“I am an historian, I am not a believer. But this penniless preacher from Galilee is irresistibly the centre of history.” (H. G. Wells, renowned author, 1866-1946) “Jesus of Nazareth, without money and arms, conquered more millions than Alexander the Great, Caesar, Mohammed, and Napoleon; without science and learning, he shed more light on things human and divine than all philosophers and scholars combined; without the eloquence of school, he spoke such words of life as were never spoken before or since, and produced effects which lie beyond the reach of orator or poet; without writing a single line, he set more pens in motion, and furnished themes for more sermons, orations, discussions, learned volumes, works of art, and songs of praise than the whole army of great men of ancient and modern times.” (Philip Schaff, Historian of the early church, 1819-1893) “I know men and I tell you that Jesus Christ is no mere man. Between Him and every other person in the world there is no possible term of comparison. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I have founded empires. But on what did we rest the creation of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded His empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for Him.” (Napoleon Bonaparte, French military and political ruler, 1769-1821) “He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in still another village where he worked in a carpenter’s shop until he was thirty. Then for three years he travelled and preached. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family or owned a house. He did not go to college. He never visited a big city. He never travelled more than two hundred miles from the place where he was born. He did none of the things we usually associate with greatness. He had no credentials but himself. He was only thirty-three when the tide of public opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. He was turned over to his enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a stake between two thieves. While he was dying, his executioners gambled for the only property he had on earth, his coat. When he was dead, he was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend. Two thousand years have come and gone and today he remains the central figure of the human race and the leader of mankind’s progress. All the armies that ever marched, all the fleets that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of men on this planet so much as that One Solitary Life.” (James Allen Francis, church minister, 1864-1928) “As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene….No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.” (Albert Einstein, celebrated theoretical physicist, 1879-1955) “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” (C. S. Lewis, writer and Oxford Professor of English Literature, 1898-1963)
Posted on: Sun, 02 Mar 2014 12:23:51 +0000