Good newsfor God

Hes been vindicated

I. The facts
Some twenty centuries ago a man named Jesus presented himself to a small but significant nation with an unexpected claim. He said he was sent here on behalf of someone
he called my Father, ** or simply Goda claim demanding more than casual proof. He
delivered, casually performing healings without drawing attention to himself, but pointing
healed and onlookers to the God their holy writings had spoken of. He commended
himself to the people by what he did and how he did it; his words were often hard to
comprehend, while touching chords that had not been struck for a long time, frequently
making listeners muse is not this the Christ? Ignoring the nations leadership, he directly
addressed the crowds without introduction or credentials, leaving folks to deduce his
identity from actions and words a mode preferred by ordinary men in any culture.
He chose twelve such ordinary men to be with him for a little over three years, and saw
to it that they would provide in their own words, an oral and written account of what they
saw in those unusual days. He wrote nothing himself. From these men and their contemporaries, we have four very straightforward accounts of the daily, often-unusual doings and sayings of Jesus. They were life-changing for the writers and oddly continue to
be reproduced in many millions of readers since then.
This altogether-unprecedented ability to guarantee subsequent, centuries-removed
readers of Jesus words the same experience that moved the original hearers, has resulted in giving to his words a credence unparalleled in the annals of human history, and
yielding countless people the unsettling experience of knowing Jesus in the same way
his literal followers reported centuries ago. His name is a household word, and we set
our calendar by his birth.
He had a way of reconnecting listeners with mankinds past, drawing from ancient writers like Moses, while adding observations that suggested he had been right there with
Moses or with Adam. For example, he added to Moses statement on this account shall
a man leave father and mother the comment he that made them in the beginning said
and added an unthought-of conclusion what therefore God has joined together, let not
man separate. Additions like this always resonate, making hearers reflect, why didnt I
think of that?
Jesus had a way of taking issues back to forgotten roots, for example, paying taxes.
Roman rule was roundly resented, taxes were onerous, so when asked the lose/lose
question is it lawful for us to give tribute to Caesar or not? he called for a coin of the
realm, inquiring whose image and superscription adorned it, and upon being told Caesars, replied simply Render therefore unto Caesar the things that be Caesars, and to
God the things which be Gods. Their prophets and sages had warned them Gods displeasure with their ways would bring foreign domination to which they must be subject
a consideration the rulers, who were in covert league with the Romans, were not ready
to face lest their alliance be unmasked.

note that italics in the text are in the most cases quotes from the
Bible, without the flow-interrupting citations of chapter/verse.

