It says something commendable about you that you have opened and begun to read this. It suggests you have an active and inquiring mind. Maybe it even reflects a humility and courage to consider new and even counter cultural ideas. I hope that’s you, because this was not written for those who let others do their thinking for them. This was not written for those who already know better than anyone else. This was not written for those who are afraid to be different. This was written for open-minded lovers of truth who would dare to be different if it’s where the truth leads.
If you have yet to hear the news presented here then you’re about to come upon the most valuable find in your life! Suppose a man held out his hand with a lottery ticket and told you it was just announced the winning ticket and he wanted you to have it. You’d be skeptical for sure, but would you not take it and investigate the truthfulness of his claim? Well, I’m telling you there’s truth here more valuable than any winning ticket. It’s brought me deep joy, peace, hope and purpose in life. It can do the same for you. And that’s just the beginning of its benefits.
I’ll start with some evidence of my claim.
A Hospitable Cave
Picture surviving an airplane crash deep in the Alaskan wilderness during winter. Knowing you’re not going to survive out there long unless you somehow find shelter, heat, water and food, you start hiking. You hike for hours seeing nothing but trees, snow and the occasional animal track. As you approach the bottom of a rocky cliff, a trail of uncovered rocks catches your eye.
As you get a closer look at the rocks, hope fills your soul, because they look like stone stairs! You follow them up to a circular stone at the base of the cliff, which you find can be rolled to the side and it uncovers a cave… a cave with a glow of light inside! You call out excitedly, “Hello?” But get no response. You enter cautiously and find a fire burning in a cavity of the wall. The warmth is wonderful. As you crouch before the fire, you notice a chimney hole through the rock above it allowing the smoke to escape. To one side of the fire, you see a large pile of dry wood, and on the other side, a bed of straw and animal furs. You turn around and are overjoyed to see a pool of water and a shelf in the wall holding piles of jerky, seeds, nuts and dried produce. This cave may be hospitable enough to get you through the rest of the Alaskan winter.
Well, if you ever found such a hospitable cave, there would be an immediate conclusion you would reach without a doubt: there was a person or persons here who did a lot of work to make the cave so hospitable. Even if the cave was in the most remote area on earth, you would not believe me if I told you the condition of that cave was just a phenomenal accident of nature, that the stone steps, doorway, fireplace, chimney, shelving were all just the way the rocks and ground naturally formed, and the fire was started by wood falling through the chimney and then being struck by lightning, and all the food and dry wood and furs and such were blown in there by a great wind storm. The cave has too many hospitable features and the chance of random processes of nature producing them is virtually zero. You’d know for sure somebody intelligent, on purpose, made that cave the way it is.
Why would we not reason to the same conclusion about the condition of the earth on which we live? Think about all the features of this earth that make it habitable for life. It’s positioned just the right distance from the sun so we have moderate temperature and liquid water. It has an abundance of water. It has just the right amount of salt in the oceans to allow clouds and rain to form, but not so salty that it kills the life in it. It’s rotating at just the right speed so one side of the world is not being unbearably scorched while the other is frozen. There’s a protective ozone layer and meteorite shield. There’s the exact mixture of chemicals we need in the atmosphere. There’s a perfect sized and positioned moon to not only give us a night light and keep the oceans from stagnating, but also to stabilize earth’s rotation on its axis. There are all the right ingredients in the soil for the production of food, and dozens of other “just right” factors that make this planet habitable for life. With its many finely tuned characteristics and rightly proportioned ingredients for life to thrive, is it not reasonable to conclude this world was no accident? That intelligence and purpose is responsible for it?
Is that not all the more reasonable when you consider…
The Phenomenon of Life
Many assume that life spontaneously generated from dead chemicals. In a lifeless primordial chemical soup, all of a sudden something came alive. When it did, it just so happened to be able to survive and just so happened to be able to reproduce itself until it could eventually evolve into all the different complex organisms living today. Yet that spontaneous generation is even possible is an assumption for which there is no evidence. Scientists today have every chemical available to them, powerful computers and amazing laboratory equipment and they have tried and tried, but never have been able to bring non-living stuff to life… ever!
Consider, also, how improbable it would be for all the molecules of just the most basic life form to randomly bond together in the right arrangement. The complexity of even the simplest life form is mind blowing (cell membrane, proteins, DNA, RNA, carbohydrates…). Some mathematicians have tried to calculate the probability of just the right kind of amino acids randomly bonding together in the right way to form a single protein (one minor component of a life form), and the best odds estimated odds I’ve found are “1 in a number with 80 thousand zeros after it,” which is a number we cannot comprehend; it may be more than the number of atoms in the universe.
Or how about…
The Phenomenon of Consciousness
Perhaps the most amazing observable fact in the universe is that we experience being and know that we do. We feel, perceive, think, desire, decide, and can think about the fact that we are doing it. How can the lumpy gray matter in our skulls give rise to this conscious-experience and self-awareness? This question is commonly called by naturalistic philosophers and scientists, “The Hard Problem of Consciousness” or “The Mind-Body Problem,” because no one has been able to provide a viable scientific explanation. If atheism is true then we are living in a merely material universe and all that exists is matter. But how could matter, which has no consciousness, be put together to produce consciousness?
According to physicist Dr. Nick Herbert,
"Science’s biggest mystery is the nature of consciousness. It is not that we possess bad or imperfect theories of human awareness; we simply have no such theories at all. About all we know about consciousness is that it has something to do with the head, rather than the foot."1
A 2011 “New Scientist” article begins this way:
"In a 1992 issue of The Times Literary Supplement, the philosopher Jerry Fodor famously complained that: 'Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. Nobody even knows what it would be like to have the slightest idea about how anything material could be conscious.' In 2011, despite two decades of explosive advances in brain research and cognitive science, Fodor’s assessment still rings true."2
Well, no one has a naturalistic explanation. But some have given a reasonable explanation, like the Australian neurophysiologist and winner of the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Sir John Eccles. A 1982 “Science Digest” article describes Eccles’ view this way:
"Eccles strongly defends the ancient religious belief that human beings consist of a mysterious compound of physical and intangible spirit. Each of us embodies a nonmaterial thinking and perceiving self that 'entered' our physical brain sometime during embryological development or very early childhood, says the man who helped lay the cornerstones of modern neurophysiology. This 'ghost in the machine' is responsible for everything that makes us distinctly human: conscious self-awareness, free will, personal identity, creativity and even emotions such as love, fear, and hate. Our nonmaterial self controls its 'liaison brain' the way a driver steers a car or a programmer directs a computer. Man’s ghostly spiritual presence, says Eccles, exerts just the whisper of a physical influence on the computer like brain, enough to encourage some neurons to fire and others to remain silent. Boldly advancing what for most scientists is the greatest heresy of all, Eccles also asserts that our nonmaterial self survives the death of the physical brain."
The article goes on to say,
"Eccles is not the only world-famous scientist taking a controversial new look at the ancient mind-body conundrum. From Berkeley to Paris and from London to Princeton, prominent scientists from fields as diverse as neurophysiology and quantum physics are coming out of the closet and admitting they believe in the possibility, at least, of such unscientific entities as the human spirit and divine creation."3
It is unfortunate that some today are saying science has disproved God and “the spiritual.” Science has certainly discovered much about how the universe, our world and life works. But science cannot explain why it all works the way it does or what or who brought it all about. Science hall-of-famer, Albert Einstein, found science to not only leave room for God, but to even convincingly evidence a supernatural creative intelligence. Einstein himself said:
"Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe – a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble."4
"Behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable."5
There was indeed a 1st century wonder-working, crucified, tomb-escaping Jesus.
There’s no question Jesus taught people about God and claimed to be our Lord and Savior. Ancient sources completely outside the Bible confirm He was put to death on a cross just outside Jerusalem under the orders of governor Pontius Pilate, under the pressure of the Jewish leaders, and His tomb, not long after, was found empty. People had various theories to explain the empty tomb. In the Jewish community the story was that somebody stole the body. Many others believed He rose from the dead. Many even testified to having seen Him alive and talked with Him. And remarkably, those eyewitnesses would not recant, nor keep quiet their testimony even when threatened and punished for it. Through the extremes of persecution and to their deaths they proclaimed Jesus as the risen Lord.
Then, much due to Jesus’ powerful deeds and this testimony, Christianity arose in Jerusalem and spread like wildfire all over the known world in that 1st century. These are historical facts that can be established even without a Bible.
Well, what do you think? Did the Creator and Jesus have anything to do with one another? It is certainly possible. Miracles and even raising a man from the dead would be no trouble for the creator of life and all things.
Let me share with you a phenomenon related to Jesus I cannot make sense of unless God indeed planned ahead of time to send and work through Jesus, and then carried through with His plans –
The Phenomenon of the Ancient Prophecies
The Jewish people before the 1st century A.D. had a collection of writings they accumulated and preserved over a couple thousand years. They revered these writings as the word of God written down by human messengers. Christians today call these ancient sacred writings the Old Testament section of the Bible. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Qumran Caves, which included many copies of these writings, has confirmed they were written long before the first century A.D.
