Tag: Science

Resurrection predictions

In an autobiography I read long ago, written, if I remember rightly by a Jewess, she recounted reading a Gospel for the first time, not knowing anything of it. As she read, she was profoundly touched by the excellence of the person of Jesus, his moral life, his wisdom and teaching – to the point that she thought this must be a prophet sent by God, like those in the Old Testament. As she read finally of his betrayal, arrest, trial and condemnation by the authorities, both religious and Roman, she grew more and more apprehensive of the outcome, wondering how God would get his prophet out of such circumstances. But when she reached the crucifixion and the death of Jesus, she closed the book, broke down in dismay and set a time of grieving for so great a man.

After that period of sorrowing, she finally picked up the Gospel again, and you can imagine her amazement, relief and joy as she read on and discovered that Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples, eating and speaking with them. It led her to faith in Jesus as her Messiah and Saviour.

The fact that Jesus rose from the dead is the decisive factor in demonstrating that he was who he said he was: he was “declared to be the Son of God with power by his resurrection from the dead,” says the New Testament (Romans 1.4). I will share the evidence for this historic fact in the next blog; this time I want to bring out something else just as amazing: Jesus actually clearly predicted on three separate occasions that he would rise from the dead. 

Did you ever hear of someone predicting their resurrection? That just doesn’t happen! If anyone was so brazen as to make such a claim, the ensuing reality that he remained dead would quickly disillusion any who had believed him. But Jesus predicted his death and resurrection and it happened! Matthew, Mark and Luke all record these clear predictions, as well as other allusions Jesus made to it, which John also recorded. So all the Gospels contain the absolutely unique prophecy by Jesus of a humanly impossible event, which occurred three days after his death (and even the three day delay was foretold by Christ!). This has no equal in world religions, and it constitutes enough evidence to convince the most hard-minded unbeliever, if he has the honesty to face up to it. 

“Jesus began to teach them that the Son of Man [i.e. himself] must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly” (Mark 8.31-32 c.f. parallels in Matthew 16.21 and Luke 9.22). Again: “The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him, and he will be raised on the third day” (Matthew 17.22-23 c.f. parallel in Mark 9.31). Then a third time, Jesus took the disciples aside and said to them: “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written of the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be delivered to the Gentiles, and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon; they will scourge him and kill him, and on the third day he will rise” (Luke 18.31-33 c.f. parallels in Matthew 20.17-19 and Mark 10.33-34).

These precise predictions are certainly among the most extraordinary facts recorded by the Gospel writers; and what is even more mind-boggling is that they turned out to be true: it all happened just as Jesus said it would.

Clive Every-Clayton

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Have you read any of the gospels?

Have you read any of the Gospels? I’d be interested to know the impact that a serious reading of a Gospel would have on an adult who had never been exposed to Christian things before…

You may have difficulty believing in the supernatural, but when you read of the miracles performed by Jesus, the visit of angels announcing his birth to a virgin, Jesus casting out demons who recognised him as “the Holy One of God”, and saying, “You are the Son of God” (Luke 4.34,41) – you must admit, these Gospel reports are quite consistent with the activity of an all-powerful God.

Did you know that Jesus multiplied a few loaves and fishes so as to feed a crowd of 5,000 people? That he touched a leper and his leprosy was cleansed? That on three occasions he raised back to life individuals who were dead? That he calmed a storm by rebuking the wind and the waves with his authoritative word? That he turned large quantities of water into wine at a marriage feast? That he gave sight to a man born blind? That he healed every person in the crowds who came to him for help?

Evidently, here is a totally unique man with supernatural power to do good in various forms to people in all kinds of needs. His miraculous works bore witness to his divine power. “The works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me,” said Jesus (John 5.36). He further said, as he might say to you today: “If I am not doing the works of my Father, do not believe me. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father” (John 10.37-38).

I have written about the witness born to Jesus by himself and by the Father; here, his miraculous works bear witness to him too. As he had promised, he sent the Holy Spirit of God on the apostles (recounted in Luke’s second book in the New Testament, “The Acts of the Apostles”, chapters 1 and 2), and they were thus divinely equipped to write the Gospels. Of John’s Gospel It was attested: “we know that his testimony is true” (c.f. John 21.24).

And as the apostles preached Christ in their first proclamation as Lord and Messiah they insisted again and again that they had seen Jesus alive after he had risen from the dead: “This Jesus… killed by the hands of lawless men, God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death… This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses” (Acts 2.23-24, 32). “You killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses” (Acts 3.15). “The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed… we are witnesses to these things” (Acts 5.30-32). So Luke sums up “With great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 4.33).

