The Most Unique Man In History

The Most Unique Man In History

Matthew 28:1-15 (NCV)
1 The day after the Sabbath day was the first day of the week. At dawn on the first day, Mary Magdalene and another woman named Mary went to look at the tomb. 2 At that time there was a strong earthquake. An angel of the Lord came down from heaven, went to the tomb, and rolled the stone away from the entrance. Then he sat on the stone. 3 He was shining as bright as lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. 4 The soldiers guarding the tomb shook with fear because of the angel, and they became like dead men. 5 The angel said to the women, “Don’t be afraid. I know that you are looking for Jesus, who has been crucified. 6 He is not here. He has risen from the dead as he said he would. Come and see the place where his body was. 7 And go quickly and tell his followers, ‘Jesus has risen from the dead. He is going into Galilee ahead of you, and you will see him there.’ ” Then the angel said, “Now I have told you.” 8 The women left the tomb quickly. They were afraid, but they were also very happy. They ran to tell Jesus’ followers what had happened. 9 Suddenly, Jesus met them and said, “Greetings.” The women came up to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. 10 Then Jesus said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Go and tell my followers to go on to Galilee, and they will see me there.” 11 While the women went to tell Jesus’ followers, some of the soldiers who had been guarding the tomb went into the city to tell the leading priests everything that had happened. 12 Then the priests met with the older Jewish leaders and made a plan. They paid the soldiers a large amount of money 13 and said to them, “Tell the people that Jesus’ followers came during the night and stole the body while you were asleep. 14 If the governor hears about this, we will satisfy him and save you from trouble.” 15 So the soldiers kept the money and did as they were told. And that story is still spread among the Jewish people even today.

1)     Jesus was born of a virgin- He is unique

Citation: Nicholas D. Kristof, "Believe It, or Not," N.Y. Times (8-15-03)

Americans are three times as likely to believe in the Virgin Birth of Jesus (83 percent) as in evolution (28 percent)….Not only do 91 percent of [American] Christians say they believe in the Virgin Birth, but so do an astonishing 47 percent of U.S. non-Christians.

The miracle of the virgin birth of Jesus Christ has perplexed many people and has actually kept them from accepting the truth of Christianity. However, the Bible declares that God decided that His Son would have a miraculous entrance into humanity.

a) It was prophesied about Him

·         Seven hundred years before the birth of Christ, the prophet Isaiah said, “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14, NASB).

·         The New Testament records the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy: “Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee, called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the descendants of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary.… And the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary; for you have found favor with God.“And behold, you will conceive in your womb, and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus.… ’ And Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin?’“And the angel answered and said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit, will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God.… For nothing will be impossible with God’” (Luke 1:27, 30, 31, 34, 35, 37, NASB).

b) The virgin birth is set down in the Bible as a historical fact. The writers who recorded the story were Matthew—an eyewitness to the events in the life of Jesus—and Luke, the doctor, who presents many things in the life of Christ from the viewpoint of His mother, Mary.

The passages in both Matthew and Luke are authentic, with no evidence at all that they were later additions to the text. The doctrine of the virgin birth has been believed by the church from its beginning.

Ignatius, who lived at the beginning of the second century, wrote to the Ephesians and said, “For our God, Jesus the Christ, was conceived in the womb by Mary, according to a dispensation, of the seed of David but also of the Holy Ghost.”

c) The virgin birth was a necessity. The Bible teaches that the Word who became flesh was with God from the very beginning (John 1:1). The fact of the pre-existence of Christ is testified many times in the New Testament (John 8:58; Philippians 2:5–11; Colossians 1:15, 16).

·         When Jesus came into the world, He was not a newly created individual such as we are, but was rather the eternal Son of God. To be born into this world of the virgin Mary required divine intervention, and this is exactly what the Gospels record.

·         Another reason why Jesus needed to be virgin-born was because of His sinless nature. A basic New Testament teaching is that from the day He was born until the day He died, Jesus was without sin. To be a perfect sacrifice, He must Himself be perfect—without sin. Since our race is contaminated with sin, a miraculous entrance into the world would be required, hence the virgin birth.

·         Moreover, if Jesus had been sired by Joseph, He would not have been able to assume the throne of David. According to the prophecy of Jeremiah 22:28–30, there could be no king in Israel who was a descendant of King Jeconiah, and Matthew 1:12 relates that Joseph was from the line of Jeconiah. If Jesus had been fathered by Joseph, He could not rightly inherit the throne of David, since he was a relative of the cursed line.

The virgin birth of Christ is not only a historical fact, but it was also a necessary historical fact when one considers all the data.

2)     Jesus had a sinless life- He is unique

the da vinchi codes etc…

The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown’s best selling novel, purports to be more than fiction: it claims to be based on fact and scholarly research. Brown wants his readers to believe that he is revealing the long-concealed truth about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and early Christianity, a truth that he says has been suppressed by the malevolent and conspiratorial forces of the Catholic Church at the council of Nicea. The novel alleges that there has been throughout history a secret group of true followers of a Gnostic Jesus and his wife, Mary Magdalene, the true “Holy Grail”. Almost everything most Christians and non-Christians think they know about Jesus, according to Dan Brown, is completely wrong, the result of Catholic propaganda designed to hide the truth from the world.