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He treated his immediate acquaintance with God, as a thing natural and commonplace,
inviting hearers to experience the same: Your heavenly Father, he told the crowds,
knows ye have need, never stopping to explain who this heavenly father (a term they
had never heard before) was. They were oddly comfortable with his method of teaching,
from encountering it in the first verse of Moses first book, where God is introduced without definition or explanation: In the beginning God created was what they heard read
aloud on the weekly Sabbath readings.
He referred to himself as the son of man, a kind of final Adam or ordinary, representative
man. Expressions like this identified him to the man on the street as one of us, as did
also his surprising approachableness. Common folks from all walks, social outcasts,
even blind and crippled found no barrier to gaining his ear or his healing touch.
Women, in a society that proscribed social interaction between men and women, found
themselves not simply attracted to a man who treated them as human beings, but comfortable and unthreatened near him. Never an untoward allusion passed his lips; for example speaking to a woman who had had six husbands, at the critical conversational
turn he obviated over-intimacy by saying to her Go, call your husband, and come here.
Unable to deploy a cover-up, she (out of character) blurted out her truth I have not a
husband. Unruffled, he replied you have had five husbands, and the man you have is
not your husband, quietly suggesting to her intuition she was speaking to a man with
qualities she had only heard of in holy prophets. Upon her leading rejoinder I know that
Messiah is coming he invited her confidence with the words I am he. I, the man who is
talking to you.
As proof of his ability to relate heavenly things, (a sign the Israelite nation had been led
to expect of their messiah) he demonstrated and spoke quietly of a radical new concept,
love, in a way and manner never seen or heard of in the annals of recorded history. Prior to his demonstrating undeserved, unrequited love to friend and enemy alike, there is
no record of like actions and words in all the cultures of mankind. And he did so with no
apparent motive, other than that which he ingenuously attributed to his mandate to declare the Father to men. Without fanfare or blowing his own horn, he added significantly
to the sum of what folks could know of God, as Moses had done when making Yahwehs
character known to their fathers. Human literature and human experience has never
been the same since; a new standard of morality was unfurled in his life, and men have
been writing, composing, and searching-out ever since, what this thing he called love is.
Contrariwise to all other of mankinds teachers, he first lived-out, then spoke-out
another demonstration to a wary audience of his being sent into the world by another,
and thus (presuming he faithfully represented the message-sender) what that Sender
was like. Teachers abound in all cultures; exemplars are rare. If he said I am the light of
the world, a high claim, he first demonstrated it by exposing a sham morality, then physically by healing a man born blind. If he said I am the resurrection, he raised a four-days
dead man within an hour of speaking it. When he said I am the good shepherdall who
ever came before me are thieves and robbers, it was only after gathering to him the outcasts of society from the denigrating clutches of religious leaders who cast such out.
He was the first man ever to use human life in the way it was intended. A rich man uses
his wealth; a strong man his strength. Jesus used rather than spent human life as a currency that enabled one to be (as he freshly taught) rich towards Godthe opposite of
every other man who ever lived on earth. We assume and presume upon life as our
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own, and spend it in the pursuit of happinessour happiness, not Gods. Not so Jesus:
the simple act of eating, for example, was for him an occasion he used, or refrained from
using, for Gods happy pleasure in His once-errant creature, Man. If we are indeed created beings, our first obligation is to our maker. Jesus reiterated this ancient teaching,
but only after living it out in the smallest details of his life. Hungering, he could variously
ask have ye any meat or curse a barren fig tree that waved its leaves at him, or refuse to
turn stones to bread after fasting forty days, or reply I have food to eat which ye do not
recognize to disciples who urged him, Master, eat the actual loaves they had just purchased. Bread, he demonstrated more than once, was not merely for eating, but could
be used for giving, counting on God to multiply five loaves to feed a crowd. Then to explain how he would do more than Moses who gave their fathers manna to eat in the desert, he added (as so often) enigmatic words the bread which I shall give is my flesh,
which I give for the life of the world. The gap between things moral and actual was no
issue for him, but if his listeners were troubled a simple parable bridged the gap.
He met the caretaker of Abrahams ennobled race, an entity known as the Law. To its
demand that men honor it he submitted, for the law was indeed given by God. But upon
being offered the prize for being the first man ever to keep it, he turned it down: eternal
life in the flesh on earth, his rightful inheritance as Gods champion, would isolate God
forever from the men He loved and the world He loved, since men would have to keep
the law as Jesus did to enter into life. Consider:
The action of Adam had to be both reversed and completed. Adam had held in his hand,
then eaten of the fruit of a forbidden tree, Jesus held eternal life as an award rather than
plucked prematurely from a tree by a companions hand. He reversed Adams taking by
giving. He completed mankinds stewardship by responsibly holding rather than squandering.
Upon asking that life be vouchsafed to him but getting no answer to his request Father,
all things are possible to thee: remove this cup from me, he acted on his own, took that
(now eternal) human life and returned unblemished to God a life, a spirit. Thus Jesus
returned the prize, choosing rather to use that life as the currency to acquire access to
God for those who could not otherwise obtain it.
This action by Jesus was unique. For the first time in mankinds history, a man anticipated God. The divine challenge to creation who has first given to me that I should repay
him? had been answered. The arm extended to Him from His earth offered as it were a
cup of cold water for His thirst.
God took it from that man but instead of drinking poured out again upon the earth Jesus
tendered repayment. That response removed the necessity of death ...for all but Jesus.
Those who could not otherwise obtain it now gained resurrection life, and the Father
gained children.
Jesus died. That fact is probably one of the widest-known events of human history, and
the manner of his death has been the subject of countless paintings, writings, and explanations by friends and foes for two millennia. While a shock to all around him, their
written and oral accounts of the significance of his death are with us today, affecting millions just as they did the twelve.