Jesus’ resurrection from the dead constitutes the final divine attestation to the deity of Jesus: as such it deserves particular attention.

Clive Every-Clayton

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Assess the evidence

To assess the evidence for Jesus’ identity, there is no other way than to start with the four Gospels. We cannot avoid the question of the authenticity of the Gospel accounts; this can go deep and technical, and there are good books by competent scholars available for those who want such authoritative information. For example, Professor Richard Bauckham, author of a scholarly work, “Jesus and the Eye-witnesses: The Gospels as eye-witness testimony”, says the Gospels are “biographies of a contemporary person, based as such biographies were expected to be, on eye-witness testimony”. 

Two of the Gospels were penned by Matthew and John who were members of Jesus’ inner circle of 12 apostles. Mark was a young man who knew Jesus and was close to the apostle Peter. Luke was a medical doctor, and “a historian of the first rank”, according to Sir William Ramsey specialist in ancient Middle East studies who, after twenty years research in the ancient Near East, avers Luke “should be placed among the very greatest of historians”. In the opening of his Gospel, Luke (who travelled with the apostle Paul on some of his journeys) shares his scholarly method of personal research of the “things that have been accomplished among us”. He affirms that he has “carefully investigated everything from the beginning”, having received them from “eye-witnesses” in order “to write an orderly account” (see Luke 1.1-4).

Oxford don C.S. Lewis, specialist in medieval literature considers the Gospels’ genre to be “reportage… pretty much close up to the facts”, and definitely neither fable, myth or legend. 

Other scholarly works demonstrating the reliability of the Gospels are “The Historical Reliability of the New Testament” by Craig L. Blomberg and “Can we Trust the Gospels?” by Peter J. Williams, principal of Tyndale House, Cambridge, which is full of details indicative of their trust-worthiness. But I like the simple words of another professor, J.I. Packer, a biblical scholar of worldwide reputation, who has written: “There is no good reason to doubt the authenticity of what the Gospels say of [Jesus]. They were evidently written in good faith and with great care by knowledgeable persons (cf. Luke 1:1-4, John 19:35, 21.24). They were composed at a time when Jesus was still remembered, and misstatements about him could be identified. They were accepted everywhere, it seems, as soon as they were known, though the early Christians as a body were not credulous and detected spurious gospels with skill. The consensus of the centuries has been that these four portraits of Jesus have a ring of truth… It is not credible that he should have been made up. It is safe to say that not even Shakespeare, who created Lear, Hamlet and Falstaff, could have invented Jesus Christ!”

That last thought is worth a moment’s reflection. How would it ever be possible for four budding writers in the middle of the first century AD, seated round some ancient table in a tavern in Jerusalem, enjoying a time exchanging their various writing projects, to come up with the idea of inventing the gospel story? If Shakespeare couldn’t do it, how much less could four different unknown creative writers?

Someone has well said that it would take a Jesus to invent a Jesus. If Jesus did not exist, some unknown moral genius must have written the Sermon on the Mount! W. Robertson Nicholl has well said: “The Gospel has marks of truth so great, so striking, so perfectly inimitable, that the inventor of it would be more astonishing than the hero.” And Peter J. Williams would add: “It is far simpler to suppose that the founding figure of the new religion was the creative genius for these stories [the parables] than to suppose that several later creative geniuses all credited their less creative founder with their great compositions.” 

The last word to Professor J.I. Packer: “We may be confident, then, that in reading the Gospels we meet the real Jesus.”  (In Truth and Power, Eagle, 1996, p. 31-32).

Clive Every-Clayton

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The vital question

We see Jesus in the Gospels reiterating and confirming his claim to be the Son of God come down from heaven to speak God’s truth to the world. If this is true, it provides authentic hope that his teaching is able to answer our existential questions. There can be answers from God our Creator, in theory, if, first, He knows all things, and second, he can tell us. This is of the essence of what Christians believe to be true, on the basis of evidence and experience (as I hope to show).

So we need seriously to consider if Jesus was indeed God’s messenger, sent in human form into the world (as he claimed). Because – let’s be frank: if he is God’s Son – that is, more than a prophet, a very unique incarnation of God, as Christianity holds – then “the Light of the world” will enlighten us with absolute answers. And if he is not the Son of God, we have a huge puzzle to solve if we are to be intellectually honest: how did the Jesus-event ever happen? Who was he really, this historic Master whose influence more than any other so radically benefitted humanity and transformed human history? A strange holy man if he goes around making himself out to be God when fully knowing he is lying! 

