R.C. Sproul - Whats in the Bible: A One-Volume Guidebook to Gods Word

JESUS
AMONG OTHER GODS

THE ABSOLUTE CLAIMS of THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE

RAVI ZACHARIAS

Jesus Among Other Gods

2000 Ravi Zacharias. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible : New International Version. 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations noted KJV are from the King James Version of the Holy Bible.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Zacharias, Ravi K.

Jesus among other gods / by Ravi Zacharias.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-8499-1437-X (hardcover)

ISBN 978-0-8499-4327-0 (trade paper)

ISBN 0-8499-4263-2 (international edition)

1. Apologetics. 2. Christianity and other religions. I. Title.

BT1230 .Z33 2000

239dc21

00039920

CIP

Printed in the United States of America

02 03 04 05 06 PHX 9 8 7 6 5

To the memory of two very dear friends

Charles Kip Jordon
and
Robert Earl Fraley

Both had a share in this effort;
Kip greatly encouraged me to write the book.
Robert made sure I took the time to write it.

None of us knew how soon they would be with Him
Who is the focus of this work.

CONTENTS

WITH THE SUPPORTIVE HELP OF MANY, THIS BOOK FINALLY TOOK SHAPE. I express my heartfelt gratitude to them all.

Danielle DuRant, as always, provided invaluable research support and took on the tedious task of tracking down sources.

Editors Jan Dennis and Jennifer Stair smoothed the bumps significantly.

Laura Kendall with W Publishing Group drew it together at the end. To the leadership at W Publishing GroupDavid Moberg, Joey Paul, Rob Birkhead, and othersI express my sincere thanks for their gracious words of encouragement.

Finally and most importantly, my thanks to my wife, Margie. She pored over every page with the utmost scrutiny to make her suggestions that make it more readable. I gladly allow her the last word.

This book comes as an expression of a heart grateful to God for all that He has done in my own life.

WHEN I BEGAN WRITING THIS BOOK, I LITTLE DREAMED OF HOW difficult a task this was going to be.

The difficulty has really not been in knowing what to say, but in knowing what not to say. We are living in a time when sensitivities are at the surface, often vented with cutting words. Philosophically, you can believe anything, so long as you do not claim it to be true. Morally, you can practice anything, so long as you do not claim that it is a better way. Religiously, you can hold to anything, so long as you do not bring Jesus Christ into it. If a spiritual idea is eastern, it is granted critical immunity; if western, it is thoroughly criticized. Thus, a journalist can walk into a church and mock its carryings on, but he or she dare not do the same if the ceremony is from the eastern fold. Such is the mood at the end of the twentieth century.

A mood can be a dangerous state of mind, because it can crush reason under the weight of feeling. But that is precisely what I believe postmodernism best representsa mood.

How does one in a mood such as this communicate the message of Jesus Christ, in which truth and absoluteness are not only assumed, but also sustained?

Well, for starters, let us be sure that Jesus was not western. In fact, some of His parables were so eastern that I think much of the West may not have entered into the rigor and humor of what He said. What has happened in the West is that His impact over the centuries has been so felt that the ethos and moral impetus of His message changed the course of western civilization. The western naturalist, in sheer arrogance, does not see this. Now, after technological progress, wealth and enterprise have so woven themselves around the message of Jesus that popular models of Christianity appear as nothing more than self and greed at the center, with strands of Christian thought at the periphery. This adulteration has rightly merited the severe rebuke of the critic. We would do well to remember, however, what Augustine said: We are never to judge a philosophy by its abuse. That aside, the way Jesus spoke, the proverbs and stories that He told, and the very context in which He addressed issues was steeped in an eastern idiom. Let us not forget that.

But if the western world has been guilty of adulterating His message beyond recognition, the eastern world has often forgotten that it has, by fault, left a mass of religious belief, sometimes bizarre, irresponsibly uncriticized. Take, for example, various forms of eastern worship and practice. During the writing of this book, I happened to be at several such settings. In one of these, devotees had a large number of hooks pierced into their bodies. Knives were pierced through their faces and small spears through their tongues. Sights like these terrify visitors and children. One has to ask, Why do the same thinkers who criticize any western forms of spirituality not take this to task?

Closer to home, we see the writings of Deepak Chopra, who teaches a doctrine of spirituality, success, and prosperity woven into Vedic teachings, karma, and self-deification. By contrast, we see millions devoted to that underlying world-view living in abject poverty. Have they somehow missed the mark? What is wrong with the picture here? One can readily see that every religion must face the responsibility of answering the questions posed to it.

Numerous other issues can be raised, but the point remains the same.

As a result of all this, serious distortions have come into vogue. Some proponents of other religious faiths talk about the myth of Christian uniqueness. Others have demanded that propagation of ones faith is wrong and that conversion should be banned.

Such a mood brings a tyranny all its own.

The reality is that if religion is to be treated with intellectual respect, then it must stand the test of truth, regardless of the mood of the day. This book is a defense of the uniqueness of the Christian message.

As I have drawn it to a close, I wish I could have said more and argued more by contrast, but the current mood may not lend itself to any more than this.

The route I have followed is to present a clear difference between Jesus and any other claimant to divinity or prophetic status. I have taken six questions that Jesus answered in a way that none other would have answered. An opponent may disagree with His answers, but when those answers are all added up, antagonists will not be able to challenge His uniqueness. I believe every answer is fascinating, and I wish I could have done justice to them. As it stands, the chapters were becoming lengthier, as the subjects had to be adequately dealt with.

The difficulty in containing the length was exacerbated by the fact that I also needed to contrast the answers with those of other leading religions. By far, the most difficult one to deal with was the question posed to Jesus on pain and suffering. That chapter I have divided into three parts.

The final chapter is not a question posed to Jesus, but a question posed on His behalf, to His followers and to His doubters. It was only fitting to end it that way.