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Those closest to him, the surviving eleven men who were deeply affected by his dying
made it their lifes goal to inform others of what they had seen and heard, both when with
him, and after Jesus words announcing his death came to pass.
The testimony of these men is that three days after dying, Jesus rose again from among
the dead. They saw him, touched him, spoke with him, ate with him, and were absolutely persuaded by what they experienced that the same Jesus they had known was the
one they saw, touched and conversed with.
After answering their query on the hill where they met for the last time by appointment,
the disciples were surprised to see Jesus caught up (as Luke describes it) and, while
they gazed, continue upward until a cloud obscured him from their sight.
Ten days later, they experienced what Jesus had told them to expect, an outpouring of
power from the heavens to which their gaze had been directed the last time they saw
him on earth. Their lives were profoundly changed by that event, as they were immediately enabled to do things quite beyond their previous abilities--speaking for example, in
other languages without being taught, doing healings like Jesus had done, or boldly addressing political and religious leaders without fear, even of death. The concept of a
martyr for a cause, began with these early followers of Jesus (or Christians as they
were deridingly styled). They rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor
for the name of Jesus.
For them, it was clear that what they experienced in the outpouring was tangible proof of
what Jesus had told them to expect: he would do more than rise from the dead. Having
risen he would ascend, introducing humanity to the heavens (not only being received
again by the God who had sent him, but) as a conquerors gift fit for God. What God had
desired then lost in Edena creature capable of holding colloquy with Him, and acting
as His steward over the newly minted earthHe more than regained. The specimen
man Jesus presented passed muster. God accepted the gift. The replacement the first
Adam. God was honored in heaven by a man from earth.
Proof of Jesus arrival and heavens formal reception of his gift from the earth would (Jesus had told them) be forthcoming: if they received the outpouring of Spirit while assembled in Jerusalem, they would know that Jesus had arrived where he had been sent
from, and would know it in themselves by a permanent outpouring of Holy Spirit that God
would award Jesus, and Jesus in turn would bestow on them in Jerusalem.
The universal testimony of these disciples of Jesus, a growing number, was that on the
Jewish festival day consistent with such an event, the house in which they were sitting
was filled with a strange but expected presence, emboldening them to forget their peasant roots. They preached freely and convictingly to those they previously feared, leaders
of the nations that had conjoined in the effort to get rid of their Master. The message
they began to deliver was consistent with that which Jesus had initiated. The series of
eye-witnessed events, beginning with Jesus birth and culminating with his disciples
sudden acquisition of language skills was, they proclaimed, a demonstration of that
strange thing, love, but with a brand new twistlove proceeding from God himself, to

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His creatures that showed Him and his messenger no love, turning from Him in Eden, at
Babel, and at that moment. 1
That it was love from God to mankind (never heard of in any culture on earth to that day)
was immediately demonstrated in the fact of Gods offering them forgiveness instead of
judgment for their act of vilifying His messenger. The retribution they feared would be
delayed while the unexpected love they were being treated to would carry the day.
They proclaimed forgiveness from God as an expression of His fatherly longing over
mankind, just as Jesus had illustrated in his story of a father and his prodigal son. So
persuaded were they of the truth of what they had seen in Jesus, of his rising from the
dead, of his subsequent return to the heavens that sent him, and of his motive as doing
it for the love of his Father, that they continued speaking of what they had witnessed, in
the face of threats and actual opposition from those who sought to set aside their testimony.
In spite of many of their number being put to death for the politically unpopular facts they
narrated, these disciples refused to modify or blunt the detailed reporting of the Jesus
they had come to know and his resurrection, saying that the same God who had sent
Jesus, had empowered and commissioned them to proclaim this good news to the
world.
Their message was quite novel, their missionary-mode was without precedent in any
land, their gentleness of manner and kindness to one another quite ridiculous, and their
willingness to flaunt death was spectacular. The God they spoke of was quite unlike anything in Pagan or mythological experiencewhat kind of a weakling would love his own
enemies? And the Jesus they admired was quite simply the first unflawed hero ever to
grace the pages of historical or romantic literaturegods who became men were not
new, but a god-man without flaws was. (Western literature took a distinct turn from that
moment; check it out).

