What if Jesus Christ Had Never Come to Earth?
Pastor Eric J. Hanson
(with thanks to the late Dr. D. James Kennedy)
December 23, 2007
On this Christmas Sunday, we stop and reflect on the events that brought our Lord Jesus Christ to Earth to become the Savior of all who will put their trust in Him. Through the years, your pastors have considered many aspects of the Christmas story from this pulpit, from simply re-telling the story, to Greek word studies on various aspects of it, such as just what the star of Bethlehem was. We have looked at seemingly minor characters in this great pageant of God’s love, such as Anna and Simeon, and found out, that in God’s great plan, they were not minor after all.
Today we are going to do something different. We are going to look at the effects upon our World, if the Lord had not come to be born here and had not lived upon this planet which He holds together. I acknowledge with gratitude, the great help I received in preparing this message by viewing the Coral Ridge Ministries presentation that bears the same name as my sermon today. Dr. Kennedy, and those who now continue the great Coral Ridge ministry to our country, are heroes of the Faith. Now let’s get to the body of this message.
Secular Humanists, today’s so-called Secular Progressives, are quick to say that the Christian Faith is the biggest problem around. They blame many woes upon those who seek to follow the Lord. They are especially quick to paint true believers as ignorant, uneducated, anti-science, and easily commanded by our leaders. Followers of Christ are mischaracterized as intolerant of all others, and quick to launch a middle ages style crusade.
In the face of these falsehoods, it is good to take a look at the actual changes the World has seen because of the message of Jesus Christ. Let’s look today at a few areas of great progress among people, because the Lord came to Earth.
We will not be considering the matter of eternal salvation or damnation in this little study. Those subjects have been explored many times from this pulpit. Today we are looking instead at the human condition as it is experienced in this life. Let’s go there now.
Science
A favorite charge hurled against believers in Jesus Christ is an “anti-science” card. The reality is far different. The founders of modern science, almost all of them, were devout believers who were motivated by and informed faith to investigate creation. They sought to think God’s thoughts after Him, and thus to discover divine design and logic in nature.
Francis Bacon, who is credited as being the father of modern science, said that there are two books essential to our understanding of God’s mind. These two are the holy Bible and the book of nature.
Critics of the Faith are quick to hold up the Catholic Church’s opposition to part of the work of Galileo Galilei, as proof that religion is anti-science. The truth here, however, is the Galileo himself was a devout believer. That which he opposed, was Roman Catholic dogma, not the teaching of the Bible. The Roman Church taught that the Earth is stationary and that the sun and stars move around it. The Bible does not teach this. Galileo reproduced the work of Copernicus, and confirmed that the Solar System is indeed heliocentric. (Sun-centered) rather than Earth centered.
A quote from Galilleo, which the humanists never mention is this: “The Holy scriptures may not err. Expositors and commentators on the scriptures may err in many ways.” This Godly man, who was looking for divine design, also founded physics, and formulated several other important scientific foundations in fields ranging from ballistics to determining specific gravity, to measuring temperature.
Strong Christian believers who made great scientific progress also include such people as the following:
Louis Pasteur (Bacteriology)
Johan Kepler (Celestial Mechanics)
Lord Kelvin (Energetics)
Blaise Pascal (Geometry and calculations)
Joseph Lister (Antiseptics)
Robert Boyle (Chemistry)
Samuel Morse (Telegraphy)
Isaac Newton (Calculus and Dynamics)
Newton, noting the exact distance of the Earth from the Sun, said that this did not simply happen by chance, nor did the laws, such as gravity, which regulate the universe. Newton is acknowledged by many, to have perhaps possessed, the greatest scientific mind ever.
The Christian Faith and the Scriptures gave the impetus for modern Science to arise. Hinduism could never have produced he scientific method. It is riddled with fatalism and a cyclical view of reality. Tribal religions, which see little local deities in control of everything, could never have produced modern science. The whole focus of Islam is struggle and warfare to rule the World. Islam also does not teach the Genesis truth that people are created in God’s image and are commanded by God to subdue the Earth and rule over it as good and wise stewards.
Only a World View which sees man’s highest fulfillment coming from pursuing that which God has put into our grasp could produce the basis for modern science. Only the Bible-Based Christian Worldview arising from the Reformation was able to produce the needed mind set, which follows. God intends for all of us who know Him, to discover His design and intent in all things, and to use that knowledge in ways that alleviate suffering and better the lot of humankind. This glorifies God as we honor Him for being the master designer, and as we show his goodness and greatness to people.
