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1. kumarei said,

   September 17, 2007 at 2:12 am

   There are some other arguments in favor of Jesus’s life being fictional. There are no mentions of him by any historians until long after his death, and those first mentions simply refer to the beliefs of Christians. In addition, there is no record of anyone being crucified at that time that might be Jesus.

   Of course, it’s impossible to prove that he didn’t exist. There is, however, little evidence to suggest that he actually did.

   I would be willing to give the benefit of the doubt that there was a guy named Jesus at the time, but there seems to be a serious lack of evidence for any of the supposed miracles, enough that I think it’s perfectly rational to deny that they happened.

   As a sidenote, could any Christian who believes that Jesus fulfilled the prophecies explain to me how Jesus is of the line of David? I’m just curious, since accounts trace the line through Joeseph’s side, and that kind of runs counter to the virgin birth doctrine.

   I’m not trying to insult anyone or imply that there is no counter argument, but I’m really curious about how this is handled.

2. Richard said,

   September 17, 2007 at 6:22 pm

   I suppose I should have mentioned the time line issue as well. As far as I’m aware, there’s no records of Jesus in any form until at least one (I think it was more like two or three?) generations after his death. But even knowing that, that doesn’t mean he didn’t exist, just that they might have got some details wrong!

   I, like you it seems, was “willing to give the benefit of the doubt” to those who claim a guy named Jesus existed – even if I did think they’d most likely got the details wrong. It seems, however, that the side for Jesus not even existing is getting stronger in my mind.

   Of course, if we ignore all the “son of god”, “born of a virgin”, “performed miracles” stuff, I don’t think it would make any difference to my life one way or another if he was real or not.

   Still, these similarities with previous mythical figures seems to put it all into perspective…

3. Tomjunlee said,

   September 18, 2007 at 3:21 pm

   Hi!
   It’s great to hear debates on religions; asking questions is the best way to uncover answers.
   First, I’ll talk a bit about my background – For the majority of my life, I was born, raised, and brought up as an atheist/agnostic in Australia. Most of my friends are atheists as well, and I almost became one too. I’ve heard the arguments that atheists make; Richard Dawkins, the stringent militant atheist, has merely recycled and accumulated these arguments together in a somewhat poetic fashion.
   But, I became friends with a Christian, but I didn’t associate his “niceness” to his Christian lifestyle – no, I just thought that was who he just was. Later on, he kindly invited me to go to his church (I had time, and I would be a hypocrite if I _didn’t_ go, I needed a way to somehow pay back his EXTREME generosity – driving me to places without me paying for his petrol, giving me lots of money when I didn’t really need to, etc.), and later found compelling truths to life in that church (truth, by the way, is a relative idea… you may need to find your own “truths” of the world).
   You often hear of church leaders of being hypocrites, not practicing what they preach (and this, thus leads to crimes of pedophilia, etc.) However, the actual mainstream Christian church is full of practicing moral people who will never dare even _think_ about the idea of pedophilia. What you have to think of is the Christian next to you, and see for yourself, how they behave.
   But! You have to be careful of fundamentalists if you live in America. They would have put me off Christianity for life if I was ever born there.

   Now, the question of whether Jesus existed is raised time and time again. Obviously, for me, I’ve asking this question so many times I’ve lost count, as I have been an agnostic so far too long. But, I’ve been doing investigations for myself into not just Christianity, but other spiritual movements.
   Firstly, I just have to say, Zeitgeist the movie, although a lengthy and well-illustrated “documentary”, its sources are poor. Its cited sources are out-of-date (or if not, are based on these sources). In fact, some of the claims made in Zeitgeist were so downright outrageous, I just had to laugh.
   In Zeitgeist, there’s this session of words with intense music, each word only mentioned, comparing Jesus to Osiris – its effect is to not make you think, but just assume that it must be true. Well, if one ACTUALLY do the research for themselves, you’ve find how folly Zeitgeist is.

   Since, others have summed up the argument for me, I shall merely quote from them:

   “I have been amazed that some people actually believe that Jesus is a copycat myth based on pagan gods. It, of course, is absolutely ridiculous, but let us look at one of the examples from Zeitgeist: Horus.

   Here is a good outline that examines some of the claims regarding Horus:

   ——–

   Ending the Myth of Horus

   I’ve heard repeated here several times that Horus, an Egyptian god, is carbon copy of Jesus. The obvious implication by those that have made this statement is that Jesus is a copycat version of an earlier Egyptian deity. The purpose of this entry is to disembowel that proposition once and for all.

   When I first heard that Horus was the inspiration for Jesus several years ago, I didn’t give it much credence because I couldn’t establish any source material for the claims. I still can’t, but the internet is as adept at allowing anybody and everybody to pass on misinformation.

   Upon further research, I’ve concluded that this theory originated with Gerald Massey, an English poet, born 1828, died 1927. He published primarily poems, but had an interest in Egypt. He parlayed that interest in Egypt into several books and lectures in which he set forth the proposition that Horus was in essence the first Jesus, and Jesus was a cheap imitation. The primary basis for his writing is the Egyptian Book of the Dead. This is available on-line and you can easily look it up to read it yourself. Be forewarned that forced reading of this would be an extremely efficient form of torture.

   It should be noted that Massey’s actual proposition was that Jesus was a copycat from more than just Horus. According to Massey, Jesus was a compilation of an innumerable number of Egyptian deities. There were over 2,000 deities who had every human and godlike characteristic one can think of, excepting Superman’s power to stop a speeding bullet.
   …
   Claim #1-Horus and Jesus are born from a virgin.

   Horus’s mother is Isis. Isis was married to Osiris. We do not know for what length of time, but presumably the marriage was consummated. Whether it was or wasn’t doesn’t matter though. After Osiris is killed, Isis puts him back together again (he was hacked into 14 pieces) except for his penis which was tossed in a river or a lake. Iris fashions a substitute penis for him, humps him and here comes Horus. There is nothing virginal about that.

   Claim #2-Both Horus and Jesus were born to a Mary and Joseph. (Seb)

   As noted Isis is Horus’s mother’s name not Mary. In addition, Seb is not Horus’s father, Osiris is. Seb is Osiris’s father. Further, Seb is a distinct name from Joseph. Putting them side by side does not make them synonyms, and that appears to be what was done here.

   Claim #3-Both were born of royal descent.

   This is accurate.

   Claim #4-Both births were announced by angels and witnessed by shepherds.

   I can find nothing that mentions that the birth of Horus was announced by an angel or witnessed by shepherds. I have found that Horus was born in a swamp, which is a pretty unlikely place for shepherds. In addition Acharya mentions that Horus was born in a cave. Massey makes no mention of this, although he does represent that Mithra was born in a cave.

   Claim #5-Both were heralded by stars and angels.

   There is no star that heralded Horus’s birth nor is there any angel announcing it. Archarya in a footnote in The Origins of Christianity indicates that that there are three stars named the three kings in Orion and then relates this to the birth of Jesus. When we look to the stories regarding Horus, we find no star or angel announcing his birth. To the extent that Acharya S relies upon Massey and Massey relies upon what is depicted in the panels at Luxor see (from an atheist) further regarding virgin birth and pronouncement by angels [www.frontline-apologetics.com]

   Claim #6-Both had later visitors (Horus-3 deities and Jesus-3 wise men.)

   There is no indication that there ever were 3 wise men. The bible never mentions the number of wise men, nor is there any document that reflects 3 deities at the birth of Horus. See the website referenced in Claim #5.

   Claim #7-Both had murder plots against them.

   There is mention that Seth did want to kill Horus, and Herod wanted to kill Jesus. so this is accurate.

   Claim#8-Both came of age at 12, were baptized and their baptizers were executed.

   There is no indication that Horus was preaching in a temple when he was 12. In fact, Massey indicates that Hours the child was depicted as a “weakling.” That doesn’t jive with story of Jesus preaching in the temple. Again this appears to have been a confabulation from Acharya and repeated by others.

   Horus was never baptized in any of the Horus stories. In addition, Acharya mentions that John the Baptist is actually Anup the Baptizer. This individual is never mentioned anywhere in any Horus account. There is not even a footnote in Archaya’s on-line work The Origins of Christianity to support this. There is nothing.

   Claim #9-Both had 12 disciples.

   According to the Horus accounts, Horus had four semi-gods that were followers. There is some indication of 16 human followers and an unknown number of blacksmiths that went into battle with him. Horus did not have 12 disciples. Jesus reportedly did. Acharya failed to give a footnote to support this.

   Massey points to a mural in the Book of Hades in which there are twelve reapers. Horus is not present in this scene. For Massey to make this connection he goes to a different scene within the same mural. In this scene there is a picture of a god whose name is the Master of Joy. Horus is never depicted although in other murals the artists do depict Horus. Had the artists ascribed 12 reapers in any relation to Horus all they had to do was put Horus at the scene. They did not.

   Claim #10-Both walked on water.

   Horus didn’t, or at least there is no record that I can find that he did. Massey does not maintain that Hours did. Massey uses wild conjecture to connect the story of fish man, Oannes, not Horus, to Jesus. Oannes came out of the sea during the day, and went back into the sea at night. Massey makes the two analogous because by his calculations, Jesus walked on water during the day.

   As to Acharya, she as usual provides nothing to substantiate this.

   Claim #11-Both performed miracles.

   This is true although the miracles were different in scope and nature.

   Claim #12 Both exorcised demons and raised Lazarus.

   The actual claim is that Horus raised Osiris from the dead and that the name Osiris morphed to Lazarus. It doesn’t matter because Horus did not bring Osiris back to life. There is no mention of this in any document regarding the story. Horus did avenge Osiris’s death, but that did not raise Osiris from the dead.

   Claim #13-Both held a Sermon on the Mount; both were transfigured on a mountain, died by crucifixion along with two thieves and were buried in tombs where they paid a quick visit to Hell and then rose from the dead after 3 days time, both resurrections were witness by women, and both will supposedly reign for 1,000 years in the Millennium.

   These are the most damning claims if they were proven true in my opinion. Yet, I can locate none of this. No sermon, no transfiguration, certainly no crucifixion w/ two thieves, no trip to hell and no resurrection. There was an incident in which Horus was torn to pieces and Iris requested the crocodile god to fish him out of the water he was tossed into, which was done, but that’s it. I am at a loss to refute this because I can not find anything to support it.

   Massey does compare a story about the Autumn Equinox related to Osiris, not Horus, as the symbolic crucifixion. There is no indication that Horus is involved in any way. There is no mention by Massey of any Sermon on the Mount. No mention or any actual crucifixion, no two thieves, no burial in a tomb. Massey does not maintain that anything of the sort occurred with Horus.

   In short, of the claims outlined in this entry, I find the comparison between Horus and Jesus to consist of the following: they were of royal descent, they allegedly worked miracles and there were murder plots against them.”

   It appears that atheists seem to grasp onto anything that even remotely appears to be in their favor in order for them to make their point, without considering actual facts.

   No wonder “Zeitgeist the Movie” was deleted from Wikipedia.

   Now, that being said, the New Testament is not the only historical document from first century and it’s certainly not the only one that refers to Jesus. There are non-Christian and anti-Christian writers from the period, particularly Roman and Jewish historians, whom I also investigated. How can any serious investigation ignore the testimony of contemporary hostile witnesses? Modern theorist speculate on the history of Jesus while ignoring testimonies from contemporaries among whom were some of the greatest historians and public figures of the time.
   One of the most significant Roman historians who lived in the first century was the administrator, and later Roman consul, Pliny the Younger. Pliny declares in his letter to the Emperor Trajan that Pliny had ordered the execution of Christians, releasing only those whom he could force to “worship [the Emperor's] statue and the images of the gods”. Those who refused were executed. He goes on to say that these Christians worshipped Christ as “a God”.
   Tactitus, Suetonius and Mara Bar-Serapion are other first-century anti-Christian historical writers who confirm significant details of the New Testament claims.
   Jesus’ claim to deity also antagonized Jewish writers such as historian Rabbi Eliezer, who said that Jesus was one who dared to:
   “…rise up and seek to make himself God and to cause the whole world to go astray…God is not a man that he should lie and if he says he is a God he is a liar.”
   The main point I noted in all this was that Jewish and Roman history, and anti-Christian/Christian writers confirm that Jesus and his followers claimed he was God. Rather than being caught up in today’s “latest theory”, some of these writers were acclaimed historians, of whom some were actually contemporaries of Jesus’ apostles.