II. Significance of the facts

The disciples bore testimony to a sundering assertion: the heavens, and the God of the
heavens, had formally received the first of the new race and given him a conquerors
seat at the council table of heaven. Peter, for example, reported that angels, authorities
and powers had been made subject to Jesus risen and ascended over their heads.
If their assertion was trueand the disciples staked their lives on itthis is good news
for God, now finally justified in the eyes of all onlookersearthly, infernal and heavenly.
Mankind, the crown of Gods creating, does not need to be scuttled as an experiment
gone bad, or flooded off Gods earth as in Noahs day. One man had acted like a man
ought, vindicating the God who had installed man vice-regent over His earth. Adams
1

We cant today appreciate the stark shock produced by connecting the words love and
God. They simply had never been heard in this way. A god of power, of majesty, of
wrath, of wisdom or righteousness even, was not strange. But which of the gods could
ever be accused of loving, really loving mankind? The proclamation of the gospel by
Christians in our times has so acclimated us to connecting God and love, that we have
difficulty picturing the exotic effect on hearers who had never contemplated a god loving
all mankind.

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transgression has been formally, judicially and righteously closed by a man who proved
by trusting God utterly, what Adam called in question--that God is good, without reservation, shadow or admixture, worthy of blind trust, as we men desire from our own children.
And of course, if Jesus really came as he said from the God who is there, then this is
good news for mankind as well. What Jesus did, he did on behalf of God, as well as on
behalf of the whole world of mankind loved by God. Uncommanded, Jesus gave his
flesh for the life of the world as he had said he would. His personal loss, eternal life on
earth in flesh, is flesh-and-bloods gain. News like this could not be, and was not, anticipated.
For the apostles and their followers, everything had now changed, along with a corresponding change in the spiritual world.
Death, as the apostles now viewed it, need not be feared. Mankinds centuries of wanderings missing the mark (or sins as they commonly styled these errings) can be
turned from and forgotten (now they understood Jesus story of a father and his returning
prodigal!). Egotism, that shiny, bitter root of mankinds separation from an ego-free God,
can be dethroned. Forgiveness can be offered a poor, ignorant world guilty of setting
aside its father-God, since Jesus had overcome its ruler. And that deceptive adversary
himself (referred to as the Devil or Satan) who sold Adam short has been evicted from
the place Adam ceded to him, never again to wield such power over the race. In short,
the good news for men is that in every way that we failed, he overcameand Jesus is
one of usthe new us. We, mankind, have not merely been reinstated, but elevated to
a new, higher place in creaturedom. The first Adam was given dominion over the whole
earth. The second mans dominion includes both earth and the heavens.
A strange and striking feature of the disciples witnessing to these things is their disinclination to use force in promulgating the Way. Jesus taught I say unto you, not to resist
evil . They remembered and observed. Going from city to city thru the known world, they
carried the news of Jesus and the resurrection, but never organized to force the news on
men, nor did they ever frighten men into believing.
They universally proclaimed a coming day of judgment where God would finally deal with
any holdouts, but not privy to the day or hour of that event, they simply commended to
mens consciences the words they heard Jesus say. The Jesus they watched calmly
returning to the heavens had only momentarily gone to a far country to receive a kingdom and return. Rather than apologize for Jesus unfulfilled words, they repeated them
as he spoke them, trusting he had good reason to put them in that puzzling form. #
Gods program however, (begun to be alluded to as the way) failed to unfold as expected, awaiting ratification. The victory of Jesus, heralded far and wide, has not secured universal obedience of faith in the worldand God will have no other. Mankind
has not acknowledged what heaven already hasthat Jesus is Lord of all: the earth be# This has been the subject of Christian comment for two thousand years. Disciples, who preached that Jesus was only
momentarily absent, and obviously expected his return in their lifetimes, were puzzled at this turn of events. Both Peter
and Paul indicate this by asserting they got an answer to their puzzlement from Jesus himself: They were, Jesus told
them, both to experience death rather than see Jesus return. Peter says in his announcement and apology to the disciples, that the putting off of my tabernacle would proceed swiftly even as our Lord Jesus Christ also showed me. We
are still waiting in 2014. God seems to have anticipated our puzzlement by assuring readers of Peters last letter that this
is not the first time in human history the longsuffering of God has waited. So were in good companyNuff said.

