Submitted by Staff on
While on a preaching tour of Japan several years ago, I was given the opportunity to visit a Buddhist temple. My guide was a young lady who appeared to be in her early 20s. We discussed a variety of topics during the course of the tour. Eventually, our conversation turned toward religion.
By Kelly Boggs
Editor
While on a preaching tour of Japan several years
ago, I was given the opportunity to visit a Buddhist temple. My guide
was a young lady who appeared to be in her early 20s. We discussed a
variety of topics during the course of the tour. Eventually, our
conversation turned toward religion.
When I asked the young lady her thoughts about Jesus
Christ, she was polite but pointed. She believed that Jesus was a good
teacher but nothing more. When I pressed her about his claim to be God,
she dismissed the notion. “In the history of the world,” she said,
“many have claimed to be divine.” I smiled and replied, “Perhaps, but
only one rose from the dead!”
Easter is the exclamation point to Jesus Christ’s
claim that he is “the way, the truth, and the life,” and that “no man
comes to the Father, but through Me.” The resurrection of Jesus from
the dead is the event that sets Christianity apart from all other
religions. The Apostle Paul said it well, “And if Christ has not been
raised [from the dead], your faith [Christianity] is worthless.”
Some insist the issue of Christ’s resurrection is a
matter of blind faith. Charles Colson would disagree. In fact, he would
offer a contemporary illustration that represents a compelling argument
in support of the biblical assertion that Jesus Christ rose from the
dead.
Colson served as special counsel to President
Richard Nixon. He was also a co-conspirator in the infamous Watergate
cover-up. As a result, Colson pled guilty to the crime of obstruction
of justice and did time in a federal prison.
With the Watergate scandal unfolding, Colson began a
soul quest that concluded with a commitment to Jesus Christ. Later, as
he began to ponder one of the fundamentals of the Christian faith – the
resurrection – Colson found his conspiracy experience to be most
enlightening.
Reflecting on the Watergate scandal in his book Loving God, Colson wrote:
“With the most powerful office in the world at
stake, a small band of hand-picked loyalists, no more than ten of us,
could not hold a conspiracy together more than two weeks.... Yet even
the prospect of jeopardizing the President we’d worked so hard to
elect, of losing the prestige, power, and personal luxury of our
offices was not enough incentive to make this group of men contain a
lie. Nor, as I reflect today, was the pressure really all that great.
... There was certain to be keen embarrassment; at the worst, some
might go to prison; though that possibility was by no means certain.
But no one was in grave danger; no one’s life was at stake....
“This is why the Watergate experience is so
instructive for me. If John Dean and the rest of us were so panic
stricken, not by the prospect of beatings and execution, but by
political disgrace and a possible prison term, one can only speculate
about the emotions of the disciples.
“Unlike men in the White House, the disciples were
powerless people, abandoned by their leader, homeless in a conquered
land. Yet they clung tenaciously to their enormously offensive story
that their leader had risen from his ignoble death and was alive – and
was the Lord.
“... Take it from one who was inside the Watergate
web, who saw firsthand how vulnerable a cover-up is: Nothing less than
a witness as awesome as the resurrected Christ could have caused those
men to maintain to their dying whispers that Jesus is alive and the
Lord.”
There are many religions in the world. Each
possesses wisdom and philosophical insight that adherents find helpful.
However, only one has as its author a man who claimed to be God and
then validated that assertion by resurrecting from the dead.
As a result, we who follow Jesus Christ celebrate
his triumph over death. For us it is more than blind faith; it is a
living reality.