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Why I Believe in Christ – another
perspective
Before getting in this article,
it may be helpful to review the previously posted articles in
this series.
If there wasn’t enough reasonable
evidence for the previous articles who many have called into
existence then this article wouldn’t be valid. If there wasn’t
a God or Jesus never really historical reasons then this section
which uses some of the events surrounding Jesus life wouldn’t be
valid. Now once again although I personally believe the Bible
(the Gospels specifically in this case) has many instances that
Jesus was who He says He was I will not be leaning upon just
simply the words and the miracles of Jesus although these could
stand alone.
There are two main evidences that
I would submit for thought to show that Jesus was who He was.
They are:
1)
The fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies
2)
The martyrdom of the apostles
The fulfillment of the old
Testament Prophecies
The Old Testament has over 400
prophecies that the Messiah had to fulfill and which Jesus did
fulfill. Some of the prophecies might have been able to been
produced by one’s own efforts (such as the fulfillment of Zech
9:9 in which the King was riding on a coal and Jesus did that in
Matthew 21) and others are debated if it is indeed a prophecy
(such as Isaiah 7:14 concerning if indeed that is a word for
virgin or not in some circles). This however would still make it
difficult for one man to fulfill all of these prophecies. There
would be others that are almost downright impossible to fulfill
Psalm 22 describing the incident of the cross. Could you imagine
Jesus planning with the Romans and Pharisees to get this
prophecy right?
Jesus:
OK guys make sure that you don’t break any of my bones and that
I am thirsty as well.
Romans:
What should we be saying?
Jesus:
Well make sure you say ‘He rescued others, let Him rescue
Himself.’ Oh yea and don’t forget pay Judas 30 silver coins and
also divide My garments up while you are killing Me and cast
lots for them. Did I leave anything out?
Pharisees:
No I think we have it pretty much down. All the prophecies seem
to have been met.
To think that this would have
taken place to fulfill Scriptures seems to be a bit preposterous
to say the least. In fact one study1 said that that
the probability of taking 8 Messianic prophecies (although I am
not sure which 8 they chose) and having one person fulfilling
them would be 1 in 1017 (that is 1 in
100,000,000,000,000,000 chance). In fact it was compared to
taking the state of Texas and filling it with
100,000,000,000,000,000 coins (which incidentally would be 2
feet deep) and placing one coin marked special somewhere in with
the rest of them, walking blindfolded and pulling the marked
coin out. Statistically this is a big deal.
I know that there
is also going around where Jesus is being compared to others on
a list of 22 or so factors that make up a “Superhero” list. I
hope to deal with that in a future article but I need to study
it a bit more at first. I would only begin to answer and say
that Jesus had more than 22 prophecies fulfilled, His name has
lived on longer that all the other names, and historically the
Old Testament was around a great many of those on that list.
Does that begin to answer that list? No, not really but it isn’t
a huge concern for this article and will be addressed later.
The Martyrdom of the Disciples
The second area
to be addressed would be the martyrdom of the disciples. Of the
12 disciples, 10 suffered horrible deaths. Now you may say “Well
there are many people who die for their beliefs everyday and
throughout history, why then do these 10 make a difference?”
These 10 didn’t die because of beliefs. They died because they
knew and did not deny what had happened with Jesus. Now the
Bible and Josephus2 both make mention of people who
drew crowds like Jesus and once they were killed they were
dispersed. If I were in the shoes of the disciples and I did not
see a resurrected Jesus and experience all that had happened,
then I would have stuck by a lie that I knew was to be a lie. I
am sure if the resurrection and everything else was indeed a lie
at least 1 of the remaining 11 would have started singing a
different tune when persecuted.
You can read
Fox Book of the Martyr’s
Chapter 1 to see how each of the disciples died.
Some of the deaths were horrible deaths, yet none recanted from
what they were being persecuted. In fact Peter who denied Him 3
times on the night of Jesus’ trial, who also wrote of Jesus’
sufferings and resurrected and also claimed to be an eyewitness
(2 Pet 1:16), was crucified upside down not to be crucified the
same way as Christ was. And while he had opportunity to run, he
didn’t. Even the accounts of his speeches in Acts and the
beatings and jailings that followed are not indicative of a man
who is lying especially to build someone else up. A man who is
lying for a made up story simply will not go through these
things.
While this article may have not
been pure “logic” in a college sense of the word, it has shown
two more building blocks of why I believe that Jesus is indeed
the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God. The next and final
article will show why I believe in Jesus from a relational
aspect.
1
The study was done by Professor Peter W. Stoner, American
Scientific Affiliation, and was mentioned in Beyond Belief to
Convictions by Josh McDowell & Bob Hostetler (2002)
2
Acts 5:33-39, Antiquities, 20.5.1.97-98
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