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longs to him. Thus, two thousand years later the good news of Jesus victory is still being proclaimed, but Gods planned celebration party is stifled while an apparent errant,
the worlds acceptance, tries the longsuffering of God. Absent one eventthe willing,
unforced acclamation of Jesus by his own nation and the wider worldthe return of Jesus from the far country to receive the kingdom is stalled. The world sees this as an errant, and Jesus promise of a second coming as laughable.
The unfolding timetable of Gods program demands the appearance and acclamation of
the victor.
The good news then, soberly but passionately proclaimed by disciples ever since that
day is that Gods program, sidelined in Eden by reason of Adams transgression, is back
on track. God (as all four writers relate) after observing and enjoying Jesus the last Adam for three decades, celebrated that life with an unprecedented action: opening the
heavens upon one of Adams race in an installment ceremony on the banks of the Jordan. That ceremony had included a public, attested anointingnot by men as every
other kingbut an anointing by mankinds Maker Himself. King Saul and King Davids
investiture was by the prophet Samuels anointing. God anointed Jesus. The dove that
appeared and lit on Jesus came directly from heaven.
God, now finally justified in the eyes of earth and heaven, showered tokens of that satisfaction upon a human. The one announced according to protocol was crowned publicly
by God, and commissioned as the ambassador to carry out Gods purpose. The superhuman tools Jesus used to do this demonstrated an unearthly power. God was with him
Luke says, explaining how blind see, lame walk, lepers are cleansed, dead are raised by
Jesus agency. Three years later God received the life Jesus commended to His keeping, and decreed that Jesus body should not see corruption. Raising Jesus from among
the dead (the significance of which escaped his disciples for fifty days) was tantamount
to God speaking, not by a voice but an action. That action formally ended the human
race as we know it. The second man, the beginning of the creation of God has appeared; transition from Adam to Christ has commenced: As in the Adam all die, thus
also in the Christ all shall be made alive. The race of mankind, on trial for 4000 years
and found useless to Gods purposes, has died like Adam and is now superseded by a
new race headed by this second man.
Good news gets shared. The fact that the proclamation of Jesus return has been continuously made to each generation for two millennia without occurring is poor reason and
shabby faith to accord this promise of Jesus less credence than his other words.
SoGood news! God has been honored by manas it were given a drink of cool water
from the earth. The slur that suggested God was not really good but had a hidden
agenda making a garden intruder more trustworthy than He, has been countered by a
descendent of Adam trusting God, not in a garden of delights but when actually abandoned by God. Gods assertion that men are to live by words coming from Him and not
by bread alone has seen fulfillment in a man. A man on earth has showed Gods stern,
inflexible law to be keepable. Gods perceived arbitrary favor has been shown by Jesus
to be kindness to erring children. Gods austere detachment in awesome majesty has
been shown breachablethe man who dared enter heaven unheralded has been received, celebrated, and invited into the inner circle! Gods apparent estrangement from
the world of men (Gentiles in particular, beginning at Babel) has been shown to be fatherly patience while His children learn lessons. Gods allowing death to enter the world
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and touch his creature man has been shown to be a fatherly act of kindness to men,
serving a utilitarian purpose, which has now receded from usefulness. His apparent
tempting of man by allowing a deceiver and adversary to accost innocent Adam and Eve
has been countered by a second man in less-guarded circumstances disarming the
tempter/deceiver. Gods building a wall around a single nation beginning with Abraham
now sees God applauding the breaking down of that wall by His sent one, who has furnished Him with the sought-for occasion to reunite all races into one new man, impartially removing the difference. Gods condemnation of the race for the sin of one man, Adam, has been counteredthe whole race has been freed for the one act of Jesus.
Gods harsh casting His steward of the whole earth out of the garden of Eden to till the
soil with sweat and labor, has found Jesus willing to take up that soiled stewardship, laboring and sweating to make it so profitable to God that He not only restored the stewardship of the earth to man, but doubled it: All authority Jesus said (not just Adams
original authority over the whole earth) is given to me in heaven and on earth! The mankind God stripped and cast out now rules not over the earth alone, but has been given
(and shortly will wield) total dominion over Gods heaven as well as Gods earth.
What stands out in the abbreviated list above is the man Jesus, and how all has come
together in one man. The evangel is Gods evangelconcerning his sonJesus Christ
our Lord. The message seems unstoppable; twenty centuries of proclaiming it have
continually had the same effect in each generationJesus, as Napoleon said "is no
