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The Cost of Discipleship
One of the greatest personal (as opposed to philosophical) proofs for the truth of Christianity is the actions of the apostles. One of the popular theories "refuting" the resurrection is that the disciples of Jesus stole His body and claimed that He had risen from the dead. This is obviously total nonsense when you see what happened to all of them later on. Nearly all of them died painful deaths for what they proclaimed. If they all came up with this plot to fake the resurrection, it seems foolish to think that none of them would confess to doing so under the torture that most of them faced before dying a grisly death. Today in our reading we here about James (brother of John), but I also wanted to give you a quick look at what happened to the other apostles. Some things are hard to confirm because they are based on tradition, which sometimes varies slightly, but this is a rough overview (click to enlarge):
The Cost of Discipleship
One of the greatest personal (as opposed to philosophical) proofs for the truth of Christianity is the actions of the apostles. One of the popular theories "refuting" the resurrection is that the disciples of Jesus stole His body and claimed that He had risen from the dead. This is obviously total nonsense when you see what happened to all of them later on. Nearly all of them died painful deaths for what they proclaimed. If they all came up with this plot to fake the resurrection, it seems foolish to think that none of them would confess to doing so under the torture that most of them faced before dying a grisly death. Today in our reading we here about James (brother of John), but I also wanted to give you a quick look at what happened to the other apostles. Some things are hard to confirm because they are based on tradition, which sometimes varies slightly, but this is a rough overview (click to enlarge):
They understood that following Jesus would not be easy - in many ways they probably EXPECTED suffering. Yet they followed anyway. Why? Because like the man who found treasure in a field and sold everything to obtain it, they understood that knowing Jesus and gaining eternal inheritance makes holding on to their own lives seem incredibly foolish.
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