   If you want to test the authenticity of the New Testament writings, that might be for another time. I think both the reader and I are both tired at the end of this comment!

   I hope that has cleared any preconceptions of Jesus not existing

4. Richard said,

   September 19, 2007 at 10:01 pm

   Wow! That’s a long comment… thank you so much for all this information.

   As I hopefully made clear in my post, I’m certainly not about to accept the claims in those videos without some further research, and it seems from what you’ve told me that there are certainly issues with some of the claims.

   While you only addressed a few of the (many) claims made by the movie (and, presumably, the book) It’s interesting that at least some of the claims still seem to have merit. I have no intention of treating the Zeitgeist movie as an authority, but rather a stepping stone towards a more detailed investigation.

   I specifically mentioned Dionysus in my post (not any of the other mythical figures) because I “verified” (very un-scientifically… through a few Google searches) some of the claims. If you can point me in the right direction for some more information about him, I’d certainly appreciate it.

   Anyway, even if all of the claims made by the movie turned out to be false, I still don’t think that makes the existence of Jesus a certainty. I have previously addressed some of the other issues with treating the bible as an authoritative source, and there’s also (as I understand it) significant gaps between our earliest writings of Jesus and his supposed death. Since memory is known to be very unreliable, and passed down stories even less so, a gap as small as 10 or 20 years between the events and the writings can make for some serious errors – my understanding is that the gap is more like 50-60 years (a generation or two!).

   I certainly appreciate your comments, and you’ve encouraged me to look into this in even more detail – I think it’s about time I put together a book list on the topic, and start some reading!

5. kumarei said,

   September 19, 2007 at 10:17 pm

   Tomjunlee,

   I won’t say anything against your criticism of the movie, because it’s probably right. I haven’t done much research on that subject myself, but the movie apparently has religious motives (the creators are new-agers, and the movie is supposed to convert people to their theology).

   As for the references for Jesus’s existance…

   Pliny the younger wrote some sixty years after Jesus’s death, and wrote second hand. He described what the Christians claimed, not any knowledge he had of events. Remember that sixty years is plenty of time for “Elvis isn’t dead” and “Aliens landed at Roswell”, especially in an age where very few in the population are trained in critical thinking.

   As for Tacitus, the authenticity of this passage is still very widely debated, so I think it’s a bit unfair to cite him in support of Jesus’s existence. And again, even if it is true, he’s making reference to the beliefs of the Christians of the time.

   My knowledge of Suetonius and Mara Bar-Serapion are unfortunately lacking. Can you provide a link or citation to some information on them?

6. kumarei said,

   September 20, 2007 at 12:55 am

   More for Tomjunlee:

   Okay, I’ve taken a look at Mara Bar-Serapion. I believe you’re referring to this excerpt: (?)

   “What advantage did the Jews gain from executing their wise king? It was just after that that their kingdom was abolished. God justly avenged these three wise men: the Athenians died of hunger; the Samians were overwhelmed by the sea; the Jews, ruined and driven from their land, live in complete dispersion.”

   You’ll notice that this passage is extremely vague, and could refer to multiple different stories in which a Jewish king is cast down by his people. There are multiple accounts where such an event happened. And again, all the previous arguments for the other sources apply. Wrote late, doesn’t suggest knowledge of events as they were happening, and if he even is referring to Jesus (which is debatable), it could be information heard from Christians of the time.

   Suetonius and Rabbi Elizer may be valid (although I’m having some trouble finding good reports on the latter, so if you could provide any links regarding his statements, it would be nice). As I said, I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt that a man named Jesus existed, but the rest is on the shoulders of believers to prove.

   Also, when giving examples, please limit yourself to sources that aren’t widely debated, or at least make mention that they are. For three of the five historians you mentioned, their contribution is either under heavy debate or their contribution is minimal. Using them as if they are solid examples of your point is somewhat misleading.

7. Tomjunlee said,

   September 20, 2007 at 2:06 am

   Like I say to everyone, just do your research and come to your own conclusions! The way I do my research is see the arguments both for and against the points that you are concerned in; and see the arguments for those points too! And repeat.

   In reply to Richard’s post, basically the society I grew up in were predominately atheists, and I’ve heard their point of view and I agreed to them with a great extent. However, I never believed in prejudices until I do my research. (For example, even today, people are paranoid about the Jews – I don’t plan to ignore them. I will speak to them about their opinions on this – what I’ve realised is that they’re still people – the same as the person next to them.) And during this research, I weighed the points from both atheists and Christians; and particularly I’ve met real true Christians.
   I still remember myself being an agnostic, questioning why anyone would believe in something that they cannot see, but I didn’t become antagonistic (like how some other people see Jews). So I did my own investigation.
   The section below is my own anecdotal experience with real Christians – and therefore is my own point of view:
   Now, when I first met a Christian he was strangely pleasant. Too pleasant perhaps for my liking. I became friends this Christian, but I did not associate his behaviour as a Christian – I just thought that was just the way he was. But, over time, I just realised that I’ve asked so much from him (money, help, organising social activities for me), STILL remained pleasant, and yet he’s never caved in from peer pressure going out for drinks, partying, and the like, even though he looked like kind of guy. I had to question the strengths of his motives, and later on I realised that his Christian background had a lot to do with it. It’s A LOT more than I realised. It was then, I had to do my own research into Christianity, and slowly but surely my skepticism became less and less.
   Of course, I did my research into other non-Christian areas – the occult, wicca (“witchcraft”), the paranormal. What I am absolutely convinced of is that there are a lot of unusual phenomena that occur, that science probably can never explain (even if it did, it still would be unusual). But, science can merely explain the how, not anything else. This is where atheism goes terribly wrong – from even my own experiences (deja vu for instance) there are a lot of unexplainable things/unseeable things that just exist. I have met a few regular guys, but will not deny having an out of body experience. Normal people, regardless of religious preference, just not denying having an out of body experience. Atheists like Richard Dawkins will deny even that.
   The problem with Christians though, is that they prefer to huddle amongst themselves – and I can see why: most are introverted, tend to be ignored and what better friends is there than to have those with your same beliefs?
   But, given the chance, they’ll do good – above and beyond any other on this planet, and I can guarantee that. And what’s their excuse? It’s simply God. And true Christians acknowledge God as a simple fact.
   I’ve come to realise that; and despite questioning whether we can still be good above and beyond without this “God”, I’ve come to the conclusion that that’s extremely doubtful.
   Is Richard Dawkins right in saying that God is a delusion (despite making outrageous claims in his books)? I cannot absolutely know – God might exist, or God might not. But I know for sure, this God of the Christian faith has changed people’s lives, even mine. I’ve come to acknowledge, like any other Christian, that good cannot just be for oneself, but it should also be spread out. And you know – what if I’m wrong about God? The outrageous claims of Jesus amounting himself to God? Well, at least I tried to make an impact in giving those lost (people who have become hopeless) some relief that there are people willing to help out there.
   What has given me inspiration as a Christian, is to have the strength to argue my point of view in various blogs around the Internet despite the prejudices and hatred that I’m about to face. (Which I personally find ironic! I was once like those who argued against Christians, but now I’m the one being targeted!)

   Also, I almost forgot to add: If you live in America, there are a lot of people who claim to be Christians but appear to be hypocrites; if there is a fundamentalist (Personally, I don’t understand how Christianity and politics ever got mixed up in America in the first place), stay away from them – they do not adhere to the teachings that have been laid down in the bible. Teachings about going pointing people to hell is extremely unbiblical; no wonder people are becoming atheists in America. Christians are also not above the law – anyone caught in paedophilia as you often hear on the news should be treated by the law. For some reason, individual churches seem to be forgetting that. And don’t mistake Christians for “Jehovah’s Witnesses”, or “Mormons”, since they are their own movements.

8. kumarei said,

   September 20, 2007 at 2:31 am

   Tomjunelee,

   I don’t think that anyone is saying that Christians are bad people. My sister is a Christian, and she’s one of the most moral people that I know. And she is opposed to crazy fundamentalists more, if it’s possible, than me. In fact, she’s gotten hatemail from fundamentalists before.

   While it’s perfectly fine to say that you believe because you think that there are things that can’t be explained naturally, the reason why we’re atheists is that we don’t share your belief. If something has any effect on the world, that means that it can, in principle, be studied. Thus, if something can be observed in any way, that automatically puts it in the domain of science. That’s the reason that a lot of us don’t believe in spirituality. If there really is something there, than either it doesn’t actually effect the world (in which case there’s no point in speculating about it), or it can be studied. And since our studies have suggested that these things don’t exist, pending further evidence, I’ll stick with that camp.

   It’s a matter of how you view the world, really. I am an empiricist at heart, so in order to call something a truth, I want some kind of evidence for it. Not the kind that comes from thinking things out in your head, but the kind that comes from observing the world.

   I don’t think you’ll be flamed or “targeted” here (at least I certainly hope you aren’t), but you have to understand that just because we don’t believe in god doesn’t mean we’re immoral. The behaviors you list as being special that drew you to Christianity, I see embodied in my friends all the time. We help each other out whenever we can. People can be good or bad (I won’t say evil, as that has certain connotations) on their own, without having a father figure behind them all the time saying “Be nice.”

9. Tomjunlee said,

   September 20, 2007 at 3:28 am

   kumarei,
   maybe I should mention that I am a science/engineering student? Like I once said, I was a practical atheist myself, and I can say that it is perfectly reasonable to say what you believe in! I have no problems with that. And I don’t mind being targeted – if someone, for some reason, tried to track me down in Australia and resorted to violence, well… I spent a lot of time training in competitive judo a long time ago .

   I even have confidence enough to say that science and religion are compatible. One of the myths most people have of Christians is along the lines of “Christians are illogical” – and I can see why: fundamentalists have perpetrated the figurative narrative of creationism as fact into the media. Most Christians, especially those who study science, will never agree with the “God of the gaps” theory – if something cannot be explained, it is the work of God – but rather, science is the art of studying God’s footsteps (and don’t take that literally either!). I mean, who says that God _didn’t_ come up with the idea of evolution? You have to understand that the very idea, the concept of God is that this “thing”/”being” is ultimately unimaginable, unthinkable, unknowable, and it is only through time has revealed itself to us and written down through the scriptures. By defining God that way, doesn’t that sound perfectly rational since we are talking about something ultimately unknowable?

   I mean, you have to agree with this – there are some things which are just beautiful: Euler’s identity in mathematics, the constant “e” for exponential growth, Newton’s theories. What made me realise the beauty of God’s handiwork is how there are constants in the universe at all.

   Science explains the “how”, but not the “why”. And what defines morals? Does Science?

   The very idea of creationism as pointed out in Genesis Chapters 1-3 talks about the creationism of Adam and Eve, as well as god walking in the garden in the cool of the day… and that should strike any literal believers a problem given that I had defined God above. My point is that those crucial chapters isn’t a videotaped account. The change in tone is noticed in Chapter 4 when it does become more of a journalistic account of what happens.
   You can read the book of Genesis yourself – it doesn’t matter if you’re a Christian or not, it’s still an interesting read: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%201

   And…
   I’m going to stop here. It’s 3 AM here in Australia, been writing on various blogs since 12 AM. I need to sleep, have food, study physics, and exercise.

10. Tomjunlee said,

    September 20, 2007 at 3:38 am

    Oh, and before I forget:
    This is my friend’s website: Philosophy based on Christian perspective – http://joveiaphilosopher.blogspot.com/

11. Richard said,

    September 20, 2007 at 10:18 am

    I think kumarei answered your suggestion about “having to agree” about an unknowable god before you ever said it – “If there really is something there, than either it doesn’t actually effect the world (in which case there’s no point in speculating about it), or it can be studied.”

    If you define God as “ultimately unimaginable, unthinkable, unknowable”, then even through time, with many sacred texts, visions, prophets, etc. you still can’t imagine, think about, or know what or who God really is.

    If you suggest as an axiom that God is unknowable, then I’d suggest from that axiom you can’t possibly look to your bible (or ANY other source) for information about how to please this God, and thus Christianity (and most other religions) become absolutely pointless. How can you ever be the slightest bit confident that you’re living your life the way God would want you to (as is, I assume, your goal)?