mere man. Between him and every other person in the world, there is no possible term
of comparison. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I founded empires. But on what
did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded His empire
upon love; and at this hour millions of people would die for Him. If God will not be
mocked, but justified, then who do we men have to thank for that accomplishment for our
race? Jesus. He spanned the gap of Jobs plaintive cry for an umpire between us, who
should lay his hand upon us both, putting one hand on the throne of God and one on the
man of clay. In every item related above, the significance of the factsif they are indeed factsinescapably points to the man who brot them to pass.
This raises an issue, frequently the subject of intense argument between those who receive them as facts, and those who reluctantly acknowledge their tenableness. If Jesus
was both a man of flesh and blood as we, and at the same time the son of the one he
called Father, then he possessed an unfair advantage in carrying out the putative facts
related above. While a consideration of this issue would require lengthy treatment, and
perhaps a series of treatments, the issue itself is not new. The eyewitnesses and writers
who have given us the accounts weve discussed here, faced the issue, allowing us to
refer to how they did so.
Jesus, the gospel writers proclaim, is the son of God. There is intentional ambiguity in
that expressiontwo distinct meanings are possible. Is Jesus the son of God as a man
worthy of that title for what he did during thirty years, or is he the Son of God as a person of the Godhead? The answer that fits the apostles use of the term son of God is:
both. While Christian writers and proclaimers have swung back and forth in their emphases over two millennia, seeing him as a perfect man such as God Himself is unashamed to call son, or the eternal Word made flesh while never abandoning his deity,
the universal testimony of all Jesus followers is that he is both.
Peter, for example, was slow to come to the second realization. Early-on, what his eyes
saw in Jesus made him say Depart from me Lord, for I am a sinful man, and again Thou
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art the Christ, the Son of the living Godbut faltering in that apprehension a short time
later he takes Jesus aside and says [God] be favorable to thee, Lord; this [death] shall in
no wise be unto thee! Such inconsistency is common, but the fault is that our finite
minds cannot readily grasp the Infinite even when revealed. A false either/or logically
requires Jesus to be one or the other, for human logic fails when confronted with a singularity to which nothing in our experience can be comparedand a singularity is exactly how Jesus is presented. See how the gospel writer Mark artlessly bridges the difficulty: Beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, Son of God, or the writer of Hebrews: Jesus
the Son of Godusing first his name as a man, then his name in the triad they were to
baptize into, the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Rules of logic only apply and help us distinguish things we have already experienced; it is silly to expect them to meet every case, least of all a singularity. Minds accustomed to human
usage and logic falter when called on to see a seeming two as one.
Paul the apostle, upon his conversion and acknowledging Jesus speaking to him from
the heavens, immediately preached Jesus, that he is the son of God. John tells us plainly that the Word that was with God and was God, is the same Word who was made
flesh, and dwelt among us. They had no doubt that the man they died proclaiming, was
more than a man, as Jesus had said, and as even his enemies acknowledged to be true
of the one they waited for: the Christ, the accusing chief priest acknowledged, was nothing less than the Son of the Blessedthen, realizing what he had just acknowledged,
backpedaled to condemn Jesus by a bill of attainder. #
If God has been declared in the flesh of Jesus, He has need for and has found a new
runner to replace the retired runner, Law. Paul after bringing the words of the gospel to
Thessalonica, solicits the disciples prayers for others, that the word of the Lord may run
and be glorified, thus identifying Gods new runner as the gospel.
According to the apostles, that runner will run until God tells him to stop. Paul told the
Thessalonian disciples that when the fullness of the nations be come in, the holdouts
those who obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesusshall suffer punishment, eternal destruction from the Lords face...when he [Jesus] shall come to be glorified. He adds that
the holdouts who will not acknowledge Jesus as proclaimed in the gospel of grace will
be sent a working of error in place of the sent-and-recalled gospel, that they should believe a lie, that all might be judged who believed not the truth about Jesus. The Father,
Jesus announced, judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son. Thus, title to
the world and the bodies of all men living and dead is now held by Jesus; he alone has
right and power to determine the destiny of all men, and he will do as he pleases when
the runner is stopped and the time of telling the good news ends.
It is 2014 and disciples of Jesus still do not know the day or hour of Jesus coming to accomplish the gathering in of the wheat and the burning up the tares. His last-recorded

