IS JESUS CHRIST ALIVE? - PART TWO

                                            IS JESUS CHRIST                                                 ALIVE?
                                                           part two (by Val Grieve)







 (1)   JESUS WAS DIFFERENT

        I must admit that it is extremely difficult to believe that an ordinary person could rise from the dead, but Jesus Christ is no ordinary  person. Amazingly enough, even unbelievers         have fallen over themselves to pay tribute to Jesus and His teaching.

        Bertrand Russell, the well-know atheist and  philosopher once said "There are a good  many points upon which I agree with Christ a  great deal more than professing Christians             do!"

        Mick Jagger of the "Rolling Stones" said,   "Jesus Christ is fantastic and something to  base life on."

         As a lawyer, I know that evidence like this,  from witnesses from the other side, carries great weight.  By common consent, Jesus  Christ was unique, the greatest man that ever  lived. This being so it is not so difficult to   believe that He rose from the dead. His life and teaching demand the miracle of  the resurrection.

(2)     WITNESSES SAW CHRIST

          A famous  QC once said, "when I have a  poor case in court, I make a long speech,  but when I have a very strong case I simply  call the witnesses." 

           He was right, in any court of law, the best  evidence is that of a witness who speaks  from first hand experience. That is exactly what we have here.

           On at least eleven occasions altogether,  more than 550 people saw Christ after He  rose from the dead. Let me as a lawyer call  two of these witnesses;  John the disciple and Saul of Tarsus.

           Now how do we test the evidence of a  witness?  In law there are three well-established rules for this.

 first   - evidence must be first-hand and not  hear-say. Hear-say is what Tom Jones told Mary Smith who told me! Such evidence is obviously unsatisfactory.  First hand evidence is what a witness speaks what he himself has seen and heard.

 secondly -  The value of any evidence is greatly  increased if it is corroborated. One person might be mistaken, but if I as  a lawyer, can bring more than one                           witness into court, who will testify                           in favor of my client, their evidence                         will be just about conclusive. 

      thirdly -   The value of any evidence depends  upon the witnesses'  standing.  What  about this test?  You have read what  sort of man Paul was. The witness                          of someone of his intelligence and                          social background would certainly                          be accepted in any court of law.

LIVES ARE CHANGED

Christianity is not ancient history but current  events. Ever since the first Easter Sunday there has been an unbroken succession of millions of people who can witness that their lives have been revolutionized  by contact with the Living Christ.

LET A PRESENT DAY WITNESS SPEAK FOR HIMSELF;

Professor Tony Holland, of Salford university says: "As a grammar schoolboy, I was told that the Bible was unscientific and that Jesus Christ never claimed to be the Son of God. I am ashamed to say that I adopted these views uncritically, and held them until my late twenties. Then for the first time in my life I began to think seriously about the subjects of life and death, good and evil, the failure of human beings to live harmoniously together, and the reasons for human existence.

The first question I asked was 'is there a God?'  On consideration, it was inconceivable to me that the complex system of which we are part could have occurred without a Creator. Two other things occurred to me at this time:
First;  that there was evil in human beings, including myself and that this evil was naturally occurring and did not have to be learned.
Secondly; that it was likely that a human being could have some sort of personal contact with the Creator of life.

When I started to read the Bible again (this time with an open mind) it fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle.  Jesus claims to be the Son of God, the Truth, the Way and the Life. In the Bible we learn that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and then rose again to a different dimension of divine life.

I discovered this vital life in Jesus and became a Christian, when at the age of almost thirty, I sought forgiveness, through Christ, for my sins.

The change was radical and complete. The Living Christ becomes more real to me as the days go by.  I find in Him a source of peace and security which a mere scientific knowledge can never bring.

YOUR  VERDICT

The case for the Resurrection rests, but this is not the end of the matter.

Above all the Resurrection demands a verdict. We cannot be neutral about it. It is either the greatest fact in the history of the world or the greatest deception of all time. There is no middle ground.
The most important question in the world is:

"DID JESUS CHRIST RISE FROM THE DEAD?"

As a lawyer I would like to demand a verdict from you, by asking you two questions;

(1)  Do you believe that Jesus Christ rose from the  dead? our original question "what happened to  Jesus?" still stands. We must find an answer;           was this fraud, fantasy or fact?

A former Lord Chief Justice of England, Lord Darling once said: "No intelligent jury in the world could fail to bring a verdict that the resurrection is true. I submit that the only reasonable answer is that the miracle of the Resurrection took place.

(2) Do you know Jesus Christ as a Living Savior? Many people believe that Christ rose from the dead, but this is not enough. If He rose from the dead then He is alive today.  We can meet Him and know Him for ourselves.  This is               what it means to be a Christian.

We know Christ as a Living Savior Who has changed our lives!

WHAT IS YOUR VERDICT?

This is the end of the document I copied so many years ago. 

next post  29th November