How Do You Explain Yeshua?

According to the Brit Ha-Hadashah, Yeshua was a miracle worker, God in the flesh, whose ultimate proof of power was his bodily resurrection from the dead. What is the truth?

We have the following Alternatives:

His followers concocted the story

His followers were victims of a cruel hoax

His followers were simply mistaken

Accounts of his life were greatly exaggerated long after his death

Neither Yeshua nor his disciples really existed at all

He was a miracle worker, but not God

The New Testament is right after all

Proposition 1: The disciples made it up.

That sounds simple enough. But what was the motive? Did anyone make a profit from it? Most of the disciples were martyred. All of them lived extremely difficult lives. Some died early in the history of the Church; others went on to suffer through decades of persecution, but they all stuck with their story. If they knew it was a lie, why didn't they give it up when they saw it wasn't getting them anywhere? How could a lie be the motive for such lives of love and self-sacrifice? Obviously, they firmly believed what they taught. "For we did not follow cleverly devised fables, but were eyewitnesses to his majesty." 2 Peter 1:1Return to Alternatives

Proposition 2: They were deceived.

If the disciples didn't make up the story, then either it's the truth or they were deceived. If they were deceived, then who or what deceived them? What master illusionist could have staged three years of miracles, a death, burial and resurrection, angels, subsequent appearances of the risen Christ in various locations, top it off with an ascension and make it all fit into everyday life, all the while fulfilling ancient prophecies right and left. And even if someone could, why would he? Just for laughs? To imagine that anyone could engineer such a hoax stretches credulity to the breaking point. It makes infinitely better sense to simply accept the story at face value.Return to Alternatives

Proposition 3: They were mistaken.

Maybe the believers were victims, not of a deliberate deception, but of their own gullibility. Maybe they misread the evidence, and jumped -- sincerely but wrongly -- to erroneous conclusions. But what else could they have concluded, given all that they had seen? We are not talking about one or two individuals reporting one unusual experience. Had there been only one alleged miracle, we might easily think that those who thought that had seen something extraordinary had really seen something else -- something along the order of UFO sightings that turn out to be weather balloons, or something equally ordinary. But the apostles witnessed miracle after miracle. They saw a life of extraordinary holiness and compassion lived out in the life of Yeshua of Nazareth. They listened for three years to a man who preached the highest order of righteousness, and they watched him live it as they lived with him around the clock. He made extraordinary claims, which he substantiated with extraordinary acts. He told them in advance that he would die by crucifixion. He said that one of them would betray him. He said that he would come back from the grave after three days. They watched it all happen. He himself showed them that the Holy Scriptures had foretold all of this about him. He appeared to them after his resurrection, when they had given up hope. He ate with them and talked with them at length. He even invited them to touch him so that they would know that he was really, physically there. Could all of this be hallucinations? That's a lot of hallucinations for anyone, let alone eleven plus people. Was it all optical illusion? A dream? No explanation of this sort will do. There are too many events to explain over too long a time witnessed by too many people.Return to Alternatives

Proposition 4: The gospel accounts are only semi-historical legends fabricated long after the time of Christ.

Many today are of the opinion that the historical Yeshua was only a great moral teacher, who would be appalled to find that legend had made him out to be God. Could the alleged miracles of Yeshua be explained as tales invented by later Christians? I don't think so, and here's why. From the very beginning, Christian faith has been centered around a miracle-working, resurrected Christ. The apostle Paul, in a letter to the Church in Corinth, makes very clear that there is no Christian faith apart from the bodily resurrection of Christ. (I Corinthians. 15) All four Gospel accounts portray Yeshua as a worker of miracles. They also all say that he was crucified, buried, and rose the third day. If these documents are based on legend, then the legend must be older than the documents. Paul's letter to the Corinthians dates from about 55 A.D. The crucifixion took place between 30-35 A.D. That leaves us less than thirty years for such a legend to arise. Too many people were still alive who had been there and knew what happened for a legend to arise out of ignorance. The apostles and others had seen these things and knew what they were talking about. "That which we have seen and heard, write we unto you." -- I John 1:1

Furthermore, the gospel accounts do not bear the marks of myth. Pagan myths, legends, fairy tales and the like typically refer to characters who supposedly lived long ago, and often far away, whose supernatural deeds and experiences were not witnessed by anyone still at hand who could verify them. The Gospels refer to events which had transpired only a few decades at most before they were written, in a country easily accessed, and involved large numbers of people who could still be found and interviewed, and would testify whether or not these things were true. As Paul said, "These things were not done in a corner . . ."

