According to the unanimous testimony of the Bible, the encounter with the living God causes a deep shock. When the apostle John encountered the risen and exalted Jesus Christ, he describes his experience with the words: “And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as though I were dead.” (Apk.1,17) Yet this is the Jesus whose love he had believed and experienced, the Jesus who had been very close to him. (He refers to himself in John 13:23 as the disciple whom Jesus loved). Jesus now had to lay his right hand on him and tell him, “Do not be afraid!” Very often the encounter with an angel is so shattering that the angel has to say, “Do not be afraid!”
When people encounter the preaching of Jesus there is a word there that literally reads “They were knocked out”, knocked out of the everyday course of things, out of what one thought was safe and certain, out of what one thought one could have under control. The result is a profound shaking and uncertainty. This also happens when people experience how a certain verse of the Bible hits them and changes their lives permanently. This happens when the Holy Spirit can use the words of a preacher in such a way that God Himself can strike the innermost part of a listener. This happens when God acts in such a way that it contradicts everything we have experienced or think is necessary. And this happened especially in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, where suddenly what we think is dead certain is no longer certain. This shock before God shaped all of early Christianity, its worldview and its behavior. Jesus, who was the love of God in person and served the poor and the weak, said in Mt. 10:28: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But fear him more who can destroy both body and soul in hell.”
Whoever cannot understand or comprehend this shock is incapable of making serious historical statements about early Christianity and its writings.
The subsections of the section The Bible seen by a historian are: Miracles, Divinity of Jesus Christ, Being shaken by God, lying was no longer possible, The gospels present an accurate picture of Jesus, The letter to the Ephesians, inner unity of the writers of the New Testament
The part history has the section The Bible seen by a historian
The main part world has the parts science and history.
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