Acts 4:12 “There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

On Sunday afternoon, I am speaking at Abundant Life Church on the one person in world history who has had the greatest impact on mankind, and one of the most controversial personalities in American culture today: the Person of Jesus Christ and why He is not only God but the only way to heaven.

I often ask Christian teenagers whether or not Jesus Christ is relevant in their lives. Unfortunately, most teenagers tell me “Not really”. With the latest iPhone 6, video games, sports, social media, teenagers are overloaded with options for how and where they spend their time. And most teenagers’ time is not spent with Christ. He isn’t relevant to their daily lives. That wasn’t the case with Malcolm Muggeridge.

A renowned writer and journalist, he began his career as a left-wing sympathizer and outspoken skeptic of religion. But after witnessing the horrors of both Nazi Germany and Stalinist Communism, he examined the claims of Jesus Christ and everything changed. In his autobiography entitled “Chronicles of Wasted Time”, he wrote one of the most comprehensive arguments for why Jesus Christ is the only hope for mankind:

“We look back upon history and what do we see? Empires rising and falling, revolutions and counter-revolutions, wealth accumulating and wealth dispersed, one nation dominant and then another. Shakespeare speaks of ‘the rise and fall of great ones that ebb and flow with the moon.’ I look back on my fellow countrymen ruling over a quarter of the world, the great majority of them convinced, in the words of what is still a favorite song, that, ‘God who’s made the mighty would make them mightier yet.’

I’ve heard a crazed, cracked Austrian announce to the world the establishment of a German Reich that would last a thousand years; an Italian clown announce that he would restart the calendar to begin his own ascension to power. I’ve heard a murderous Georgian brigand in the Kremlin acclaimed by the intellectual elite of the world as a wiser than Solomon, more humane than Marcus Aurelius, more enlightened than Ashoka. I’ve seen America wealthier and more powerful than the rest of the world put together, so that had the American people desired, could have outdone an Alexander or a Julius Caesar in their conquests.

All in one lifetime. All gone with the wind. England part of a tiny island off the coast of Europe, threatened with dismemberment and even bankruptcy. Hitler and Mussolini dead, remembered only in infamy. Stalin a forbidden name in the regime he helped found and dominate for some three decades. America haunted by fears of running out of those precious fluids that keep her motorways roaring, and the smog settling, with troubled memories of a disastrous campaign in Vietnam, and the victories of the Don Quixotes of the media as they charged the windmills of Watergate. All in one lifetime, all gone. Gone with the wind.

Behind the debris of these self-styled, sullen supermen and imperial diplomatists, there stands the gigantic figure of one person, because of whom, by whom, in whom, and through whom alone mankind might still have hope. The person of Jesus Christ.”

In 1926, Dr. James Allan Francis penned a sermon that captures the mystery and majesty of the God-Man Jesus Christ who can change any human heart who is willing to come to Him as their Lord and Savior:

“Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village. He worked in a carpenter shop until He was 30. Then for 3 years He was an itinerant preacher. He never owned a home. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. He never went to college. He never put His foot inside a big city. He never traveled 200 miles from the place He was born. He never did one of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but Himself.

While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against Him. His friends ran away. One of them denied Him. He was turned over to His enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between 2 thieves. While He was dying His executioners gambled for the only piece of property He had on earth – His coat. When He was dead, He was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.

19 long centuries have come and gone, and today He is a centerpiece of the human race and leader of the column of progress. Of all the armies that ever marched, all the navies ever built; all the parliaments and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as has that one solitary life.” How is Jesus Christ relevant to you? As our verse this week says, there is no other name by which you can have eternal life and one day when you die be in heaven.

“The Evidence of Faith’s Substance”, Article #279 – January 21, 2018