Madre raw ako.

I was a fourth year student in Ateneo de Manila last 2013 and I vividly recall this one google document where graduating students can anonymously post and comment about their crush or whoever they want to talk about.

I saw my name, maybe someone liked me then (char) but then clipped with the same phrase was a claim that I loved God, and mag mamadre raw ako. At first I felt offended, but then laughed. I must have been an uninformed Jesus freak then haha! (but thankfully we grow and outgrow our inappropriately zealous selves).

We are by nature, quick to judge. But a second look, a lingering one, can change our perception about things and about people. Wouldn’t it be  better to ask hard and confronting questions than to speedily conclude and dismiss the matter?  🙂

So magmamadre ba ako? That’s a hard and confronting question of what I seem to stand for. :)) But I won’t veer away from such questions. 

I have been working on this article for some weeks now and today I decided to start from scratch. I hope that this article will assist you in your calling, in your faith and relationships with people and with God.

Just the other day, I conversed with a Muslim friend and faith was in the dialogue. We are good friends and there was no strain, there was no pin-pointing, no pulling down of each other but just a genuine effort to understand each other. Faith was in question and during that time, I could only reason based on my personal knowledge of Jesus through the Bible – not stating the overwhelming facts outside even the realms of religion that prove the trustworthiness of the resurrection of Jesus and the inerrancy of the Bible.

A day after, I was glad to tag along my friends to attend an Apologetics class in CCF. Apologetic comes from the word, ‘apologia’ which means a speech in defense. We can defend our faith not just subjectively but objectively. It was intellectually stimulating, but more than that, it further strengthened my why’s on why I believe what I believe.

It saddens me that a lot of young people do not have a defense for why they believe the things they believe in. We do not want blind followers. We are encouraged to think, prove and discover the truth.

I have met many Christians who could only have their feelings and their testimonies as their defense for their faith. It’s not bad, those are good things but many people fail to understand that the early Christians, though they were persecuted, were not afraid to reason, to come together with others and settle matters with those who did not share the same belief with theirs. What was on trial was their faith, and emotions – are not their only weapon.

We were called to love God not only with all of our heart and soul but also of our mind. Your head is not a hindrance to your faith, it is a bridge to intimately knowing your Creator.  I had experiences with a certain group where sadly, questions were dismissed as God-opposing doubts or grave indicators of waning faith. And I know, how my generation loves to think, ask and challenge just about everything. But I hope to encourage you….

My dear fellow millennial, know that it is not wrong to ask.

I seek not to shallowly tickle you with inspirational jargon today. Today, I give you reality checks by bringing to the table the questions you mainly never openly ask anyone.

So together, let’s ask the right questions.

1. What sets the Bible apart from other books? And how is Jesus believable?

The Bible was written in over 1,600-year span by more than 40 writers from every walk of life. Kings, peasants, philosopher, fisherman, doctor, businessman and others. It was written in different places from Africa, Asia, Europe, prison, to wilderness and just about every corner you could think of. Different faces in different places all foretelling stories with a central theme: God’s plan for redemption through Jesus.

It’s easy to make up a lie and connive with one or two people, that is easy to maintain – but for more than 40 people to speak about one man in different time zones and circumstances and in a 1,600 year-span? nope, that is not the rumor mill. Rumors wane, truth does not. It lives and stays.

How could I say that? You see, one third (28%) of the Bible is comprised of prophesies. A prophecy is a prediction of what may happen in the future that are mainly given by prophets.

According to Dr. Peter Stoner of Science Speaks who had proved that Jesus is who he claims to be using the mathematics of probability. What are the chances of past prophecies be fulfilled in one man?

