Revealed Truth

EWTN, Global Catholic Radio, and St. Joseph Communications proudly present Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Sheen. This 50-part series was recorded on phonograph records in the 1960s, and the sound quality is sometimes limited, but the word of God spoken by Archbishop Sheen is timeless. And now, here is Archbishop Fulton Sheen. Please speak to you. Throughout the course of history, there have been many who have appeared upon its stage and declared that they came from God and were messengers of God. At this stage of our inquiry, each and every one of them has a right to be heard. There's no reason why we should pick out Christ at this particular moment, any more than anyone else. But we do, however, have a right to suggest certain tests or standards by which each of these claimants can be judged. We simply cannot allow anyone to appear upon the stage of history and say, here I am, believe me, or this is a book which an angel gave me, I want you to read it. It comes from God. When we start a discussion of revealed religion, we are never to abdicate human reason, nor are we ever to lose sight of the fact that we are in history. Therefore, one of the arguments that we will use is what might be called the argument of prophecy, or prediction, namely, has any one of the claimants ever been preannounced or foretold? Certainly the least that God could do if he sends a messenger to this earth is to say, I preannounce him, I am going to let you know that he is coming. Our friends do that when they come to visit us, appointments are made in business, and certainly God should let us know that his Messiah, or Christ, or his divine Son is coming to this earth. Now it might be argued that there are many other great world religions and we should investigate them, that is true, but it must not be thought that these world religions, such as Buddhism and Confucianism and the like, are not in any way related to Christianity. There are many myths in history, there are many great men like Buddha and Confucius and Socrates and so forth. It could very well be, we are not yet proving it, it could very well be that each and every one of them is something like a bird that prepares a nest before the bird lays eggs. After all, the bird does not know, as you and I know in anticipation, what it is going to do. It is governed solely by instinct. But as the bird prepares a nest for its eggs, it has prepared in some way for the coming of a perfect revelation. After all, divine truth might be looked upon as a circle. There is not a religion in the world, I care not what it is, even though it is one that is starting this afternoon in Los Angeles or New York or Paris, that does not have some segment of the circle of truth. It may be only two percent, but at any rate, it is part of the circle. Now some would have more degrees than others of this complete circle of truth, some might have twenty degrees, fifty degrees, a hundred and fifty degrees, and so forth. So that we recognize what is good in every single religion, and then too, as we will suggest later on, some of them are yearning for a Redeemer. Now it may be argued that there are likenesses in all religions, therefore they are all very much the same. It is true, first of all, that there are natural truths that are the same. This is bound to be, simply because every human being in the world has reason. So he is bound to arrive also at certain conclusions in the ethical order which will guide both himself and society. We are therefore not to be surprised that many of the ethical principles are the same, but to argue that all religions have similarities, and therefore have the same cause, namely the dreams of mankind, is quite untrue. When you go into a picture gallery, you will notice that every one of the paintings has certain basic colors, simply because they have the same colors, you do not conclude therefore they were painted by the same artist. Simply because there are similarities in religions, we are not therefore to argue that therefore man made them all. Then too there are truths that are above human reason, namely revealed truths, and this is the subject of this particular discussion, namely, God chose to make an historical revelation. We are arguing that the one who came, Christ, as the founder of Christianity, was pre-announced, we have to prove that. There are other differences too, which we might mention before we come to the argument of prophecy, namely, that the founder of no other religion is absolutely essential for that religion, in the same way that Christ is essential for Christianity. True, the founder was necessary for the founding, but the believer in a particular religion does not enter into the same kind of an encounter as a Christian enters into an encounter with Christ. It is the personal relationship to him which is decisive. So Christ therefore occupies a different place in Christianity than Buddha does in Buddhism, than Confucius in Confucianism, Mohammed in Islamism, and even Moses in Judaism. Judaism does not demand that you believe in Buddha, but that you become an enlightened one, that is, that you follow his teachings concerning the suppression of desires. Confucianism does not demand an intimate relation with Confucius. What is important are the ethical precepts, and anyone who follows those precepts is presumed to enter into peace with his ancestors. Moses did not demand that men believe in him, but that they put their trust in the Lord God. He was not pointing to himself. Islamism demands faith in God and the other four tenets, but not necessarily in Mohammed. But when you come to Christ, here Christianity demands a personal, intimate bond. We have to be one with him, and one with him in a way in which we cannot in any way claim to be Christians unless we reflect the person, the mind, the will, the heart, and the humanity of Christ. The argument from prophecy is really very simple. Just ask yourself if any founder of a world religion or any innovator of a modern religion was ever preannounced. His own mother could not have preannounced five years before his birth, his exact birth. No one knew that Buddha was coming, nor Confucius, nor Mohammed, but all through the centuries there was some dim expectation that Christ himself was coming. It is in this that the argument of prophecy consists. Now this prophecy argument involves two points. It involves history, and secondly, it involves a person. Christianity is an historical religion. Notice that in the creed, whenever we speak of our blessed Lord, we always say he suffered under Pontius Pilate. In other words, he's fixed at a very definite point in world history. No other founder of a world religion was ever so bound up with history as he was. But we're not just concerned with the fact that he was born and suffered under Pontius Pilate, but rather with the whole background of history. In the Old Testament, which we are not considering here as inspired, but only a record of documents, in the Old Testament we find that God seems to be making a covenant, a treaty, a pact, or a testament with humanity, with a small group within humanity. We find this in the very beginning, that God enters into a treaty or a pact with Adam that involves all humanity. Adam was the head. Whatever he did, we did. And later on, God enters into a testament and a covenant with Noah. In