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“Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the word of truth.” 2 Timothy 2:15
Most of the world gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night without even a thought about the Second Coming of Jesus or that He might return in their lifetimes. Some don’t even know about Him. Others don’t believe in Him. Even Christian believers may be dubious about the return of Jesus.
Nearly one thousand five hundred years before the incarnation of Jesus Christ, God established the construction of the Jewish Tabernacle, including the mercy seat, which is the cover on the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies:
And you shall make a mercy seat of pure gold… And you shall make two cherubim [angels] of gold… And make one cherub at one end one cherub at the other end… And the cherubim shall have their wings spread upward, covering the mercy seat with their wings and facing one another… And you shall put the mercy seat on top of the [Ark of the Covenant] …and there I will meet with you… (Exodus 25:17-22).
In the last issue of Happ-O-getics, I challenged the view held by some scholars that the illiteracy rate among people at the time of Jesus was at least 98% (they could neither read nor write). Based on the many libraries and volumes of written documents that existed even then, the statistic is quite unlikely. This leads us to ponder another question: was Jesus literate?
I also quoted Helen Bond, a professor of Christian Origins at the University of Edinburgh who said, “If Jesus was a carpenter/mason, as we generally suppose, then it’s not impossible that he had some rudimentary grasp of letters and/or numbers for the purposes of his trade, but I think it very unlikely that Jesus could read or write.”
In this issue, I want to challenge the naivety or nonsense of this statement regarding Jesus.
[Read more…] about Was Jesus Literate?I did a brief article on the Shroud of Turin about a year ago (Happ-O-getics, May 2022, Vol. 2, Issue 5). The Shroud is thought by many to be the burial cloth of Jesus (Matthew 27:59). What was already known at that time about the Shroud’s authenticity?
Imagine, for a moment, that the Resurrection of Jesus is not just a beautiful story commemorated each Easter, but the supreme fact of history—one with the power to transform lives and destinies. As a former skeptic and lifelong researcher, I have devoted my career to examining evidence not only for the mind, but for the heart. In this special celebration issue, I invite you to journey with me through compelling eyewitness testimony, astonishing archaeological finds, fulfilled prophecy, and the personal hope that the Resurrection offers. What if the hope of Easter is not mere myth, but history’s greatest reality? Read on, and discover why the Resurrection of Jesus matters—perhaps more than ever before.
The apostle Peter claimed that “…we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty” (2 Peter 1:16). In fact, ten post-resurrection appearances at different times and places are recorded in the Gospels.
The apostle Paul wrote that after Jesus’ resurrection He made numerous appearances to many individuals but also to “more than 500 hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now…” (1 Corinthians 15:4-8). C.H. Dodd comments on this: “There can hardly be any purpose in mentioning the fact that most of the five hundred are still alive, unless Paul is saying, in effect, ‘the witnesses are still there [alive] to be questioned.’”
[Read more…] about ALIVE! Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus