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The Wait Is Over, Our New Free E-Book Is Here!

4/29/2020

Patience seems to come naturally for some people – even in very difficult situations – while others are not so fortunate. But learning patience with people and circumstances is a battle we must all fight to some degree. While many people acknowledge that patience is a virtue, it is easy to regard it as only a minor one – a distant cousin of the great spiritual virtues such as faith and love. Why Every Christian Needs More Patience makes it clear that patience is not only biblically commanded, but also of fundamental importance for every believer – far more so than many people would guess. Our newest e-book shows exactly what the Bible says about the need for this quality and looks at some of the unexpected ways the Scriptures guide and help us to make patience a part of our Christian lives.

You can download a free copy of Why Every Christian Needs More Patience in a number of formats to read on any computer, e-book reader or smartphone. No registration or email are needed – simply click on the link to download the format of your choice, here.

And don't forget, of course, that many more free e-books are available on our dedicated website: FreeChristianEBooks.org.

DID SOME DISCIPLES DOUBT THE RESURRECTION?

4/26/2020

“When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted” (Matthew 28:17).

In its description of the resurrected Christ meeting with his disciples in Galilee, Mathew’s Gospel includes a somewhat puzzling – if not startling – phrase that has often led to misunderstandings. When the risen Jesus appeared to his followers at this point, we are told that some of his disciples worshiped him, “but some doubted.”

What exactly was this doubt – that it was really Jesus? That it was not a vision? That they thought it was Jesus but doubted that he was actually God? Why did some believe while others doubted? And how serious was that doubt?

To answer these questions, we need to look closely at the words Matthew uses. The underlying Greek word for “doubted” is distazō, which is only used twice in the New Testament – here and in Matthew 14:31 when Jesus asked Peter why he doubted after he lost his confidence and began to sink while walking on the water toward Jesus.   In both cases the doubting does not denote intellectual disbelief (for which Greek uses the word apistia), but rather physical “hesitation.”

Most dictionaries of ancient Greek define distazō as meaning “waver or hesitate”* as well as “doubt,” and the meaning of “hesitate” makes sense logically in both passages. Peter must have originally not doubted or he would not have decided to get out of the boat, and the disciples who were said to doubt must have not done so originally because they went to Galilee, to the place Jesus told them to go to meet him – so they could not have disbelieved in the possibility of his resurrection.

In the case of Peter walking on the waves, he was doing fine for a while, but focusing on the wind, he hesitated (Matthew 14:30). In the case of the disciples who doubted when they saw Jesus, they too hesitated in some way. What could the hesitation have been?

The answer to that question is likely found in the same verse: “When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.” It seems likely that while most of the disciples, on seeing Jesus, worshiped him as the Son of God, some few hesitated, not yet sure that they should worship someone who appeared as a man before them. Interestingly, the story of Peter on the water also occurred in a context with worship of Jesus – once the disciples had seen an indication that he was the Son of God (Matthew 14:31). Understood this way, the hesitation had more to do with the Jewish abhorrence of worshiping anything but God than it had to do with any doubt that this was the resurrected Jesus.

We should remember that when we look back on this scene, we visualize it in terms of our knowledge of the resurrected divine Son of God. Some of those disciples may well have gone to Galilee expecting or hoping to see the resurrected Jesus, but perhaps without thinking out ahead of time what exactly one should do when one did see him. We must remember that the Scriptures mention a number of people being resurrected – and Matthew tells us specifically that: “The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus' resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people” (Matthew 27:52-53).

So the disciples who “doubted” may not have doubted at all – they may have been fully aware of people being resurrected, but may have hesitated when actually seeing Jesus in the flesh in terms of whether to react with worship or not.

It is possible that the hesitation may have been based on uncertainty as to whether this really was Jesus, but that could have been a matter of distance. Matthew tells us that directly after some doubted: “Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me’” (Matthew 28:18). If Jesus came to them, they must have seen him from at least a little distance at first – when some are said to have doubted. But overall, it seems more likely that the hesitation of these disciples was not regarding the identity and reality of Jesus, but their own proper response to him.

