Monday Morning Music Ministry

1-26-26

Skeptics abound in our society, around the world, and of course are manifest throughout the entire human race. Doubting is part of humanity’s DNA. Humankind is getting “smarter”; we can walk on the moon and we might cure cancer, but there still are flat-earthers, and believers in evolution, among us.

Skepticism is a prime component of agnosticism and atheism. Of course. Is there a God, really? Can He show Himself to us? Why not? Why did His Son come to earth as a baby, not a king? Did a man really perform miracles like healing the afflicted, walking on water, raising the dead? Why would He allow Himself to be tortured and killed? His Resurrection easily could have been faked; how could Romans, Jews, and other witnesses of the time not recognize the likelihood of fraud and deception?

Well, as you might anticipate, I will offer answers to these questions. Of course God exists; He has left His imprint on me, and all of us as individuals. If He did not create the universe, who did? – which in logic is not sufficient evidence, but I patiently will await a better answer. (If there was a Big Bang, who triggered the Bang; and what existed before it? And when we get to the edges of the universe… what is beyond them? Dear God: my head hurts, please help me…) Jesus came as a baby in humility, to identify with us. These and other questions fulfilled myriad prophesies.

Helpless skeptics and arrogant haters flail about, when they allege fraud and deception by Jesus and His Disciples. Yet scoffers scoff. They love the darkness and embrace rebellion.

Sixty years ago a British Jew called Hugh Schonfield wrote a book, The Passover Plot, that carefully laid out a story that a Jesus conspired with others to fake his death and resurrection in order to claim the realized predictions of a rebel who would challenge Roman rule over Palestine. It was a popular book and movie that, if little else, encouraged increased skepticism among the scoffers and doubters.

It has been that way through the centuries. Nothing new. Do you think you would more easily, or deeply, believe in Jesus if you could only see Him? Well, many of His day saw Him, and witnessed miracles… and yet doubted. Even some Disciples, those who walked and lived with Jesus, scattered like dry leaves on a windy day, “when push came to shove.” Would you react differently than they did? Really?

Here is a test – or Exhibits A through M or so, if this were a trial. Let us review the lives of the 12 Disciples after Jesus ascended to Heaven.

Judas drove himself to suicide, filled with remorse, after betraying the Savior.

James, son of Zebedee, was beheaded by Herod Agrippa.

Peter was crucified – upside-down because he wanted to avoid comparison with Jesus.

Andrew: Crucified on an X-shaped cross in present-day Russia, on a missionary trip.

Philip was executed, probably in north Africa.

Thomas, the Disciple who once doubted, was killed with a spear as a missionary in India.

Matthew was martyred in Ethiopia while establishing some of the first Christian churches.

James, son of Alphaeus, was thrown from the Temple and then stoned to death.

Jude was a missionary to Persia, where he was martyred.

Simon “the Zealot” likewise was murdered in Persia.

Matthias, chosen to replace Judas, was burned at the stake in Syria.

Bartholomew was whipped to death and beheaded in southern Arabia.

John was the last to die – and the only Disciple to die of natural causes, although exiled to the remote Isle of Patmos. It was there he transcribed the Book of Revelation.

Paul, the persecutor of Christians who converted and became a missionary and author of half of the New Testament, was martyred in Rome. My pied-a-terre in that city is near the Basilica of “St-Paul-Outside-the-Walls,” a wonderful site for contemplation.

This list of names is more historical than canonical. The Bible traces only two martyrs in the group; the rest are of tradition and local accounts, but surely reliable. Historians of the day, chiefly the Jew Josephus, and Eusebius, and Origen recorded the activities and deaths of the early church leaders.

How many of these martyrs and men who sacrificed themselves were skeptical of Jesus’s divinity when they gave up their lives? Obviously, none.

If they had participated in hoaxes and frauds, would they have carried to their graves the schemes to torture, crucifixion, impaling, burning at the stake, beheading? Would you?

I would not die for a scam artist; and it would take a rock-solid embrace of Jesus as the Son of God, Who remains the lover of my soul and clearly is the Savior of humankind, for me to choose any of these deaths over confessing a Passover Plot.

Would you choose their lives – and deaths – if it came to that?

But it might come to that for all of us: the Bible foretells a tribulation and persecution of the believers in End Times.

Would you die for a lie?

Would you die for the Truth?

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Click: When I Am Laid in Earth