Finishing this section on Science, let me hasten to add that the founders of our nation and the founders of our Ivy League Universities, well knew the truth that the Christian faith, well understood and integrated into all of life, produces great breakthroughs in the sciences. If Jesus Christ had not come, modern science would not have developed. Classical thinking with its philosophical self-limitations would not have been replaced by the scientific method, which seeks truth.
Education
The spread of literacy and general knowledge around the Globe has been driven by Bible Translation work and the Reformation-birthed desire to put the Scriptures into the hands of all peoples. Nothing else even comes close in the annals of literacy. The idea behind universal education is this. We all need to be able to read and understand the Bible in our own language, for this is the primary way that God communicates with us.
Prior to the Reformation, small groups of devout Christian monks were the keepers of ancient history. After the fall of Rome in the year 500, if there had not been Christian historians who were concerned that the records of Rome and Greece must be preserved, they could well have been lost forever. Make no mistake about this. It was Christians who carefully and accurately preserved these things, including thousands of volumes, thousands of books.
The educational systems in New England were so effective in the 16 and 1700s, that by around the year 1800, John Adams could truthfully say that finding an illiterate man in New England was rarer than finding a comet in the sky. The literacy rate was in fact above 97% for more than 100 years in these 6 states, and very high in New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia as well.
The New England Primer series, which was used throughout that whole period, for grades 1-8 education, taught the Bible and the great doctrines of the faith at the same time as it taught reading and writing skills. A young man or woman graduating from the eighth grade, at that time, came out knowing World Geography, practical mathematics, basis for the making of good laws, and many other life skills at a higher level than millions of high school grads today. By the way, it was Christ centered thinking that caused girls to be included in formal universal education. Jesus made it clear that God loves women just as much as men.
At the other end of the scale of education, it was Reformation Christian thought that produced the great idea of Universities, where many colleges and all current knowledge could be gathered on one campus. This thinking produced Oxford University, and that place produced John Harvard, who established Harvard University in 1636 to train the next generation of highly educated men of God who could do their research and personal devotions in the original languages of the scriptures: Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic. Yale was founded on the same foundation of God’s word, as was Dartmouth. In fact, almost all of the first 123 Colleges and Universities in the United States were clearly Christian in their mission. The most common motto among them: “You shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall set you free”.
Truly, the 55 men who framed our Constitution, of whom 52 were active churchmen, were the best educated group to ever sit down to the task of shaping a nation. Among this august group of ministers, attorneys, soldiers, farmers, statesmen, business owners, and artisans, it was quite common to find men conversant in four or five languages. All of them knew the development of British common law in great detail and historical background.
Without the Reformation and its attendant drive to read well, know the Scriptures well, and apply them to every arena of life, this tremendous body of New England education which produced our nation would never have been compiled! If Jesus Christ had not come, there would be no United States of America, and no modern Great Britain either. If Jesus Christ had not come, millions in India, Africa and other lands who now have written languages and the Bible in their own tongues, would never have had these great things.
Human Freedom
Secular Progressives claim that the Christian message stifles freedom. Nothing could be further from the truth. Apart from strong and steadfast Christian effort and persistence through the centuries, most societies would still embrace slavery, denigrate women, and consider uneducated people to be worth little more than an ox or pig.
When Massachusetts wrote its colonial Constitution in 1636, that document was based on the Mayflower Compact of 1620. Over the following 100 years, almost 100 more constitutions were closely based on the devout and godly Mayflower Compact and its direct descendant, the Massachusetts Bay Colony Constitution.
The thinking embodied in these documents ran deep in New England and the other colonies. When the Great Awakening spread across colonial America in the 1750s and following years, the godly thinking it produced, led directly to our national Constitution and to its Bill of Rights. Only the elevation of each individual to infinite worth could produce such safeguards. The Lord Jesus Christ consistently demonstrated the worth of each person as he took time for the least in society, such as the woman who had been diseased for many years. Jesus demonstrated the Father’s great love for each one, as he healed, delivered, and forgave those whom society looked down on.
Take the Gospel of Jesus Christ out of society and the results are stark and frightening. History show us that without the Gospel, the most civilized city on Earth, Rome, featured such daily occurrences as hundreds of new born infants per day thrown on the city dump. It was also this august city which condemned captured men to become gladiators and to die for the entertainment of thousands.
