What is coptic Christianiy

What is Christianiy

Christianity Is the Truth

Christianianity has existed since the time that Jesus Christ was on earth. Followers of Jesus (Christians) of all denominations have had different understandings about few things, but all agree that Jesus Christ is a revelation of God in the flesh. All believe that God came to earth to bring humanity back into a relationship with Himself. And all accept Christ as God, Lord and Savior.

This relationship with God had been lost through the fall of Man at the beginning through sin and disobedience and was restored through Jesus and what He did for us - in dying to bear our sins and pay for our guilt, and in rising from the dead. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." (John 3:16).

The Christian faith is really about faith in the resurrected Jesus of Nazareth who lived historically on the earth 2000 years ago, made a definite impact on the people of Israel through His teaching and healing ministry. It is through His resurrection and continued intervention in the lives of His followers that today He has hundreds of millions who believe in Him and trust Him.

Although the Christian faith is not based purely on evidence, it is definitely supported by evidence and historical facts. The Christian faith is not about turning off the brain and merely relying on the heart. Christian faith is about seeking and knowing Jesus Christ with all facets of the human character. It’s about loving Him with all your heart, mind, soul and strength.

The tenants of Christianity are not based on blind faith as some people have claimed. In fact, Christianity depends very much on the testimony of eyewitnesses who lived with Him and observed His miracles, death on the cross and resurrection; and heard His words and sermons. A large portion of the Bible is just that: the eyewitness accounts of people who were actually there and their accounts are corroborated by both Jewish and Roman historians and records. Yes, it is possible for a person to sacrifice his life for a lie if he is brainwashed in believing in a false fiction he did not eyewitness. The fate of our fathers, the disciples and apostles of Christ, is documented in the Church’s records as well as pagan records. They willingly suffered painful deaths, after being subjected to all sorts of tortures and afflictions, testifying to the truth which they witnessed with their own eyes and ears. This is just one solid and rational evidence that Christianity is the truth.

The Christian Creed

The Christian faith is founded on Jesus Christ and His resurrection. Before the New Testament gospels were even written, the early Christian leaders and eye witnesses declared their belief in the death and resurrection of Jesus through a statement of belief known as a creed. The earliest record of the Christian creed is presented by Paul and found in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8:

"For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that He was buried, and that He rose again on the third day according to the scriptures: And that He was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: After that, He was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that, He was seen of James; then of all the apostles. And last of all He was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time."

Using the historical records of Paul and his early travels to Damascus and Jerusalem, place the above scripture at about 35 A.D., just 5 years after the death of Jesus Christ. This is dramatic, because those same scholars would hold that this basic creed for the Christian faith developed far too quickly for a myth to develop and distort the historical record of the resurrection. Also most of the disciples and eye witnesses from whom Paul received the creed were still alive when he wrote his epistle and none of them challenged him.

Recent scholarship in manuscript reliability and textual criticism now places the four Gospels at 30 to 50 years after Jesus when a great multitude of Jesus contemporaries and opponents were still around. None of the opponents and bitter enemies denied Christ’s miracles or crucifixion but tried in vain to explain away His empty tomb resurrection with weak and refutable rationalizations.

In the early forth century and during the ecumenical councils, the leaders of the universal church expanded the early creed by adding other doctrines, such as the oneness of God and the resurrection and judgment of the dead, all of which are derived from and based on the Holy Scriptures. That is the creed that is being acknowledged and recited by all Christian churches, of all denominations, today.

Christ Fulfilled the Prophesies

The Bible consists of 66 books written by some 40 different men spanning a period of over 4,000 years. It contains three distinct languages (Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic). The writers were from a wide variety of nationalities; and their professions ranged from kings to fishermen. The Old Testament contains more than 360 prophesies about Jesus which are hundreds or even thousands of years before His birth and all have been fulfilled in Him and by Him.

The following probabilities are taken from Peter Stoner in Science Speaks (Moody Press, 1963) to show that coincidence is ruled out by the science of probability. Stoner says that by using the modern science of probability in reference to eight prophecies, we find that the chance that any man might have lived down to the present time and fulfilled all eight prophecies is 1 in ten to the 17th power." That would be 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000. In order to help us comprehend this staggering probability, Stoner illustrates it by supposing that "we take ten to the seventeenth power silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas. They will cover all of the state two feet deep. Now mark one of these silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly, all over the state. Blindfold a man and tell him that he can travel as far as he wishes, but he must pick up one silver dollar and say that this is the right one. What chance would he have of getting the right one? Just the same chance that the prophets would have had of writing these eight prophecies and having them all come true in any one man."

Stoner considers only 48 of the 360 prophecies and says, "We find the chance that any one man fulfilled all 48 prophecies to be 1 in ten to the 157th power, or 1 in

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000."

It is quite evident that Jesus did not fulfill the prophecies by accident. Therefore, God exists and Christianity is the only truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Other religions may contain bits and pieces of the truth. They resemble a broken clock which shows the right time but only for a few seconds twice a day. Jesus is who He said to be, God in human flesh, and He proved this by fulfilling the prophecies and rising from the dead. He was and He is who He said He is: the only way (John 14:6).

The Oneness (Unity) of God and the Trinity

The first sentence in the Christian Creed is "We believe in one God." "Trinity" is a term that is not found in the Bible but a word used to describe what is an apparent concept about God in the Scriptures. The Bible clearly speaks of God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ), and God the Holy Spirit, Each of the persons is distinct from the others, yet identical in essence. Matt. 28:18, "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit." Also Matt. 3:16-17 "And after being baptized, Jesus went up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming upon Him, and behold, a voice out of the heavens, saying, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased." In other words, each is fully divine in nature, but each is not the totality of the other persons of the Trinity. The Scriptures also clearly present that there is only one God. Thus the term: "Tri" meaning three, and "Unity" meaning one, Tri+Unity = Trinity.

The Father creates (Isaiah 44:24), the Son redeems (Gal. 3:13), and the Holy Spirit sanctifies (Rom. 15:16). 1 Pet. 1:2, "according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, that you may obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with His blood: May grace and peace be yours in fullest measure."

Some have attempted to give human illustrations for the Trinity such as a book with its three dimensions: length, width and thickness but yet it is one book and if you remove any of the three dimensions, the object loses its attributes and ceases to be a book. I find that all attempted illustrations stop short. God is not human, so He cannot be described in human terms. The gods of other religions can be described in human or material terms since they were invented in the minds of men.