You and I live in an age of unbelief. The visible, material world so controls out thought and life patterns that only the most sensitive seem willing to look beyond the crass, the selfish, the violent, and the inhuman to the value and significance of faith in God. The problem of faith is as great today, if not greater, than at any time in man’s long history.
Many. however, who have a vague belief in God, seem totally unwilling to consider the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth. Therefore, the challenge of faith in Jesus as the Christ is probably dismissed by more people today than at any time since the Apostle Thomas’ famous struggle. Upon learning that the crucified Jesus had now become the risen Christ, Thomas exclaimed: “Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails. and put my hand into his side, I will not believe” (John 20:25).
In our time questions of literary criticism in the study of the New Testament Gospels have cast persistent shadows on the historical truthfulness of these records. Some students of the New Testament have lately devoted years of attention to the alleged “myths” of the New Testament. In the philosophical world there is a continuing, even if very faint, conviction that Jesus is not historically real. And even churchmen of late, affected by this historical-critical-empirical emphasis, have begun their ministries governed by the presupposition that Jesus was neither divine nor sovereign.
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