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As Good Friday and Easter approach, it is worth considering the historic underpinnings of our faith in the Savior. Do we just take heart in a nice mythical story, or do we genuinely trust in Someone real who has done the extraordinary to free us from our sin and give us eternal life?
The famous philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote that “it is quite doubtful whether Christ ever existed at all, and if He did we do not know anything about Him.”
F.F. Bruce, a distinguished historian, wrote to the contrary, “Some writers may toy with the fancy of a ‘Christ-myth,’ but they do not do so on the ground of historical evidence. The historicity of Christ is as axiomatic for an unbiased historian as the historicity of Julius Caesar. It is not historians who propagate the ‘Christ-myth’ theories.”
The “historicity of Christ” is “axiomatic” because everyone (enemies as well as friends) up until the 18th century had no doubt that Jesus existed and died by crucifixion. From the first century, Jewish religious leaders, Roman writers, Syrian writers, and the Jewish historian Josephus all spoke of Jesus assuming that their readers understood that He had lived.
In the Encyclopedia Britannica (1974 edition), in its article on Jesus Christ, we read,
“These independent accounts prove that in ancient times even the opponents of Christianity never doubted the historicity of Jesus, which was disputed for the first time and on inadequate grounds by several authors at the end of the 18th, during the 19th, and at the beginning of the 20th centuries.”
I. Howard Marshall, another eminent historian, wrote, “It is not possible to explain the rise of the Christian church or the writing of the Gospels and the stream of tradition that lies behind them without accepting the fact that the Founder of Christianity actually existed.”
Joe Palmer is the pastor of Fellowship Baptist Church in Kearny. He is happily married with three terrific children and two adoring dachshunds. He is of the very firm opinion that God exists, that the Bible is true, and that God in the person of Jesus Christ has saved him from his sin and prepared a place for him in paradise. His firm opinion is a long studied opinion held with happy confidence, and so, though by nature a bit high-strung and timid, he looks to his future with a joy and happy expectation which makes him largely unafraid of anything or any circumstance. The worse thing that can happen to him is that he can die, and the best thing that can happen to him is that he can die. Everything else is a detail which God will work out for his best. His ambitions revolve around reconciling people to God through Jesus Christ. This he attempts to do by declaring in appropriate ways that God is purely good and that He is the source of all of our joy and happiness. There is nothing about God one would not like, and He is our only hope. Joe is over-weight, out of shape, and as old as the town of Kearny; but he has a peace which surpasses understanding, and such peace makes this middle class American very rich indeed!
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