1. looking for Truth and Beauty
I doubt you’ve ever been to Eshowe. It’s a tiny town in Zululand in South Africa with a population of about fourteen and half a thousand people. It’s the oldest town of European settlement in Zululand. There’s not too much to see there. Lots of bush and lots of sugar cane. The Dlinza indigenous forest is impressive and my kiddies have had lots of fun climbing up the huge vines on Ficus trees watching Vervet monkeys jumping through the leaves. But for all that, Eshowe is a sleepy African market town in a rural area. It’s nice enough.
So I think you will be very surprised to hear that God’s only Son lives there. Yes, God’s Son. The only true King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Jesus himself, lives in Eshowe. You can meet him if you want to because he lives there physically in the flesh. This Jesus used to be a jewellery salesman by the name of Moses Hlongwane but in 1992 God appeared to him in a dream and told him that he is in fact Jesus Christ the Messiah. He calls himself the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Jesus. And he has consistently preached this message both in Eshowe and all the way to the economic hub of Africa, Johannesburg. To date he has only managed to persuade about forty other people to believe in him.
Do you think you should check him out? Do you think it’s worth your while going to Flight Centre, buying tickets, flying to South Africa (Durban would be your nearest city – take a surfboard with you) and then driving 2 hours North to Eshowe to investigate his claims? Do you think you should? I mean, after all, he says that he is going to end the world and judge everyone. Yes, that includes you. Scary thought that this man believes he will be your final judge – someone you’ve never met! So do you think you ought to meet him? By the way, if you do decide to go, you can also meet his wife who used to have the name Angel but now has the title ‘Mother of the Whole World.’
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Some claims aren’t worth investigating
Of course you don’t need to check him out. He is a fraud. Self-deluded at best or more sadly, just another economic desperado trying to make a quick buck. Thankfully, his type is extremely rare. There are very, very few people who come to the self-realisation that they are Jesus or Divine. But there are some. Google will show you that there are a dozen or so people around the world who claim to be Jesus Christ and even a few less than that who also claim to be God. Most of them are quite harmless and have never had any big impact whatsoever.
(Mind you, not all are harmless. Shoko Asahara a Japanese herbalist came to the realisation that he was God and at the height of his popularity he persuaded nearly ten thousand people that he really was. Unfortunately, in 1995 some of his followers released Sarin gas in the Tokyo underground killing a number of people. He was arrested and sentenced to death though he still remains in prison today. Some God-wannabes can be harmful – think of Jim Jones!)
The point is this: throughout human history there have been a dozen or so people who claimed to be God – not just divine, but the One True Creator God. Not one of them has got far. Not one. Nothing has come of their claims and other than a few handfuls of gullible people, they haven’t persuaded many people that their claims are true. The reality is that after their death their whole movement simply fades away. So don’t worry, you really don’t have to check them out. What a waste of time it would be to have to examine and check out everyone who claims such ridiculous things! It simply isn’t worth it. Just ignore them like almost everyone else has and get on with your life.
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But Jesus is definitely worth investigating
Not so with Jesus Christ of Nazareth! You have to slow down a bit here. Jesus Christ lived about two thousand years ago and yet for the past two thousand years people have believed, and have even been prepared to die for the belief that He is God. Yep, that’s right. God. Even today, while you are reading this, more than two billion people believe that He is God. That’s more than a handful! In fact, some of the people you know, some of your friends or work colleagues believe this too.
What’s even more amazing is that people all over the world are still ‘converting’ to this belief. In other words this is not just an inherited belief (as it is in many cases). Even today people are still being persuaded that this is true even when they have come from a position where they didn’t think it was true. Even though we have smartphones and self-driving cars and have grown so technologically sophisticated, the belief that Jesus is God is not only not fading, its growing in momentum, and growing fast! And this conversion isn’t happening to a particular people from just one type of culture, or one race, or one language, but from every culture, from every language, from every conceivable strata of society! Belief in Jesus Christ is growing incredibly fast all over the world – even in places where conversion to this belief is outlawed.
This does not prove that Jesus Christ is God. The point I’m trying to make here is that at the very least this shows that any open-minded intelligent person will see that there are enough grounds to justify investigating Jesus. Why? Because if Jesus really is God, just think of how many questions that could answer! More, think about what He can do for you! But more of this later.
Think about it. Because Jesus Christ is arguably in the top five or even top three most influential people who have ever lived and yet at the same time claimed to be God He is worth more than a casual dismissal – like Moses Hlongwane of Eshowe. It wouldn’t be smart to make a judgement call about Jesus simply because of what a mate said in the pub, or what Google says, or because some church who claims to have followed Him has done really bad things.
