Perhaps you've seen the ads from the "Freedom From Religion Foundation." The Foundation is using the catch-phrase, "In Reason we Trust." Other slogans proposed for billboards include: "All religions are fairy tales," and "Too stupid to understand science? Try religion." Their message is clear: You can believe in Science and reason, or you can believe in God and religion, but you cannot believe in both. And if you are going to choose one, you'd might as well choose the one that is real.
The Skeptic would say, "Let's be reasonable. People don't walk on water, they don't heal the blind, the deaf and the lame with a word or a touch, they don't feed thousands with a few small fish and a few loaves of bread, and when they die, they stay dead." We would respond: "That's right, they usually do! That's what makes the resurrection of Christ so remarkable, and that's why, all over the world, the wonder of the resurrection is still being proclaimed, almost 2000 years after Christ broke the bonds of death."
But God didn't expect even the apostles to accept something as fantastic as the resurrection without evidence. The God who created our minds gave us reasons to believe. Our's is not a "Fairy Tale Faith."
As the late Dr. Wilbur Smith put it, "The meaning of the resurrection is a theological matter, but the FACT of the resurrection is a historical matter." This message looks at the lives and the testimonies of the eyewitnesses of the resurrection, and asks the question, Is it reasonable to believe that men would suffer severe persecution in this life, and the prospect of severe judgment in the next, for affirming what they knew to be a lie, with no prospect of gain? |
