Did Jesus Exist – The Debate That Wasn’t

Re: Did Jesus Exist Debate – By Gerda Peachey. If I ever need assurance that I actually exist, I won’t be rushing to Michael Horner for reassurance. But on the other hand, Richard Carrier would do little to erode my confidence in my own being.

Richard Carrier is pretty high on himself, declaring to us, with not much more than his own puffery on display, that all the scholarship of the ages gives way before his boastful claims, that the Lord Jesus Christ never existed.

Michaels defence was weak, gutless and dull. But it was even worse than dull. I thought I heard wrong the first time he told the audience that God caused earlier people groups to believe various myths that bore vague similarities to the Biblical account of the Son of God, his miracles, his death, his miraculous return from death, and so on. Horner told the audience in all seriousness that God caused people to believe in these false figures, in order to predispose them to believe in the genuine Redeemer, when he finally arrived on earth.

I hoped it was just my hearing, but Horner and Carrier both referred back to this appalling nonsense. But just as I wrote prior to this non-debate, Michael Horner really can’t intelligently defend the Bible since he does not believe the revelation of God the creator, right at the first chapter.

Horner’s assertion that God sent us a bunch of fiction characters, so we might be able to comprehend Emmanuel, (God with us) reminds me of a young college student I met at a lecture Richard (my husband) gave at her youth group. This young woman was deeply grateful to us for the science Richard brings into the evolution/creation debate, and also for the fossils I’d brought along. For the first time in her life she was free to believe the fossil record. She had been terrible confused by accounts of trillions of life forms, frozen in death, in the rocks, around the world, because her mother, a devout Christian had told her that dinosaurs never existed. Her loving mom believed that the devil had embedded these massive creatures in the earth, in order to confuse Christians, and cause them to believe in evolution. Praise God for the work of people like Henry Morris and Ken Ham.

Michael Horner and this young woman’s mother may both be children of God, but both distort data, because real answers to valid questions elude them.

So Mr. Carrier, who is already a legend in his own mind, assures us that Jesus did not exist, 2000 years ago, because………………………well because, I guess because he does not want it to be true. So he’ll just write that and say that so often, that maybe he’ll get a following, and maybe become very famous, and……….? Well,…… and then he will die, like the rest of us, and he will stand before the Lord of Glory, the God he tried so hard to deny. How awful that day will be for Richard Carrier.

To anyone reading this, who does know the risen Lord, please pray for this man, and pray also for the Abbotsford atheist and sceptics, to see our wonderful God, and live new life with Jesus, and then forever in His presence after this short trip is ended.

So Carrier tries to convince, against mountains of scholarship over several thousand years, a gospel that spread from Jerusalem throughout the entire known world, that IF Jesus had actually existed, then more people would have been talking about him. And if the Biblical Jesus ever existed, Richard Carrier should have lots of extant manuscript evidence as proof. Of course Mr. Carrier waves a haughty, dismissive hand at Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, James, Timothy or the early church writers. He puffs at claims that thousands believed and were baptized, and were persecuted for their faithful witness to the Christ. Every testimony to Jesus is declared by the Great Carrier to be phoney, erroneous, contrived, false, hallucination. Carrier also gives short shrift to archeology which shows us that scrolls were on tablets of stone, that crumble, on papyrus, plant material, cloths that get moth-eaten, and the brutal destruction of Scripture under numerous tyrannies. But the Bible has not been destroyed because of the meticulous copying, and translation work of believers, Christians who even in great danger carried the Word of God into every part of the world.

So I got thinking about me. What if my authentic existence depended on how many people know about me, and write enough about me, so that a record will remain to prove I actually lived here. How scary! If no one is talking, or writing about me, I cease to have being? There was no television in Jesus’ day, but the Scriptures tell of crowds flocking to him, in various cities…….thousands of them. Pretty impressive, without social media to announce his presence.

For a variety of reasons, over these past 20 years or so, I have been interviewed on television, and radio, and appeared in newspapers, actually quite often. So then will more people know me, or talk about me, because after all television reaches a lot of viewers. Well sadly for my existence (according to the great Dr. Carrier) I am in peril of ceasing to be. Hardly anyone knows or cares about my name, other than a handful of family and friends.

I can try to hold my own while I still have life, but it won’t be long after the grave before the Dr. Carriers of this world pronounce me nothing more than a figment of someones imagination……’cause no one remembers my name.

But hold on now, while that will likely be true of me, it is most definitely not true of Jesus Christ. Despite the shoddy scholarship claims of Dr. Carrier, the name of Jesus is on the lips, and in the hearts of billions of people, and has been since He died and rose from the cross of Calvary, to save mankind from their sins. That’s 2000 years of remembering. And millions of those believers past and present speak his name even when there is deprivation, suffering, torture and even death as the price they pay because they believe in the Saviour, and love Him.

Maybe that is what drives Richard Carrier to run around saying silly things, so he will be noticed, so lots of people will take note of him, so maybe enough will be recorded in history to authenticate his existence. Because if no one remembers Richard Carrier 100 years from now…………..

he never existed.