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Writer's pictureBible Brian

The evidence YOU can't see


"And after eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, “Peace to you!” Then He said to Thomas, “Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.” And Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”"

- John 20:26-29


It's ironic that Thomas, who would spend the rest of his Earthly life suffering great persecutions for his testimony of Christ, will always be remembered for his doubts. Having been told that Jesus had risen, he demanded physical proof, saying "Unless I 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."


2,000 years later, stubborn people continue this trend of doubt. Not a mere healthy skepticism, which Scripture itself advises (1 Thessalonians 5:21), but a demand that all doubts, reasonable and unreasonable, be erased.


I would imagine quite a few people responded to Thomas in a similar way he responded to his friends. You claim to have seen Jesus? You claim to have put your fingers in His wounds? Humbug. Let me put my fingers in His wounds. Then I will believe.


But some people take this a step further. "Personal experience is not evidence", they say. But tell me, is it evidence to the one who saw? Of course! If you see something, of course you believe it. If you're Thomas, you've met the risen Lord, you've felt His very wounds, you're not going to stop believing because some Doubting Thomas tells you your personal experience is not evidence.


In fact, most of what we believe is based on what we have not seen. Few of us are well-traveled enough to have seen every place we believe in. I've never even been to Paris, should I doubt it exists? I never met Queen Elizabeth, should I assume everyone who mourned her recent passing is a quack?


Seeing, usually, is believing, but if you have to see to believe, you may even cross the street without checking for a bus, assuming you're fortunate enough to have never seen anyone get hit by one. So why should Jesus be any different? Enough well-matched testimonies is enough to put a criminal in jail. We have enough eyewitness testimonies for Christ that we can reasonably assume either He rose again, or He did something fantastic enough to make the dissenters of His day believe He did.


As humans, we are not telepathic. If one person has an experience, the only way they can pass that on to you is with their words. Even if humans were telepathic, Thomas and his friends have been dead for nearly 2,000 years. But they testify to what they saw in their writings, which have been copied and distributed worldwide over the centuries, allowing us to know with high certainty what they said. They cannot transfer their experience to us, but what they tell us shows this experience is true. The Lord Jesus Christ really did rise from the dead, and we can trust that as surely as Thomas could have trusted the other disciples when they told Him.

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