Why Jesus? Part Three

When evaluating the authenticity of Christianity, it is important to examine subjective claims of individuals whose lives have been changed. When I was younger, I can remember hearing my dad tell about accepting Jesus Christ while he was in early twenties. In 1960's, like many other rebellious teenagers, my father naively joined the army to get away from his home so he didn't have to "obey so many rules." After his rude awakening to the real world, he found himself in Vietnam. Here he turned to drugs and alcohol to satisfy the empty longings of his soul. After he returned to the states, he continued to live an immoral lifestyle. But somehow, when he had reached his lowest point of hopelessness, he turned to Christianity for satisfaction. Due to the influence of several Christian relatives, my dad became a Christian. Today his life is radically different. Stories like this might not impress the skeptic, but somehow every time I heard my dad's testimony my confidence in Christianity is bolstered.

This is also evidenced in the history of early church. The conversation of two different skeptics greatly advanced Christianity in its infant stages. Before the death of Christ, Jesus' half-brother James had rejected the controversial claims of his older sibling. But after empty tomb, James changed his mind to embrace the new religion and he became an important leader in the Jerusalem church. In Acts 15, we see him presiding over the Jerusalem Council.

Where as James was a skeptical insider who was related to Christ, the second influential convert was an outsider to the early church. Paul (the Hellenistic equivalent of the name Saul) had been a zealous member of the Pharisees, a religious group that had been partly responsible for the death of Christ. Initially Paul tried to stomp out this new "heretical" sect of Judaism. And because of his religious beliefs, Paul intensely persecuted the early church. However, about five years after the death of Christ, Paul had an unusual experience that changed his life. On the way to Damascus to persecute the church, Paul had a vision of the risen Christ and apparently was blinded. After receiving back his sight, Paul went from being the church's greatest persecutor to its greatest evangelist. These changed lives were greatly responsible for the spread of this new religion.