12. Tomjunlee said,

    September 20, 2007 at 12:43 pm

    “If there really is something there, than either it doesn’t actually effect the world (in which case there’s no point in speculating about it), or it can be studied.”
    -Maybe I should elaborate: What I did answer, is that things effecting the world can be studied through empirical sciences (physics, chemistry, biology, etc.). But, what do you say about Out of Body Experiences, when they are acknowledged to exist but unable to be studied; meanwhile are already acknowledged in a collection of books called the bible written almost 2000 years ago?

    I am Christian: I follow Jesus Christ – who lived a blameless life, and yet said set himself up to say he was God. Jesus gave us instructions, fulfilled promises set in the Old Testament, and gave promise and hope. As Christians, we don’t have to please God – God has already done the hard work for us. Rather, we do things because we know this in the trust we have placed on Jesus’ promises.
    Perhaps I’m wrong, Jesus never existed, we are delusional, but hey! 3 of the 5 major religions (Judaism, Islam, Christianity) acknowledge Jesus Christ exists. From Judaism, the people were promised that Abraham’s descendants will be blessed and spread among the land. If Christians are wrong, well… there’s no unfortunate drawback for me anyway. There’s absolutely nothing that I can gain from being a Christian (which I should remind is just a label) but nothing to lose either.

    Wouldn’t you agree if the words written in the bible is true, wouldn’t it have a disclaimer of some kind? And yes, it does – the book of Luke begins with a disclaimer that it is an “orderly account…so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.”
    Regardless of whether Jesus was real or not, Luke is a historical account of what has happened, and what Christians are on about. (Read here: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%201;&version=31; )
    But when I see the work of others travelling to poverty stricken countries, supporting others financially, providing them with food, clothes, education – this is what Christians do – giving people hope and a better life, despite remaining positive themselves despite the hardships that these guys face. Maybe that seems bizarre (I thought it did too) but I believe that such behaviour warrants a personal investigation.

    I’m not a student of theology and philosophy (although they both look like good options to study) but, I’ll point to two articles:
    Perhaps this two might satisfy any further reading:
    http://joveiaphilosopher.blogspot.com/2005/11/plantingas-argument-to-properly-basic.html
    http://joveiaphilosopher.blogspot.com/2007/01/michael-martins-disproof-of-god.html

13. Tomjunlee said,

    September 20, 2007 at 2:12 pm

    Just to elaborate on the evidence that anti-Christian historians verify:
    The Jewish historian Josephus recorded that Jesus died on the cross briefly (read Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book 18 Chapter 3 – http://sacred-texts.com/jud/josephus/ant-18.htm).

    Josephus’ works give an important insight into first-century Judaism.

    Tacitus (as Encyclopedia Britannica puts it: “probably the greatest historian…who wrote in the Latin language”)
    “As for Tacitus, the authenticity of this passage is still very widely debated, so I think it’s a bit unfair to cite him in support of Jesus’s existence.” – it should be noted that there are only a few people who will debate it, just as there are a few people who believe September-11 attacks was perpetrated by the Government.

    http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/tacitus.html – the passage from the Annals of Imperial Rome, and the arguments for and against.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacitus_on_Jesus – Wikipedia article.

    In any modern courtroom it would be ridiculous to hear evidence only from prosecution witnesses. But the evidence from non-Christian sources is such that even if the New Testament had never been written, Jesus’ crucifixion could still be verified.

    “Dr Sim Greenleaf was more qualified to examine such evidence than any man who ever lived. He was the Royal Professor of Law at Harvard University and was declared by the chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States to be the greatest authority on evidence that could be quoted in any English speaking courtroom in the world. After writing voluminously on the laws of the legals evidences he decided to turn the searchlight of his knowledge of evidence and his ability to sift the true from the false toward the evidence for the resurrection of Christ.
    He examined each thread of evidence concerning the resurrection of Christ and concluded that in any unbiased courtoom in the world, if the evidence for the resurrection of Christ were presented it would be adjudged to be an absolute historical fact.”

    Surely only a lunatic would carry on a hoax when there was nothing to gain from it but death by crucifixion.
    If Jesus went all the way to his death carrying out a self-deluded or deliberate fraud, then obviously he didn’t come back from the dead. That is why the “lunatic” or self-delusion theory fails. If he claimed to be God and was self-deluded, then the whole story would come to an abrupt end at his death, just as with many cult leaders. But here is where it only gets more complicated. Rather than ending at his death, in some ways it only begins. If his claims weren’t true, we now have to add as liars or deluded the hundreds of people who claimed to have witnessed his resurrection from the dead. The penalty for maintaining this claim was often death. It’s one thing to propose that Jesus was a liar, dying for a hoax, but we now have to imagine those claiming to be eyewitnesses to his resurrection also dying torturous deaths of execution just to keep the hoax going. (the hatred and detail into how they die is written in Tacitus’ Annals of Imperial Rome). Those martyrs claiming to be eyewitnesses would be dying these gruesome deaths while _knowing_ it was a deception.

    It’s worth noting that these eyewitnesses were not especially brave “follow him to the death” people before Jesus was crucified. Not only did they scatter like cowards when he was arrested, but the apostle Peter had cursed and sworn he never even know Jesus just to avoid his own arrest (sounds somewhat like me when I first became a Christian). After the alleged resurrection, we see a different story. Something clearly transformed his resolve. Peter was crucified upside down, holding onto his testimony. Of the other apostles, execution, crucifixion, the sword (James), beheading and so on. All because they wouldn’t deny having seen a risen Christ. If the resurrection didn’t happen, why were the apostles and others so determined to die for it? After all, plenty of people in history have died for something they believed in. But _no one_ dies for something they _don’t_ believe in.

    Author Josh McDowell set out as a skeptic to disprove the resurrection but eventually became convinced it was an historical fact. He points out that even if you include only the apostles, you would be hard pressed to find that many people in the whole of history who all willingly died for the same lie, while knowing it was a lie!

    What about a mistaken identity? Like kumarei said, there are even people who claim to have seen Elvis alive. (Wasn’t it the coroner who performed the autopsy who said that if Elvis wasn’t dead when he got started, he was surely dead by the time he had finished?) But there is a tremendous difference here. The eyewitnesses to Jesus after the resurrection were not just reported fleeting glimpses, as in “We saw Elvis in the car park”. Rather, these eyewitnesses were people who knew Jesus and claimed intimate contact, having conversations and even eating meals with him during his resurrection appearances. Such detailed reports cannot be dismissed as merely mistaken: they must be either genuine or deliberate fabrication.
    And this situation wasn’t one of mass hysteria (like a “one in, all in”) as with the Waco cult or Jonestown massacres, where questions still remain as to whether the events included suicide or murder. The followers of Christ were executed publicly and individually, at different places, and some even decades apart. Hardly the setting required for mass emotional and irrational action. For example, the martyrdom of Jesus’ brother James in 62 AD is recorded by Josephus. James had not been a follower of Jesus until he saw Jesus alive after the resurrection. He eventually wrote one of the New Testament books. James was stoned to death for refusing to recant. He held on to his claim that he had seen the risen Christ.
    James was not the only skeptic to change his thinking dramatically after the resurrection. If we are looking to discredit the New Testament record on the grounds that “it was written only by hopeful supporters of Christ”, then we are looking in the wrong place. One Roman citizen and a Jew of some high standing was among the greatest opponents of the first followers of Christ. He persecuted them with great zeal and brought many of them to trial and execution. He was door knocking everyone’s homes to check any Christ followers systematically. There was a sudden change in his attitude after he claimed that he too had seen Jesus after the resurrection. This man, Paul of Tarsus, had become apostle to the Gentiles (non-Jews). He wrote more books of the New Testament than any other writer, and was eventually martyred himself for his belief when Nero cut off his head in about 67 AD.

    And all this for a lie?

14. Tomjunlee said,

    September 20, 2007 at 2:36 pm

    I’d like to quote the problem of religion (including atheism) from “Religion is for fools”, a letter for Rita turned into a book by comedian and former skeptic Bill Medley.
    I remember the first time I fell in love at high school. I had this overwhelming feeling (in fact I was _certain_) that this girl was going to feel the same way that I did. It was a definite! now you are not going to believe this – but it turned out I was wrong! What could that girl possibly have been thinking!

    Well, we’ve all been wrong sometime – even when we’ve been “certain”. So even if you have that great intuition and and are 99% reliable, you still could never be certain of anything based on feelings. What about a spiritual experience? Some say they know God, or know about God, because they have had a great experience. But even that doesn’t prove anything. Most people believe there is good and bad in all of us. If there is good and bad in us, then this could apply in the spiritual realm. If you had a genuine spiritual experience, then how do you know it is from a good or truthful source? “Oh I know its good because it felt so right, and the experience gave me the assurance that it was good and from God.” But how do you know it was not a bad source _telling_ you it was good? You can’t be certain – even with the most profound spiritual experience.

    So what about our intellect? I remember doing a gig one night at a conference with about 1,000 doctors. I got talking with a specialist MD who told me that you could be certain about God. He said you could be certain that there was no God, because God is an absolute, and there is no such thing as an absolute. I said to him, “Are you _absolutely_ sure about that?” – He gazed into the night…
    In other words, you would have to know absolutely everything before you could really know the answers to these great questions.
    Suffice it to say that the only thing we know for sure is that we just don’t know everything. Whether it is our feelings, our spiritual experiences or our intellect, the bottom line is that from ourselves, there is no way any of us could ever know anything for certain about God or the afterlife, or any of these great mysteries. This is what led me to believe that “religion is for fools”. People are grasping at ideas and placing all their hopes in them, without having any real basis. And no matter how heartfelt these beliefs are – in the end they are just (albeit sincerely) – guessing.

    And I suppose we have to include people who are sure that no religion is true. They are guessing as well. Then there are people who say that all the religions are true. They must be the biggest “guessers” of them all. They are just “hedging” their guesses. And then there are those who say that truth in religion is relative. That is, “all beliefs are true – as long as it’s true for you.” Great! And where did you get that “truth” from? “Well, er … I guess it’s my own idea…” Wonderful! You might do well at politics, but in the end it’s just another stab in the dark. Another guess. All because it “feels” right.

    So we are all in this together, Rita. It’s not enough to say that each person’s opinion is as good as another. Take a look at what we are dealing with here. We might as well be trying to guess how many specks of dust are on the moon. Let’s say it straight. Each person’s opinion is as _bad_ as another’s!

    The only way we could ever know anything for certain about any of these great “unknowable” questions concerning God, is if someone who knew absolutely everything was to tell us. It would have to be someone completely outside our limited knowledge. Someone who was not dependent on our finite feelings or our unreliable experiences. In fact, it would have to be no one less than God – “him”, “her”, “itself” (whoever or whatever God is), to be the one to reveal who or what God is, and answer for us those “unknowable” afterlife questions.

15. kumarei said,

    September 20, 2007 at 3:34 pm

    Tomjunlee,

    You have made a lot of comments. I will address them in order.

    1) Out of body experiments are currently under investigation by science, and we are already to the point where we can stimulate them quite easily in normal individuals.

    2) You’re making an appeal to numbers. Even if everyone in the world believed that god existed, this would not prove his existence.

    3) Next you claim that the bible is true, because the bible says so. I don’t even know where to start with this, it’s so far from any kind of valid argument.

    4) Next you appeal to emotion by making the claim that Christians all over are doing good things. You (rather offensively, in my way of thinking) ignore any contributions made by atheists, and in fact deny that atheists are capable of making such contributions. I assure you that we have morals and feelings, and we are just as capable of helping people as anyone else.

    5) The links. The second one I don’t really care about, but as a cognitive science student, the first is painful to read. First of all, as for 2+2=4, you may have heard of the Principia Mathematica, in which over 100 pages are spent proving that 1+1=2. It then goes on to establish algebra. You also may note that the basics of algebra and mathematics came from observation of the world. First we could enumerate objects, then perform operations on them. Math is an abstraction of counting. People certainly can’t perform math without learning it first.

    As for god being a primitive, there is no evidence to suggest this. This is a testable hypothesis here. Raise a child with no notion of god, and see if s/he becomes a believer with no prompting from anyone. In addition, even if god was a primitive, the idea of god could be built in due to evolutionary advantage. You would have a long way to go if you wanted to use this route to prove god.

