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The Forum > Article Comments > The miracle of Christmas > Comments

The miracle of Christmas : Comments

By Peter Sellick, published 24/12/2018

The celebration of Christmas is based on a miracle; the incarnation of the Eternal Word of God as the man Jesus.

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To Peter.

What you've written must be a confrontation of your understanding of the world. After all how could it not be? Two of the foundations in Christian Faith are based on miracles. Jesus's birth, and His reserection three days after his crucification. Both are the foundations of Christian fain and much Christian understanding.

Yet you've mentioned that this topic of miracles is a hard one to believe. A hard one to swallow. Let this Christmas be the start of something for you. The search of modern day interventions of God. Not to prove or disprove them. Just collect them. See how much God still interacts with us in miraculous ways.

If you can find God in His ability to do anything,my hen perhaps it can help you to believe in Jesus outside of the two miracles that surround His birth and His reserection after His death. It might matter because the gospel is filled with signs that Jesus is from God. Jesus even say it as such that the miracles He does are a sign of Him and His message coming from God.

The blind see, the lame walk, the dead are brought back. These were signs Jesus gave to assure John the Baptist that Jesus is the Massiah that John was waiting for and who he proclaimed Jesus to be long ago before being jailed. If those are miracles that Jesus offers of His authority and to be a sign of who He is, then all of the other miracles from virgin birth, walking on water, calming a storm,feeding thousands on two different occasions, the transfiguration, His prophies and them coming true about the temple being distroyed, even to casting out demons.

(Continued)
Posted by Not_Now.Soon, Tuesday, 25 December 2018 4:28:41 AM
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(Continued)

All of these are recorded as acts of Jesus outside of just His teachings. But if they are a sign of Jesus being from God and if they are hard to believe, then I highly recommend that you seek out acts of God in the lives today. Or at least the lives recorded after the New Testiment books are recorded. My hope in this recommendation is that by finding out how much God still interacts in the world today in both natural and miraculous ways, then your faith and understanding can be strengthened. And you don't have to doubt or try to explain away the miracles of the bible.

Good luck Peter, I know from your writtings that you are trying to share your faith to a skeptical world, and that you really are sincere in your faith to God, otherwise why would you write on in an overly skeptical and confrontational audience to Christianity. If you can find how often God still interacts in the world it might help you in believing the signs and miracles of Jesus as well,
Posted by Not_Now.Soon, Tuesday, 25 December 2018 4:30:21 AM
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Nothing committed to paper over fifty years after the event, Is necessarily historically accurate? In fact, the story of the exodus may have been a simple revolt by slaves against their Jewish Masters, and somewhere near modern-day Israel. a mountain climbing Moses and receiving the written word of God carved into tablets of stone for a population over 95% illiterate.

Meaning there was no exodus and no Moses smashing the first tablets to the ground in fury over what he allegedly claimed was obscene depravity.

Moreover, the new testament was Authored by four writers, who both plagiarised and embellished the work written earlier by Matthew, then Mark, then Luke, then John. John being the only educated scholar, and alone reports, walking on water and feeding the multitude from a single basket of bread and fish.

If one believes a man called Jesus Christ was put to death on a cross? Then one must hold open the possibility of the opposite being possible. In my limited reading of the Bible, the man Jesus never ever claimed to be the embodiment of God, but rather when asked about the miracles he allegedly performed said, It is not I who does these things, but the father in me.

That said and set aside, it is Christmas and miracles are possible, when fallen Angels want them badly enough and put enough faith into their appearance by expecting their realization as actual events!

And with as much belief in those outcomes as you believe in your visible world as your experienced literal reality.

Made even more powerful, "when two or more gather in my name." Great power there, and only available for good, never evil outcomes which are just boomerangs coming right back at you, in God's good time!

Thus allowing the father to work in any of his sons and daughters,i.e., the entire human race, to perform or co-create miracles! The fact that I'm still alive and able to write these words, one of them!
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Tuesday, 25 December 2018 12:28:50 PM
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Not-Now_Soon
"Two of the foundations in Christian Faith are based on miracles. Jesus's birth, and His reserection three days after his crucification. Both are the foundations of Christian fain and much Christian understanding." On the contrary none of the great theologians of the Church base their systematic theology on the miraculous. This includes, perhaps the greatest of them all Augustine. In the present day, Barth, von Balthasar, Williams, Millbank etc do not base their theology on the reality of the miraculous.
Peter
Posted by Sells, Tuesday, 25 December 2018 12:48:55 PM
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yep the atheist faith of JBowyers that kills the unborn by the millions and is responsible for mass atrocities gives him the higher 'rational' ground. What nonsense. Without God their is no moral basis for him to even criticise the child molesters. Atheism is for those who have thrown away the ability to think past their dogmas. Most atheist know that one day they will face the moral Law Giver. For their sake I pray they find mercy rather than receive their just deserts.
Posted by runner, Tuesday, 25 December 2018 8:01:16 PM
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Alan B,

<<Nothing committed to paper over fifty years after the event, Is necessarily historically accurate?>>

Who said so? That's your presupposition about the dates of the life of Jesus and the recording of that life in the Gospels. It lacks the validity of historical research.

Let's compare the dating of the first 3 gospels with recording other ancient historical events. It doesn't matter if the gospels were written 30, 40 or 50 years after the events of Jesus' life, death and resurrection. How come? By ancient historical standards, this short amount of time allowed time for hostile eyewitnesses to refute the narratives if they were fake.

Compare the recording of the life of Alexander the Great, king of Macedonia, 336-323 B.C. with Jesus? What time lapsed between his life and recording of the events? The oldest existing biographies we have of Alexander are by Diodorus (1st century BC – ca. 300 years after his life). Then we have Quintus Curtius (1st century AD) and Plutarch and Arrian (best two on Alexander, from early 2nd century AD) [Craig Blomberg 2016. The Historical Reliability of the New Testament, pp. 17-18].

Luke made it very clear what were the sources of his evidence:

"Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught" (Luke 1:1-4).

Luke used material to compile a narrative delivered to them. This could have been by oral tradition); PLUS these people were 'eyewitnesses'. What better witnesses could one get? Even police today appeal for eyewitnesses to highway smashes, crime and violence. Luke 'carefully investigated everything' and wrote 'an orderly account' that Theophilus may 'HAVE CERTAINTY' about the things he had been taught.

(continued)
Posted by OzSpen, Tuesday, 25 December 2018 9:18:19 PM
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