Wednesday 31 January 2024

It also seemed good to me, after having done exact research on all these things from their origin, to explain them to you in writing in a consistent manner... Luke 1.3

Ben-Hur

During a trip, English General Lewis Wallace met Colonel Ingersoll, a notorious atheist. They talked about the ridicule of Christianity and any form of religious belief. Ingersoll proposed : “I believe you are capable of carrying out a work which sounds the death knell and delivers a final blow to all this religious obscurantism which holds our fellow men in its net." Wallace accepted the proposal, but not wanting to write anything, he undertook to do serious research into the sources of these beliefs. He set to work, reading, studying, in particular confronting the texts of the Bible. Confident in his insight and his analytical spirit, he had no doubt that he would find many errors, contradictions and fabrications which would reduce Christianity to nothing...

But as he progressed in his research, the arguments supporting his ideas diminished, and the more he saw on the contrary which pleaded in favor of the authenticity of the texts, the reality of God, and the validity of a true and active faith. He eventually acquired the conviction that Jesus was truly the Son of God who had come to reconcile him with this God he had denied for so long. And the planned book ? He wrote it in 1880... It was the famous novel Ben-Hur !

Jean-Louis Gaillard

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Proposed reading : Gospel according to Luke, chapter 1, verses 1 to 4.

Source (Living Today)