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APOLOGETICS |
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Is Christianity
Alone Fully True and Is Jesus Christ Really the Only Way --- Part 8
By Dr. John
Ankerberg and Dr. John Weldon |
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Among many possible converging lines of evidence for
Christianity we have selected two. We feel these will command the
attention of any open-minded person. First, the existence of
supernatural prophecy in the Bible cannot be denied except on the
basis of philosophical (anti-supernatural) bias. For example, the
internal and external evidence clearly supports a pre-neo-Babylonian
composition for the book of Isaiah and a neo-Babylonian composition
for the book of Daniel. 1
Yet Isaiah predicts and describes what King Cyrus will do (by name)
over 100 years before he even lived (Isa. 44:28-45:6).
Isaiah described the specific nature and death of
the Jewish Messiah 700 years in advance (Isa. 9:6; 53:1-12); and the
Babylonian captivity of Judah 100 years in advance (Isa. 39:5-7).
Indeed, the Assyrian-Babylonian captivities are hinted at as early as
1400 BC in Deuteronomy 28:64-66. Similarly, in 530 BC, hundreds of
years in advance, the prophet Daniel (Matt. 24:15) predicts the Medo-Persian,
Greek and Roman empires so clearly that antisupernaturalists are
forced, against all the evidence, to date this book at 165 B.C. and
thus imply it is a forgery (Daniel chs. 2, 7, 11:1-35 in light of
subsequent Persian, Greek and Roman history and the dynasties of the
Egyptians and Syrians). 2
First Kings 13:1-2 predicts King Josiah 300 years before he was born,
and Micah 5:2 predicts the very birthplace of Jesus 700 years before
He was born. How are we to account for such things if the Bible is not
a book inspired by God? Nothing like this is found in other religions.
Second, the historical resurrection of Christ cannot
logically be doubted and if true, based on the teachings of Jesus,
proves Christianity alone is fully true. On the authority of accepted
principles of historic and textual analysis, the New Testament
documents can, as noted, be shown to be reliable and trustworthy. That
is, they give accurate primary source evidence for the life and death
of Jesus Christ. In 2,000 years the New Testament authors have never
been proven unethical or dishonest, or to have been the object of
deception. In the Gospel records, Jesus claimed to be God incarnate
(John 5:18; 10:27-33); He exercises innumerable divine prerogatives,
and fully rests His claims on His numerous and abundantly
testified, historically unparalleled miracles (John 10:37-38) and His
forthcoming physical resurrection from the dead (John 10:17-18). No
one else ever did this.
In each Gospel, Christ’s resurrection is minutely
described, and for 2,000 years it has been incapable of disproof
despite the detailed scholarship of the world’s best skeptics. The
resurrection cannot be rejected a priori on antisupernaturalist
grounds for miracles are impossible only if so defined. The
probability of miracle is determined by the cumulative weight of the
evidence, not philosophical bias.
To illustrate the quality of the evidence for the
resurrection, a public debate of two days duration was held between
Dr. Gary R. Habermas, a Christian scholar, and Antony Flew, a leading
skeptic of the resurrection. These men were the two primary debaters.
Ten independent judges, all of whom served on the faculty of American
universities, were to render a verdict: the first panel of judges was
comprised of five philosophers instructed to evaluate the debate
content and render a verdict concerning the winner. The second
panel of judges was told to evaluate the argumentation
technique of the debaters.
The results on content were four votes in favor of
the Christian argument one vote for a draw. The decision on
argumentation technique was 3 to 2 in favor of the Christian debater.
The overall decision of both panels was 7 to 2 in favor of the
Christian position, with one draw. The judges were often surprised
that the outcome resulted so heavily in favor of the resurrection.
3
Dr. William Lane Craig gives the following anecdote
in The Son Rises:
"There ain’t gonna be no Easter this year," a student friend
remarked to me.
"Why not?" I asked incredulously.
"They found the body."
Despite his irreverent humor, my friend displayed a measure of
insight often not shared by modern [liberal] theologians. His joke
correctly perceived that without the resurrection Christianity is
worthless.
The earliest Christians would certainly have agreed with my
friend. The apostle Paul put it straight and simple: "If Christ was
not raised then neither our preaching nor your faith has any meaning
at all…. If Christ did not rise your faith is futile and your sins
have never been forgiven" (1 Corinthians 15:14,17, Phillips). For
the earliest Christians, Jesus’ resurrection was a historical fact,
every bit as real as His death on the cross. Without the
resurrection, Christianity would have been simply false. Jesus would
have been just another prophet who had met His unfortunate fate at
the hands of the Jews. Faith in Him as Lord, Messiah, or Son of God
would have been stupid. There would be no use in trying to save the
situation by interpreting the resurrection as some sort of symbol.
The cold, hard facts of reality would remain: Jesus was dead and
anything He started died with him.
David C. K. Watson tells the true story of another man who
understood this, with tragic consequences. The man was a retired
clergyman who in his spare time began to study the thought of
certain modern theologians on the resurrection. He read books on the
resurrection and watched television talk shows on the subject. In
his old age, he felt sure that the highly educated professors and
writers knew far more than he did and that they were surely right
when they said Jesus had not literally risen from the dead. He
understood clearly what that meant for him: his whole life and
ministry had been based on a bundle of lies. He committed suicide.