Throughout their pages, from beginning to end, there is a common theme of One that God would send for us. The Scriptures said this One would become a king greater than any king before and would reign forever. They said people of all tribes, languages, and nationalities would be drawn to Him and serve Him (Daniel 7:13-14; Isaiah 42:1-9; 49:5-7). They said He would be called by names like, “Wonderful counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6-7). They said He would save and shepherd His people and bring them lasting peace (Micah 5:4; Ezekiel 34:23-31). They said He would be born of the lineage of Abraham and Judah and David (Genesis 49:10; II Samuel 7:16; Jeremiah 23:5-6), and He would come forth from Bethlehem Ephrathah, a little town south of Jerusalem (Micah 5:2). They said He would come during the days of the fourth empire to come to power starting with the Babylonian Empire, which would be the days of the Roman Empire (Daniel 2, 7). They said He wouldn’t look physically like anyone special (Isaiah 53:2), and He would be abused and put to death. But it wouldn’t be for any sins of His own. He would be pierced through for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, chastened for our well-being, scourged for our healing, cut off of the land of the living for the transgression of those to whom the stroke was due. Yet then He would be highly exalted, and would grant forgiveness and peace to many whose sins He bore (Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Psalm 22). They said many more things about this One that God would send.
It’s intriguing to say the least. Why would people just make up that a King and Savior is coming of a particular lineage and at a particular time and place and all these details about Him?
But do you realize that this extraordinary real man named Jesus came at the foretold time and place and of the foretold lineage, and all the rest of the prophetic description fits Him perfectly? Much of the testimony and teaching of the New Testament writings explain in detail how Jesus fulfilled the predictions, promises, fore-shadowings and symbols of the ancient Scriptures. The prophecy phenomenon is too detailed, too consistent, too accurate to be explained as lucky guesses and coincidences. It is one of several powerful confirmations God has given us that Jesus is the One He sent for us and the One we need to get to know.
In addition to the prophecy phenomenon we have…
- Abundant and credible eyewitness testimony of Jesus alive from the dead (I Corinthians 15:3-10).
- Biblical and ancient secular confirmation of His supernatural deeds.
- The confidence in His Lordship of those who knew Him best (His own mother and brothers and apostles). Many of them went to their deaths maintaining their testimony.
- The unparalleled impact Jesus has had on the world.
- The brilliance of His teaching and the beauty of His character.
- The beautiful transformation He causes in the hearts and lives of those who follow Him.
- The indestructibility of Christianity despite the fervent efforts of many to destroy it.
What convinces me most of all is my own experience of His presence, wisdom, power and kindness as I’ve followed Him with all my heart (joy, peace, answered prayer, spiritual family, discipline when I stray, gifting for ministry, power to end my sinful habits).
These things have persuaded me that Jesus was no con-artist or madman or sorcerer, but rather everything He claimed and everything His servants who wrote the Biblical writings said He is.
According to the Bible…
Jesus was fully man, but not just a man. John chapter 1 says that He was in the beginning with God and He was God and all things came into being through Him, and apart from Him has nothing come into being that’s come into being. I know that’s a challenge to comprehend, that He was with God and was God. I won’t try to explain it, I’ll just leave it at that. In Philippians chapter 2, it tells us that before He became a human being in the womb of a virgin named Mary, He existed in the form of God and then He emptied Himself. He emptied Himself of His limitless power and presence and wisdom and knowledge to become a dependent weak human being just like us. He was subject to pain and hunger and thirst and fatigue and and temptation. He grew up in poverty. II Corinthians 8:9 says, “Though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you by His poverty might become rich.”
Though He was like us in human nature and He was tempted in all things as we are (Hebrews 4:15), unlike us, He lived a completely righteous sinless life. He showed us how we’re supposed to live. He showed us how we are supposed to believe in and worship and love the God who made us with all our hearts. And how we’re supposed to love our neighbors as ourselves, be completely honest and reliable, how we’re to be generous and self-controlled and have the courage to do the right thing even when it’s unpopular. In the way He lived He also showed us the glorious character and personality of God. One time one of His disciples, Philip, said, “Jesus, show us the Father.” And Jesus said, “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father” (John 14:9). When we read in the biblical accounts of how Jesus interacted with people, how approachable He was, how compassionate and patient and unselfish He was, what made Him rejoice and what made Him angry, we’re seeing exactly what God is like. That’s the character of the One who made us.
For the last 3 years of His 33 years on earth, Jesus went about the land of Israel teaching and, by the power of God’s Spirit upon Him, healing all who were oppressed by the devil with various diseases and handicaps. With these miracles He proved that God the Father was with Him and His teaching is truly the Word of God. During this time He also trained disciples to carry on His ministry after Him.