    6) Now we move on to your next comment. I’m not sure exactly how much of this is a quote and how much is yours, so I’ll answer it as one big chunk.

    There is a reason that I call myself an atheist rather than an agnostic. I want to state that I have a firm belief that God does not exist in any form. Notice I don’t say certainty. I said a firm belief. It is, as you say, impossible to absolutely know anything. But that doesn’t mean that nothing is more likely than anything else.

    It is extremely unlikely that the earth is flat. It is extremely unlikely that everything orbits the earth. It is extremely unlikely that we are held to earth by the force of our perfect being wanting to inhabit its home below the ground.

    In the same way, I would claim that god is extremely unlikely. EXTREMELY unlikely. Unlikely enough that I have no problem in applying a nice swoop of Occam’s Razor and taking him out of the equation all together. I am certain enough to chance being wrong and risking hell. I am certain enough to declare it in the face of people who hate me for it. I’m certain enough that I’ve decided to live my life the best that I can, because I don’t get anything else.

    That’s how certain I am.

16. Tomjunlee said,

    September 20, 2007 at 10:33 pm

    You seem to be misrepresenting what I am saying – or rather, I seem to not make my point across. Or maybe both. I’m just going to talk about the fallacy of your arguments:

    1. Out of body experiments are currently under investigation by science, and we are already to the point where we can stimulate them quite easily in normal individuals.
    -Really? I’ve studied these over two years and nothing has been conclusive. The latest news (or breakthrough) that scientists have had was a new method of triggering it with some success in normal healthy humans, if you have been watching the news. But techniques have been out there for ages – you can just use Google to find them. The “breakthrough” is nothing more than a mere technique. In the occult circles, the alias for OBE are called “Astral Projections”, and Google has plenty of results for both. I personally tried these methods – and I failed in my attempts. But I have met a few people with real success.
    Don’t forget, scientists have been studying other parapsychological phenomena, most whom know exist but cannot prove (James Randi will boast his $1000000 challenge) – the study of telepathy, telekinesis (also known as “psychokinesis”). One example – There’s a document at http://www.firedocs.com/ (somewhere amongst the links) – which is a Government funded remote viewing research, from a branch of the CIA in America.
    I’m trying to avoid the “God of the gaps” theory here, but the very nature of parapsychological phenomena (unique, one-off, contrary to the laws of mechanics) means that it cannot be studied to a satisfactory effect by the standards outlined in empirical sciences (which is to demonstrate, test, demonstrate, test, and check resemblances).
    In fact, if I stopped studying science and engineering, I would have studied parapsychology (in some obscure university, no doubt).

    2) You’re making an appeal to numbers. Even if everyone in the world believed that god existed, this would not prove his existence.
    An appeal to numbers? That’s a first. I doubt anyone is appealed to seemingly random figures. I never used numbers to _support_ my point of view; I used numbers to merely quote the context in which they were numbers were there as a quote from other

    3) Next you claim that the bible is true, because the bible says so. I don’t even know where to start with this, it’s so far from any kind of valid argument.
    Never made a claim that the “bible is true, because the bible says so”. Rather, I have avoided that argument because like you, I believe that is sheer stupidity to say such a thing. I feel strongly against fundamentalists who make that point. Putting what I have said in context, it was an assumption: “if the bible was true”.

    4) Next you appeal to emotion by making the claim that Christians all over are doing good things. You (rather offensively, in my way of thinking) ignore any contributions made by atheists, and in fact deny that atheists are capable of making such contributions. I assure you that we have morals and feelings, and we are just as capable of helping people as anyone else.

    I’m pretty sure there are contributions made by atheists all around the world, but why take offense, by any means rationally thinking?
    I’m not suggesting atheists are sub-human simply because I did not mention them. I merely pointed out that there a plenty of people who have given generously – but of the people I’ve met, I’ve been inspired by people who have given their all, for the sake of other people’s lives. I’ve met one who gave away ALL their money and lived in poverty and came up to scratch to society again. Call that foolishness, but I call that inspiration. The Christian mindset is to give because money belongs to this world and Christians, in their quest to be more and more spiritual. Money is of little concern to Christians and that the money they have is a blessing from this “God” – initially I myself was surprised at this, coming from an atheist background. A selfish Christian is a contradiction – if there is someone who considers themselves Christian and yet selfish, either they are not true Christians or must be taught about their wrongdoing to strengthen their morals. A selfish atheist – they exist. There is a branch of Satanism who live for themselves and themselves only. This branch of Satanism isn’t a religion – its an atheist society against religion (hence, being called “Satanism”). Of course, that might be an extreme example, but its the same underlying idea – atheism can lead to selfishness. Yet Christians don’t think they’re just doing good enough to help society – they need to do more than just that. We don’t self-justify ourselves. I mean, Christians themselves don’t think we’re being good enough at all.

    Faced with the choice of donating a spare $10 to your favourite charity or frittering it away at your favourite High Street shop, what would you do … honestly?

    5) “The links. The second one I don’t really care about, but as a cognitive science student, the first is painful to read…”

    Again, I can’t see the arguments disproving or proving God. Like I said above, God and science are fully compatible. Isaac Newton, Nicholas Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Rene Descartes, Robert Boyle, Michael Faraday, Max Planck: ALL Christians who believed in God. ALL made a significant contribution to the scientific community. Even though Albert Einstein was not Christian, he himself believed in some form of God, let me repeat: he believed in “a god”.

    Francis S. Collins is the director of the human genome project. Without him, we would not know our DNA as we would know it today. And you know what inspired him to tackle this gargantuan task of mapping out human DNA?
    It’s God.
    [On a personal note, I just find it ironic, almost hilarious to an extent, that atheists accuse Christians of being unscientific when Christians first proposed the very notion of empirical sciences to better understand God]

    “As for god being a primitive, there is no evidence to suggest this. This is a testable hypothesis here. Raise a child with no notion of god, and see if s/he becomes a believer with no prompting from anyone. In addition, even if god was a primitive, the idea of god could be built in due to evolutionary advantage. You would have a long way to go if you wanted to use this route to prove god.”

    Ah, see, another misconception: Who said God was a primitive? Who even said God lived “in the sky”? Who said God was a male? And I myself was raised as a child with no notion of God – if you don’t believe in miracles then you should believe now

    “It is extremely unlikely that the earth is flat. It is extremely unlikely that everything orbits the earth. It is extremely unlikely that we are held to earth by the force of our perfect being wanting to inhabit its home below the ground.”

    Who said that the earth was flat? Who said that everything orbits around the earth? Who said we are held to earth by the force of a perfect being? Not only is what you say “extremely unlikely”, Christians believe this is “impossible”.
    If you are accusing Christians of believing in something we don’t even believe ourselves, in its full unscientific and unbiblical glory…then good luck trying to get a Christian crowd to be swayed, even remotely, to listen to such a point of view

    Have you even read a book of the New Testament to even know what Christians are on about? Remove the ideas of God in the bible. And I assure you, you will still be surprised at what you might learn.

    Next, give me one quote that Jesus said from the bible (always putting it into context) and criticize him for it. That’s my challenge.

    And if you can’t – Why accuse Christians then, who simply see Jesus as their role model?

17. kumarei said,

    September 21, 2007 at 7:02 am

    Tomjunlee,

    1) Scientists have been looking for evidence for psychic phenomena for a long time. There is no evidence that they exist. Remember, I believe that science is perfectly equipped to deal with such phenomena if it exists. It affects the world, people claim that they can do certain things with it, we should be able to study it. Yet it mysteriously doesn’t work in the presence of skeptics. Maybe because it’s not true?

    2) “Perhaps I’m wrong, Jesus never existed, we are delusional, but hey! 3 of the 5 major religions (Judaism, Islam, Christianity) acknowledge Jesus Christ exists. From Judaism, the people were promised that Abraham’s descendants will be blessed and spread among the land.”

    Appeal to numbers

    3) “Wouldn’t you agree if the words written in the bible is true, wouldn’t it have a disclaimer of some kind?”, etc.

    Claim that the bible is true because it says it is.

    4) You’re saying that Christians can’t be bad, because then they aren’t Christians. And yet, they worship the same person that you do. Hmm…

    And what about a person who, instead of spending all their money to feed a few people, makes a new kind of corn that can grow in rough conditions to feed thousands? Is he not doing the greater good?

    5) Christians invented science: Yes, well, Greeks invented philosophy and Muslims invented the algebras, yet you don’t have to worship Zeus to be a good philosopher or Allah to be a good mathematician. The fact is that science has a method now, which one can apply to the world.

    You can’t find god by applying the scientific method, you need to use faith. And I don’t have any of the stuff.

    Sure, there are a lot of famous people and very smart people that have been Christian. But in this modern age at least, it isn’t reason that lead them there. It’s faith.

    As for god being a “primitive”:

    “One Christian to reach this conclusion was Alvin Plantinga, and he formulated a solution to keep Christian belief reasonable by saying Christian belief is ‘properly basic’.”

    Note that I was using ‘primitive’ in the programing sense, which is synonymous with ‘properly basic.’ I’m sorry for that, but it’s a habit from being immersed in Computer Science.

    Many Christians now disbelieve those things (although many, especially in the US, don’t), but I wasn’t saying that those were things that you believed. The last example, in fact, has nothing to do with Christianity, but was a belief of Plato. The point was that there are things that were believed in the past that turned out to have no relation to the current scientific paradigm. And yet it’s still possible that THEY COULD BE TRUE. We can never know for sure. And yet, most people discard them out of hand, as I’m sure you did. This is the same way that I discard god.

    I, unlike you, grew up in a Christian house. I have two bibles on my bookshelf (one King James, the other NRSV). I have read them (although I admit that I skipped over some of the really really boring parts in the old testament).

    I will mention some quotes from the new testament in my next post. This one is getting too long.

18. kumarei said,

    September 21, 2007 at 7:39 am

    Alright, let’s look at the new testament. You seem to have a few misconceptions about it.

    Let’s start with Luke 16:18. “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”

    This section is a quote of Jesus. I have quite a few problems with this. If you come to no longer love your spouse is it really that bad to marry again? It disturbs me that Jesus had this opinion.

    Ah, but that’s not really the point. The point is the context. The point is the reason that Jesus believes this.

    Luke 16:17. “It is easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for the least stroke of a pen to drop out of the Law.”

    Interesting. Jesus believes that the Jewish law of the old testament is absolute. This runs counter to your argument that the parts of the old testament that I was criticizing have nothing to do with Christianity. Christianity inherits the rules of the old testament, and everything that goes with them.

    Matthew 15:3-7. “Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.’ But you say that if a man says to his father or mother, ‘Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is a gift devoted to God,’ he is not to ‘honor his father’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites!”

    When Jesus is called out for washing his hands before he eats, he says that they are much worse, because they ignore the word of god and don’t kill children who don’t show the proper filial piety. That Jesus would want this law upheld is disturbing in the extreme.

    But of course he does, because JESUS BELIEVES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT LAWS.

    So, by your liberal reading of the bible, you’re cherry picking the things that you think are nice.

    If you take out the mentions of god, what you get is a series of extremely vague parables. And you can get things like that from many places. Heck, I could make up some extremely vague parables. I don’t necessarily think that would make me a great man.

    But that’s not the point. The point is that the new testament is about god, and you can’t just remove the reference, because even the more vague parables are meant to uphold old testament law, some of which are good, some of which are absolutely awful. Some of which you would be locked up today for following.

