Reasonable People

You’re a reasonable person– right? If someone presented you with strong evidence about something, you’re open minded enough to consider it– right? Surely, you’re not like those people who still think the earth is flat. You know, the die-hard skeptics you can show videos of satellites orbiting the globe or pictures of the earth from space and they’ll say it’s fake. Even a trip to outer space wouldn’t convince them the world is shaped like a volley ball. It’s quite shocking to watch them flat out (pun intended) ignore all of the scientific evidence. Ironically, they remind me of the people who seem reasonable enough but they reject all of the evidence of Jesus being our savior. 

It’s shouldn’t be surprising given the fact people actually saw Jesus raise someone from the dead– from the dead! And they still didn’t believe Jesus was the messiah. The Sadducee’s were so hyper skeptical that after Jesus brought Lazarus back to life they plotted to kill both him and Jesus. Their pride and hatred of the truth blinded them from the obvious. At the core of anyone who isn’t saved is that same stubbornness and dislike for the truth. I hate to be so blunt but there are way too many people who aren’t being saved because nowadays Christians rather go along to get along instead of getting someone out of their comfort zone. I hope you know there’s strong evidence for believing in Jesus. 

Yes, evidence. We walk by faith but it isn’t a blind faith. There were over 500 eyewitnesses to Jesus being alive after he was crucified. Many of those witnesses were martyred because they refuse to deny what they’d seen. The apostles endured beatings, imprisonment, and suffered agonizing deaths. Some were beheaded, crucified upside down, and even flayed alive! They were willing to be tortured to death because they actually touched, talked, and ate with Jesus after his resurrection. More evidence of his resurrection is the missing body. The Romans or Jews could’ve easily ended Christianity by producing Jesus’ body. 

Want more compelling evidence of Jesus’ resurrection? How about a woman being the first person to see Jesus alive. It’s significant because in those times a woman’s word was considered so worthless they weren’t allowed to be witnesses in court. It wouldn’t make sense to discredit your own story by having Mary Magdalene as a witness. If the apostles wanted to be believed, they would’ve had a man be the first to see Jesus so you know the Biblical accounts are exact. We can trust in the Bible’s accuracy because there are more ancient manuscripts of the Bible than all the other ancient writings combined. The Old Testament manuscripts are over 2,000 years old and the oldest complete Bible (the Ethiopian Bible) is over 1,600 years old. Yet all of those manuscripts are nearly identical to what we have today (minor punctuation or grammar that doesn’t affect the verses’ meaning). 

With so much evidence (I only covered a few) it’s upsetting to see people deny Jesus.  As I previously stated, either it’s their pride or they don’t really want to know the truth. Pride because no one wants to be wrong about something they’ve believed in for years. They willfully deny the truth because of the strain following Jesus can put on relationships or because believing in Jesus means you have to give up certain habits or things. As a Christian you need to learn as much as you can about the historicity and accuracy of the Bible. It’ll give you more confidence to spread the gospel and hopefully they’ll be open minded…they’ll be reasonable people. 

Think about it.