When He’d ministered like this enough, to the shock and horror of those who followed Him, He allowed His enemies to have their way with Him. He could have called legions of angels to deliver Him at any time. But like a lamb before it’s shearers is silent, so He did not open His mouth to defend Himself. They tortured and mocked Him all night. At 9 o’clock in the morning they nailed Him to a cross. We’re told that in the midst of it Jesus prayed the most amazing thing. He prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.” He hung there and suffered for six more hours and then finally died at 3 p.m. A soldier thrust a spear into His side to make sure He was dead. But this was no unfortunate tragedy as many thought, this was planned in the mind of God all along and even prophesied about in the ancient scriptures that were written long before Jesus was born. This was the ultimate expression of God’s amazing love for us people whom He’s made. Jesus was offering Himself in our place and for us. He was taking the penalty that we have earned by our sins. He who knew no sin, he who had done nothing wrong, had all of our sins willingly transferred to Himself. He bore the punishment for us. He paid our debt so that forgiveness, friendship with God and eternal life are available to us.
On the third day after His death God put His stamp of approval on Jesus by raising Him from the dead. Over the course of 40 days He appeared to many alive (Acts 1:3). He allowed them to touch Him and visit with Him and they had meals together so they could know for certain He was alive. Before He ascended to heaven, He told those witnesses that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Him (Matthew 28:18). In other words, He has been made Lord and King of all creation, even over the highest of the angels, and He is the judge of all. It is to Him that every one of us will answer and He will decide ultimately what happens to every one of us. That is the most important fact for every one of us to realize. What happens to you is up to Jesus. Your future is in Jesus’s hands. If you are right with Jesus, you’re good. If you’re not right with Jesus, you have no hope.
He also told those disciples that one day He was going to come back. He’s going to come back, not in the same weak body He had, but He’s going to come back glorious and with the angels. He will judge the world and set the world right. And to those who would not take Him as their Lord, to those who would not turn from their sin, who would not trust Him, He will deal vengeance according to what each deserves, according to what they’ve done and they will be destroyed. And all of the beings that we cannot see that have been in rebellion against God, (Satan, fallen angels and demons) will also be justly dealt with. And all that Satan and evil has done to this world will be undone. This world will undergo a major demolition and renovation. There will be a new heavens and a new earth the Scriptures say. And those who believe in Him, those who trust in Him enough to turn from going their own way to make Him Lord and master of their life, they will stand before Jesus in new immortal glorious bodies, with all of their sin considered paid in full by the blood of Jesus. The Lord will reward each of them according to their labor for Him in this world and they will enjoy life without end in the new creation.
And He wishes for every human being, regardless of race, gender, social status or even how sinful they have been in their lives, including you, to be a part of His new creation (I Timothy 2:4; II Peter 3:9). He does not wish for any to perish. But He has conditions if we’re to receive the salvation He offers.
What are Jesus’ requirements?
It’s a common misconception today that Jesus only requires we acknowledge our need for His grace and ask Him to save us, and then we will be saved regardless of how we live. Not according to Jesus. According to Jesus we must so trust Him that we repent of our sins and seek to bring our life into harmony with His word. That’s true saving faith in the Bible; it’s trusting Jesus enough to give up our way of life and embrace His way of self-control and love for God and our fellow man. Jesus taught, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter” (Matthew 7:21). We must trust Him enough to listen and follow His teachings. (See also Matthew 10:37-39; 16:24-27; Luke 6:46-49; John 10:27; Acts 3:22
-23; James 2:14-26.)
Jesus calls those who desire a relationship with Him to express their faith and commitment to Him initially by being baptized (from the Greek word baptizo, meaning immersed) in water in His name. He promises they will rise from the water forgiven of their sins and they will be given the gift of God’s Spirit to help them live righteously and serve His mission in the world (Matthew 28:19; Mark 16:16; Acts 2:38; 22:16; Romans 6:3-4; I Corinthians 12:13; Galatians 3:26-27; Colossians 2:12; Titus 3:5; I Peter 3:21). This is what we find the first disciples of Jesus preaching to the world in His name.
Peter’s Preaching in Acts 2
Chapter 2 of the book of Acts takes place a week or so after Jesus ascended to heaven. Peter, one of Jesus’ apostles, gets the opportunity to preach to a crowd of thousands in Jerusalem. He presents to them an abundance of evidence regarding who Jesus is (prophecies of Scripture, Jesus’ miracles, eyewitnesses of Him alive from the dead, and more). Then he concludes his sermon with this statement (Acts 2:36): “Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ – this Jesus whom you crucified.” The word “Christ” is not Jesus’ last name. It’s a word that means “anointed one” and refers to the one God has chosen to be King. So Peter was telling them, “This Jesus that you put on a cross is the promised one, the Lord and King of all.”
