<\/p>\n
\u201cPhilip found Nathanael and said to him, \u2018We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.\u2019 Nathanael said to him, \u2018Can anything good come out of Nazareth?\u2019 Philip said to him, \u2018Come and see’\u201d (John 1:45,46).<\/p>\n
WHETHER SOMETHING SEEMS \u201cLIKELY\u201d IS USUALLY DETERMINED BY OUR CULTURE AND OUR CONDITIONING. If you had asked somebody two thousand years ago whether it was likely that people would ever travel to Mars, they would have said no. Today, however, that feat does not seem as unlikely as it did back then.<\/p>\n
But we should not be so arrogant as to think that we\u2019ve broken free from the limitations of culture and conditioning. We may be freer to see the likelihood of some<\/em> things than ancient people were, but in all honesty, we are less free than they were to see the likelihood of other things \u2014including the truth of the gospel.<\/p>\n The inherent likelihood of the resurrection of Christ (and therefore of the truth of the gospel) has not changed since the first century. If it seems more improbable today, it is only because we approach the question with a set of prejudices that ancient people were not bound by. Before even considering the historical evidence, we\u2019ve already made up our minds that there is no God who could have caused the event, so we dismiss it out of hand.<\/p>\n But if you have ever sat on a jury in a courtroom and had to evaluate evidence, you know how wrong you can be when you start thinking, \u201cIt just doesn\u2019t seem possible that this could have happened.\u201d If the evidence is sufficient, you have to revise your opinion of what is possible and go with the evidence. The operative question is not \u201cIs this likely?\u201d but \u201cIs this true?\u201d<\/p>\n And so it is with the gospel. However unlikely, implausible, or even impossible it may seem, the gospel story must be judged on the basis of the evidence, even if we don\u2019t want it to be true. As C. S. Lewis once said, \u201cI do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable; but when I was an atheist, I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable.\u201d Fortunately, C. S. Lewis did not let his moods determine his beliefs one way or the other.<\/p>\n So if our sense of likelihood tells us that \u201cnothing good can come out of Nazareth,\u201d the gospel simply says, \u201cCome and see.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe gospel is wildly improbable \u2014 except that it happened\u201d (Michael Horton).<\/p>\n Gary Henry \u2013 WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com<\/p>\n