Expert: David - 4/21/2009

Question
Following on the thread of a question dealing with Egyptian religion vs Christianity ... is there an account in the old testament telling how many disciples Christ would have? It's troubling to learn of all the similarities, given that Egypt's Horus predates Christ. I've also read that a lot of these stories are based on astrology. The dying of one age and birth of another. What makes Christ more believable than the other religions?

Answer
I am not sure I understand your question. There were many prophecies in the old Testament dealing with the Messiah, and it was clear in retrospect that only God could have fulfilled those prophecies. There were so many of them that they could not have simply been a coincidence. The twelve apostles represented the new Israel, as did the 12 sons of Jacob under the Old Covenant (Testament) under Moses. I don't know what similarities between Egyptian Gods and Jesus you are talking about, but every one of the Ten Plagues of Egypt was God's Judgment against the powerless gods of the Egyptians.

I recommend reading books by a scripture scholar named Scott Hahn. Many Pagan myths deal with Astrology, but what makes Jesus believable is, as I said before, is that he fulfilled every prophecy in the old testament. It is mathematically impossible for this to be random chance, there are too many prophecies to be fulfilled. They could only be fulfilled by God.

The New Testament records Jesus as saying he is God, he proved he was God because the Apostles reported seeing him raised from the dead. How do we know he did rise? Too many people saw him for it to be a hallucination. 500 people are reported to have seen Christ appear to them in the New Testament, and when people Hallucinate, they don't all  hallucinate the same thing.

Further, many of the Early Christians were brutally ans savagely tortured and murdered for their faith. It's hard to believe that people would be willing to go through all of that for a lie, and they continue to do so today in many countries.

The most compelling reason though, is Acts Chapter 5 which states that if this movement is of God, no one will be able to stop it from growing without fighting God, but if the Christian movement is man made, it will crumble eventually as all man made movements do.

Here's the punch line: No other human institution has lasted for as long as the Church with an unbroken line of leaders traced back to St. Peter.  A Cardinal who was once threatened by Napoleon illustrated this point. Napoleon threatened to destroy the Church, and the Cardinal's response was: "My dear Excellency, if 1800 years of Catholic Clergy hasn't managed to destroy the Church by now, I doubt that you in your short lifetime could accomplish so formidable a task."

His point is that unless God is keeping the Church alive, it shouldn't have been able to endure so long. Napoleon is long gone, ans so is every other historic persecutor of the Church, but the Church is still here, in fact, persecution makes it grow stronger, and it will still be here long after its current persecutors are gone.

There are only two possibilities: Either Jesus was insane, a liar, or exactly what he said he was-God, and Messiah. If he was a liar, or insane, no one would have been wiling to die for him.