.

For one thing, God requires that we know, love and worship Him as He truly is. Jesus claimed that this knowledge was essential:

·        “I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be, you will indeed die in your sins." (John 8:24)

According to Jesus, faith and salvation were a matter of believing what He taught about Himself. In contrast, many today believe that a relationship with God isn’t about believing a set of teachings or doctrines about God, but rather in experiencing Him. Oprah asserted this very thing:

·        “God is about a feeling experience, not a believing experience…A mistake we humans make is believing that there is only one way…There are many paths to what you call God…There couldn’t possibly be just one way…Do you think that if you never heard the name of Jesus but lived with a loving heart…you wouldn’t get to heaven?...Does God care about the heart or if you call His Son ‘Jesus?’”  

According to Oprah, a relationship with God is a matter of both experience and the quality of our heart. However, we all fail the heart test (Rom. 3:10-18; 23). That’s why salvation must be by grace and not by our merit.

Understanding God is not optional. God had been angry at Job’s three friends because they failed to understand and speak rightly of Him:

·        After the LORD had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, "I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. (Job 42:7)

Jesus reaffirmed the fact that we have to approach God bearing a correct understanding. He contrasted a true understanding with the understanding of the Samaritans:

·        “You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the [doctrines of the] Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." (John 4:22-24)

Why is God so insistent about being worshipped according to the truth of who He is? Perhaps we can best understand this if we examine our own relationships. We tend to value those friends who appreciate us according to who we really are, rather than people who might appreciate us but for the wrong reasons.

An accurate knowledge of God is so valuable that this is the one thing we can boast about (Jer. 9:23-24). For one thing, knowing that when we confess, He forgives our sins is so freeing. It also endears us to Him.

However, knowing of Christ’s Deity also endears us to our Triune God. Scripture reveals that the cross was a monumental demonstration of God’s love for us (Romans 5:8-10). I had experienced decades of the severest depression and panic attacks, even into my Christian life. It often felt that God was a cosmic sadist, eating popcorn as He delighted in the freak-show below.

Even though I wanted to believe otherwise, my feelings allowed no other interpretation. One night as I walked with head to the ground, crying my eyes out, I suddenly realized that this wasn’t a freak-show, and that Christ suffered on the cross for me and even suffered for me now (Heb. 4:15).

However, how could the cross demonstrate God’s love for me? God could have created 50,000 Christs in one second, at absolutely no cost to Himself. However, if Jesus is God and not a created being, this was totally another matter. God actually loved me so much that He Himself died for me! He didn’t send a mere created being to take my place.

Jehovah’s Witnesses isn’t the only groups that obscures the truth of Christ’s Triunity and His love for us. The modalists do the same thing but in a different way. For instance, the United Pentecostal Church claims that Jesus was no more than an appearance of deity, a manifestation – smoke and mirrors. Consequently, God didn’t die for us but rather an appearance of God “died” – hardly a token of God’s love.

I continue to find evidences of this atomic explosion of self-sacrifice that has changed this world. Jesus talked often of His coming moment of glory. How could anyone imagine that this moment would entail His time of pain and humiliation?

·        Jesus replied, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” (John 12:23-24; 7:39; 13:31)

What love! He so desperately longed to show us His glory, and we thought that this had been fulfilled on the Mount of Transfiguration. However, He was pointing to something even more glorious - His torture and His death, the spit and the naked humiliation – the greatest tokens of His love.

It also served as an example for us of what our own self-sacrifice should look like. (Lord, help us!) Paul argues that if Jesus, God Himself, had humbled Himself to die on the cross, so should we do likewise for others (Phil. 2:3-8).

However, if Jesus isn’t God but rather a created, non-priceless being who was created for the very purpose of dying, this fails to both demonstrate God’s love and glory. It also fails to impress us into self-sacrificial living.

Furthermore, the death of a mere created being fails to humble us by showing us the depths of our sins. In fact, they were so weighty that the blood of animals couldn’t begin to atone for them:

·        Because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: "Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. Then I said, 'Here I am--it is written about me in the scroll--I have come to do your will, O God.' " (Hebrews 10:4-7 quoting Psalm 40)

If our sins could have been atoned for in a less costly way, our Savior would have done it that way. However, nothing short of the death of the Savior would suffice! This humbles us more profoundly than would the crucifixion of a created being.

It also gives us great confidence. It demonstrates to us that if God loved us so much while we were still His enemies, how much more will He keep and protect us now that He has already paid the price and has converted us into a band of friends and worshippers (Romans 5:8-10).

Even beyond this, the cross of Christ our God communicates that we are rich beyond reckoning. Paul argues that if we have Christ, we have everything. Why? Because in Christ is everything – all Deity (Col. 2:9-10). Before making this life-altering assertion, Paul set forth the Deity of Christ – “the image of the invisible God…by Him all things were created…and hold together…all [God’s] fullness dwells in Him” (Col. 1:13-21). Therefore, we really do have everything, along with the assurance that we are co-heirs with Christ (Rom. 8:17).

Because of these surpassing riches, we should never be tempted to think that we lack anything. We need to know that we are safe and beloved as we venture forth every morning into the discouragements of this life. The fact that God Himself died for us while we were still sinners can give us this assurance, especially as we drink deeply from the truth of our own unworthiness.