1 In the open, among crowds of people, not in isolation or in dark corners. (For example, note the amazing feeding of the 5,000, one of the few events in the life of Christ reported in all four Gospels.)
2 Reported in a great variety of times and places, by many different people of varied backgrounds and characteristics, unlike any other cases of mass delusion ever reported.
3 Written up by men who were clearly not the type of men subject to credulity or hallucinations — e.g., Paul, one of the best-educated men of his day, with a highly logical and careful mind; Luke, an exceptionally competent physician and historian; Peter and John, trained as hard and pragmatic fishermen; Matthew, a politician and tax-assessor; James, a stolid and practical individual, acknowledged as leader of the early church in Jerusalem; and Jude, brother of James.
4 Accepted by great numbers of people who, because of the intense persecution they endured for their faith, would have certainly had every reason to analyze and test very critically the claims made concerning Christ by the early Apostles. It is inconceivable they could have persisted in their faith if there were any grounds for believing the Apostles to be nothing but deluded fanatics.
The Character of Christ
The only remaining source of deception that could be a possible explanation must be in Jesus Christ himself. That is, we have seen that the New Testament documents are authentic, written around the middle of the first century by men who were intelligent and stable men, sincere in what they wrote; men who had full access to the facts they were reporting, and who were firmly convinced that the one about whom they wrote was God himself, perfectly in union with human flesh, as Son of God and Son of Man, the one whose words and deeds were uniquely perfect, who performed many mighty miracles, and who had triumphed over death itself by His bodily resurrection.
Now, if all this were not really true, the only remaining possible way of accounting for such beliefs is to say that Jesus Christ himself somehow deceived His disciples into believing them. He so dazzled them with His speech that they thought He was absolutely perfect in word and deed. Likewise, He somehow tricked them into imagining they had seen Him walking on water, giving sight to the blind, and restoring Lazarus to life after four days in the tomb. And then, most marvelous of all, by some sort of incredible "passover plot," He persuaded them He had been crucified, buried and then raised again. Furthermore, He deceived them into thinking that after His resurrection, they saw Him ascending up through the clouds into heaven!
The mere recital of such absurdities is proof enough that they are impossibilities! If Jesus were of such absolutely unique skills in trickery and deception as such an explanation would require, He becomes a more marvelous enigma than if He actually did all the disciples claim for Him. Furthermore, He is surely the greatest charlatan and hypocrite in all history, if such an explanation is really true.
Yet even His enemies have continually acknowledged Him to be the greatest teacher, by precept and example, the world has ever known. The influence of His teachings and those He inspired in His followers have been the greatest force for good that man has ever encountered. Unless His character is truly as portrayed in the New Testament, there is no way ever to find that which is good and true in this world. Life is certainly devoid of any meaning, and God is dead, if Christ is not what the Scriptures declare.
The Witness of the Ordinances
Christian churches everywhere, of almost all denominations, practice two most remarkable ceremonies. Though the particular form of the observance of each may have changed in some respects with the passing years, the very fact of the observance is itself a strong testimony to the authenticity of the New Testament and Christianity. These two ceremonies are what are known as the ordinances of baptism and the Lord's Supper.
According to the gospel records (e.g., Matt. 28:19), baptism was commanded by Jesus Christ as an integral part of His Great Commission, to be given to each new convert won to himself by the preaching of the disciples. Similarly, observance of the Lord's Supper was commanded by Him as a regular observance to commemorate His sacrificial death (e.g., Matt. 26:26-28).
It is known, of course, from the literature of the Church through the ages that the churches have always practiced these two ordinances in one form or another. The authority for doing so comes from the New Testament. However, the ordinances do have a peculiar witness of their own, not shared by the other events recorded in the New Testament.
As a matter of fact, they antedate the New Testament, since they were established by Christ himself and have been practiced ever since. It is clear from the Book of Acts that converts always were baptized soon after conversion (Acts 2:41; 8:12; etc.). Also, the churches regularly observed the Lord's Supper (1 Cor. 11:20-26), even before they had the New Testament Scriptures which commanded them to do so.
To appreciate the significance of this fact, one should try to imagine what it was like to be in one of these first century churches when they first began to receive copies of the epistles and other writings which eventually were to be the New Testament. Say, for example, it was a church which had been established as the result of the preaching of Philip the evangelist. This church continued to exist for, say, about 20 years after its founding before it began to receive copies of some of Paul's epistles and perhaps another 10 years before it obtained a copy of one of the four Gospels.
During this time it was guided in its practice by the teachings of its founder and perhaps also by other teachers whom God sent its way or raised up from its own members. Among the instructions they were following were, of course, those pertaining to baptism and the Lord's Supper. Philip, who had been one of the original seven deacons, would certainly have been careful to emphasize the basic importance of these two ordinances in the life of the church. When they finally received the actual written accounts of how those ordinances were first established, this would merely strengthen and confirm them in what they were already practicing and knew to be in accordance with the verbal teachings they had received at first.
But, now, just suppose neither Philip nor any of their other teachers had ever told them anything about either ordinance and they had not practiced either baptism or the Lord's Supper before, and neither had any of the sister churches with whom they had contact. Suddenly they receive a document purporting to be from an Apostle (say, the Gospel of Matthew, or Paul's first Epistle to the Corinthians) in which these ordinances are discussed in such a way as to indicate they had been established by Christ and practiced by the churches ever since.
The obvious reaction by the church would be to assume the documents were fraudulent and to reject them forthwith. Their authors obviously could not have been the real Apostles, because they were proposing two ceremonies as having existed in the churches since the days of Christ himself, which the church receiving the documents knew, from their own previous contacts, did not exist in the churches. Thus, these documents would have been rejected as spurious by this church and by any other churches to which they came.
Thus, at no time after the days of Christ, could any such writings ever have gained acceptance as authentic records at all, unless these ordinances which they described were actually being practiced in the churches at the time of their writing and circulation. In this way the very existence of the two simple ceremonies of baptism and the Lord's Supper, both picturing and commemorating the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus in obedience to His commandment, is in itself a powerful witness to the authenticity of the New Testament documents which describe their establishment and perpetuation. There is no way of accounting for the initiation of either of the ordinances except as described in these documents. The churches could never have been persuaded to begin practicing them by books or teachers who told them they had already been practicing them since the days of Christ, if in fact they knew otherwise. Therefore, the ordinances were established by Christ, and the New Testament writings which tell about them are authentic.
Demonstration of New Testament Truth in History
A