So the identity of Jesus is a vital question, needing our first authentic answer. The Jews asked him “Who are you?” (John 8.25). Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” and his vociferous disciple, Peter, expressed his conviction that Jesus was for real: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16.16). And Jesus calmly affirmed Peter’s response, in words meaning, “You’ve got it, Peter. My Father revealed that to you” (see Matthew 16.17). Thus Jesus confirms that this was indeed his identity.

It is useful to understand that for the Jews of Jesus’ day, such a claim to deity was considered blasphemous for a human being to make. That’s why, at the end of John’s Gospel chapter 8, when Jesus reached the culminating point of his talk by saying, “Before Abraham was, I AM”, the Jews picked up stones and would have killed him: for only God is the “I AM”.

Like Peter, we are all challenged – even obliged – to take our position (for refusing to believe is also taking a position). And to do so validly, we need to evaluate the evidence put forward in the Gospels (because Christian faith is evidence-based, not blind!). Jesus said that his apostles, aided by the Holy Spirit of truth, would “bear witness” to him (John 15.26-27) – so their writings constitute yet another witness to the unique person that was Jesus, as they recorded what they had seen and heard, for posterity. We have therefore in the four contemporary Gospels the permanent record of Jesus’ life, teachings, death and resurrection that we can assess. As we examine the history of Jesus, we will be seeking to ground our on-going search on something believably true.

Clive Every-Clayton

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Jesus affirmed truth

Jesus affirmed that “the Father who sent me bears witness about me” (John 8.18). This word is striking for two reasons. The first is that Jesus refers to God as “the Father who sent me”. Later in the same chapter Jesus says, “I came from God and I am here… he sent me” (v42). Earlier he had already stated: “I have come down from heaven… to do the will of him who sent me” (John 6.38). Amazingly, Jesus stated several times and very clearly that he came into the world, sent by God from heaven, and God was his Father, whose message he was to convey to the world!

If this is true, we have an extraordinary key to knowing what was in the mind of God when he created us – understanding who we are and what is the meaning of life. 

Jesus himself was categorical, calling himself “a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God” (John 8.40). “I tell the truth”, he reiterates (v45). He firmly believes and insistently attests that what he says is true. And when he was later judged by the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate, Jesus tells him, “For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world – to bear witness to the truth” (John 18.37). These affirmations are absolutely amazing: the big question is, was Jesus actually telling the truth here? For those who want a digital copy of a 3,000 word booklet I wrote entitled: “Did Jesus tell the truth?” I will send it to you if you ask me for it at cwilliam.ec@gmail.com

There is a second reason why Jesus’ reference to his Father bearing witness to him is important. It is the key to answering the question: who is able to tell us truth about God? The answer has to be: only God himself. God is so infinitely great and complex, that no mere human can define his being. He himself alone is capable of telling us truth about himself – and that is what he has done. Only God can bear accurate witness to Jesus’ divine identity; that’s why God’s voice said, “This is my beloved Son”. And it’s why Jesus predicted the coming of God’s Holy Spirit, saying (in John 15.27-28) “I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth… he will bear witness about me”.  God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all bear witness to the deity of Jesus; we should receive this testimony – or at least be open to check it out, for Jesus is the key that allows us to obtain authentic answers to our questions.

Clive Every-Clayton

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Witness to Jesus

Jesus’ claim, “I am the Light of the world” must be wisely assessed. Not all are persuaded that Jesus brings light from heaven into the world: indeed, John records that those who heard Jesus’ claim were not at all convinced: “You are bearing witness about yourself”, they protested, “Your witness is not true”. 

Now that’s a valid point; according to Jewish law it takes two to establish a lawful testimony, and Jesus goes on to admit that – “In your Law [given by God to Moses who wrote it down] it is written that the testimony of two people is true”. But then Jesus adds something that is more than remarkable: “I am one who bears witness about myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness about me.” What did he mean by that?

In saying that his Father bore witness to him, he was referring to two staggering events in his life. One was at the inauguration of his public ministry when he was baptised by John the Baptist and “the heavens were opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased’” (Luke 3.22, Mark 1.10 and Matthew 3.16-17). The fact that three of the Gospels record this amazing event of God speaking out loud to authenticate his Son is highly significant. But that is not all. Jesus had in mind also the time he was transfigured in the presence of three disciples on a mountain top when “his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light.” A cloud overshadowed them and “a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased; listen to him’” (Matthew 17.2-5, Mark 9.2-7, Luke 9.28-36). So three Gospel writers record that God had spoken out twice from heaven, bearing miraculous divine witness to his Son.