19. rafael said,

    June 19, 2008 at 4:19 am

    shall begin by assuming that the issue of God’s existence is settled. We all believe that there is a God. As those who desire to know the truth, we must go one step further to find out what kind of God He is. God is the greatest Unknown. We must spend some time to find out about this unknown One. The next step now is to know what kind of a God He is. In the past few thousand years man has been inquiring about the nature of God. Is He kind or is He righteous? Is He indifferent towards us, or is He extremely interested in human affairs? These types of questions are the direct cause of all human religions. What is religion? Religion is man’s inquiry about God and his explanation of Him. Through these explanations, different men have arrived at different concepts about God. What kind of God is He? This is a big question. It is also a very serious question. We have all given our thought to this subject at one time or another. The question might even have occurred to our little mind when we were five years old. All men, educated or ignorant, have been intrigued by this question. It comes naturally after some contemplation and observation. But a person trying to speculate about God is like an ant attempting to understand a human being. It is extremely difficult for the little creature to try to realize our life, nature, and mind. In the same way it is impossible for us to try to comprehend God. For this reason, in the past few thousand years, all kinds of people, theologians and philosophers alike, have done much thinking about Him. What has God been doing all this time? Has He been indifferent to us or has He tried to reveal Himself to us? What is God’s attitude? Do you think He would say, “I am God and have nothing to do with human beings. I do not care what you think about me. I shall stay in heaven as God. Let the mortals be ignorant!” Or do you think He has a desire to reveal Himself to man and visit him? When I was in India, I saw some people lying naked on beds studded with nails. Some walked with bare feet on burning coals. These people devoted a great deal of energy to seeking after God. What has God done to them? Did He hide Himself and take no notice of them at all? Has He not kept Himself as a perpetual mystery? This is a great question. We have to consider it scientifically and objectively in order to find out what God is like. A few years ago I spoke on a similar subject to some medical students in an auditorium in Cheloo University. I said that man is an organism with a life. God also is a life. Man’s life is higher than that of the lower animals, and God’s life is even higher than that of man. I asked the students, “Since we realize that all living organisms have some common laws and express some common traits, can you name them?” Different ones then started to bring up different points. At the end we summed up the discussion in this way: all living organisms contain two common characteristics. You can call these characteristics their common expressions or their common laws. First, every life wants to preserve itself. It tends to reproduce itself. There is the ability to produce posterity, to continue its own life. Second, every life wants to have fellowship with other lives. It cannot stand being by itself. When a man cannot find fellowship with another human being, he goes to dogs, cats, fish, or birds and makes friends with animals. All living creatures desire fellowship. Based on these two characteristics of life, namely, the preservation of itself and fellowship with others, laws of human government are instituted. For example, the death penalty reflects a convict’s desire to preserve his own life; punishment comes in the form of taking away and terminating such a life. This is the way to inflict suffering on a life. Imprisonment, as a less serious punishment, cuts him off from having fellowship with others. This reversal of the life principle becomes then a suffering for him. From this we see that punishment is applied according to the principles of life. With these two chief characteristics in mind, let us turn to the life of God. God is an organism of a higher order than human beings. He is naturally governed by this law of life. We can know God by the characteristics and distinctive features of His life. From this we can deduce whether or not God wants to have fellowship with man. There are two kinds of religion: religion based on natural concepts and religion based on revelation. Natural religion starts with man as the center. He is the one that is seeking after God and studying about Him. What then is revelational religion? Revelational religion comes directly from God. He is the One who comes to reveal things to us. Man’s thoughts are often useless fancies. God’s revelation alone is trustworthy. Christianity is different from all other natural religions in that it is a religion that comes from revelation. Christianity begins from God. It is God who comes to seek out man, rather than man who seeks after God. I will not try to persuade you to believe in Christianity or to read the Bible. I will only make a few suppositions. We will treat the subject in the same way as if we were solving a problem in geometry. We will start from the suppositions and then deduce our arguments step by step. We will examine our reasoning’s to see if they are sound and if our conclusions are logical. As in mathematics, with some problems we work forwards, while with others we work backwards. At any rate, in the end we should be able to tell whether or not a supposition is justified. We have to make a few suppositions. The first one is that God exists. This in fact has been covered by us already. We have agreed that there is a God. He is a Being who has a purpose. Second, we assume that God has a desire to reveal Himself to man. If God wants to reveal Himself to man and if He wants us to know Him, how does He do it? In what manner can He be made known to us? If He speaks to us through thunder or writes to us through lightning, we will not be able to comprehend His message. How then does God make Himself known to us? If He is to reveal Himself and if He wants us to know Him, He necessarily must do it through human means. What then are the common ways that men communicate with one another? First, they do it through speaking and second through writing. All means of communication, whether telegraph, telephone, sign, or symbols, are all included in these two categories. If God is to manifest Himself, these are the only two means for Him to do so. For the present we set aside the aspect of speaking; we will see how God communicates with us through writing. If God reveals Himself through writing, of all the volumes written by different people throughout the centuries, there must be one book which is divinely inspired. This is a very crucial test. If such a book exists, it proves not only the existence of God, but it contains His written revelation to us as well. Is there then such a divinely written book? In the search for such a book, let us first mention a few basic principles. Suppose I want to order a book from a publisher. If I can tell him the name and author of the book, there will be no trouble getting it. If, however, I forget the name and author of the book, I can describe the characteristics of it to the publisher, such as the contents, size, color, binding, etc. The publisher will then search through all his books and locates the volume I want. God has one book in this universe. How do we find it? We have to know its characteristics first. If there is any book that has been written by God, it must meet certain conditions or have certain qualifications before one can say that it is from God. Let me put forth a few propositions. If there is a book written by God, it must first of all mention God. It must tell you that it is from God and that its author is God. This is the first qualification. Second, it must carry a moral tone that is higher than what we commonly know. If it is a fabrication, it can at the most be on the same level as man. Third, if there is such a divine book, it must tell us about the past and the future of this world. Only God knows clearly what occurred in the past and what will happen in the future. Only by telling us these matters will we know Him as God. Fourth, this book must be simple and available so that all may be able to secure and understand it. If there were only one such book in the world, then only a very few people would be able to see it. It would not pass the test unless it is a book accessible to everyone. In the United States there is a group of people who claim to have a book from God. It is engraved in gold and contains only twelve pages. Such a book then would not be accessible to the Chinese. God would never write to us a book at which we could not look. Now the matter is simplified. Let us repeat these four conditions once more.
    (1) If such a book exists, it must tell us explicitly that its author is God.
    (2) It must carry a high tone of morality.
    (3) It must give a detailed description of the past and the future of the universe.
    (4) It must be available.
    Let us pick out some of the more important writings throughout human civilization and check them against these qualifications to see if any meets our requirements. We will start from books that are generally considered to be good. Let us take the Chinese classics of Confucius. They are immediately disqualified under the first requirement, for none of them claims to be written by God. They do have a high tone of morality, but they fail to give the origin and destiny of the world, the universe, and man. This does not mean that they are worthless books; it means that they do not contain the qualifications we want. They are not what we are looking for. Let us go to the classics of other cultures. There are numerous volumes of famous writings, but none of them passes the first test. They are all clearly written by man. They may be masterpieces in philosophy or morality, but they are not written by God, nor are they divinely inspired. We have to set them aside. There is a book in India called the Rig-Veda. It once dominated Hinduism. However, it does not claim to be written by God. Another book called the Avesta, written by a Persian named Zoroaster, is also extremely influential in the Middle East. It does not claim to be from God either. Moreover, its moral tone is not especially commendable. Let us come to the Koran of Mohammedanism. This is the closest one we can find. It tells us that it comes from God; it meets the first requirement. However, it does not fulfill the second requirement, for its moral tone is too low. The heaven it describes is full of lusts and flesh. God could never write a book with such licentiousness and immorality. Hence, this book does not pass the test of morality. After searching through all the books, you have to come finally to the Bible. If God desires to communicate with man, and if He does so through writing, then this is the only book that can pass the four tests. Hence, this must be the book God has for man. What does this book say? In the books of the law in the Old Testament, it says, “Thus saith the Lord,” at least five hundred times. Other books in the Old Testament repeat the phrase about seven hundred times. In addition to the references in the New Testament to the speaking of God, the Bible has more than two thousand claims of divine origin. If God has no intention of communicating with man, we can forget about this book. But if He does communicate with man through writing, then this book has to be of immense value. Can you find another book where God is claimed as its author that many times? We have to see if the Bible meets the second qualification. Let us take a look at its moral tone. Everyone who has studied this book confesses that it carries the highest moral standard. Even the sins of the noblest persons are recorded and condemned without mercy. Once a strong opposer of the Bible was asked by his son, “Why are you so strong against the Bible?” He answered, “If I do not condemn it, it will condemn me.” This book does not let us get by easily. The human concept is that all sexual acts outside marriage are considered as fornication. The Bible, however, says that even an evil thought is fornication. Human morality condemns an act of killing as murder, but the Bible condemns a slight hatred in the heart as murder. We consider a man who lets his enemy get by without paying vengeance as forgiving. But the Bible charges man to love his enemy. How high is its moral tone and how low we are before its standards! You cannot help but admit that it presents the best ethical code for humanity. Furthermore, this book describes in detail the past and future of the universe. Once a friend told me that he could believe in everything the Bible says except the parts in Genesis and Revelation where it talks about the origin and destiny of the heavens and earth. I told him that if this is indeed a book from God, it must, of necessity, contain these matters. If the Bible did not contain Genesis and Revelation, it would be the same as any other book, and we would have to look for another book; it would not be the one we want. But the past condition of the world and its future destiny are recorded here. Hence, the third qualification is also met. What is the circulation of such a book? Last year (1935), more than two hundred million copies were sold. Can you name another book that has such a high circulation rate? This statistic, moreover, is not limited to just last year; every year the number has remained approximately the same. In one sense this book is very popular. In another sense it is like a thorn in your hand; it pierces you. This book gives you a headache. It creates an unspeakable uneasiness within man. It even causes man to oppose it. In spite of this, its annual sales are still over two hundred million. Furthermore, this book is translated into more than seven hundred twenty languages. In every country and among every race, there is a translation of this unique book. It is extremely easy for anyone to obtain a Bible anywhere in the world. If the Rig-Veda were God’s book, then more than half of the world would perish due to a failure in obtaining it. Even if you put the Rig-Veda in my hand, I would still be unable to understand it. If only the educated ones can contact God, then I am destined to go to hell. If only the Indians have the opportunity, we Chinese, as well as other races, are out of hope. If God speaks through the Rig-Veda, then where can we find that book? Maybe we can only find the original copy in the London Museum. And even that may not contain the original meaning of God’s revelation to man. This is not all. The Bible contains sixty-six books and it is divided into the Old and New Testaments. It was written by no less than thirty people. The span from the time the first book was written to the time when the last book was finished is more than sixteen hundred years. The places where they were written are also different. Some were written in Babylon, some in Italy, some at one end of Asia Minor, others at the other end of the Mediterranean. Furthermore, the writers themselves differed in their backgrounds. Some were lawyers; some were fishermen. There were princes, and there were shepherds. All these writings by men of different backgrounds, languages, environments, and periods are put together. The amazing thing is that it is still a complete book. All those who have had some experience of editing know that in order to put together a few articles written by different authors, it is necessary for the authors to be of comparable level of academic achievements and viewpoints. Even when the academic standard and viewpoints are similar, there will still be conflicts and contradictions when you put five or six articles together. But the Bible, though complex in contents, contains history, poetry, laws, prophecies, biographies, and doctrines and was written by so many different ones at different times and under different circumstances, yet when you put them together, they surprisingly run as one continuous volume. There is no conflict or contradiction. They are written in one breath. If you read this book carefully, you have to admit that God’s hand is behind all the writings. More than thirty people of varied backgrounds and ideas in different times and places wrote these sixty-six books. When