Then it says, “when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, ‘Brethren, what shall we do?’” They were convinced by Peter that Jesus is indeed our Lord. They were surely concerned for their welfare, realizing they were part of the group responsible for putting the Lord on a cross… which, by the way, is a group we also are a part of; it was for our sins as well that He died. They wanted to know what they were to do to obtain the forgiveness and favor of the Lord Jesus.
Peter did NOT tell them to just say a prayer asking Jesus to save them, as some preachers today would have told them. Rather he told them to do two things. First he said, “Repent.” “Repent” means to change the way you’ve been thinking and living. It means to make the commitment that from now on you are going to listen and obey the Lord Jesus. It will involve things like being honest, being faithful to your spouse, showing compassion to the hurting, forgiving those who wrong you, controlling your temper. Secondly, Peter told them, “and each of you be baptized in the name of the Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself.”
My friend, if you just read this message, know that the Lord our God has called YOU to Himself. The Bible says the way God calls people to Himself in this age of time is through this message of Jesus and the salvation He offers (II Thessalonians 2:14). It is for YOU, reader, the promise of His Spirit to help you and work through you and the promise of the forgiveness of sins, if you will believe, repent, and be baptized in the name of Jesus.
The next verse (Acts 2:40) says, “And with many other words he solemnly testified and kept on exhorting them, saying, ‘Be saved from this perverse generation!’ So then, those who had received his word were baptized; and that day there were added about three thousand souls.” They were added to God’s family, the saved, the church, the followers of Jesus. And if you respond as they responded to the message of Christ, you’ll be added as well.
The verses that follow in Acts 2 tell of how those 3,000 saved souls lived out their new commitment, how they devoted themselves to prayer and learning the teachings of Christ from His apostles and taking care of each other. They weren’t perfect flawless people and you won’t be either. But they were honestly trying to learn all that Jesus wanted them to know and to please Him in their lives. As long as that’s the ambition of your heart, His grace will cover all your faults and His Spirit will be at work in your life to gradually shape you into His likeness (Romans 8:13; Galatians 5:13-26).
The Bottom Line
God is building His family, made up of people who look like Jesus in character. Through the preaching of the good news about Jesus and the working of His Spirit in the hearts and lives of people, He is transforming willing men and women into the beautiful image of Jesus. He will give to them immortal bodies and a whole new creation to live in and live there with them Himself. They will love and glorify and enjoy Him forever. And He invites us all to be part of what He’s making. But He doesn’t force us to be. He leaves the choice up to us.
My friend, it is the choice of ultimate life or death what you do with Jesus. Will you submit to the King who died for you, who is good and righteous and worthy? Will you let God, who made you and loves you, make you into someone better and bless you forever? If that’s what you want to do, then “why do you delay? Get up and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on His name” (Acts 22:16). And He will embrace you as His child and His Spirit will be your helper the rest of the way as you follow Jesus to glory.
– James Williams
1 – Nick Herbert, Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics (1987), p.249.
2- Terrence Deacon, ” Consciousness is a matter of constraint,” New Scientist, (November 2011)
3 – John Gliedman, “Scientists in Search of the Soul,” Science Digest, (July 1982)
4 – Quoted in H. Dukas and B. Hoffman, Albert Einstein – The Human Side (USA Princeton University Press 1981); Jammer, p.144
5 – H.G. Kessler, The Diary of a Cosmopolitan (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971), p.322, quoted in Max Jammer, Einstein and Religion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 1999), p.40
James, you mentioned this website on Sunday and so I looked it up! Wow – I really appreciate the organized, thorough “evidences” and Gospel presentation here. It really is a powerful presentation of truths. Thanks for putting this together.
Thank you, Mollye, for your encouragement! If it’s as you say, it’s by God’s gracious enabling and guidance.
Blessings!
Just came across your site from a search on “Gnosticism and First John.” I am sure the information there will help me to link some of John’s teachings to the errors of Gnosticism as I endeavor to construct some teaching outlines from First John.
Just read your piece on “I Require Evidence…” and deem it an excellent article. Especially embrace the fact that you acknowledge the Holy Spirit in our lives today! Some folks around here say they don’t like the church of Christ because “they don’t believe in the Holy Spirit.” That is understandable from some of the presentations on “Church of Christ Articles dot com.” I have been a Christian for about 58-years, embracing the promise of Acts 2:38, Asked Him in prayer to be with me, and lived by Proverbs 3:5 & 6… and He has not let me down! Praise His Name! God bless!