“They answered Him, ‘Jesus of Nazareth.’ Jesus said to them, ‘I am He.’ And Judas, who betrayed Him, also stood with them. Now when He said to them, ‘I am He,’ they drew back and fell to the ground” John 18:5-6.
Later they would mock Him, “if you are the Christ come down.” How quickly they forgot His power in the garden. How quickly they forgot how easily He could have walked away. How conveniently they forgot the other times when He did walk away. In what a small and yet undeniable way He proves the stupidity of their jeers.
The world still jeers, if there is a God …? If Christ is really in control …? And yet the proof of Christ’s claims are all around us. Not in large flaming letters through the sky, not in the voice of thunder, but in a thousand different smaller and yet undeniable ways.
For me personally some of the most vivid evidence of the truth of the Bible is (one) the complete and total depravity of man, that is so evident no matter how we try to deny it. We think our time is so enlightened and so much better than all other cultures, and yet the past century has seen violence, cruelty, and evil beyond anything I can find in any history book. From Auschwitz to Hiroshima to Roe v. Wade, this is what WE, not some barbaric long-dead civilization, but what WE have done. No philosophy, no religion, can give adequate explanations to these horrors which men continually propagate upon themselves apart from God’s word. And (two) the simple fact that this evilness within us continues to fall down before the Word of God. Again there is no other philosophy, book, or religion which grabs our evil hearts and forces us to bow down in the knowledge of my own evil, my own part in these atrocities.
At the word of Christ I too am cast down to dust, and yet by His death I am lifted up unto the skies. What power there is still acting in His word.
(Devotion from Redeemer Lutheran Church, Sister Lakes, Michigan.)