The question remains: how do you get to be so influential and yet at the same time claim to be God? How did Jesus persuade so many people to believe His outrageous claims? There really is no other way to describe His claims other than ‘outrageous’. Jesus’ claims about Himself are truly outrageous, even worse than Moses Hlongwane of Eshowe. Anyone who doesn’t think so, and thinks that Jesus was just a very do-gooder has no idea about what Jesus actually said or did. Surely investigating Him is worth some time?
You don’t even have to go to Eshowe or anywhere. All the evidence for His claims are written down in eyewitness accounts from nearly two thousand years ago. All you have to do is examine the documents with an open, questioning mind to see for yourself. And if you’re hung up about whether these documents are an accurate record of Him, then check them out for yourself. Don’t be gullible and rely on what people say about these records of Jesus. Check them out for yourself. These documents are called the gospels and there are four of them: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Besides, bear in mind also that much of what Jesus said and did was documented hundreds of years before He even lived in the form of predictions and prophecies about Him. You can check out those documents too. They have been fastidiously kept and meticulously preserved by the Jewish people. They are called the Old Testament.
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Even if Jesus is God, so what – why should I care?
But even if it was all true, so what? So Jesus is true and Jesus is God, good for Him. How does it touch my life? Well, the answer comes directly from one of Jesus’ claims. Here’s the claim:
“Come to me all you who are weary and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” (Matthew 11:28-29)
Jesus says that some of us are weary. Our souls are tired. Something is missing. We’re worn out from the round-and-round-and-round. We’re a bit jaded because we can’t find satisfaction or rest for our souls. Jesus makes the astonishing claim that when we find Him, we will find rest for our souls. That means that the deepest part of us, the ‘inner’ us, the part that is restless, will at last find rest.
Satisfaction. Jesus says that the way to achieve that is to come to Him. To ‘take my yoke’ and ‘learn from me’ means to yield to Him. To be willing to let Him take control – but He is not talking about losing control or switching your brains off. Jesus is not for gullible people. He wants us to switch our brains on and ‘learn’ from Him. He is not talking about a weird experience. He is talking about a lifestyle of learning. Learning from Him.
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How do you satisfy your soul?
What do you think it will take to satisfy the deepest part of you? Long ago, one of the sharpest minds that ever lived, Blaise Pascal, said that we will only be satisfied if we can find something that is both true and beautiful at the same time. Think about it. If we could find something that is both true and beautiful at the same time – surely that would satisfy our souls?
Many settle for truth only. But truth can be harsh. Children growing up in fundamentalist homes where “truth” is forced onto them often grow up resentful and angry. They often still think the things that they were taught are true, but they rebel against them because they never saw any beauty in them. Truth by itself will not satisfy the human soul.
But it works the other way round too. Beauty by itself will not satisfy the human soul either. Something that is beautiful but isn’t real or true won’t satisfy our souls. Drugs are an easy example of this. A good drug trip must be a beautiful experience otherwise people wouldn’t do it. It must be. But… it isn’t true. There is no objective truth in it, just a temporary subjective feeling of beauty. And for that reason it passes all too quickly. And worse, it leaves a trail of destruction in people’s lives. Every one knows that if you keep chasing beauty without truth it will get very ugly in the end.
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Beauty + Truth = satisfaction
So we need truth and beauty to go together. Find that combination, and our souls will be satisfied. Think about it. What more could you want? True beauty and beautiful truth. What more could you want?
Is there such a thing? I think there is. And I’m not alone. Billions have found it. If you scale up beauty to an infinite degree and if you scale up truth to an infinite degree then what you get is… God. That is who God is. God is infinite truth and infinite beauty. The very thing our souls need to be satisfied.
But you may not be persuaded yet. Perhaps you weren’t even sure if there really is a God or not. You may never have thought of God in terms of truth and beauty. That’s exactly where Jesus comes in. Jesus claimed to be God. So, all you have to do is look more closely at Jesus. Is He beautiful? Is He true? In my experience I have come across many people who don’t think so. But as soon as they allow me to ask them questions, questions such as, ‘Ok, what is it about Jesus that you don’t like?’, I quickly realise they don’t know Jesus at all. The things they think about Him having nothing to do with Him, neither are they about what He said nor about what He did. They dislike the Jesus that they have made up in their own mind – not the real one.
This short book is about the real Jesus. This is Jesus. I want to show you some things about Jesus. I want to show you why He really is God and why that’s really good news. Why? Because it turns out God is true and beautiful at the same time. Exactly what our hearts are searching for. You don’t need the God people make up in their own heads. You don’t need the God religion concocts. The God you may have heard about is probably going to be disappointing. The true God, the One we see in Jesus, is what you need.
Enough waffling. Why not check it out for yourself? This is Jesus.
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Go to chapter 2...