It’s like God was saying to the world: “I have so many things I really want to tell you – and that you need to know; but rather than shouting them all out from heaven, I have sent my Son. Listen to him, for he will tell you all I want to tell you; I put my words in his mouth and he faithfully relays it to you.” In any case, God did say: “Listen to him”. God’s voice was heard speaking out loud, endorsing Jesus as his Son, his messenger to bring us truth that otherwise we could never grasp. We must sit up and take notice! The order “listen to Jesus” comes as a divine command! Are you obeying it? It is in doing so that we shall find the answers we need and the fullness of life we all want.

Clive Every-Clayton

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You will know the truth

Jesus had the role of a prophet, as was acknowledged by some of those who heard him, and he claimed to bring the very words of God whom he called his Father: “He who sent me is true; and the things that I heard from him, these I speak to the world” (John 8.26). We need to examine if this is believable; if you’re not convinced, that’s OK – just keep following my reasoning and I trust it will become not only clearer but compelling. But I can’t say it all in one short blog post; in further posts I hope to lead on to those authentic answers we all hope for and we all need.

You may have heard the expression sometimes quoted, “the truth shall make you free”. It seems a great sound-bite, but you may not know where it comes from. It was Jesus who said it, but it is often quoted without the important words just before it. In the context just before, Jesus said, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free”. These words are to be found in one of the Gospels (John 8.31-32) recounting the life, teaching and ministry of Jesus. They are intriguing words indeed, for they offer truth – indeed, they promise to be the key to knowing the truth. May this be the key we need? Might this be the way to authentic answers from God himself?

In that same chapter 8 of John’s Gospel we find other astounding statements (it’s a chapter well worth studying and reflecting on). In a previous blog post we saw that God revealed himself and spoke to identify himself using the expression, “I am who I am”, and calling himself “I am” – the self-existing one. Well in John chapter 8 Jesus takes this very expression to define who he is. He uses the emphatic expression in Greek five times in that chapter, insisting on the importance to believe “that I am” (v24). He also uses the expression in affirming: “I am the light of the world” (v12). Now that is no meagre statement! We are in the dark: light is what we need. And Jesus brings light into the world. 

Human beings have sought in vain for the light of truth to enlighten our path, and have not obtained the answers by our own intellectual activity. We should consider if this may be the light that we need! Indeed, as all the world is still trying to penetrate the deep mystery of existence and wondering if God may exist, all of a sudden here is one who claims to be “The Light”. And not just a wee candle shining to lighten some forgotten corner, but the light for the entire world – of all men and women everywhere who are seeking answers! We call that “universal truth”! Truth such as only God himself could know and communicate!

If we can discover that Jesus is actually telling us truth about himself – then we would have authentic hope for true answers to our existential questions. This deserves to be thought through…

Clive Every-Clayton

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Moses wrote of me

We have considered how Moses recorded that God spoke to him, introducing himself by the name “I AM”. It is an astonishing phenomenon that God has broken the silence, communicating with man, revealing something about himself. He is a God who speaks! This is very important, first, because man’s mind is too tiny to teach truth about God unless God reveals himself. And second, it is vital, because if we are to obtain authentic answers to our many personal questions about life and everything, a God who speaks should be a major source of understanding. Indeed, the Creator of humankind must supremely be the one who can help us make sense of who we are and what life is all about.

Moses wrote of this encounter with God in Exodus chapter 3 in the Bible. Along with the account of God creating the heavens and the earth, Moses wrote of the divine intervention where God called Abraham, promising him that he would become the father of a multitude of descendants. Moses recounted the history of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and his children who became the twelve tribes of Israel. He related the exodus of the Israelites from their time of bondage in Egypt and he received and wrote down numerous laws and precepts that God gave him for the people to obey, notably the Ten Commandments.

One striking thing about the writings of Moses is the number of passages where God is speaking, giving him words to write; “the word of the Lord” is what defines his will and purposes for his people. Numerous chapters in Leviticus, for example, begin with, “The Lord spoke to Moses, saying…” The same is true of the great biblical prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, for example – so literally hundreds of communications of God are thus recorded.

