Q: There was a day when even entertainers acknowledged that Jesus was who He said He was, yet did not claim Him as their Savior. Today there’s a deep hatred at the mention of His name. Can people acknowledge Jesus as a real person and still not believe? — A.J.
A: The Saturday Evening Post once published a landmark interview with the great physicist and mathematician Albert Einstein. His response to questions of Jesus as a historical figure are breathtaking. He stated, “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.”
No one knows whether Einstein ever received Christ as Savior, but near the end of life he said, “If you ask me to prove what I believe, I can’t.… The mind can proceed only so far upon what it knows and can prove. There comes a point where the mind takes a leap… and comes out upon a higher plane of knowledge, but can never prove how it got there. All great discoveries have involved such a leap.”
But we can’t rely on the testimony of others over the testimony of Christ Himself who said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM” (John 8:58). This leap of faith is given when we speak the name of Jesus in sincere truth, realizing that we’re bound to a dark eternity without His forgiveness, grace, and mercy.
Regardless of the knowledge gathered, no one can know Jesus without taking the certain leap of faith that salvation comes only from Him. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1).
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(This column is based on the words and writings of the late Rev. Billy Graham.)
©2021 Billy Graham Literary Trust. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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