Who is Jesus?

Greetings again friends. Today I'm writing about the last booklet I have in Grandpa's collection of literature from the Worldwide Church of God.

"Who Was Jesus" is a concise work by Paul Kroll, whom I know nothing about. The text is remarkably similar to explanations and arguments I've heard on the feasibility of the deity of Jesus of Nazareth, who lived and died about 2000 years ago.

Briefly, here are the main points:

1) There was a man named Jesus who lived in Nazareth in what is now part of the nation of Israel. Assassin's Creed players will find that this is North of Jerusalem, East of Acre, and South West of Damascus. This fact is attested to by not only the gospel accounts found in the Bible, but also by several ancient historians.

2). Jesus claimed to be God in human form. This makes him one of 3 things:

1. A Liar
2. Crazy
3. Actually God in human form

3). Jesus was put to death for claiming to be God. Let's look at what this means in terms of the last 3 options. If he was lying, why continue to the point of death? Surely he understood these guys were serious. I mean, what did he gain by dying for a lie? Moreover, in death his movement would have ended, particularly as the Bible - from a historical context - provides that his followers abandoned him as he was being executed, at least one denying ever knowing him.

4) The story of Jesus of Nazareth continues 3 days after his death. According the Bible he rose from the grave and appeared to his followers again. For the sake of argument, let's contend you don't allow the bible as actual historical fact on this matter and he either 1) stayed dead or 2) was never really dead. I'd contend that as a dissident condemned to death, the Romans would not have half-executed him. Historically, the Romans were quite good at putting people to death. This leaves the option that he stayed dead.

5) So if he stayed dead, what's the big deal? His followers had abandoned him at his execution. Why are there still Christians today? Early Christian leaders posited that if Jesus had not risen from the dead, this is all pointless: he was either a liar or crazy in claiming to be God, but was never to be seen or heard from again. No, these early Christians felt so strongly that Jesus had come back to life (as he had predicted he would) that they resumed following him at great cost - many of them lost their lives as well for this reason - but felt that our 3rd option, that Jesus actually was God to be most reasonable, and the movement that started with followers scared of losing their lives for knowing Jesus has expanded into one of the largest world religions, many losing their lives willingly for this cause.

Okay, so much for being brief. Some of this is from arguments I've collected over the years, not exclusively from this booklet, but the booklet does a good job of surmising the basic reasons why Christianity developed from its roots. I also recommend Dr. Greg Boyd's "Letters from a Skeptic," which is more erudite but goes deeper on similar points of why there is evil in the world and why then Jesus Christ is God in human flesh.

Until next time,
Matt