But a most extraordinary thing happened over a thousand years after Moses, when another of Abraham’s descendants made the mind-boggling statement, “Moses wrote about me”! It was Jesus of Nazareth who said that: he dared to assert that Moses wrote about him (see John 5.46)! What did he mean? He was probably referring to a passage where God predicts to Moses that he, God, would raise up another prophet like Moses, and he specifies: “I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him” (Deuteronomy 18.18). Just listen to what Jesus went on to say: “The Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment – what to say and what to speak… What I say therefore, I say as the Father has told me” (John 12.49-50). Jesus is basically saying God put his words in his mouth.  So many of Jesus’ contemporaries thought that he was “the prophet who is to come into the world” (John 6.14), for the Jews had taken note of God’s prediction through Moses. 

“God spoke to our fathers by the prophets”, says the New Testament, “but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (Hebrews 1.1-2). God’s communication of the answers we need got a huge step nearer.

Clive Every-Clayton

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God has spoken

Only God can speak properly of God. So where has he spoken? Here we are at a key moment in our journey. Over 1,000 years before Christ, Moses was intrigued to see a bush on fire but which was not consumed. He approached. Then God spoke to him out of the bush. This vital moment of divine communication, where God took the initiative and spoke into our world, is recounted in the Book of Exodus, chapter 3.

This was not the first time God had spoken, but it has particular significance because God was speaking about God! God told Moses, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”. What was God saying about himself here? That he had already been in touch with Abraham, the great progenitor of the Jewish people; indeed he had given promises to Abraham which actually were fulfilled – giving an extra weight to the truth he spoke.

And when Moses asked God who exactly he was, what his name was, God gave an astounding reply. Here is God, explaining who he was: “I am who I am”. Now that seems to us to be a strange way of defining God, but that reminds us that we are dealing with an entity unlike any other. God repeats his name to Moses, shortening it to “I AM”. By this he means something we are able only with difficulty to take on board – that God has existence in himself; he is the eternal one; he is there – he has always been, and ever is, present. In other words, God, speaking well of God, tells us he exists; indeed, he has always existed! Wow! This could prove to be a first key that we puny ignorant humans need, for gaining access to real truth – truth first of all about God, but then, by listening to what God says, truth about ourselves, his creatures.  Well – this is only the beginning. We still need to check whether this is actually true. There is more to be said to back this up, as we shall see.

Clive Every-Clayton

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No answers in philosophy

While many university students choose to study the scientific field of psychology in order to get closer to answers about their personal inner quest, others hope that there will be some light shed on their dilemma by studying philosophy. When I studied philosophy I was struck by the fact that these great minds were trying to explain reality by starting out from themselves. That is obligatory in philosophy, though of course, philosophers build on those who have gone before them. But ultimately, it is a human being who sits down and tries to think through reality and come to some sense of it all. A huge task! And who has ever succeeded at it?

After many centuries of serious effort by the greatest minds of humanity, nowadays philosophers admit that they have not been able to come up with the answers. Already Blaise Pascal in his day, (whom the modern French atheist philosopher André Comte-Sponville calls “an exceptional man, one of the greatest ever – by his intelligence, by the lucidity and depth of his thought”) had this enlightening pensée: “Men, it is in vain that you seek within yourselves the cure for your miseries. All your intelligence can only bring you to realise that it is not within yourselves that you will find either good or truth. The philosophers made such promises and they have failed to keep them”.

The modern thinker Peter Van Inwagen avers that after a few thousand years of beginning with the tool of reason, metaphysics has yet to establish any viable body of knowledge, and K. Scott Oliphant comments that since this is the case “a good argument could be made that a change in thinking is long overdue. It seems high time to introduce into the discussion something altogether different”.

This failure of philosophy to find the answers can have one of two consequences. Post-modernity is one of them – where people give up hope of ever finding rational answers at all, and this produces the despair and hopelessness and meaninglessness of our generation. The other, which Scott Oliphant proposes, is to take as “starting point… the basic truth provided by Scripture”. 

Philosophical reasoning obligatorily has to start out from given propositions which are neither proved nor even absolutely provable. Humans, building their philosophy on postulates (i.e. presuppositions or assumptions) that are merely their own ideas, cannot come to absolute truth – hence the relativism of our day. Human reason cannot justify its own ability to establish truth. In pensée §188/267, Pascal says that “reason’s last step [or finest effort] is to recognise that there are an infinite number of things that are beyond it”. It is the supreme accomplishment of reason to realise there is a limit to reason; and from there to seek a higher source of truth. 

We should be very grateful to God, who, seeing our total inability to come up with truly helpful answers, has been pleased to send us One who brings us truth from God, which does provide the answers we seek.

Clive Every-Clayton

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