these testaments and covenants, there are always promises and agreements on both sides. If one party remained moral, that was the human side, God on the divine side would give them blessings. Now from the moment of the very first covenant, and its breaking, God said that there would come the seed of a woman who would undo the work of evil. Now this tradition is caught up not only among the Jews, but particularly among the prophets. After the treaty with Noah, God enters into a new treaty with Abraham, whom he calls from the land of Ur. And he promises Abraham, I am going to make you the founder of a people, that will be the people of God. Through this people will come the Savior and the Redeemer and the conqueror of evil, who is promised after the fall of Adam. Abraham is also told that the people of God that would come from him, first Israel, would be as numerous as the sands of the sea. Later on these people are led into bondage in Egypt. A new treaty, pact, covenant, is made with Moses. They break it, it is renewed again, and then finally there begin to come now prophets. And these prophets say that into this people of God there will one day come a Savior and a Redeemer. Here now we are speaking not just about a people that continue a tradition, who have an expectation of a Savior, but we are speaking now of many details that were given concerning that particular person. We will not go into all of the prophecies that are mentioned, they are too many. You can readily get hold of a book which will tell you about the many prophecies that were made concerning our blessed Lord. For example, that he would be a member of the tribe of Judah, that he would be born of a virgin. And I think one of the very astounding prophecies of Michael was that he would be born in the city of Bethlehem. If you were predicting the birth of someone who would be a kind of a great world politician, you would certainly choose a big city. But lo and behold, the prophet Michael, under divine inspiration, chooses the tiny little village of Bethlehem, which is called the least of the cities. And he says that out of that city will come forth the one that is to be the ruler of Israel. And centuries, many centuries before his coming, it was foretold that he would be meek and humble of heart, that he would be the suffering servant, that he would be God as well as man, and above all, the selfless. Then pick up the Old Testament, turn to chapter 53, and read there the prophecy of Isaiah's concerning the death and the sufferings of Christ, that he would be reputed with the wicked, for example, in his death, which indeed he was, because he was crucified between two thieves. That he would be laid in a stranger's grave, which indeed he was. It almost seems as if the prophecy of Isaiah's were written at the foot of the cross. Then take the many prophecies concerning him as coming from the royal line of David. That meant that for about a thousand years there had to be a male descendant in every single descendant from David in order to have a fulfillment of her prophecy. Now, that's very difficult. Take, for example, a great character like Abraham Lincoln. He had four children. But even in the short span of history since his death, there is not a single male descendant of Abraham Lincoln alive today. No one else ever made a prophecy about the founders of world religions. It's only about Christ. The Jewish scholar who became a Christian and who knew very well the Old Testament and all of the traditions of the Jews, said that at the time of Christ the rabbis had gathered together 456 prophecies concerning the Messiah, the Christ, the conqueror of evil, who was to be born of that long line of Israel and who was to enter into a new covenant with mankind. 456 prophecies. Suppose the chances of any one prophecy, like the place that he would be born, was one in a hundred. That is to say, it had that chance of being fulfilled. Even if two prophecies were fulfilled, the chances would be one in a thousand. If three prophecies were to coincide in Christ, that would be one in ten thousand. If four, one in a hundred thousand. If five, one in a million. Now if all of these prophecies were fulfilled in Christ, what would be the chance of them all concurring at the appointed moment, not only in place, but also in time, as was foretold by the Prophet Daniel? If you take a pencil and write on a sheet of paper, one, and draw a line beneath it, then under the line write eighty-four, and after eighty-four, if you have time, write one hundred and twenty-six zeros. Now that is the chance of all of the prophecies of Christ being fulfilled. You see, it runs into millions and millions, trillions and trillions, and then it was not only a question of the Jews foretelling that Christ was to come, there were many other prophecies, too, that were not among the Jews, but certainly the Jews, simply because they were in servitude among the other peoples of the world, had passed on their traditions. For example, Confucius said that he was expecting some great wise man from the East. Buddha said he was not the wise man, someone else was to come. The way Plato said that a just man was to come would tell us how we are to conduct ourselves before God and men. The great dramatist had always felt that there was some God to come, as Aeschylus put it in his work Prometheus, look not for any end moreover to this curse, until some God appears. To accept upon his head the pangs of our own sins. In other words, he would bear our sins. And to Socrates expected someone else, someone whom he called a just man. Virgil, remember the fourth echologue of Virgil? It has been sometimes called the Messianic echologue, because he asked a virgin, smile on thy infant boy, with whom the iron age will pass away, and the golden age on all the earth be born. And when Christ appeared, he said, I am the one whom the prophets foretold. In other words, I am not just coming here on the stage of history, you have heard of me before. That is one of the reasons why, for example, Herod was not surprised that the Messiah was born. The rabbis told him, they knew the prophecies, he knew he was to be a king, the new king of mankind, therefore he wanted to kill him. And then when our blessed Lord had reached the age of about thirty, one day he walked into his synagogue of Nazareth, and the clerk of the synagogue handed him as the village carpenter a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. And he began to read off a passage of Isaiah about what the Savior, the Messiah, the Christ would be like, namely his meekness, his gentleness, how he would bind up wounds, how he would forgive, how he would release captives. The audience listened with rapt attention, then he said, this day is sacred scripture fulfilled in your ears. In other words, I am the Messiah, I am the Christ, I am the Savior of the world. No one else can claim this background. Just alone we study, the others we say, step aside. From now on, my heart and my soul will be absorbed in him who has preannounced. God love you. This has been Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Sheen. For more information about this series, contact St. Joseph Communications at 1-800-526-2151. Outside the U.S., call 818-331-3549. And please join us again next time for Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Sheen on EWTN Global Catholic Radio.