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 Reviews:"What if Jesus Had Never Been Born" BY MIKE MCMANUS In the Christmas movie, "It's a Wonderful Life," Jimmy Stewart plays the part of George Bailey, who has a chance to see what his town would be like if he had never been born. Dr. D. James Kennedy and Jerry Newcombe have written an important book on a similar theme, "What if Jesus Had Never Been Born?" It's a book for believers and skeptics. They write that Jesus' birth "utterly altered the way we measure time. Now the whole world counts time as Before Christ (B.C.) and A.D. . . . that means Anno Domini, 'in the year of the Lord.' "It's ironic that the most vitriolic atheist writing a letter must acknowledge Christ when he dates that letter." If Jesus had never lived, the writers say, there would be no elevation of the common man, no mass education or modern science, capitalism, hospitals or modern universities, representative government,
charity, civil liberties, the civilizing of barbaric cultures or the eternal salvation of countless souls. The last goal sparked it all. Life was cheap in early paganism. "Only half of children born lived beyond the age of eight in part because of widespread infanticide. That was the practice of Canaanites before Jewish conquest
of the promised land, of ancient Rome and Greece, of the Mayas of Mexico and to a lesser extent, in India of today. "Abortion disappeared in the early Church. Infanticide and abandonment disappeared. The cry went out to bring the children to the Church." Foundling homes and orphanages were started as a result of Jesus changing "the value of human life," they write. Since every person is "made in the image of God," Jesus treated women with respect. We take it for granted that women have equal rights, but in much of the world women are little more than the property of men. Missionaries to India were shocked to find widows were forced to
be burned on their husbands' funeral pyres. Indeed, cannibalism has only been wiped out in recent years. Before Christianity, education was only for the elite. Many of the world's languages were first set to writing by Christian missionarles so that people could read the Bible. The Cyrillic alphabet used in Russia
was developed by St. Cyril (who died in 869) to translate the Bible and liturgy into the Slavic tongue. Luther touched off the Reformation by writing the Bible in German. John Calvin, "Father of Modern Education," believed children should be taught to read to know God and glorify Him. The first universities at Oxford, Paris and Bologna, begun about 1200, mainly
taught theologyas did Harvard, Yale and Princeton.
"Had Jesus never been born, there would never be an America," asserts Kennedy, pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., whose radio and television broadcasts are heard and seen by 3 million people weekly. He notes that nearly all U.S. Revolutionary Army colonels were Presbyterian. Why? Presbyterians had long given lay people the right to govern the churchnot a hierarchy. Having seen freedom in church governance they wanted an elected government ruled by law. When the Declaration of Independence was signed Sam
Adams said, "We have this day restored the Sovereign to whom all ought
to be obedient. He reigns in heaven. . . . No King but King Jesus! Robert Oppenheimer, the nuclear physicist who oversaw
the atom bomb's creation, wrote that Christianity is the mother of science
due to "the Medieval insistence on the rationality of God." It
did not develop among Jews, who saw the world as a reason to praise God,
or Arabs due to Muslim belief that all is fatalistically determined. Nor
could Hindus or Buddhists begin science who see "the physical world
as unreal, that the only reality is the world's soul." Lutherans published books of Copernicus and Johannes
Kepler, who wrote: "We astronomers are priests of the highest God in
regard to the book of nature." Blaise Pascal, inventor of the barometer,
wrote: "Faith tells what the senses cannot, but is not contrary to
their findings . . . We only know God through Jesus. . . . " Newton wrote as much about theology as science. Other
Bible-believing scientists founded 30 branches of science: antiseptic surgery,
Lister; bacteriology, Pasteur; electromagnetics, Faraday. "Take a break from reading and look around,"
says Kennedy. "What do you see? Electric lights? Stereo? Television?
A computer?" Without Jesus, "I strongly doubt these would have
been invented."Posted with permission from NYT-12-16-94 1006EST --30-- | |
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