101 Amazing Truths about Jesus by Mark Littleton

Author:Mark Littleton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2007-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

50

Jesus was accused of being the DEVIL himself.

Think of what it must have been like to be living in Israel at the time of Jesus’s ministry. If you had anything wrong with you—blindness, deafness, lameness, demon-possession, bad skin, a constant cold, chronic bleeding, whatever—and you heard about Jesus, you set aside whatever reservations you might have had and went to see him. The Bible tells us of Jesus’s mission of mercy to the sick and suffering: “Laying his hands on each one, he healed them” (Luke 4:40).

Even if you happened to be healthy, listening to Jesus speak must have been a marvelous experience. Mark 10:24 tells us that the disciples were “amazed at Jesus’s words.” It’s easy to understand why the things Jesus said would amaze those who heard them. He spoke as one who had authority (Mark 1:27) and turned the petty traditions of the Pharisees and Sadducees upside down. He gave the despondent hope, the loser another chance, the sinner redemption, and the lost a direct line to God. Even today the words of Jesus—the ones printed in red in many Bibles—ring with truth, joy, fulfillment, love, compassion, spiritual power, and a clear sense of who God is and what he wants from us. Crowds gathered just to hear Jesus speak.

In some cases multitudes witnessed mighty miracles that displayed Jesus’s power over nature—feeding crowds of four thousand (Matthew 15:29–39) and five thousand (Matthew 14:13–21), calming the sea (Mark 4:35–41), walking on water (Matthew 14:22–27), and raising the dead (Mark 5:35–43; Luke 7:11–17; John 11:38–44). At no other time in history did God display his power so frequently. In the three years Jesus ministered in Israel, he never turned away anyone. And we know that he performed many more miracles than just those recorded in the New Testament.

Now suppose you’ve gone to the lectures. You’ve seen several actual miracles, right before your eyes. You’ve met Jesus, heard him argue with some of your friends; perhaps you’ve even sat and dined with him. How is it possible that you could come to the conclusion that Jesus was the devil in disguise?

Yet this is precisely what some of the leaders in Jesus’s day accused him of being. Early in Jesus’s ministry various scribes said, “He is possessed by Beelzebub,” and “By the prince of demons he is driving out demons”(Mark 3:22).

How could they try to explain Jesus away like this?

If you look closely, you’ll find that each time the leaders spoke of Jesus being the devil or being possessed by the devil, Jesus had just said or done something that exposed them for the frauds they were. For instance, in Mark 3:1–19 we read that Jesus healed on the Sabbath, cast out demons, and called and commissioned twelve disciples, giving them power to do miracles of all sorts. Jesus chose humble, common, uneducated men to do God’s work—completely passing over the scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees, the religious leaders who were supposed to be working for God. Not one of them was invited into Jesus’s inner circle.

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