Go hide in your vanity. The reason you don't wrangle is your inability. I do not understand why you are so zealous in proselyting for something you cannot explain.
Since you are adapted to biblical parables let me ive you one for analysis.
The Truth About Jesus
By education most have been misled,
So they believe because they were so bred;
The priest continues what the nurse began,
And thus the child imposes on the man.
The following work offers in book form the series of studies
on the question of the historicity of Jesus, presented from time to
time before the Independent Religious Society in Orchestra Hall. No
effort has been made to change the manner of the spoken word into
the more regular form of the written word.
M.M. MANGASAIRIAN.
PART I A PARABLE
I am today twenty-five hundred years old. I have been dead for
nearly as many years. My place of birth was Athens; my grave was
not far from those of Xenophon and Plato, within view of the white
glory of Athens and the shimmering waters of the Aegean sea
After sleeping in my grave for many centuries I awoke suddenly
-- I cannot tell how nor why -- and was transported by a force
beyond my control to this new day and this new city. I arrived here
at daybreak, when the sky was still dull and drowsy. As I
approached the city I heard bells ringing, and a little later I
found the streets astir with throngs of well dressed people in
family groups wending their way hither and thither. Evidently they
were not going to work, for they were accompanied by their children
in their best clothes, and a pleasant expression was upon their
faces
"This must be a day of festival and worship, devoted to one of
their gods," I murmured to myself
Looking about me I saw a gentleman in a neat black dress,
smiling, and his hand extended to me with great cordiality. He must
have realized I was a stranger and wished to tender his hospitality
to me. I accepted it gratefully. I clasped his hand. He pressed
mine. We gazed for a moment into each other's eyes. He understood
my bewilderment amid my novel surroundings, and offered to
enlighten me. He explained to me the ringing of the bells and
You admit also that the risen Jesus did not present himself at
the synagogue of the people, in the public streets, or at the
palace of the High Priest to convince them of his Messiahship. Do
you not think that if he had done this, it would then have been
impossible to deny his resurrection? Why, then, did Jesus hide
himself after he came out of the grave? Why did be not show himself
also to his enemies? Was he still afraid of them, or did he not
care whether they believed or not? If so, why are you trying to
convert them? The question waits for a reasonable answer; why did
not Jesus challenge the whole world with the evidence of his
resurrection? You say you saw him occasionally, a few moments at a
time, now here, and now there, and finally on the top of a mountain
whence he was caught up in a cloud and disappeared altogether. But
that "cloud" has melted away, the sky is clear, and there is no
Jesus visible there. The cloud, then, had nothing to hide. It was
unnecessary to call in a cloud to close the career of your Christ.
The grave is empty, the cloud has vanished. Where is Christ? In
heaven! Ah, you have at last removed him to a world unknown, to the
undiscovered country. Leave him there Criticism, doubt,
investigation, the light of day, cannot cross its shores. Leave him
there!" meaning of the holiday crowds moving in the streets. It was Sunday
-- Sunday before Christmas, and the people were going to "the House
of God."
"Of course you are going there, too," I said to my friendly
guide.
"Yes," he answered, "I conduct the worship. I am a priest."
"A priest of Apollo?" I interrogated.
"No, no," he replied, raising his hand to command silence,
"Apollo is not a god; he was only an idol."
"Am idol?" I whispered, taken by surprise.
"I perceive you are a Greek," he said to me, "and the Greeks,"
he continued, "notwithstanding their distinguished accomplishments,
were an idolatrous people. They worshipped gods that did not exist.
They built temples to divinities which were merely empty names --
empty names," he repeated. "Apollo and Athene -- and the entire
Olympian lot were no more than inventions of the fancy."
"But the Greeks loved their gods," I protested, my heart
clamoring in my breast.
"They were not gods, they were idols, and the difference
between a god and an idol is this: an idol is a thing; God is a
living being. When you cannot prove the existence of your god, when
you have never seen him, nor heard his voice, nor touched him --
when you have nothing provable about him, he is an idol. Have you
seen Apollo? Have you heard him? Have you touched him?"