These are some of the prophecies:

If about 8 prophecies would be fulfilled, what are the chances that it will be fulfilled in the life of Jesus? Dr. Stoner provides us a visual picture of such and I will contextualize this in Philippine setting. Imagine, a 5 peso coin more than two-feet deep be placed in the whole of Luzon Island. Let’s say every coin has specific name of a person.  Ride on an helicopter, go down whenever you want to and pick any coin you’d like. What are the chances, that you’d pick the coin with your name on it? The gravity of that question parallels with Jesus – fulfilling all the prophecies.

And let me tell you, if at 8 prophecies, it’s jaw dropping, what more 100 more prophecies? Bible students note that there were more than a hundred dealing with Christ’s first advent. Dr. Stoner goes on and says, “Any man who rejects Christ as the Son of God is rejecting a fact proved perhaps more absolutely than any other fact in the world.”

2. Are there any other sources that prove the trustworthiness of the Bible?

Yes. Last November, I had the privilege of doing a pilgrimage in Holy Land (Israel, Jordan and Egypt). Archaeology did not disapprove but confirmed the truth and authenticity of the Bible and of Jesus.

The Dead Sea Scrolls (more than a thousand-year-old) in Qumran, were discovered in the 1940’s. Skeptics were excited to disprove the Bible, because they knew the copies could be wrongly translated from the original copies. And they were wrong, the message was intact and did not contradict with the present copies we currently have now.

The Taylor Prism in the British Museum was discovered in 1830 in Nineveh (Iraq). In 2 Kings 19, there was a ruler named Tirhakah, king of Cush. Nowhere in other historical records proved that such a king existed until the Taylor Prism was discovered and engraved was the ruler’s name. There are some things not even our history books have covered, so just because it is not there does not mean it is not the truth.

The pool of Bethesda mentioned in John 5:2, was something people contested about, as they could not find the actual place, not considering that Romans destroyed Israel, leaving little remnants. But lo and behold, what they dismissed as non-existent was later discovered.

Other archaeological finds that you may want to check out are: Ebla Tablet (Genesis 14:8); Walls of Jericho (Joshua 6); Pilate Inscription (Matthew 27, Mark 15, Luke 23, John 18-19); Erastus Inscription (Romans 16:23; 2 Tim 4:20).

Read up. Even if you don’t believe in the Bible, nor in Jesus, at least, must have the reason why you don’t. Patunayan mo. Wag lang sa feelings bes, isip isip din pag may time. 

3. What do other non-Christians say about the case of Jesus Christ?

I have heard of prominent people mentioned in the Apologetics class and did some research about them. Here it goes:

Sir Lionel Luckhoo (1914-1997) is considered one of the greatest lawyers in British history. He’s recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records as the “World’s Most Successful Advocate,” with 245 consecutive murder acquittals. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II — twice. Luckhoo declared:

I humbly add I have spent more than 42 years as a defense trial lawyer appearing in many parts of the world and am still in active practice. I have been fortunate to secure a number of successes in jury trials and I say unequivocally the evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is so overwhelming that it compels acceptance by proof which leaves absolutely no room for doubt.

Simon Greenleaf (1783-1853) was one of the founders of Harvard Law School. He authored the authoritative three-volume text, A Treatise on the Law of Evidence (1842), which is still considered “the greatest single authority on evidence in the entire literature of legal procedure.”1 Greenleaf literally wrote the rules of evidence for the U.S. legal system. He was certainly a man who knew how to weigh the facts. He was an atheist until he accepted a challenge by his students to investigate the case for Christ’s resurrection. After personally collecting and examining the evidence based on rules of evidence that he helped establish, Greenleaf became a Christian and wrote the classic, Testimony of the Evangelists.

Let [the Gospel’s] testimony be sifted, as it were given in a court of justice on the side of the adverse party, the witness being subjected to a rigorous cross-examination. The result, it is confidently believed, will be an undoubting conviction of their integrity, ability, and truth.

So I’ll end this with a quote from one of my favorite authors.

“You must make your choice: either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” – CS Lewis

And of course, you might have found out by now that I did not become a nun. Hehe. Hope you had fun reading this 🙂