The Biggest Hole in History
Mar 22, 2021 2910
I want to tell you about the biggest hole in history. It’s a mysterious hole that secular historians are unable to fill.
They know that something big happened in the first century, but they don’t know what it is.
It transformed the Roman Empire. In fact, it transformed the world and laid the foundations of society as we know it today.
Christians know how to fill that biggest hole in history. They know that it is perfectly filled by the biggest event in history: the resurrection of the Son of God.
The biggest hole in history is perfectly filled by the the biggest event in history.
If you don’t believe in the resurrection of Jesus, there is a huge Jesus-shaped hole in history which is basically unexplainable without it.
Most historians of the period agree that the Gospels represent important historical documents. They agree that Jesus was born, lived, and died, much as the Gospels say that he did. But when they look at the evidence for the resurrection, they drawback and say, “No, that never happened.” Why? Because their worldview doesn’t allow them to believe in God.
What would our world be like today if Jesus hadn’t risen from the dead? There’d be no Christianity: a worldview that has shaped our modern world like no other.
Why are our societies today not based on Mithraism or Gnosticism or polytheism, or any of the other “-isms” that existed in the first century? These made much more sense in the ancient world than in Christianity. That God would be born as a Jew on the fringes of the empire? Worshipping a crucified criminal? Maintaining that he rose from the dead? There could be no beliefs more stupid than those.
There is nothing that can explain the rise of Christianity other than that it is true: that Jesus really did rise from the dead, and that there were a large number of people who knew it to be a fact and who were willing to give up their lives for it rather than go back to the comfortable things they once believed.
What would our world be like if Jesus hadn’t risen from the dead?
It’s not just that. If Jesus hadn’t risen from the dead, there’d be no science as we know it. There’d be no hospitals and modern health care. There would be no universities and public education. There’d be no organized benevolence and charities. There’d be no human rights. There were none of these things before Jesus rose from the dead. And as 1 Corinthians 15:17 says, we are still our sins.
They were all introduced into the world by Christians, based on the principles that they learned from the message of Jesus. None of these things ever existed in non-Christian societies before the coming of Christianity, at least not in the form that we know them today. You can say that it’s just luck and that they could have existed given enough time and the right circumstances, but the fact is that they didn’t.
Something happened in the first century that changed the world by setting in motion the philosophical and societal underpinnings that allowed all these things to be created. It was the life, teachings, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
But that’s not just a hole in history. It’s also an aching hole in the life of every person who lives today who hasn’t yet discovered Jesus. It’s just that most people just don’t recognize it: that Jesus really is the answer to their every good desire, to their every noble ambition, and their most cherished hopes.
Susa
Mar 30, 2021
Amen. This is true. As from a Christian perspective, I believe this message. As mentioned above, we cannot say that all those happen by luck and the right circumstances. Jesus Christ is the teacher, doctor, and He is the road to Eternal life.