·         Christ’s sinlessness is typified in the OT by the perfection required of the sacrifices (Ex 12:5; Deut 15:21; cf. Jn 1:29; I Pet 1:19).

·         It was declared in the NT by the testimony of the demons (Mk 1:24; Lk 4:34)

·         by Pilate’s wife as she pleaded, “Have thou nothing to do with that just man” (Mt 27:19)

·         by Pilate as he said, “I... have found no fault in this man” (Lk 23:14)

·          by Judas as he cried, “I have betrayed the innocent blood” (Mt 27:4)

·          by the centurion as he said, “Truly this was the Son of God” (Mt 27:54; cf.Lk 23:47).

·         It is evidenced by the fact that while others admitted they were sinners, Christ maintained Himself to be sinless (Jn 8:46)

·          while others had sins to confess, Christ confessed no sins

·          while others must be born again, He never spoke of the need for Himself.

·         He was not, as we, dead in trespasses and sins (Eph 2:1), but rather He was and is the resurrection and the life (Jn 11:25).

a)     Man finds himself guilty of three kinds of sin:

(1)   original sin, that is, the sin of Adam which is imputed to every man (Rom 5:12 ff.)

(2)   a sinful fallen nature which leads man to want to sin (Rom 7:17 ff.)

(3)   individual acts of sin. It is because man under the federal headship of Adam is fallen in Adam, that the NT says, “By one man sin entered into the world....for that all have sinned” (aorist, Rom 5:12), and “in Adam all die” (I Cor 15:22).

b)Christ did not enter the world under the federal headship of Adam. He introduced a new headship, His own (I Cor 15:20–22, 45–49). In order to do this it was necessary that He not follow in Adam’s line, but be born of a virgin. This the angel made clear to Mary as he said, “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee...therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God” (Lk 1:35). A better translation, supported by the margin in Nestle and by Westcott and Hort, is, “therefore also that which is born shall be holy, the Son of God.” This reading answers Mary’s question, “How can this be, seeing I know not a man?” (The son of God can be born of Mary and be holy because this will occur by the power of the Holy Spirit.) This is the attestation of the angel Gabriel to Christ’s incarnation in innate holiness.

3)     Jesus preformed miracles and raised people from the dead- He is unique

The Louis Finkelstein Institute for Religious and Social Studies of The Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City sponsored a national survey of 1,100 doctors on the subject of miracles, on the weekend prior to Christmas 2004. The results were:

Physicians believing that miracles have occurred in the past: 74 percent.

Physicians believing miracles can occur today: 73 percent.

Citation: "Science or Miracle?" Businesswire.com (posted 12-20-04);

a) Many laugh at the idea of the possibility of miracles. They argue that miracles are a violation of scientific laws and are therefore unacceptable to modern man.

The Scriptures, however, from one end to the other, contain stories of the miraculous. There are accounts of blind people who immediately received their sight, dead people being raised and extraordinary occurrences within nature, such as a universal flood and the parting of the Red Sea.

The basis for believing in the miraculous goes back to the biblical conception of God. The very first verse of the Bible decides the issue. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1, RSV).

If this verse can be accepted at face value, that in the beginning an infinite-personal God created the universe, then the rest should not be a problem. If He has the ability to do this, then a virgin birth, walking on water, feeding 5,000 people with a few loaves and fish, and the other biblical miracles become not only possible but expected.

b) if one does not believe in God, he will not accept the miraculous, but for those who have granted the possibility it is not at all ridiculous. As the apostle Paul once said to an unbelieving king, “Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?” (Acts 26:8, KJV).

So behind this important question is the familiar issue of whether or not God exists. For if there is a God, then certainly miracles are possible. In fact, the very nature of the question: “How can miracles be possible?” presupposes there is a God, for a miracle is an act of God.

c) As for the idea that miracles violate natural or scientific laws, we must remember that scientific laws neither dictate events nor do they explain them. They are merely a generalization about observable causes and effects.

One cannot reject the claim of the parting of the Red Sea 3,500 years ago by noting that this even does not happen every day. Appealing to the laws of nature to refute the miraculous will not work, since the Bible teaches that an all-powerful God has broken into the natural order from time to time with His mighty acts.

d) A miracle is by definition an event that is unique and without a precedent. It is impossible to account for it as we do other events. The proper way of determining if something happened is not whether we can explain it. The first question to be asked is not can it happen, but rather did it happen?

e) If an event can be determined as having happened, yet it defies explanation, we still have to admit to the fact that it happened, explanation or not. The evidence for biblical miracles is as powerful historically as other historical events (such as the fall of Rome and the conquests of Alexander the Great). Just because miracles are outside of our normal daily experience does not mean that they have not occurred and do not occur.

Thus when all the evidence is taken into account, there are excellent reasons for believing not only in the possibility of miracles but also in their actuality.