"No," I said, in a low voice.
"Do you know of any one who has?"
I had to admit that I did not.
"He was an idol, then, and not a god."
"But many of us Greeks," I said, "have felt Apollo in our
hearts and have been inspired by him."
"You imagine you have," returned my guide. "If he were really
divine be would be living to this day.
"Is he, then, dead?" I asked.
"He never lived; and for the last two thousand years or more
his temple has been a heap of ruins."
I wept to hear that Apollo, the god of light and music, was no
more -- that his fair temple had fallen into ruins and the fire
upon his altar had been extinguished; then, wiping a tear from my
eyes, I said, "Oh, but our gods were fair and beautiful; our
religion was rich and picturesque. It made the Greeks a nation of
poets, orators, artists, warriors, thinkers. It made Athens a city
of light; it created the beautiful, the true, the good -- yes, our
religion was divine."
"It had only one fault"' interrupted my guide.
"What was that?" I inquired, without knowing what his answer
would be.
"It was not true."
"But I still believe in Apollo," I exclaimed; "he is not dead,
I know he is alive."
"Prove it," he said to me; then, pausing for a moment, "if you
produce him," he said, "we shall all fall down and worship him.
Produce Apollo and be shall be our god."
"Produce him!" I whispered to myself. "What blasphemy!" Then,
taking heart, I told my guide how more than once I had felt
Apollo's radiant presence in my heart, and told him of the immortal
lines of Homer concerning the divine Apollo. "Do you doubt Homer?"
I said to him; "Homer, the inspired bard? Homer, whose ink-well was
as big as the sea; whose imperishable page was Time? Homer, whose
every word was a drop of light?" Then I proceeded to quote from
Homer's Iliad, the Greek Bible, worshipped by all the Hellenes as
the rarest Manuscript between heaven and earth. I quoted his
description of Apollo, than whose lyre nothing is more musical,
than whose speech even honey is not sweeter. I recited how his
mother went from town to town to select a worthy place to give
birth to the young god, son of Zeus, the Supreme Being, and how he
was born and cradled amid the ministrations of all the goddesses,
who bathed him in the running stream and fed him with nectar and
ambrosia from Olympus. Then I recited the lines which picture
Apollo bursting his bands, leaping forth from his cradle, and
spreading his wings like a swan, soaring sun-ward, declaring that
he had come to announce to mortals the will of God. "Is it
possible," I asked, "that all this is pure fabrication, a fantasy
of the brain, as unsubstantial as the air? No, no, Apollo is not an
idol. He is a god, and the son of a god. The whole Greek world will
bear me witness that I am telling the truth." Then I looked at my
guide to see what impression this outburst of sincere enthusiasm
had produced upon him, and I saw a cold smile upon his lips that
cut me to the heart. It seemed as if he wished to say to me, "You
poor deluded pagan! You are not intelligent enough to know that
Homer was only a mortal after all, and that he was writing a play
in which he manufactured the gods of whom he sang -- that these
gods existed only in his imagination, and that today they are as
dead as is their inventer -- the poet."
By this time we stood at the entrance of a large edifice which
my guide said was "the House of God." As we walked in I saw
innumerable little lights blinking and winking all over the
spacious interior. There were, besides, pictures, altars and images
all around me. The air was heavy with incense; a number of men in
gorgeous vestments were passing to and fro, bowing and kneeling
before the various lights and images. The audience was upon its
knees enveloped in silence -- a silence so solemn that it awed me.
Observing my anxiety to understand the meaning of all this, my
guide took me aside and in a whisper told me that the people were
celebrating the anniversary of the birthday of their beautiful
Savior -- Jesus, the Son of God.
"So was Apollo the son of God," I replied, thinking perhaps
that after all we might find ourselves in agreement with one
another.
"Forget Apollo," he said, with a suggestion of severity in his
voice. "There is no such person. He was only an idol. If you were
to search for Apollo in all the universe you would never find any
one answering to his name or description. Jesus," he resumed, "is
the Son of God. He came to our earth and was born of a virgin."