you group them up, they link together as if they were written by one individual. Genesis was written about fifteen hundred years before Christ, and Revelation was written ninety-five years after Christ. There is a time span of sixteen hundred years. One talks about the beginning while the other projects the end of the world. Yet whatever begins in Genesis is concluded in Revelation. This amazing feature cannot be explained in human terms. Every word of it has to be written by God through man. God is the motivating One behind the whole composition. There is another remarkable thing about this book. In itself it is a book that gives life. Yet countless numbers of people have lost their lives for its sake. There was a time when anyone who held this book in his hand would immediately be put to death. The most powerful empire in history was the Roman Empire. There was a time when this empire summoned all its forces to destroy this book. Everyone who possessed it would be inhumanly persecuted and later killed or burned. They wiped out thousands of people and burned countless copies of the Bible. They even set up a monument at a place where they killed Christians. On it was the inscription: “Christianity is buried here.” They thought that when they had burned all the Bibles and removed all the Christians, they would see Christianity lying there beneath their feet. But it was not long after that when the Bible came back again. Even in a country like England, which has already accepted Christianity as its state religion, you can still find tombs of martyrs for Christ if you visit different places there. Here and there you can find places where the Bible was once burned. Or you may come across a tombstone that tells you that such and such a person tried so hard and wrote so many books in his life to oppose the Bible. One place may tell you that the Bible was once burned there, and another place may tell you that Christians were once killed there. One signpost may point you to a statue of martyrdom, and another may point to a site of Bible burning. Why is it that so many people have tried so hard to oppose this book? Why is it that men would pass by other books, but would either oppose this book with every fiber of their being or would put their whole life to the stake for it? There must be something extraordinary here. Even if you do not believe that this is God’s word, you have to admit that there is something unusual about this book. This book seems to be very simple and easy. If you consider it from the historical point of view, it tells the origin of the universe, the earth, the plants, human beings, how they established their kingdoms, and how they will eventually end. This is all. There is nothing special about it. Yet it has been handed from generation to generation for centuries. Today it is still with us. Moreover, if you do not confess that it is truth, you have to conclude that it is false. You can disregard many books, but you cannot ignore this book. Nor will it ignore you. It will not let you go. It demands a verdict from you. It will not pass you by. Another remarkable thing about this book is that almost half of it is prophecy. Among the prophecies, almost half of them are fulfilled. The other half is for the future and await fulfillment. For example, it predicted the fate of the nations of Moab and Ammon and of the cities of Tyre and Sidon. Today when people talk about big cities, they mention London and Shanghai. Then it was Tyre and Sidon. They were two chief cities of the ancient world. The prophecies concerning these two cities were all fulfilled. Once I was in the Middle East. For some reason I did not visit those two places. However, I bought two pictures of those cities. It amazed me when I looked at those pictures. I could not help but believe in the Bible. It was prophesied that if these two metropolitan cities did not repent, they would be destroyed and devastated. Their land would become hills of rocks and pebbles where fishermen would come to dry their nets. In the pictures that I bought, there was nothing but fishing boats and open nets on the shore. This is only one small fact that proves the reliability of biblical prophecy. If you compare past events with the prophecies in the Bible, you will find that they all correspond one with another. For another example, take the birth of Christ. Isaiah prophesied concerning a virgin with child a few hundred years before Christ actually came. Later, He was born indeed of the Virgin Mary. The prophecy was accurately fulfilled. As the prophecies concerning the past have been fulfilled, so the prophecies concerning the future must also be fulfilled. If God desires to communicate with man, He must do so through common human channels of communication. He must use the human language or human writings. In other words, there must be a book in the world that is a direct revelation from God. If such a book does exist, it must contain the four criteria we mentioned. Now we can say that such a book is found. This book tells us that God desires to have fellowship with us. He speaks to us through this book. Through it God is no longer an unknown Being. We can now know Him. This book is the Bible. I hope all of you will read it.
    THIS IS SERIOUS: WAS JESUS CRAZY? WAS HE A LUNATIC? OR THE BIGGEST LIAR?
    God desires to reveal Himself to us. He does so through means that are comprehensible to man. These are namely written and spoken language. We have seen how God reveals Himself through writing. Now we want to take a look at His revelation through speaking. Suppose that you have had correspondence with a person for many years; however, you have never seen him. Naturally, you would want to know him more by having some direct acquaintance with him. Full understanding of someone cannot be achieved merely through writing. Direct contact gives a better chance. It seems as if communication through speech is of a more intimate and thorough nature than writing. When spoken language is added to written language, communication becomes enhanced. If you take away either of the two, you have a gap. Of course, if you take away both, communication is completely voided. Effective communication is always carried out by these two means. If God’s intention is to reveal Himself to us, He must of necessity do so through speaking. But how does God speak? Does He trumpet from the heavens? If so, we would all be frightened to death. We would all run away. No one would dare to listen. There is a chasm between Him and us. He, being so high and great, would drive us away from His holiness. How then does He speak?
    THE WINTER ON THE MOUNTAIN
    Let me relate to you a story. One winter I was staying on the mountain Lu-shan, recovering from an illness. It was immediately after the war, and there was practically no one living on the mountain. In the vicinity of my dwelling, one could hardly see anyone all day long. I am a quiet person by nature. This kind of environment was very appealing to me. Not only was it quiet there, but the weather was cold as well. From morning till dusk, all I saw was a boy who came three times to deliver my meals. At the beginning I was quite at ease. But after a while, even a person like me began to feel lonely. One day after lunch I went to take a nap. There was a balcony outside my bedroom window. When I woke up I saw some little creatures gathering around the balcony. Bits of my meal had been dropped there, and the birds were busily chirping around them. As they hopped around, they chirped and made many cheerful noises. I said to myself, “All right. Since I cannot find any human beings, I will try to make friends with these little birds.”I rose up and went out to greet them. But in an instant they all flew away. An idea came to me. I took some of the leftover rice and began to arrange it in rows, with only a few grains in the first row and gradually increased them towards the entrance of the doorway. I hid behind the door and watched them coming. Soon they gathered around again. I said to me, “This is my chance.” I walked out and began to make friends with them. But the minute they saw me, they all scattered. Some perched on the branches of the tree across the balcony and stared at me, as if trying to determine what my intention was. Every time I approached them, they flew away, and every time I walked away, they came back. This went on a number of times. I wanted to preach to the birds. I wanted to tell them, “Little birds, I have no special intention in doing this. This is winter on the mountain, and food is scarce. I have enough food with me, and I just want to share it with you. Please be at peace and come down. I only ask that as you eat, I can sit among you. I want to listen to your songs and watch you playing. Come. Let us be friends…” But the birds would not come. They did not understand me. I had to give up. Later I had a certain realization within. I began to preach to myself. I said, “This body of mine is too big. If I could shrink from five feet eleven inches to the size of a bird, and even change myself into a bird, they would not be alarmed by my presence. I could then tell them my heart’s intention, and we could spend the winter on the mountain Lu-shan together.”We have a similar problem today. If God remained God, we could never understand Him. If He talked to us in His language, we would be altogether lost. If God wants to reveal Himself through speaking and have fellowship with man, He must shrink Himself to such a degree that He and we are the same. Only then would He be able to speak to us and tell us of Himself and of the mysteries of the universe. Only then would we be able to understand Him. Has God become a man to reveal Himself through His speaking? Let us again use the method of supposition. What if God revealed Himself through the human language? What if He became a man and fellowshipped with man? The implication is tremendous here! It would mean that in this world, among all the human beings throughout history, one person was not merely a man, but God as well! If it is granted that God became a man, there must be a mortal who was also divine. We need to find out about this One. This is a thorny task. But we will employ the effective method we have adopted—namely, setting down a few principles. Then we will search according to these qualifications and directions. We want to base our evaluation on what manner of life a person should possess and what qualifications he must have if he is God.
    The first condition that this person must fulfill is that he must claim to be God while he is on earth. He cannot be apologetic about it. He must declare boldly that he is God. Only then can we know who he is. Without this declaration, we have no way to guess his identity. Hence, a declaration is our first qualification.
    Second, the way this person came into the world must be different from ours. If I said that I am God and yet was born in the same manner as every other mortal, my words would carry no force. If on the other hand, I dropped down from heaven; my assertion would be taken seriously. The way this person comes into being must be extraordinary. He must come in an absolutely different fashion; otherwise, his words will not carry the necessary weight. Third, this man must bear a moral standard that is far above that of all other human beings. He must have God’s holiness, and his life must bear the mark of God’s righteousness. For example, if I became a bird and lived in exactly the same way as other birds, without showing them anything extraordinary, I could not convince them that I was actually a man. If God is to become a man, His moral behavior must be of the highest quality. This is the only way that we could identify Him as God. Furthermore, if a person is God, he must necessarily be able to perform things which no mortal can do. If he can achieve what we cannot achieve and know what we do not know, we can say that he is truly God. Lastly, this person must be able to tell us the divine purpose concerning man. What was God’s purpose in creating the universe and man? How does He take care of human pains and sorrows? What is the origin and ultimate solution of everything in the universe? What should our attitude towards God be? All these he must reveal to us. Unless this one shows us what we do not see, we cannot say that he has shown us any revelation. We will set down these five conditions and put the whole of humanity to the test. Let us find out if someone meets the five requirements. Such a person would surely be qualified to be God. The first person to put to the test should be yourself. Of course, you are not God, because you have never claimed to be God. Nor have I ever claimed to be. So that rules out you and me. Very well, now we will introduce Confucius. If you read his books, you will find that he did conduct a very moral and proper life. But he never claimed to be God either. Hence, he fails in the first step. What about Sakya Muni, the founder of Buddhism? Not only was there an absence of the claim of divinity, but his philosophy itself is void of deity. He did not believe in the existence of God. Since he had no God, he cannot be God either. Next, go to Mohammed. He believed in God. But he never claimed to be God. He called God Allah and himself the prophet of Allah. If you go through every person in history, you will discover that no one ever claimed to be God except One. That One was Jesus of Nazareth. He claimed to be the living God. No other person put forward such a claim. How can Jesus of Nazareth claim to be God? Before going on, we have to pause for a moment to seriously consider the matter. It is not a light thing to claim to be God. A person who makes such a claim falls into one of three categories. He must belong to one of these three categories; he cannot belong to all three. First, if he claims to be God and yet in fact is not, he has to be a madman or a lunatic. Second, if he is neither God nor a lunatic, he has to be a liar, deceiving others by his lie. Third, if he is neither of these, he must be God. You can only choose one of the three possibilities. If you do not believe that he is God, you have to consider him a madman. If you cannot take him for either of the two, you have to take him for a liar. There is no need for us to prove if Jesus of Nazareth is God or not. All we have to do is find out if He is a lunatic or a liar. If He is neither, He must be the Son of God. These are our three choices. There is no fourth. What did Jesus of Nazareth say about Himself? In John 10:30 He said, “I and the Father are one.” We need some explanation here. In the Bible the invisible God is called the Father. The Son manifests and expresses the Father. What is hidden is the Father, and what is expressed is the Son. The Son is the One who can be seen and touched. Behind, you have the Father. In front, you have the Son. The two are actually one. They are the two sides of the same reality. When we talk about two, we refer to the fact that one is hidden while the other is revealed. When we talk about one, we say that the revealed One is just the hidden One in manifestation. This is the biblical interpretation of the Father and the Son. Therefore, when Jesus of Nazareth one day said, “I and the Father are one,” it was a statement that no one else could make. This man was saying in reality that He and the invisible God are one entity. He is God and God is He. God is the invisible Father, and He is the manifested Son. The Father and the Son are one! Who can this One be that made such a claim? Is He a madman? Is He out to deceive us? After Jesus spoke such a word, what reaction do we see? “The Jews again took up stones that they might stone Him. Jesus answered them, I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of these works are you stoning me? The Jews answered Him, We are not stoning You for a good work, but for blasphemy, and because you, being a man, are making Yourself God” (vv. 31-33). The Jews understood very well that Jesus’ words meant that He claimed to be God. After hearing these words they wanted to stone Him to death. A claim was made by Jesus, and an accusation was charged by the Jews, both of which concerned His divinity. Was Jesus insane? Did He speak pure nonsense just to cause people to kill Him? Or was He a swindler setting up some kind of a scheme? If so, what was He trying to gain? Was He trying to gain death? Perhaps we will go back a little bit to the earlier parts