Strobel - Finding the Real Jesus: A Guide for Curious Christians and Skeptical Seekers

Resources by Lee Strobel

The Case for Christ
The Case for Christ audio
The Case for Christ Student Edition (with Jane Vogel)
The Case for Christ for Kids (with Rob Suggs)
The Case for Christmas
The Case for Christmas audio
The Case for a Creator
The Case for a Creator audio
The Case for a Creator Student Edition (with Jane Vogel)
The Case for a Creator for Kids (with Rob Suggs)
The Case for Easter
The Case for Faith
The Case for Faith audio
The Case for Faith Student Edition (with Jane Vogel)
The Case for Faith for Kids (with Rob Suggs)
The Case for the Real Jesus
The Case for the Real Jesus audio
Faith Under Fire, curriculum series
Gods Outrageous Claims
Gods Outrageous Claims audio
Inside the Mind of Unchurched Harry and Mary
Off My Case for Kids (with Robert Elmer)
Surviving a Spiritual Mismatch in Marriage
(with Leslie Strobel)
Surviving a Spiritual Mismatch in Marriage audio
What Jesus Would Say

ZONDERVAN

FINDING THE REAL JESUS
Copyright 2008 by Lee Strobel

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Zondervan.

ePub Edition August 2009 ISBN: 978-0-310-86613-8

Requests for information should be addressed to:
Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Strobel, Lee, 1952
Finding the real Jesus : a guide for curious Christians and skeptical seekers / Lee Strobel.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-310-28787-2
1. Jesus Christ Historicity. 2. Jesus Christ Biography History and criticism. I. Title.
BT303.2.S77 2008
232 dc22

2008025042

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version. NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Editorial assistance by Cassandra Gunn

08 09 10 11 12 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

I first encountered Frank Walus when I was a reporter at the Chicago Tribune. Federal prosecutors had revealed to me the startling news that this unassuming Southwest Side resident was actually a Nazi terrorist who had participated in the murder of innocent Jews in Poland during World War II.

They painted a gruesome picture. They said that while he was accompanied by Nazi SS troops, Walus separated children from their parents and then helped shoot the children to death. Later, working with the Gestapo, he allegedly ordered a woman to disrobe in the presence of her two daughters and when she refused, he shot her to death. The two girls were also killed. In addition, Walus was accused of beating a Jewish prisoner to death with a metal bar at a local Gestapo headquarters.

Prosecutors filed a lawsuit to strip Walus of his U.S. citizenship on grounds that he had concealed his Nazi past when he applied for entry into the country. At his trial, aging witnesses dramatically pointed out Walus as the perpetrator of atrocities in the Polish cities of Kielce and Czestochowa. A federal judge declared the governments charges substantiated, and Walus was ordered to relinquish his citizenship.

It would be tempting, in light of the horrendous image of Walus that emerged at his trial, to join a gang of vigilantes and storm the courthouse demanding swift and severe punishment for this monster. After all, eyewitnesses identified him as a heartless killer and a judge ruled that the case against him had been proven by a preponderance of the evidence. But not so fast.

Walus attorneys offered a far different portrait of him. He wasnt a collaborator with the Nazis, they said. Rather, Walus was a victim himself trucked to Germany and required to work as a forced laborer on farms in three villages.

They also pointed out that there was no corroborating evidence to back up the eyewitnesses who identified Walus as a Nazi thug. And they cast doubt on whether these witnesses could accurately identify Walus, then in his 50s, based on their memories of what he looked like when they claimed they briefly encountered him as a teenager during the war.

However, it wasnt until after the trial that the true picture of Walus came into sharp focus. His attorney, Charles W. Nixon, found a Red Cross list of forced laborers in Germany during the war, including thirty who were Poles like Walus. Eight of them offered sworn testimony that Walus had been among them.

Then a German priest and two former French prisoners of war confirmed Walus account. Finally, a German archivist unearthed a copy of Walus intake working permit issued by the Nazis in 1940 further confirmation of his defense.

In light of these developments, investigators dropped the entire case against Walus. The new evidence, said a federal judge, exonerates the defendant of all charges made against him.

Im glad the case is over, Walus told the press. But I lost everything: my reputation, my health. What was done to me was terrible.

In the troubling case of Frank Walus, two diametrically opposed portraits of the same individual were presented. There was testimony to support each one but the most dramatic picture, though touted by a credible source, evaporated upon closer examination of the surrounding facts.

For Walus, the effects were personally devastating. Thats bad enough, but theres even more at stake when we consider the conflicting portraits of Jesus Christ that are being enthusiastically promoted to the public these days.

Increasingly, the traditional picture of Jesus is under an intellectual onslaught from critical scholars, popular historians, TV documentaries, bestselling authors, Internet bloggers, Muslim debaters, and atheist think tanks. Theyre capturing the publics imagination with dramatic new depictions of Jesus that bear scant resemblance to the picture historically embraced by the church.

But if theres any lesson from the horror that Frank Walus endured, its that a surface-level consideration of the facts is simply not enough. When were dealing with a topic as important as the identity of Jesus, we need to go beyond opinion, speculation, and hype in order to find the solid ground of historical evidence. In the end, which portrait would prove to be the most accurate?