I believe that modern theologians must answer to God for that
man’s death. One cannot make statements on such matters without
accepting part of the responsibility for the consequences. The
average layman probably expects that theologians would be biased in
favor of the resurrection, when in fact exactly the opposite is
often true. It has not been historians who have denied the
historical resurrection of Jesus, but theologians. Why this strange
situation? According to Carl Braaten, theologians who deny the
resurrection have not done so on historical grounds; rather theology
has been derailed by existentialism and historicism, which have a
stranglehold on the formation of theological statements. Hence, the
statements of many theologians concerning the resurrection of Jesus
actually are not based on fact, but are determined by philosophical
assumptions. That makes statements that deny that Jesus’
resurrection was a historical fact all the more irresponsible, for
their conclusion has not been determined by the facts, which support
the historicity of the resurrection, but by assumptions.
The point is that the Christian faith stands or falls with the
resurrection of Jesus. It is no use saying, as some theologians do,
"We believe in the risen Christ, not in the empty tomb!"… If Jesus
did not rise from the dead, then He was a tragedy and a failure, and
no amount of theologizing or symbolizing could change the
situation." 4
Dr. Craig concludes with the following comments:
1. The resurrection of Jesus was an act of God…. Anyone who
denies this explanation is rationally obligated to produce a more
plausible cause of Jesus’ resurrection and to explain how it
happened…
2. The resurrection of Jesus confirms His personal claims…
3. The resurrection of Jesus shows that He holds the key to
eternal life." 5
If Jesus rose from the dead, something no one else
has done, this strongly infers His claims to be God-incarnate are
valid. If so, Jesus is an infallible authority. Yet it was Jesus
Himself who taught He was the only way to God (John 14:6). If no one
else in history ever rose from the dead, on what logical basis
can the claims of Jesus be doubted?
Edward John Carnell once commented that, "The
incongruity between man’s desire for life and the reality of physical
death is the most maddening problem of all. Although he sees the
handwriting on the wall, man yet refuses to think that death is his
final destiny…. Man wills to live forever; the urge is written deep in
his nature." 6
Dr. Francis Beckwith observes:
Death is man’s most obvious enemy. Therefore is it not reasonable
to assume that if the world’s religions, which offer the human race
countless abstract utopias in the afterlife, cannot deal with man’s
ultimate dilemma in this mortal realm, they are indeed unworthy to
be considered alternatives to the awful truth that [in the words of
Albert Camus] "the world itself…is but a vast irrational"?
In other words, a religion that is true would be one that defeats
death, man’s most detestable foe. Of all the religious leaders
previously discussed, only one, Jesus of Nazareth, has conquered the
Grim Reaper. Though we will all inevitably die, the fact that Jesus
defeated death gives us assurance that His pronouncements on the
nature of God, His own Deity, salvation, the afterlife, judgment,
sin and righteousness are to be taken most seriously. 7
Certainly, death puts us all in our place. Yet
because God has also "set eternity in [our] heart" (Ecc. 3:11), all
men hope to live forever and the thought of death is only rarely
considered. As J. C. Ryle noted, "Death is a great fact that all
acknowledge, but very few seem to realize"; while Ugo Betti wrote in
Struggle Till Dawn (Vol. 2, 1949), "Every tiny part of us cries
out against the idea of dying and hopes to live forever." Biblically,
of course, all men will live forever; the only question is where they
will live.
Our conclusion is that both the miraculous nature of
the Bible itself, which speaks for its divine inspiration, Christ’s
own resurrection and His infallible pronouncements as God incarnate
concerning the true way of salvation are more than sufficient reason
to accept the Christian view.
Notes:
1 Bruce K. Waltke, "The Date of the Book of Daniel," in Roy B.
Zuck (gen. ed.), Vital Apologetic Issues: Examining Reason and
Revelation in Biblical Perspective (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel,
1995), pp. 194-203; for Daniel and Isaiah see Gleason L. Archer,
Jr., A Survey of Old Testament Introduction (Chicago:
Moody Press, Rev. 1974).
2 See the commentaries on Daniel by John F. Walvoord, Charles Lee
Feinberg and H. C. Leupold.
3 The details are given in Terry L. Miethe, ed., Did Jesus
Rise From the Dead? The Resurrection Debate (Harper & Row 1987).
4 William Lane Craig, The Son Rises (Chicago: Moody Press,
1981), pp. 135-36.
5 Ibid., p. 136.
6 In Francis Beckwith, Baha’i (Minn., MN: Bethany 1985),
citing E. J. Carnell, An Introduction to Christian Apologetics,
(Eerdman’s, 1948), pp. 24-25.
7 Ibid., p. 41.
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Apologetics
Authors
Dr.
James Bjornstad
Mrs. Lorri MacGregor
Mr. Marvin Cowan
Dr. John Ankerberg
Dr. John Weldon |
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ANKERBERG SHOW |
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DR. JOHN ANKERBERG'S RESPONSE TO CREATION QUESTIONS
Dr. John Ankerberg answers your
questions on creation in the following article available both as
a downloadable PDF and broken down into individual questions for
online reading. Click the link below to read:
Does Scientific Evidence Today Show
that God Created the Heavens and the Earth? And What Does the Bible Say
About When He Created?
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Copyright 2006, Ankerberg Theological Research Institute
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