in the Gospel of John and see what it says there. John 1:18 says, “No one has ever seen God; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.” Why has no one seen God? It is because God is invisible. Jesus said that He was the only Begotten of the Father; He expressed the invisible Father. When you see the only Begotten, you see the Father. Again He spoke concerning Himself, “And no one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended out of heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven” (3:13). Have you ever heard anyone say such words? I cannot say, “No one has been to Shanghai, but he who comes from Shanghai to Tientsin, even I, Watchman Nee, who is in Shanghai.” If I say so, I would be gibbering nonsense. But Jesus was speaking a heavenly language. He said that He came out of heaven and is still in heaven. What can a person be if he can be in two places simultaneously? Either he is God or he is a lunatic or he is a liar. If you have not yet believed in Christ, please give a verdict to this issue. Who is this man? Let us read John 3:31-32: “He who comes from above is above all; he who is from the earth is of the earth and speaks out of the earth. He who comes from heaven is above all. What He has seen and heard, of this He testifies, and no one receives His testimony.” He said that He came out of heaven and was above all. After a while He said the same thing again. Let us see what the purpose behind these words is. He came to preach the things of heaven, but no one received His words. He mentioned words like “heaven,” “above all,” “out of heaven,” etc. What kind of man was He? Confucius never said this. Neither did Sakya Muni or Mohammed. Was Jesus of Nazareth a madman, a liar, or the Son of God? John 5:17 says, “But Jesus answered them, My Father is working until now, and I also am working.” He always put Himself in the same place as the Father. Verse 18 says, “Because of this therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill Him, because He not only broke the Sabbath but also called God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.” When we read His words now, we may consider them to be ordinary remarks. But the Jews knew what He was saying. They knew that He was making Himself equal with God. The words in fact meant that God is His Father and He came to express God. The invisible One is God, and the visible One is He. Therefore, the Jews sought to kill Him. What should we do about such an unusual person? John 6:46 says, “Not that anyone has seen the Father, except Him who is from God, He has seen the Father.” Here the word is clearer. He said that no one other than Himself has ever seen God. Only He knew what the Father is like. I can only say with soberness and reverence that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God. Read John 8:18. What did He say? “I am one who testifies concerning me, and the Father who sent me testifies concerning me.” The question in verse 19 is most interesting: “They said then to Him, Where is Your Father? Jesus answered, You know neither Me nor My Father; if you knew Me, you would know My Father also.” Have you seen what He was saying? They had seen Him, yet did not know Him. Of course they would not know the Father either, whom they had not seen. If men knew Him, they knew God. Who is He then? If knowing Him equals knowing God, is that not the same as saying that He is God and God is He? Read John 8:23: “And He said to them, You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world.” The preposition “from” in this verse is ek in Greek. It means “out of.” That is how it should be translated. He said, “You are out of this world, but I am not out of this world.” This man claimed to be from above; He did not come out of this world. Who can He be? The Jews were confused. They were totally bewildered. Who was this man? The ancestor of the Jews is Abraham. They boasted of being the descendants of Abraham in the same way the Chinese boast of being the offspring of Hwang-ti. The name Abraham was highly venerated among the Jews. Now they brought out Abraham. Please read John 8:53: “Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? The prophets died too. Who are you making yourself? How did Jesus answer them? Was He greater or smaller than Abraham? In verse 56 Jesus said, “Your father Abraham exulted that he would see my day, and he saw it and rejoiced.” What is this? Even Abraham had to look forward to Jesus! Hence, verse 57: “The Jews then said to Him, You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” Now please pay your attention to Jesus’ answer in verse 58: “Truly, truly, I say to you, Before Abraham came into being, I am.” Tell me who this man is. If I told you that before Hwang-ti was, I, Watchman Nee am there, you would immediately write me off as a lunatic. Some of you would say that I am a liar. The words Jesus spoke made Him a madman, a liar, or God. There can be no fourth alternative. We have to read on. In John 10:37-38 Jesus said, “If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; but if I do them, even if you do not believe Me, believe the works so that you may come to know and continue to know…” Know what? The clause following is very crucial. It is a big statement: “…that the Father is in Me and I am in the Father.” Who then is this man? He said that He was in God and God was in Him. Passages like the above are numerous in the Bible. I shall mention one more. Read carefully John 14:6-7: “Jesus said to him, I am the way and the reality and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me. If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and henceforth you know Him and have seen Him.” It says clearly that if you know Jesus of Nazareth, you have known the invisible God. Why is this so? It is because He is God. One of the disciples was confused. John 14:8 says, “Philip said to Him, Lord, show us the Father and it is sufficient for us.” Philip was asking to be shown the Father who had been mentioned again and again by Jesus. Verse 9 says, “Jesus said to him, have I been so long a time with you, and you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father; how is it that you say, Show us the Father?” Here Jesus made it very plain that to see Him is to see God. He made no apology about it. He is God. There is no need to see the Father anymore. If you see Him, you see God! Who is Jesus of Nazareth? What would you say? Is He merely the founder of the Christian religion? Is He merely an example of self-sacrifice and humanitarianism? Is He a social reformer? Is He an advocate for universal love, peace, and freedom? Listen to what He said about Himself. He said that He is God. What is your conclusion? Is He a lunatic or a liar? Is He a hoax, or is He God? This is a vital question. Can He be a madman? If you read His biographies in the Gospels and observe His life and manner, you will realize that not only was He sane and sound, He was very sober and firm. If there is a perfectly sound person in this world, He has to be the One. His mind was clear, and His mentality was alert. If you study His deeds and words carefully, you have to confess that His thoughts are very logical and consistent, and His manners are most comely and appropriate. To opposing ones He only needed to reply a few sentences, and their arguments against Him were defeated. He did not have a trace of madness in Him. A madman could never have done what He did. Then is He a liar? A liar always lies for a profit. If there is no profit to be gained, what is the purpose of lying? Why was Jesus crucified? For no other reason than that He claimed to be God. At the last judgment, the hour when His release or crucifixion was to be deliberated, He was examined as to who He was. What was His answer? He said that the Son of Man would be seen sitting on the right hand of the Majesty on high, descending on the clouds in glory (Matt. 26:64). Even then He claimed to be God. As a result, He was crucified on the cross. Is there a liar who would sacrifice his life for his lie? Once I met a person who wanted to talk with me about our faith. He read some books about Jesus and admitted that Jesus had a high standard of morality. He could consider Jesus as a perfect man, a model for humanity. But he could not believe that Jesus is God. I said, “If you admit that He has a high standard of morality, then He at least is not a liar. If you agree that He is not a liar, then you have to accept His claim of divinity as truth. He repeatedly asserted that He is God. If you admire His morality, you have to recognize His divinity as well. Jesus of Nazareth is God!”Please read John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Verse 14 says, “And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us (and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only Begotten from the Father), full of grace and reality.” What is the “Word” mentioned in verses 1 and 14? Verse 1 speaks of the relationship the Word has with God.
    In reference to when, the Word was there from the beginning.
    In reference to where, the Word was with God. In reference to what, the Word was God. Today the Word has become flesh; He has taken on a human body and dwelt among men. As to how He dwells, it says that He is “full of grace and reality,” and “we beheld His glory, glory as of the only Begotten from the Father.” Who is this One? He is Jesus of Nazareth. Here we have only seen one of the five qualifications mentioned earlier. Only Jesus of Nazareth meets this first condition. This proves that He is God. We shall go on to see the four other conditions or qualifications. Jesus of Nazareth must meet all the other four qualifications before we can conclude that He is God.
    EXAMINE THE CLAIMS
    If God is to be a man, He must come into the world in a way that is very different from all other mortals. We come into the world through our parents and are conceived by our mothers. To ascertain whether Jesus of Nazareth is an ordinary person or the incarnated God, we need to examine His birth. If His birth was no different from ours, we have to conclude that He is nothing but a man. Not only does He have to pass the first qualification, but He needs to pass the second one. Do not hastily believe in a person simply because he claims to be God; we have to test him by our second criterion. If he is indeed God, he must be born in an extraordinary manner. If we study the birth of Jesus, we will find that it was very different from ours. He was born of a virgin. Both the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke in the New Testament tell us this fact. Jesus was born of a virgin, Mary. Before we go on, we have to realize that there are two ways to know God: by natural speculation or by revelation. According to natural speculation, one meditates and conjectures about God. In revelation, God speaks to man. We want to look at the revelation of God. We want to know what God says. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke show us that Jesus was born of a virgin, Mary. This important fact enables us to conclude that He is no ordinary person, and it justifies our being a Christian. The natural mentality cannot readily accept this fact. Some years ago, a big debate was conducted in England. On one side were prominent leaders of modernistic schools of theology. On the other side was a famous Presbyterian pastor-theologian. Four major topics were raised. Twice a day, for four consecutive days, each side took turns delivering a long speech for a total of eight messages. One of the topics was related to our subject—the virgin birth. The modernistic theologians asserted that one reason alone was enough to disprove the virgin birth—the event was biologically impossible. According to the law of biology, it is impossible to have the virgin birth. On the same day, their opponent gave the rebuttal. Let me briefly mention a few of his arguments. He said, “Our friends have denied the possibility of such an event on the ground of biological law. I am here to ask whether such an event happened. They asked, ‘Can this happen?’ They referred you to academic principles. I am asking, ‘Has this happened?’ I point to a historical occurrence. It is one thing to be academically justified. It is another thing to be historically recorded.”As he was speaking, he drew out a newspaper from his pocket. In the paper was an article about an accident that had happened a few days earlier. A man was driving on a winding mountain road. Due to carelessness, the car slid and tumbled down a deep gorge. The car was totally wrecked. Not even a square foot of the vehicle was left untouched. It was thoroughly damaged. But the man on the ground was absolutely unhurt. Later, he rose up and walked away. The theologian read the passage aloud and said, “This car tumbled down a thousand feet into ruin. You cannot even find a square foot of whole metal, and yet the man was unharmed. My friends would ask, ‘Could this man live?’ But my question is, ‘Is this man alive?’ He is alive! If you consider the possibility, there is none. But if you consider the fact, there it is!”What we have is a historical fact. If we try to study the virgin birth from a scientific point of view, we may conclude that this is an impossible event. But my question is whether or not such an event occurred. The Gospel of Matthew says that Jesus was born of a virgin. So does the Gospel of Luke. At least you have to say that these records have said such a thing and that such an event was recorded in history. At least you have to believe that there is a historical event. I am not asserting that Matthew and Luke were inspired by the Holy Spirit when they wrote their books. Whether these books were divinely inspired or not, we will set aside for a moment. We are saying that there were a few people who followed Jesus. They wrote His biography. Both Matthew and Luke were contemporaries of Jesus. Matthew followed Him for more than three years. Luke was not as close, but he “carefully investigated all things” (Luke 1:3). I believe that when he wrote his gospel, the mother of Jesus was still alive. What did they say about the birth of Jesus? They all testified that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary. His birth was absolutely different from ours. Today, after almost two thousand years, some who never saw Jesus, never talked to Mary His mother, and never met Joseph His father; conclude that He was not born of a virgin. How can you say that He was not born in this manner? Are you ruling out the possibility of such an event and concluding that it did not happen because of some arguments you proposed in your study room or some theories you fashioned in the laboratory? Perhaps we should read the genealogy of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew. There are forty-two generations in the genealogy. Beginning from the first generation, it repeatedly says, “So-and-so begot So-and-so.” This phrase is used through verse 15, which says, “And Eliud begot Eleazar, and Eleazar begot Matthan, and Matthan begot Jacob.” Verse 16 continues, “And Jacob begot Joseph.” The surprising thing is that the next part of the sentence does not continue with “Joseph begot Jesus.” Rather, it says, “Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.” When the line reaches Joseph, the pattern is dropped. This is because Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary. His way of birth was very different from ours. We have seen that His method of coming into the world was an unusual one. Now we want to look at His way of departing from the world. As we shall see, this was also contrary to our ordinary deaths. No one can ever predict the place, time, and manner he or she is going to die. A hundred years from now, all of us here will be dead. But no one knows how we are going to die. Jesus of Nazareth, however, foresaw His own death. He knew exactly when, where, and how it was to happen. Once when someone told Him that He was going to be killed, He answered that it was not acceptable for a prophet to perish outside of Jerusalem (Luke 13:33). He knew that He was going to die in Jerusalem. One day, He told His disciples that the hour had come. Not only did He sense the imminence of His death; He told others that His death hour had come. He knew also how He would die. A number of times He mentioned that He would be crucified. This was recorded at least three times in Matthew. Not only was this man different in His way of