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This poll is debased and perverted.

nt

As we face the claims of Christ, there are only four possibilities. He was either a liar, a lunatic, a legend, or the Truth. If we say he is not the Truth, we are automatically affirming one of the other three alternatives, whether we realize it or not. When friends of ours take this position, we should invite them to show us what evidence they have that would lead us to adopt it. Often they realize, for the first time, that there is no evidence to support their views. Rather, all the evidence points in the other direction.

One possibility is that Jesus Christ lied when he said he was God – that he knew he was not God, but deliberately deceived his hearers to lend authority to his teaching. Few, if any, seriously hold this position. Even those who deny his deity affirm that they think Jesus was a great moral teacher. They fail to realize those two statements are a contradiction. Jesus could hardly be a great moral teacher if, on the most crucial point of his teaching, i.e., his identity, he was a deliberate liar.

A kinder, though no less shocking possibility, is that he was sincere but self-deceived. We have a name for a person today who thinks he is God – or a poached egg! That name is lunatic, and it certainly would apply to Christ if he were deceived on this all-important issue.

But as we look at the life of Christ, we see no evidence of the abnormality and imbalance we find in a deranged person. Rather, we find the greatest composure under pressure. At his trial before Pilate, when his very life was at stake, he was calm and serene. As C. S. Lewis put it, "The discrepancy between the depth [and (let me add) shrewdness] of His moral teaching and the rampant megalomenia which must lie behind His theological teaching unless He is indeed God has never been satisfactorily got over."2

The third alternative is that all of the talk about his claiming to be God is a legend -- that what actually happened was that his enthusiastic followers, in the third and fourth centuries, put words into his mouth he would have been shocked to hear. Were he to return he would immediately repudiate them.

The problem with the legend theory is the discoveries of modern archaeology. It has been conclusively shown that the four biographies of Christ were written within the lifetime of contemporaries of Christ. Some time ago Dr. William F. Albright, world-famous archaeologist, now retired from Johns Hopkins University, said that there was no reason to believe that any of the Gospels was written later than A.D. 70. For a mere legend about Christ, in the form of the Gospel, to have gained the circulation and to have had the impact it had, without one shred of basis in fact, is incredible. For this to have happened would be as fantastic as for someone in our own time to write a biography of the late Franklin Delano Roosevelt and in it say he claimed to be God, to forgive people's sins, and to have risen from the dead. Such a story is so wild it would never get off the ground because there are still too many people around who knew Roosevelt! The legend theory does not hold water in the light of the early date of the Gospel manuscripts.

The only other alternative is that Jesus spoke the truth.

From one point of view, however, claims don't mean much.

Talk is cheap. Anyone can make claims. There have been others who have claimed deity. One was Father Divine, of Philadelphia, now deceased. I could claim to be God, and you could claim to be God, but the question all of us must answer is, What credentials do we bring to substantiate our claim? In my case it wouldn't take you five minutes to disprove my claim. It probably wouldn't take too much more to dispose of yours. It certainly wasn't difficult to show that Father Divine was not God. But when it comes to Jesus of Nazareth, it's not so simple. He had the credentials to back up his claim. He said, "Though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father" (John 10:38).

What were his credentials?

First, his character coincided with his claims. We saw earlier that many asylum inmates claim to be various people. But their claims are contradicted by their character. Not so with Christ. We do not compare Christ with others – we contrast him with all others. He is unique – as unique as God.

Jesus Christ was sinless. The caliber of his life was such that he was able to challenge his enemies with the question, "Which of you convicts me of sin?" (John 8:46). He was met by silence, even though he addressed those who would have liked to point out a flaw in his character.

We read of the temptations of Jesus, but we never hear of a confession of sin on his part. He never asks for forgiveness, though he tells his followers to do so.

This lack of any sense of moral failure on Jesus' part is astonishing in view of the fact that it is completely contrary to the experience of the saints and mystics in all ages. The closer men and women draw to God, the more overwhelmed they are with their own failure, corruption, and shortcoming. The closer one is to a shining light, the more he realizes his need of a bath. This is true also, in the moral realm, for ordinary mortals.

Quoted from "Know Why You Believe" by Paul E. Little

This is perverted, talk of this unspeakable behavior between men. Whoever started such a poll is a pervert.

========== In Reply To ========== "It's silly to warn someone about something, when there's no proof of it. Examples of where you should warn someone; well, you should warn your children against drugs, or crossing the road without looking, because there is a proven risk from those things. As for damnation, well, some religions believe in it, and some don't. Not all Christians believe in it! By all means have this belief yourself, but don't go around imposing it on people when you have no scientific proof. There is no scientific proof of any religion."

A prudent man sees evil and hides himself, the naive proceed and pay the penalty.