What was so special about the teaching of Yeshua that his disciples felt compelled to spread it across the world? Morality? If that just means another set of rules, forget it! First century Jews had more rules than they could handle. Was it the way he talked about love? Love is nice, but it would take more than "nice" to persuade eleven grown men -- most of them outdoor types -- to abandon all earthly pursuits to spread the Word of Christ. And there again, the word they did spread was not a lot of warm fuzzies about the "nice" idea of everybody loving everybody, but about the Love of God as actually demonstrated in the real life of Christ Yeshua, who was himself God in the flesh, whose love was so great he took on a human body in order to die for the sins of Man, thereby reinstituting the personal relationship that mankind had lost with God. There is more involved here than just a philosophy of love. The problems of sin, love, hope, life, death, goodness -- everything -- all find their ultimate answer in Yeshua Christ. And there you have another reason we know the truths of Yeshua are not legends -- because nothing so integrated and all-encompassing could arise from a hodge-podge of legends. Christianity, as outlined in the New Testament, could not have evolved out of hear-say and imagination. Everything in the gospels and the teachings of the apostles works together so well that it must be either real, or the work of a single genius. Maybe it's both, with the genius being God, house work is reality.Return to Alternatives

Proposition 5: Neither Yeshua nor the disciples ever existed.

Some have taken the view that the whole New Testament is the work of a time centuries after the alleged time of Christ. This is certainly a minority view, and with good reason. The existence of the church and the New Testament documents are well attested by archaeology and secular references dating back at least to the early second century. To question the essential antiquity of the New Testament is to question the whole of ancient history. One might as well say the Roman Empire never existed.Return to Alternatives

Proposition 6: Yeshua did exist and did amazing things, but he was not God.

I have occasionally seen claims that Yeshua was an alien from another planet (or time or dimension or what have you), or maybe a human visitor from the distant future, but with great powers, owing to superior technology or to his highly advanced evolutionary state. This kind of tabloid/comic book theology will be immediately dismissed by most people with a roll of the eyes, but as it may appeal to some, let me have a few words about it. What was this alien (or future man, or whatever) trying to pull by coming here and calling himself God? Was he just messing with our minds on some kind of cosmic fraternity prank or something? Why did he display such compassion and endure such suffering if he was only out looking for fun? Or if he was just visiting, why did he interfere? On the other hand, if he meant to do us good, why the deception? This approach to the Yeshua problem raises more questions than it answers, and lacks even the appeal of naturalism. If we are to believe he was anything extraordinary at all, it is best to believe he simply was who he said he was, and who the apostles claimed he was -- God in the flesh. More mundane, but hardly more credible, is the idea that Yeshua was some kind of master hypnotist, who had such powers of persuasion that he could convince large crowds of people that he was walking on water, turning water into wine, etc.

But I wonder how you hypnotize a blind man into seeing. Did the blind man only think he could see? How did he keep from bumping into things? Did Yeshua hypnotize the entire crowd? How is it that people who weren't even therefor the healing, who met the blind man after he had left Yeshua, were able to tell that he could see? And how do you hypnotize people into thinking you've risen from the dead? It has been suggested that Yeshua used post-hypnotic suggestion to cause his followers to believe they saw him alive after he was dead! I wonder why he bothered. I also wonder where he could have learned such high-powered hypnotic technique as it would take to convince hundreds of people to experience the same complex illusion at the same time, as well as various groups of various sizes at various times in various places with no obvious common denominator that might have activated the dormant suggestion. And there's the problem of Paul, who once persecuted the church, but suddenly made an about-face and became an ardent believer after seeing the risen Lord. How did the presumably dead Yeshua manage that? It would take more faith than I can muster to believe any of these preposterous schemes. I am amazed at the lengths people will go to to get around the obvious.Return to Alternatives

Proposition 7: Yeshua is who the New Testament says he is..

According to the New Testament, Yeshua is God become a man, the only way of salvation for humankind. He has given us ample reason to believe in him, paving the way from the beginning of human history with covenants and miracles and prophecies, working in the lives of the people he chose for that purpose, and in the histories of nations to set the stage for his coming.

When he came, he came in righteousness and in wisdom and in power. He spoke as no mere man could speak, and did works no mere man could do. He loved as no mere man could love. He touched the lives of the people who knew him, not merely affecting them from the outside but giving them new life. They went on to spread the word, and he went on to spread the Life. From that time to this, millions have come to know the new life that Yeshua gives. The first disciples knew him in the flesh in those days when he walked this earth. We might envy them for that, thinking it would have been easier to believe had we seen him with our eyes. But even they were not able to go out and live like him until he had gone away from them and sent that "Counselor," or Holy Spirit, he had promised them. That same Holy Spirit is ours today, if we believe in Yeshua Christ, and the Spirit is a testimony within our hearts far greater than what our eyes could tell us!

How do you explain Yeshua? Is he still an enigma to you? Will you say, "You can't know."? You can know, if only you're willing to know. If you allow yourself to accept him as real, then you will know. Accepting something as reality is all knowledge is anyway. Only an infinite mind (i.e., God) can ever know anything absolutely. All human knowledge involves at least a little bit of faith.

Of course, there is always the final cop-out. You can always say, "I can't explain Yeshua, but that doesn't mean there isn't an explanation I just haven't thought of!" Quite true, but if you say this, you are confessing yourself to be a person of faith, because you believe without evidence in an "explanation" you know nothing about!

If Yeshua really is who they say he is, it is of supreme importance to know. What will you decide?

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