BUT!!! the crazy thing? God actually revealed himself. Whaaat? How? Well, I reckon there are two big ways:
1) Through his words. 2 Timothy 3:16 says that ALL scripture is God-breathed; so it comes straight from God to a guy who writes it down. So God reveals himself; his standards, his character, the way he interacts with his world through the bible. The bible is a tangible revelation of God himself. What even? Crazy stuff.
Not convinced?
2) Well; God reveals himself through Jesus! Jesus is God with legs! How can we possibly know that?
Well, firstly; surely, if God really was God, he would have some sort of authority/control over his creation. I mean, he created it after all. Hello? Jesus STOPPED BEING DEAD. He turned water into wine. He made people who were dying (or even already dead) stop doing that and and do other things. Like living. Again, how can we know? We have 4 seperate eyewitness accounts (or an accumulation of eyewitness reports in Luke's case) called the gospels. All of them were written within the lifetime of the generation that were being written about. So, SOMEONE surely would have been like 'actually - Jesus' tomb is over here. Yep. He's definitely in there.' Anyone could have picked up a gospel and been able to testify to it's truth, or totally derailed anything in there. On top of that, an historian called Josephus calls Jesus 'a doer of many startling deeds' and a bunch of other things like that (see my note below*) So, if there were people around who could testify to it's status as truth or lie, and it had turned out the be a lie, then the gospels would have been discredited as historical fact. The whole Christian thing would have lost all credit and popularity. But instead it EXPLODES (see Acts (no seriously, read it. It's insane) + Tacitus (below.))
And so many of his closest followers are led to their death because they claimed that Jesus was God, and that he rose from the dead - and they would have seen him die, and seen him rise. If it was a lie, if it wasn't true, if Jesus didn't really rise, why would you die for it? Surely at the point where the executioner is getting ready to kill you, you'd 'fess up. Surely, they believed that Jesus ACTUALLY rose. And history points to it as well. Who would be the only person able to do that, able to physically raise someone from the dead? God. Surely. Who else??
God has revealed himself. On pages, and on earth.
*Josephus, Antiquities, Book 18.63-64
'Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of startling deeds, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ, and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians so named from him are not extinct at this day.'
*Tacitus, Annals, 15.44
‘Christians derived their
name from a man called Christ … the deadly superstition, thus checked for the
moment, broke out afresh not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but
also in the City of Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part
of the world meet and become popular'
P.S. Did I mention how much I love history??
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