12, we can read:
34 The people answered Him, "We have heard from the law that the Christ remains forever; and how can You say, 'The Son of Man must be lifted up'? Who is this Son of Man?"
35 Then Jesus said to them, "A little while longer the light is with you. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you; he who walks in darkness does not know where he is going.
36 While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light." These things Jesus spoke, and departed, and was hidden from them.
The good news for us is that we have the light, the one true light - Jesus has come to reside in our hearts and to lead us into His light. We are surrounded by darkness, but God doesn't leave us to fend for ourselves as we walk through this world. He does not want us to stumble and fall, but to walk in triumph through our knowledge of and trust in Him. The enemy would want to deceive us and to snuff out our light - but the light of Christ, ignited in the heart of a believer, is a powerful force for truth in this world.
+++++
In Matthew chapter 4, we read these words about the "great light" of Christ:
12 Now when Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, He departed to Galilee.
13 And leaving Nazareth, He came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is by the sea, in the regions of Zebulun and Naphtali,
14 that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying:
15 "The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, By the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles:
16 The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, And upon those who sat in the region and shadow of death Light has dawned."
17 From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."
Imagine waking up on Christmas morning, firing up your computer or smartphone, and being greeted by this headline on social media: "Did historical Jesus really exist? The evidence just doesn’t add up.”
That actually happened this past Christmas - the tweet came from the "Post Opinions" Twitter account from the Washington Post.
As William Briggs of The Stream wrote: "It contained no 'breaking' news of some scholar unearthing new historical evidence. After all, the link in the Post’s tweet was to a three-year old, already-debunked opinion piece they published in December, 2014."
Briggs states:
But, such is not the neighborhood in which we have been born and to which we have been called. People are comfortable with the darkness, and we have been called into the light. I thought it was interesting that the Daily Wire made light of the Washington Post's motto, "Democracy Dies in Darkness," by stating in its heading, "Christmas Dies in Darkness." This can propel us to seek to display the light of Christ in an even more forthright and urgent manner.
Finally...like never before, we have to be cautious about the influences to which we expose ourselves, lest we are distracted from the purity and the authority of the Scriptures, or drawn into complacency or divisiveness. We live in an age in which causes that seem to be good and right contradict the teachings of the Bible and can corrupt our witness. Discernment is a key element that we can incorporate into our practice. Effective discernment is consistent with the Scriptures, and we can be challenged to dig deeper into God's Word. Faith Radio has a Bible reading guide available through our app - download it for iPhone, iPad, Android, Amazon, and Microsoft through our website at FaithRadio.org.
12 Now when Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, He departed to Galilee.
13 And leaving Nazareth, He came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is by the sea, in the regions of Zebulun and Naphtali,
14 that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying:
15 "The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, By the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles:
16 The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, And upon those who sat in the region and shadow of death Light has dawned."
17 From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."
Imagine waking up on Christmas morning, firing up your computer or smartphone, and being greeted by this headline on social media: "Did historical Jesus really exist? The evidence just doesn’t add up.”
That actually happened this past Christmas - the tweet came from the "Post Opinions" Twitter account from the Washington Post.
As William Briggs of The Stream wrote: "It contained no 'breaking' news of some scholar unearthing new historical evidence. After all, the link in the Post’s tweet was to a three-year old, already-debunked opinion piece they published in December, 2014."
Briggs states:
The article was by Raphael Lataster, with subtitle, “There are clearly good reasons to doubt Jesus’ historical existence.”
What “good reasons” does he have? Lataster claims that there are a “lack of early sources” about the life of Jesus. What about the Gospels? He dismisses those because, he says, they
all stem from Christian authors eager to promote Christianity — which gives us reason to question them. The authors of the Gospels fail to name themselves, describe their qualifications, or show any criticism with their foundational sources — which they also fail to identify.The writer also discounts non-Christian writers of the time. Briggs writes:
His argument can thus be boiled down to this. If you discount or ignore all the contemporary and near-contemporary eye-witness and other accounts of Jesus’s life, because these sources were biased, then the other evidence like miracles, the lives of the saints, the faith of billions, and so and on can’t possibly be true. Therefore, Jesus never existed.The Daily Wire website references a tweet from columnist Erick Erickson:
The Washington Post has republished a "Jesus isn't real" piece from 2014 on its website for Christmas 2017. But in the past three years a good number of *atheist* historians have thoroughly discredited this piece and WaPo still ran it again.The Daily Wire states:
Lataster mentions nothing about the fact that more historical evidence exists for Jesus than for Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle. He also makes no mention of the fact that Christ's apostles were all-too-eager to die horrific deaths for what he calls an "invented" belief.
Worse still, the republished article was already skewered as counter-factual after its first publication, by Lataster's own "history of Jesus" lecturer.And, Red State notes that Lataster's former professor wrote:
Raphael’s 1000 words on Jesus would not receive a pass mark in any history class I can imagine, even if it were meant to be a mere “personal reflection” on contemporary Jesus scholarship.That article also quotes from Erickson, who wrote three years ago:
The common thread of all these columns, articles, and expositions are unbelievers writing to reassure other unbelievers at a time of year billions of people are celebrating either the miraculous burning of oil for eight days or a virgin giving birth to a child. The secular left can abide no miracles.And, there's the rub - the Bible is full of stories of the miraculous, the display of the supernatural - indeed, the story of God coming to earth in the form of a man, born of a virgin, is a bridge too far for some of these secular thinkers. Yet, that amazing story provides the cornerstone of our faith, and, especially at Christmas, our views as believers in Christ should be respected.
But, such is not the neighborhood in which we have been born and to which we have been called. People are comfortable with the darkness, and we have been called into the light. I thought it was interesting that the Daily Wire made light of the Washington Post's motto, "Democracy Dies in Darkness," by stating in its heading, "Christmas Dies in Darkness." This can propel us to seek to display the light of Christ in an even more forthright and urgent manner.
Finally...like never before, we have to be cautious about the influences to which we expose ourselves, lest we are distracted from the purity and the authority of the Scriptures, or drawn into complacency or divisiveness. We live in an age in which causes that seem to be good and right contradict the teachings of the Bible and can corrupt our witness. Discernment is a key element that we can incorporate into our practice. Effective discernment is consistent with the Scriptures, and we can be challenged to dig deeper into God's Word. Faith Radio has a Bible reading guide available through our app - download it for iPhone, iPad, Android, Amazon, and Microsoft through our website at FaithRadio.org.
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