* See, for example: Walter Bauer, William F. Arndt, F. Wilbur Gingrich, and Frederick W. Danker, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed., revised and edited by Frederick W. Danker (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001), p. 252.

Do the Resurrection Accounts Conflict?

4/12/2020

It is common for some who reject Christianity to speak of the “clear contradictions” among the Gospel accounts of the resurrection (Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, John 20). The four accounts are frequently said to be inconsistent in terms of the witnesses to the event, its timing, and what the witnesses saw. We will look at these aspects individually and see how the issue of perspective affects them:

The Witnesses: Matthew 28:1 states that two women (Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary”) came to the tomb of Jesus, whereas Mark 16:1 states that there were three women (Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome). In Luke 24:10 we find three women named, but a different list of three than Mark gives (Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Joanna); finally, John 20:1 mentions only Mary Magdalene. Clearly, a number of women went to the tomb that morning, but it is likely that each Gospel writer mentions the particular women that he had heard were there. The fact that there is so much agreement between the lists is, in fact, a point for their authenticity rather than some kind of contradiction. John mentions only Mary Magdalene, likely because she was the first to arrive at the tomb. But in each case the perspective of the writer is all that is really different.

Timing of the Event: John 20:1 states “it was still dark” when Mary arrived at the tomb, but Mark 16:2 states it was “just after sunrise” when the women arrived. Once again, perhaps Mary Magdalene (who alone is mentioned by John) arrived at the tomb a little earlier than the others. Thus, from John’s perspective it was dark, whereas from the other writers’ perspective it was now light when the other women arrived.

What Was Witnessed: While Matthew 28:2 tells us “an angel” rolled away the stone sealing the tomb and sat upon it, Mark 16:5 says the women found “a young man” sitting by the tomb. Luke 24:4 says the women saw “two men,” and in John 20:1 it is not recorded that Mary Magdalene saw anything other than the moved stone. But Matthew does not say there was only one angel, just that one moved the stone. The “young man” mentioned by Mark was clearly how the women had described the angel. The fact that John does not mention the two "men" does not mean that they were not there – his account is written from the perspective of Mary Magdalene and it is possible that when she arrived at the tomb – somewhat before the other women – no one else was present. So this is hardly a contradictory situation.

As the theologian N.T. Wright has written, "It is a commonplace among lawyers that eyewitnesses disagree, but that this doesn’t mean nothing happened." (Surprised by Hope, Harper 2008, p. 33). Given four separate accounts of the same event, one would expect differences of detail to be remembered by the different witnesses, and differences in the stress placed on certain details by the four writers as they recorded the event from their own perspectives.

* Excerpted from our new free e-book, Scriptures in Question: Answers to Apparent Biblical Contradictions. You can download a free copy here.

Quarantined or Sheltering in Place?

4/5/2020

If you are quarantined right now because of the COVID-19 virus or just sheltering in place, or perhaps not working because of the situation, you may have more time on your hands than you know what to do with. If that’s the case, take advantage of the numerous free e-books we offer on this site, and the many more on our sister site FreeChristianEBooks.org.

You have lots of options there – dozens of e-books by leading Christian writers – all free for download without registration or need to give an email address. All you have to do is select the format you want to read on your computer, smart phone, or e-reader, then download and enjoy!

Having too much time on one's hands is not fun after a while, but you can turn the situation around and use that time both profitably and enjoyably with good e-books. So why not stock up – there is no shortage. But you may find a number of books that you would be glad to read!

The Wait Is Over, Our New Free E-Book Is Here!

DID SOME DISCIPLES DOUBT THE RESURRECTION?

Do the Resurrection Accounts Conflict?

Quarantined or Sheltering in Place?

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