4)     Jesus predicted His own death - He is unique

·         Jesus prophesied in Matthew 12:40 (NASB) that “just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”

·         In Mark 8:31 and Matthew 16:21, Jesus is recorded as saying, “The Son of man will rise again after three days,” and “He will be raised again on the third day.

·         Jesus, in addition to the Matthew 12:40 passage, spoke of His resurrection in John 2:19–22, stating that He would be raised up in three days (not the fourth day).

·         Matthew 27:63 (KJV) After the Pharisees tell Pilate of the prediction of Jesus, “After three days I will rise again,” they ask for a guard to secure the tomb until the third day.

5)     Jesus was resurrected from the dead as He predicted- He is unique

In April 2002, the well-respected Oxford University philosophy professor Richard Swineburne used a broadly accepted probability theory to defend the truth of Christ's resurrection. He did this at a high-profile gathering of philosophy professors at Yale University.

In a New York Times interview, Swineburne said, "For someone dead for 36 hours to come to life again is, according to the laws of nature, extremely improbable. But if there is a God of the traditional kind, natural laws only operate because he makes them operate. Swineburne used Bayes Theorem to assign values to things like the probability that God is real, Jesus' behavior during his lifetime, and the quality of witness testimony after his death. Then he plugged the numbers into a probability formula and added everything up. The result: a 97 percent probability that the resurrection really happened.

Citation: Group magazine (July 2002); submitted by Van Morris, Mount Washington, Kentuck

28:1–8 After Jesus’ body was placed in a tomb, sealed with a huge stone, guarded by a cohort of Roman soldiers, He was raised from the dead. The angel announced, “Go quickly and tell His disciples that He is risen from the dead” (v. 7). This is the most profound event in human history! The resurrection of Jesus Christ proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that He is God.

·         No other spiritual leader in human history, including Buddha and Muhammad, claimed to have been raised from the dead.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the acid test of whether Christianity is true or not. The whole message of Christ rests upon the historical fact of His resurrection. Paul the apostle declared, “And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins!” (1 Cor. 15:17).

The resurrection of Jesus from the dead makes Him the most totally unique person in human history. It is God’s way of shouting to the whole human race, “I AM ALIVE!”

·         Fortunately, one of the most well-attested events in the ancient world is the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. When confronted by the religious leaders of His day, Jesus was asked for a sign to demonstrate that He was the promised Messiah.

·         The sign of the resurrection was meant to set Jesus apart from anyone else who ever lived, and it would designate Him the Son of God (Romans 1:4).

·         Writing about a.d. 56, the apostle Paul mentions the fact that more than 500 people had witnessed the resurrected Christ at one time and most of them were still living when he wrote (I Corinthians 15:6). This statement is somewhat of a challenge to those who might not have believed, since Paul is saying that there are many people yet living who could be interviewed to find out if Christ had indeed risen.

·         The historical evidence is more than sufficient to satisfy the curiosity of the honest inquirer. This can be seen not only by the positive defense that can be made for the case for the resurrection, but also by the lack of any evidence for an alternative explanation. The theories attempting to give an alternative explanation to the resurrection take more faith to believe than the resurrection itself.

Frank Morrison, who was an agnostic journalist, attempted to write a book refuting the resurrection of Christ. After much investigation, his opinion changed and he became a believer in Jesus Christ. This is how Morrison described what happened to him:

“This study is in some ways so unusual and provocative that the writer thinks it desirable to state here very briefly how the book came to take its present form. In one sense it could have taken no other, for it is essentially a confession, the inner story of a man who originally set out to write one kind of book and found himself compelled by the sheer force of circumstances to write another.

“It is not that the facts altered, for they are recorded imperishably in the monuments and in the pages of human history. But the interpretation to be put on the facts underwent a change” (Who Moved the Stone? Preface, Zondervan, 1971).

Morrison discovered that Christ was publicly put in the tomb on Friday, but on Sunday morning the body was missing. If He did not rise from the dead, then someone took the body.

There are three interest groups that could possibly have taken the body: the Romans, the Jews, or the disciples.

·         The Romans would have had no reason to steal the body, since they wanted to keep the peace in Palestine. The idea was to keep the provinces as quiet as possible, and stealing the body of Christ would not accomplish this objective.

·         The Jews would not have taken the body, because the last thing they wanted was a proclamation of the resurrection. They are the ones who asked for the guard, according to Matthew 27.

·         The disciples of Jesus had no reason to steal the body, and if they did, they later died for something they knew to be untrue. Moreover, the religion which they proclaimed emphasized telling the truth and not lying. Their actions would have been inconsistent with that which they knew to be true and commanded others to follow.

·         The other reasonable explanation is that Christ has risen, and the eyewitnesses make it plain this is the case. The disciples of Jesus may not have been as sophisticated as twentieth century man in the realm of scientific knowledge, but they surely knew the difference between someone who was dead and someone who wasn’t.

As Simon Peter said, “For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty” (II Peter 1:16, NASB).

Who do you say He is?

Death used to be an executioner, but the gospel has made him just a gardener."

- He is unique He is God!

----

OT Old Testament

cf. confer (compare)

NT New Testament

Nestle Nestle (ed.), Novum Testamentum Graece