John
10:18-21 (NIV) No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I
have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I
received from my Father."
19 At
these words the Jews were again divided. 20 Many of them said, "He is
demon-possessed and raving mad. Why listen to him?"
21 But
others said, "These are not the sayings of a man possessed by a demon. Can
a demon open the eyes of the blind?"
NOTE: In his book, More than a Carpenter, Josh McDowell
popularized the argument of liar, lunatic, or Lord (Son of God). But long
before that book, that very line of reason was being argued by the people, and
by John in his gospel. McDowell adds some of the after-effect arguments. How
could all but one of Jesus' apostles go to their death if they knew the message
they were spreading was a lie? None of them experienced rich and prosperous
lives, and most died early deaths. John was the exception as he spent his last
years exiled on the island of Patmos. I don't give much credence to followers
(non-eyewitnesses) who give there lives for a cause because they can be easily
deceived. But eye-witnesses, who were close to and intimate with the person
they were following, is quite a different story, and is why the death of so
many of Jesus' early followers is an important fact. They knew him, they saw
the miracles, they were eyewitnesses to the events, and they died rather than
deny the facts of the Lordship of Jesus Christ. In this passage, the Jews are
very divided over whether Jesus is a lunatic or not. Lunatics cannot open the
eyes of the blind. They were eyewitnesses to the miracles. The miracles have to
be faced. Today, the world wrongly assumes the miracles are fables or myths,
popularized by the Christian church years afterwards. Of course, that
assumption does not fit with the facts since we have hundreds of fragments of
the new testament from the first century that were copied because eyewitnesses
testified to their truth. The so called lost books of the bible that some
people popularize today, were not copied because the eyewitnesses knew they
were not true. No, you cannot dismiss the miracles. It is the fly in the
ointment that should bother every agnostic and atheist.
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