Again I was tempted to tell my guide that that was how Apollo
became incarnate; but I restrained myself.
"Then Jesus grew up to be a man," continued my guide,
"performing unheard-of wonders, such as treading the seas, giving
sight, hearing and speech to the blind, the deaf and the dumb,
converting water into wine, feeding the multitudes miraculously,
predicting coming events and resurrecting the dead."
"Of course, of your gods, too," he added, "it is claimed that
they performed miracles, and of your oracles that they foretold the
future, but there is this difference -- the things related of your
gods are a fiction, the things told of Jesus are a fact, and the
difference between Paganism and Christianity is the difference
between fiction and fact."
Just then I heard a wave of murmur, like the rustling of
leaves in a forest, sweep over the bowed audience. I turned about
and unconsciously, my Greek curiosity impelling me, I pushed
forward toward where the greater candle lights were blazing. I felt
that perhaps the commotion in the house was the announcement that
the God Jesus was about to make his appearance, and I wanted to see
him. I wanted to touch him, or, if the crowd were too large to
allow me that privilege, I wanted, at least, to hear his voice. I,
who had never seen a god, never touched one, never heard one speak,
I who had believed in Apollo without ever having known anything
provable about him, I wanted to see the real God, Jesus.
But my guide placed his hand quickly upon my shoulder, and
held me back.
"I want to see Jesus," I hastened, turning toward him. I said
this reverently and in good faith. "Will he not be here this
morning? Will he not speak to his worshippers?" I asked again.
"Will he not permit them to touch him, to caress his hand, to clasp
his divine feet, to inhale the ambrosial fragrance of his breath,
to bask in the golden light of his eyes, to hear the music of his
immaculate accents? Let me, too, see Jesus," I pleaded.
"You cannot see him," answered my guide, with a trace of
embarrassment in his voice. "He does not show himself any more."
I was too much surprised at this to make any immediate reply.
"For the last two thousand years," my guide continued, "it has
not pleased Jesus to show himself to any one; neither has he been
heard from for the same number of years."
"For two thousand years no one has either seen or heard
Jesus?" I asked, my eyes filled with wonder and my voice quivering
with excitement.
"No," he answered.
"Would not that, then," I ventured to ask, impatiently, "make
Jesus as much of an idol as Apollo? And are not these people on
their knees before a god of whose existence they are as much in the
dark as were the Greeks of fair Apollo, and of whose past they have
only rumors such as Homer reports of our Olympian gods -- as
idolatrous as the Athenians? What would you say," I asked my guide,
"if I were to demand that you should produce Jesus and prove him to
my eyes and ears as you have asked me to produce and prove Apollo?
What is the difference between a ceremony performed in honor of
Apollo and one performed in honor of Jesus, since it is as
impossible to give oracular demonstration of the existence of the
one as of the other? If Jesus is alive and a god, and Apollo is an
idol and dead, what is the evidence, since the one is as invisible,
as inaccessible, and as unproducible as the other? And, if faith
that Jesus is a god proves him a god, why will not faith in Apollo
make him a god? But if worshipping Jesus, whom for the best part of
the last two thousand years no man has seen, heard or touched; if
building temples to him, burning incense upon his altars, bowing at
his shrine and calling him "God," is not idolatry, neither is it
idolatry to kindle fire upon the luminous altars of the Greek
Apollo, -- God of the dawn, master of the enchanted lyre -- he with
the bow and arrow tipped with fire! I am not denying," I said,
"that Jesus ever lived. He may have been alive two thousand years
ago, but if he has not been heard from since, if the same thing
that happened to the people living at the time he lived has
happened to him, namely -- if he is dead, then you are worshipping
the dead, which fact stamps your religion as idolatrous."
And, then, remembering what he had said to me about the Greek
mythology being beautiful but not true, I said to him: "Your
temples are indeed gorgeous and costly; your music is grand your
altars are superb; your litany is exquisite; your chants are
melting; your incense, and bells and flowers, your gold and silver
vessels are all in rare taste, and I dare say your dogmas are
subtle and your preachers eloquent, but your religion has one fault
-- it is not true."
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