In India, until the Victorian British forcibly put an end to it, widows were burned to death on their husbands’ funeral pyres. Often the dead man was sixty years old, and his widow might be twenty or twenty five. Polygamy and wife abuse were common in many lands where today they have been stopped because of the influence of the Gospel. The same is true with cannibalism in Central America, Australia, and Africa. It was the work of devout Christians such as William Wilberforce in England, and Harriet Beecher Stow in the United States, which led to an awakened national conscience and the abolition of human slavery in these lands. Two thirds of those who ran the dangerous Underground Railroad here in the USA, transporting escaping slaves to safety, were Bible believing Christians.
Atheist regimes, each of whom promised a utopia, killed more than 135 million innocent people around the World during the twentieth Century. From the killing fields of Pol Pot’s Campucia, where four million innocent Cambodians died, to the concentration camps of Hitler’s Third Reich, where some twenty million died, to the purges of Stalin and his rape of the Ukraine, with its fifteen mission dead, atheist regimes are consistently the worst oppressors of humankind.
This grim tour of history brings us, logically to my last point.
Helping the Downtrodden
This theme has already been woven into the other points I have made today, but I wish to be more specific in this matter. Secular progressives conveniently ignore the following realities. Some of the other matters in this message are historical in thrust, and therefore, a little research might be needed to be fully informed, but the helping of the downtrodden is a “right now” kind of reality that can not be denied by anyone who will look around the disaster relief and people helping scenes.
Jesus told a story about a Samaritan man who was good to his Jewish neighbor. This story has made such an big cultural impact, that today, people who do good for others, expecting nothing in return, are routinely called good Samaritans. Jesus also emphasized the importance of doing merciful good for others, when he outlined the day of Judgment in his tale: The Sheep and the Goats.
-Every city in America, and many throughout the World has rescue missions which are run by Christians. Nearby is the Hope Haven mission in Lewiston. As I traveled through inner city areas in Maryland not long ago, I rode by similar places there where the Gospel of Jesus Christ is given freely along with food, shelter, counseling, and training. The rescue mission of one church in Los Angeles, the West Angeles Church of God has served up 1.8 million meals. The same merciful impulse drives Christian soup kitchens around the world to help the hungry.
-Teen Challenge has turned around the lives of untold thousands. Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship has seen tens of thousands of lived turned around.
-The Salvation Army, started in London by evangelist William Booth during the second great awakening, today helps about 10 Million people per year with the Gospel, clothes, training, food, and disaster relief.
-Who provides homes for unwed mothers, such as Hope House, complete with life training and material goods. Bible Believing Christians do, overwhelmingly so.
-The Red Cross, which has directly saved millions of lives, was started in Switzerland by devout reformation Christians. It’s flag is the flag of Switzerland with the colors reversed; the truncated cross being none other than the cross of Jesus Christ. Founder Henry Dumont said that the Red Cross existed to do God’s will.
-Habitat for Humanity grew out of Bible Believing Christian Mission. Today it makes possible decent housing for many thousands around the World. The hospital, as we know it today, with privacy, sanitation, and research, was a Christian invention flowing from the Lord’s compassion. The devout Florence Nightingale gathered believers, mostly church deaconesses to start the first modern nursing corps.
-Add to these the huge scope of Christian disaster relief. Such missions as Food for the Hungry, Compassion International, Samaritan’s Purse, Operation Blessing, and others are often the first on the scene when tsunamis, hurricanes, mudslides and such strike. These same organizations also supply the lions share of supplies and of getting the area back on its feet.
Conclusion
If Jesus Christ had not been born; none of these organizations would exist, and the kind of thinking that under-girds them would also be missing.
If Jesus Christ had not come, the World today would be a dark and brutal place, much more than it is now. The benefits that have come to all the World, from the Gospel of Jesus Christ could never be fully understood. But they are huge. We could not recognize our World without them. The very atheists who despise the Lord and His followers, have benefited in many ways from the effect that the Gospel has had upon this World.
All of us have thus benefited; long before we were believers. From the bill of rights, to inoculations against deadly disease the benefits of Jesus having come to Earth are many and are mighty!
So today, we honor this one who is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. In addition to working the eternal work of salvation, which only He could accomplish; Jesus has also changed the course of history for time and for eternity. Be sure that you follow him with all of your heart!