entering into the world, but His manner of departure was no less extraordinary. Both His birth and His death were very unusual. Is this the Son of God? Let us consider the third qualification. What kind of morality did Jesus of Nazareth have? Was He the same as we are? Did He ever sin? I like the sentence Jesus spoke in John 8. Many were opposing Him at that time. They surrounded and cross-examined Him. In return He asked, “Which of you convicts Me of sin?” (v. 46). This was a tremendous challenge! Which one of us would dare to stand before everyone and challenge to be convicted of sin? Whoever dared do such a thing would be put to shame the minute his wife stood up to testify against him. Perhaps, in less than five minutes, seven or eight people would immediately rise up to expose his lies and unfaithfulness. But when Jesus made such a statement, no one was able to convict Him of sin. There has been a countless number of saints and sages throughout the ages, but none was bold enough to claim to be perfect and sinless. Why is it that Jesus alone dared to make such a claim? All I can say is that this man is either arrogant to the extreme or holy to the uttermost. A proud person may talk in an outlandish manner because he does not know himself; he has no realization of what kind of person he is. But when Jesus challenged, “Which of you convicts Me,” there was no way He could be humble or polite about it. He is without sin, and He is holy to the uttermost. Jesus of Nazareth is not like Confucius, who said that given some more time, he would be rid of big, moral flaws. Jesus is sinless. When He made such a statement, He made it before His enemies. If there had been a slight misconduct on His part, the Jews would have caught it right away. The Jews are not prolific writers; they have not produced many books other than the Holy Scripture. But after Jesus, many books were written by the Jews to contradict Him. All these books deny His divinity, but none touch His morality. Of all the opposing writings, none can prove that Jesus ever sinned. Every philosopher or founder of religion, at one time or another, has said, “I repent,” or “I regret such and such a matter. I will do better from now on.” But Jesus of Nazareth never repented. A sinner must of necessity repent. But what does a sinless man have to repent of? Jesus never apologized to anyone; He never did anyone any wrong. When I was in England, some British friends asked for my opinion concerning their people. I said, “Among you, once ever so often, I hear, ‘Excuse me’ and ‘I beg your pardon.’” To the English, anyone who does not know how to make these two remarks has to be an extremely base person, for he knows not his own mistakes. Anyone can make a mistake, but when one refuses to admit his mistakes, he makes himself vulgar. For this reason we have to say, “Excuse me” and “I beg your pardon” all the time. The amazing thing is that Jesus of Nazareth never said “sorry” to anyone. He never apologized. Could He be so evil as to ignore His conscience completely? Was He oblivious to His own errors? Or is He really sinless? If so, He cannot say, “sorry.” It is not a matter of humility or politeness to Him, but a matter of maintaining His standing. I love the story about Jesus once walking down a road. Many people were gathered around Him, hoping to see the resurrection of a dead person. It was so crowded that the people pressed upon each other. One woman, who suffered from an issue of blood for years, thought that Jesus would surely be able to heal her since He had performed all kinds of miracles. She did not come to the Lord directly. All that she did was touch the fringe of His garment, and the sickness was immediately healed (Mark 5:25-29).Jesus felt something, turned around, and asked, “Who touched Me?” How did the disciples respond? They said, “You see the crowd pressing upon You and You say, Who touched Me?” (v. 31). He should have asked, “Who pressed Me?” instead of “Who touched Me?” If I were Jesus, I would have said in a gentlemanly fashion, “Excuse me.” But Jesus did not need to say that. When He said that it was a touch, He meant that it was a touch and not a pressing against. The disciples only knew that many thronged around Him. But He knew that someone “touched” Him. He knew what He was doing. There was no need for apology. He knows no sin because He is without sin. Let me mention another story about Jesus. One day He came to the synagogue in His hometown. Someone handed Him the Scripture, and He started to read from a passage about Himself. The people there, however, despised Him. He remarked that a prophet is always despised in His own place. For this reason, God would not choose them but would rather go to someone else. After they heard this, they were very indignant. They carried Him outside and tried to throw Him down a cliff. I like very much what Jesus did then. He passed through their midst (Luke 4:16-30). If someone tried to push us over a cliff, we would struggle to escape. But He was no ordinary person. He simply passed through the persecutors’ midst. They could do nothing except let Him pass by! He is without sin. Again, you see the same Jesus preaching to a ruler at midnight in a house (John 3:2), while choosing to converse with a woman beside a well at midday (4:5-7). Everything He did was very proper. No one can say anything against Him. You cannot find fault in Him. Another time some opposers came to tempt Him. They asked whether or not it was lawful to pay tax to Caesar. The Jewish nation, as you know, no longer existed then, and Caesar of Rome was their king. If Jesus said “no” to the question, He would have been involved in a political issue, and the opposers would have had an excuse to condemn Him. If He said “yes,” all the Jews would have counted Him as siding with the Romans and hated Him. The result, of course, would have favored the opposers. This was a question that could not be answered “yes” or “no.”How did Jesus reply? He said, “Show Me the coin for the tribute” (Matt. 22:19). He was wise. He even had the opposing ones draw out the money from their own pockets. Then He asked, “Whose is this image and inscription?” (v. 20). They had to admit that it was Caesar’s. Jesus gave an excellent reply: “Render then the things that are Caesar’s to Caesar and the things that are God’s to God” (v. 21). With that He dismissed the whole case. This is where His majesty lies. He never made a mistake. You cannot get a case out of Him. I cannot enumerate all His deeds. Everything He did bears such a mark of nobility that there is absolutely no flaw in His behavior. I will briefly mention His betrayal as a final example. It was very late in the night, and men armed with torches, spears, and swords came to arrest this empty-handed Jesus. He asked them, “Whom do you seek?” They said, “Jesus the Nazarene” (John 18:7). He replied, “I told you that I am” (v. 8). At that very word, the band of rogues whose minds were set on capturing Him fell back to the ground. If Jesus had not voluntarily given Himself over to them, they would never have been able to seize Him. Such calmness and majesty can only be seen in Him! As to the traitor, Jesus knew from the first day of his intention. Yet He allowed the same to follow Him and even let him be the keeper of the money. All the time Jesus knew that money was being stolen by him. Who can demonstrate such forbearance and uprightness? Here is a man who is absolutely different from all others. In every respect, He has been proven to be the Son of God. The fourth qualification we mentioned is that one who claims to be God incarnated must be able to perform what an ordinary person cannot. Has Jesus of Nazareth performed any supernatural acts? We are not His contemporaries; it was almost two thousand years ago that He walked on earth. Naturally, we cannot be His witnesses. But one thing is sure: the apostles who followed Jesus recorded, preached, and testified the things concerning Him. The four Gospels were all completed within thirty years after His departure. Most of the Jews who were then alive had seen Jesus. If the apostles’ records were false, they would have been repudiated long ago. However, the Jews only argued that Jesus is not the Son of God. They never denied His deeds, for the deeds were all facts. Today, when we read the four Gospels, we have no apprehension about their authenticity. If there had been a slight error when they were written, there would have been grave problems because many of the contemporaries had actually seen and heard Jesus. There was no chance for any fabrication. Hence, these books cannot be a hoax. If the Jews could not attack these books, there is even less of a basis for an attack today. Let us examine some of the deeds of Jesus of Nazareth. Matthew 11:2 and 3 say, “Now when John heard in the prison of the works of the Christ, he sent word through his disciples and said to Him, Are You the Coming One, or should we expect another?” John wanted to make sure that Jesus was the Christ sent from God. If He was not, John would wait for another. Verses 4 and 5 say, “And Jesus answered and said to them, Go, report to John the things that you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; and the dead are raised and the poor have the gospel announced to them.” Jesus answered neither “yes” nor “no.” He only asked the messenger to tell John of the things heard and seen. He wanted John to think about them and decide for himself if Jesus was the Christ. Jesus proved His divinity by the miracles He performed. Here is a man who accomplished things that are impossible for human beings. You cannot help but confess that He is God. John 7:31 says, “But many out of the crowd believed into Him and said, Will the Christ, when He comes, do more signs than this man has done?” Many people testified that He performed all kinds of miracles which no man could do. John 10:24 says, “The Jews therefore surrounded Him and said to Him, How long will you hold our soul in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” On the one hand, the Jews hardened their hearts and refused to acknowledge His divinity, and on the other hand, they were puzzled by the many supernatural miracles that He performed. They gathered around Him and pressed for an answer. There is one thing in which Jesus never gave in: His claim to divinity. He performed what mortals could not. These acts testify to His divinity. He told the people clearly, “The works which I do in My Father’s name, these testify concerning Me” (v. 25). On the one hand, He made His claim, and on the other hand, He performed miracles to justify His claim. In John 14:11 He said to His disciples, “Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” This is the same as saying that He is the invisible Father. “But if not, believe because of the works themselves.” If He had not done anything impossible, this word would have had no value at all. If He had not performed any extraordinary acts, they would have asked back, “What works have you done? We do not know what you are talking about.” But the disciples knew of the acts He did. All these acts prove that He is the Son of God. We have to check Jesus of Nazareth against a fifth qualification. If He is God, He has to show us what He is. Is He kind, or is He severe? Is He gentle, or is He fierce? What kind of a God do we have? As a matter of fact, Jesus did show us what God is. This is a most wonderful thing. The eternal, invisible God is now seen by us. There is no need to conjure up an untouchable and far transcendent God or imagine what He is like; He has revealed Himself to us. He has dwelt in our midst and walked among us. Jesus of Nazareth is the very God dwelling among and with man. He has manifested God’s nature and attributes to us. There is no need to search for God anymore because He has revealed Himself. Our mentality is too limited. Our hands are too short, and our viewpoint too narrow. If we were left to ourselves to study and search for God, we could only conclude that He is the unknown One. Now we know that God desires to reveal Himself. In fact, He has revealed Himself to us already. We have said that the two means whereby God communicates with us are the written and spoken language. For this reason, the Bible and Jesus of Nazareth are the two indispensable factors in our faith. When you take away either one, God becomes the gravest problem in the world. Hebrews 1:1 says, “God, having spoken of old in many portions and in many ways to the fathers in the prophets.” These speaking constitute the Bible. “Has at the last of these days spoken to us in the Son” (v. 2). This is Jesus of Nazareth. Whoever is in Christ now may know Him. To have heard the words of Jesus of Nazareth is to have heard the words of God. Dear reader, what is your attitude towards Jesus of Nazareth? Thomas confessed, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28). Peter proclaimed, “You are…the Son of the living God!” (Matt. 16:16). Martha said, “I have believed that You are the Christ, the Son of God” (John 11:27). Even a Roman centurion exclaimed at the sight of Jesus hanging on the cross, “Truly this was the Son of God” (Matt. 27:54b). I hope you will make the same confession
    WHO IS HE?
    Our Christian faith is based upon the revelation
    of God. It is different from all other religions which are attained through meditation, conjecture, and searching. We believe that the Bible is God’s revelation to us. In other words, it is His spoken word to us. We also believe that God has become a man, who is the very Jesus of Nazareth. God, the Bible, and Jesus Christ constitute the basis of our faith. Let us begin by looking at the position that Christ occupies in our faith, or we may say, in Christianity. However, Christianity has been altered and is not what it ought to be. At the present we will not mention what Christianity ought to be. Rather, we will only draw a comparison between Christianity and other religions in order to see the distinctiveness of our faith. We will not try purposely to exalt Christianity and debase other religions. We will only draw an objective comparison between them. First, let us consider Confucianism. Actually, followers of Confucius never formally assert that theirs is a religion. Confucianism merely exercises great influence on Chinese culture, education, ethics, and philosophy. One thing, however, is certain: the teachings and doctrines of Confucius are of foremost importance, while the person Confucius is not as crucial. I do not mean that Confucianism has no concern for Confucius. The man indeed was an extraordinary person. However, in order to be a part of Confucianism, one only need to understand the doctrines of Confucius, abide by his teachings, and be thoroughly acquainted with his books. It does not matter whether one understands the man Confucius or not. The principles, doctrines, and teachings of Confucius are the essence of the religion. Next let us consider Buddhism. The founder of Buddhism was Sakya Muni. Once he preached to his disciples about evil persons being reincarnated through the Wheel of Rebirth after death. This is something that attracts man’s attention. But in all of Buddhism, the point of emphasis is doctrines and theories. Concerning the man Sakya Muni, although he has a history and biography, they are something parenthetical. They do not form the crux of Buddhism. The center of the religion is not the man Sakya Muni. Whether there was such a person is unimportant to today’s Buddhism. All that is needed are the doctrines and teachings. Other religions such as Taoism and Mohammedanism are all of the same principle. After each founder set up a religion and left his

20. Tim said,

    January 6, 2009 at 6:29 am

    Tomjunlee, kumarei, Richard,

    first off, the bible clearly states not to argue with a non-believer,

    “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know [them], because they are spiritually discerned.”

    it’s a spirit thing. if you never make the commitment to God, the bible will never make sense.
    it’s all about Faith.
    “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the Evidence of things not seen.”

    Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide [is] the gate, and broad [is] the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
    Because strait [is] the gate, and narrow [is] the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

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