[quote]pat wrote:
Well, up until the apostles, these weren’t ‘Christian characters’ they were Jewish. And yes, some people through out history have been chosen for divine revelation while the rest of us have not. I don’t know why he chose whom he chose. They all had things in common, though, humility, faithfulness and lowliness.[/quote]
Not really…IMHO.
Paul was quite a proud man, and he writes himself in his letters that he struggles with the sin of Pride.
As far as Faith, its hard exactly to ascertain just how faithful they were before they had a supernatural encounter. After that, yes they were very faithful up til death - which is obviously really commendable but you could obviously say that the encounter was a big part of their faith.
Lets face it, an individual had a supernatural encounter with God and knew (not had faith, but knew for sure) that heaven exists, they’d be a lot more inclined to suffer what they would perceive as a temporal inconvenience or death for eternal glory.
I would have to disagree with you in the strongest terms.
Every single time where God does something supernatural in the Bible, the Bible itself records an outporing of conversions.
Elijah and the Priests of Baal: After the fire of Heaven came down, the crowd were so whipped up in religious fervor they were willing to rebel against Ahab and execute the priests of Baal on the spot.
Jesus heals the official’s son (Gospel of John): The man and his entire household believes.
Peter heals the lame beggar (in Acts): All the onlookers believe after an impromptu street sermon.
Not to mention all those times in the Old Testament God gives Israel an impropable victory and they follow the familiar route of repentance.
So yes, a great many will believe upon seeing miraculous signs. Obviously not everyone, but surely a majority.
[quote]
Jesus raised a guy from the dead who was dead for 4 days and there were witnesses to that who still didn’t believe. [/quote]
Again I beg to differ.
John 12 specifically says many Jews were turning to Jesus after they met Lazarus. Lazarus’ sister Martha who probably witnessed the event live became one of his most devoted followers.
In all honesty, a Jewish friend once told me (and I agree), assuming everything written in the Gospels are true, Jesus would have converted all of Israel in under 10 years, probably closer to 5 if he’d continued crisscrossing the country doing miracles. While that may seem like a “long time” there were no newspapers, telephone or Internet in those days, so that was actually quite a heroic effort for a lone man and a ragtag band of followers. The fact that God planned for him to die after just a couple of years of ministry is quite puzzling when put in context of how God views the Jews as his “chosen”.
Quite an astute opinion IMHO.