|
|
|
What Did They Not Know
They Were Doing?
By Bob Myhan
While hanging on the cross our Lord and
Savior prayed for His
enemies, “Father, forgive them,
for they do not know what they do” (Luke 23:34).
But the Jews knew that they were condemning
a man unjustly! We know this for at least three reasons.
1.
They knowingly accused Jesus
falsely.
“And they began to accuse Him saying,
‘We found this fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to pay taxes to
Caesar, saying that He Himself is Christ a King’”
(Luke 23:2). “And though they found no cause for death in Him, they asked
Pilate that He should be put to death” (Acts 13:28).
2.
They solicited false
witnesses against Him.
Now the chief priests, the elders, and
all the council sought false testimony against Jesus to put Him to death
(Matt. 26:59).
3.
They conspired against Him.
When morning came, all the chief priests
and elders of the people plotted against Jesus to put Him to death”
(Matt. 27:1).
4.
Even Pilate knew that they
were motivated by envy.
Therefore, when they had
gathered together, Pilate said to them, “Whom do you want me to release to
you? Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?
For he knew that they had handed Him
over because of envy” (Matt.
27:18).
What was it then that they did not know
they were doing? Of what were they ignorant? They were ignorant of at least
three things.
1.
They did not know that they
were crucifying the Lord of glory.
“But we speak wisdom of God in a
mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory,
which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would
not have crucified the Lord of glory”
(1 Cor. 2:7,8).
2.
They did not know that they
were killing the Prince of life.
“But you denied the Holy One and the
Just, and asked for a murderer to be granted unto you, and killed the Prince
of life, whom God raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses…. Yet now,
brethren, I know that you did it in ignorance, as did also your rulers”
(Acts 3:14-17).
3.
They did not know that they
were fulfilling the prophets.
“For those who dwell in Jerusalem, and
their rulers, because they did not know Him, nor
even the voices of the Prophets which are read every Sabbath, have fulfilled
them in condemning Him” (Acts
13:27).
In response to the apostles’ teaching on
the crucifixion, “the high priest asked them, saying, ‘Did
we not strictly command you not to teach in this name? And look, you have
filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this Man’s blood on
us!’” (Acts 5:28)
This is interesting in view of their
statement to Pilate about the guilt of Jesus’ blood.
When Pilate saw that he could not
prevail at all, but rather that a tumult was rising, he took water and
washed his hands before the multitude, saying, ‘I am innocent of the blood
of this just Person. You see to it.’ And all the people answered and said,
“His blood be on us and on our children’”
(Matt. 27:24, 25)
There were, indeed,
some things they did not know about their actions. But they knew full well
they were condemning an innocent man.
&
Why Some Don’t Believe #3
By Bill Walton
Some people do not
believe in God, Christ, and the Bible because they are overly impressed with
science and scientists.
But the fact is
science does not have the answer to the ultimate questions of life. And some
within the ranks of the religious skeptics in the scientific community have
been candid enough to admit it.
In his book,
Until the Sun Dies, Dr. Robert Jastrow says,
"The universe and everything that has happened in it since the beginning of
time are a grand effect without a known cause." He says, "In science, as in
the Bible, the world begins with an act of creation. That view has not
always been by scientists. Only as a result of the most recent discoveries
can we say with a fair degree of confidence that the world has not existed
forever; that it began abruptly, without apparent cause, in a blinding event
that defies scientific explanation.”
And, concerning
life in the universe, he says, “At present, science has no satisfactory
answer to the question of the origin of life on the earth.” And he admits,
“The chemical origin of life is held by scientists as an article of faith
without proof.”
Those who are prone
to accept without question the unproven theories and dogmatic pronouncements
of skeptical scientists need to be reminded that scientists have been proven
wrong many times. In the middle of the last century the French Academy of
Science listed more than fifty instances of conflict between the Bible and
acceptable scientific thought. The French Academy of Science has since been
proven wrong in every instance.
It is also a fact
that scientists can be as blind, prejudiced, and unreasonable as anyone. In
the Moody-Lovell debate on the existence of God, Frank Lovell, a scientist
and skeptic, admitted he could not disprove that there is a God. But he said
he would not believe in God even if it could be proven that Jesus was raised
from the dead on the third day after his burial. When asked what kind of
evidence it would take to convince him of the existence of God, he said: “If
an orderly sequence of numbers were discovered in the permutations of
Pi, that might cause me to believe in God.”
And listen to this
candid admission from Niles Eldridge: “We paleontologists have said that the
history of life supports (the theory of gradual adaptive change), all the
while really knowing that it does not.”
And then we have
this from Stephen Jay Gould: “We can tell tales of improvement for some
groups, but in honest moments we must admit that the history of complex life
is more a story of multifarious variation about a set of basic designs than
a sage of accumulating excellence.”
And here is a
candid and enlightening observation from Fred Hoyle, an astrophysicist, in
his book, The Intelligent Universe. “Orthodox scientists are more
concerned with preventing a return to the religious excesses of the past
than in looking forward to the truth [and this concern] has dominated
scientific thought throughout the past century.”
What is proven to
be true is true. But nothing has ever been proven to be true that
contradicted the Bible. Nothing. And many will
lose their souls for blindly trusting in false science and biased
scientists. &
|