# A bill of attainder is a law that imposes any punishment on a named or implied individual without a trial. It makes a man
an offender for being himself. Jesus was indeed tried, but was condemned for who he was, not for what he did. He confessed to being the Son of God, while not asserting that fact until adjured, as the Hebrew law stated: And if any one sin,
and hear the voice of adjuration, and he is a witness whether he hath seen or known it, if he do not give information, then he shall bear his iniquity. The thrust of what the High Priest declared is that it was a crime to be the Son of
God. But the High Priest acknowledged that the Messiah they all awaited was indeed, in his own words, the Son of the
Blessed. It would appear that this fact, while well known among the leadership, was not publicly taught.

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words in the Revelation Behold, I come quickly have been the laughingstock of unbelieving holdouts. Possessed of all power in heaven and on earth, and charged with carrying out Gods program, he saw fit to use those exact words to convey from his new
position in the heavenlies, how the obedience of faith can guide men who wait for their
never-seen Lord. The significance of such words is that God waits; Jesus waits; Jesus
disciples must wait as well.

III. Eyewitnesses and the Role of Belief

So much for the facts of the gospel. Are they true? I personally refuse to take this bait.
It is solely for the eyewitnesses to declare whether their testimony is true. If you ask me,
Do you believe they are true? I will be happy to respond, giving you my reasons and
listening to yours.
The more intellectually honest question to ask is: what evidence do we possess that argues for or against receiving the testimony of the writers, and for the accuracy of the
writings that purport to relate these? If someone enters the room shouting Fire! or
Free pizza! or the like, we assess the credibility of the excited person or jokester as the
case may be. Applying the same criteria, it would seem wise to avail ourselves of the
counsel of experts who daily judge the reliability of human testimony.
I refer of course to our courts. Centuries of Western jurisprudence (the science concerned with the law and the principles that lead courts to render the decisions they do)
have evolved and defined the rules we commonly employ. In any matter of disputed testimony, the credit due to the testimony of witnesses depends on first, their honesty; secondly, their ability; thirdly their number and the consistency of their testimony; fourthly,
the conformity of their testimony with experience; and fifthly, the coincidence of their testimony with collateral circumstances.
Each generation farther removed from the time of their occurrence, relies on the written
and oral testimony of the men who penned them long ago. For our generation, the expert counsel of Simon Greenleaf (italicized in the paragraph above) serves well, coming
from a father of American jurisprudence as ordinary rules of any courtroom. Similar
rules govern oral testimony, but were precluded from using them here by two thousand
years.
Bidders for mens belief offer inducements. Most often, these are acceptance into a scientific, political, academic or religious community, or immediate financial gain, power,
position, and so on.
The facts (if believed as true) of the gospel offer inducements as well. In Jesus words,
those who believe the gospel will receive houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions, and in the coming age life eternal.
Harvey B Vedder

Cf. the popular 1970s song Delta Dawn, which mockingly portrays a hapless, witless, beautiful woman waiting downtown with a suitcase in her hand. Waiting for a mysterious dark-haired manand did I hear you say, he was a-meeting
you here today, to take you to his mansion in the sky?
There are no variants of this expression in the Greek manuscripts, and thus, no question that these are indeed the
words John recorded.

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New York
December 14, 2005, rev. Oct 31, 2014
harvedder@gmail.com
212 968-0230

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