Rodent Regatta

This is simply too amazing to risk losing to link rot. Instead, I’m quoting it here, in full, with attribution to Marvin Olasky for initially pointing it out and PCA News for running it.

Dear Friend,

Is there a good, non-commercial reason for this holiday madness? Is this annual multi-billion dollar global celebration just a quaint urban legend that clever businessmen have turned into the longest-running, most successful marketing gambit in the history of merchandizing? Or could there be something to this story that won’t die in spite of millions of man-hours over two millennia devoted to killing it?

Here is the logline for this Christmas screenplay:

A God infinite in all his attributes who is three persons in one, who created everything in the universe out of nothing, sends one member of that trinity to earth as a baby born to a young virgin in squalid conditions, fulfilling a 700-year-old prophecy (Isaiah 7:14). It’s a fantastic tale.

Baby Jesus grew up and became a vagabond rabbi with nothing more than the clothes on his back, healing the sick and the lame and resuscitating the dead before thousands of witnesses, promising an eternal life of inexpressible bliss for folks who believed he was who he said he wasGod (John 10:24-30). Yet he made no attempt to save himself from a horrible execution instigated by jealous co-religionists. Then, as if willfully shattering any hope of verisimilitude, the final chapter ends like the first began, with an unfathomable event for those who don’t think beyond human possibilities. Jesus came up out of the grave alive and was seen by hundreds of people before he rose magically up through the clouds, promising to prepare a place in heaven for the faithful and return one day. Is that a mind-boggling plot or what? Certainly no human mind could conceive such a narrative, and that may well be the best evidence indicating a divine origin.

What it is, is a love story: ”For God so loved the world” (John 3:16). The theme is love conquers all, even unrequited love, when the lover and prime mover is God. That is why it is called the gospel”good news” indeed. It seems timelier than ever now with hate in such high fashion.

Preposterous, you say? Is it possible for eleven men, Jesus’ closest followers, to stick to such an outrageous story”he rose from dead”at the cost of unspeakable persecution and grisly death, if it was a lie? Millions of people who believed the story through the centuries have met the same fate for refusing to mouth a denial. America’s founders risked life and limb in a hostile wilderness to establish a city on a hill based on the precepts of this story. Half died the first winter but the greatest, freest, most bountiful nation on earth grew from that faith-filled beginning. This story certainly has legs.

So here are the options available to you this Christmas season. You can believe this story and, in the words of its protagonist, spend eternity with God in heaven, or you can ignore it, laugh at it, or ridicule it and run the risk of eternal torment in a fiery place called hell. There is a third option: You can make a note in your Daytimer to give it some serious thought some time in the New Yearand set Uncle Screwtape up with a chance to claim another soul with his favorite strategyprocrastination.

Might not the veracity of this story, the longest running best seller ever written, be worth looking into now? And while you’re at it, why not read the source material rather than best selling fiction that profanely distorts the original story? Stop by most any bookstore on your way out of the mall and buy a Bible. If God really is, as stated in that book, it’s the best news the human mind could ever absorb. If it’s a fable consisting of several authors’ fantasies over many centuries that just happens to fit together, what have you lost by reading a great literary work? But if 200 plus prophecies over a millennium were truly fulfilled by a man called Jesus, the Son of God, as recorded in the Bible, denying or ignoring its reality places you in grave peril, my friend.

I suggest you start reading with an eyewitness account by Jesus’ best friend, John: ”[He] became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

It’s your choice to read and then consider his invitation. Jesus says the consequences are eternal. I am convinced to the depths of my soul that he speaks the greatest truth ever told.

With gratitude to God for his love and your friendship and a fervent desire to spend eternity with you both,

I am sincerely yours,

JD Wetterling

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JD Wetterling is resident manager of Ridge Haven, the PCA Conference Center and Retreat in North Carolina.

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