By Jim Mettenbrink
As we have repeatedly proclaimed, Christianity is the most unique religion that ever existed. It does not depend upon what the founder(s) said, but rather upon what the founder did – Jesus of Nazareth rose from the grave alive. According to lawyers who have analyzed, the testimony of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John via the rules of evidence, the claim of Jesus’ resurrection is irrefutable. The most recent and prominent author/lawyer published his investigation in Jesus on Trial: A Lawyer Affirms the Truth of the Gospel by David Limbaugh.
He was reared in a church-going family, but by the time he was in college, he was “unconvinced that Jesus was the Son of God,” and “had great difficulty believing in the God of the Bible.” His conclusion was, “I had serious doubts about Christianity.” He stated that he had not investigated the Bible. So he set out to analyze the gospel via the rules of evidence. As a result, he became a believer in Jesus as the son of God and the Savior of mankind. What prompted this doubt and subsequent investigation through time?
Because of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, man drifted from God, and became self-reliant which in turn brought in the centuries of skepticism, and Atheism. That era also prompted an investigation of the credibility of the Bible – Is it true? One investigator was a lawyer.
In 1847 Harvard professor, Simon Greenleaf published “The Testimony of the Evangelists: The Gospels Examined by the Rules of Evidence.” He wrote, “If a close examination of the evidences of Christianity may be expected of one class of men more than another, it would seem incumbent upon lawyers who make the law of evidence one of our peculiar studies. Our profession leads us to explore the mazes of falsehood, to detect its artifices, to pierce its thickest veils, to follow and expose its sophistries, to compare the statements of different witnesses with severity, to discover truth and separate it from error.”
Regarding his investigation, he also came to a conclusion about the Bible itself, containing the record of Jesus’ resurrection – “Of the Divine character of the Bible, I think, no man who deals honestly with his own mind and heart can entertain a reasonable doubt. For myself, I must say, that having for many years made the evidences of Christianity the subject of close study, the result has been a firm and increasing conviction of the authenticity and plenary inspiration of the Bible. It is indeed the Word of God.”
His assessment of Jesus is, “A person who rejects Christ may choose to say that I do not accept it, he may not choose to say there is not enough evidence.”