Christianity - A Journey from Facts to Fiction — Page 94
94 Christianity – A Journey from Facts to Fiction tion that as he had somehow escaped death in the first attempt so as to consummate the sentence passed against him, he must be crucified once again. That man then defends himself by postulat- ing that he most certainly has died once; hence the purpose of law is indeed achieved and now that he had risen from the dead by a special decree of God so the past judgement of condemnation could not be re-executed for the reason that he is enjoying a completely new lease of life in which he had committed no offence against the law. If the court accepts this plea, obviously he would not be punished again for a crime for which he had already paid his dues. If such an incident were to happen in a court of law in a Chris- tian country with a Christian judge and a Christian jury, what verdict would the reader suggest they would or should pass? If the plea of the person under trial is to be rejected and he is con- demned to be hanged again, on what grounds would it be justi- fied? Evidently, any sane judge, Christian or non-Christian, and any jury made up of sane people would not even remotely entertain the plea that having died once the accused had come to life again. Such a verdict has no parochial, religious, racial or ethnic bias. It is universal in nature and no man in command of his sanity can think of a verdict other than this. Hence the universal consensus of human intellect would reject the plea of ‘revival’, and would only pass a verdict of ‘survival’ from death. That is exactly what happened in the case of Jesus Christ as. It was neither a case of revival, nor of resurrection, but simply as common sense would have it, a clear case of survival.