LIAR, LUNATIC OR LORD ?

Lew Wallce was a famous general and literary genius of the nineteenth century who, along with his friend Robert Ingersoll, decided to write a book that would forever destroy what they called “the myth of Christianity.” For two years, Wallace studied in the libraries of Europe and America, and then he started writing his book. But while writing the second chapter, he found himself on his knees crying out to Jesus Christ in the words of Thomas, “My Lord and my God.” And the book he was writing became the great novel about the times of Christ, Ben Hur.   Bill Murray was a businessman who grew up in a home that had rejected God so completely that his mother once told him, “I don’t care if you become a drug addict or a bank robber or if you bring home a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend. There’s just one thing I don’t want you to do in life-become a Christian.” So Bill grew up sexually promiscuous, moving from one marriage to another, from one sexual partner to another. He began drinking and drugging, and wanting more and more possessions, he worked himself to the point of exhaustion. He collapsed inwardly and found himself praying to the God he had rejected, “Please, get me out of this mess!” Going to an all-night bookstore, he found a Bible buried under a stack of pornographic magazines, and he began reading about Jesus Christ. He was especially drawn to Luke’s Gospel, and as he read it he grew convinced that Jesus was unique in history, matchless in his magnetism, his teachings, his claims, his resurrection and his impact on history.   Bill received Christ as his Savior, and it changed his life. He gave up his drinking and drugging and promiscuous sex and rampant materialism, and he found the inner peace and joy he’d always been looking for. Bill Murray, you may be interested to know, is the oldest son of atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hare, who used him as the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case that outlawed prayer in the public classrooms of America.   C. S. Lewis, likewise, came to Christ almost against his will, being convinced by the evidence that Christianity was true. One of the factors was the simple process of deduction. He said that he realized that it was impossible to call Jesus a great mora! teacher but not God. Lewis explained, “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic, or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”   There are only three logical options. Either he was a liar, a hoax, a deceiver, an imposter-in which case you have to explain how he could also have been the greatest spiritual leader and the most selfless, atoning sacrifice the world has ever known; or he was a lunatic-in which case you have to explain how he could have been the wisest teacher the world has ever seen; or he is the God-Man-which is just who he claimed to be.   Liar, Lunatic, or Lord. The answer, it seems, is obvious.  (From a sermon by Robert Morgan)