I have been listening to a few podcasts over the last few months. Some from the American Pastor Billy Graham, some from Jordan Peterson making guest appearances on Joe Rogan and Professor John Lennox also with guest appearances on a number of shows.
John Lennox is a Professor Emeritus in Mathematics at the University of Oxford but has also come to fame for his defence of his faith in Jesus and debates for God with Richard Dawkins.
John recently did a debate in the Oxford Union (video attached) about the existence of God. John speaks for 15 minutes regarding the issue and looks at it from a number of angels, moral, scientific, evidential and also personal.
The states that he believes in God not because of blind faith, but because of evidence. This was new too me because I had only ever felt accustomed that people believed in God but it was said that you had to believe in God. And for that reason, plus societal changes that more people weren’t believing in him… I didn’t!
But John stated in his speech that there is hard evidence for the existence of God and it comes in the person of Jesus Christ. He, his actions and who he said he was, his death and his resurrection.
For a person who very early doors on the faith journey in terms of knowledge. It has got me asking four questions:
Was there a guy called Jesus alive precisely 2023 years ago?
Did he do what he said he did?
Did he die?
Did he come back to life?
Lets look at Number 1
Now its pretty unanimous that approximately just over 2000 years ago there was a guy called Jesus living in the middle east. There is more evidence about Jesus being born in a place called Bethlehem and being raised in a town called Nazareths alone than the life of the Roman Emperor Julius Cesar. This I can safely say FACT. There was a guy called Jesus.
Lets break this down slightly more however because there is some more questions behind this to come out of these facts to answer…
Was he born of a Virgin named Mary?
I’m using the bible for the passage as I have just started reading it… Matthew 1:18-25
Now the cynic inside of me looks at this passage and thinks… honestly… they had sex before marriage. And due to her getting pregnant Joseph thought that it would be frowned upon by the locals, he couldn’t face the shame of it. However, he decided to stay with Mary as he was also equally responsible for this and the pair of them decided that they would say it is the Messiah coming back as they knew the Jewish law well having been brought up in it. They wouldn’t tell anybody “THE TRUTH” and would raise the child as THE MESSIAH. This would bring fame and fortune as they were disillusioned with Jewish tradition and secretly wanted change. This is the change that they knew would help others.
I have no idea if this is blasphemous or not… I don’t know and don’t care. I know internally where I stand on this issue.
The faith/non cynical side of me is much more simple and I believe it because it sounds much more complicated this reasoning above and would millions before me all believe potentially a lie? Potentially just a normal dude?
If Mary & Joseph didn’t have sex before marriage and was born a virgin. Jesus is the real deal! If not, its all a hoax. What do you think happened?
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