Why Is The Murder Of Jesus Called Good Friday?Sample

Did Jesus plot His own death?

  During the 1960’s, Hugh J. Schonfield created quite a stir when he published a book entitled The Passover Plot.  The central premise of "The Passover Plot" was that Jesus had meticulously planned and engineered his own death and resurrection.

According to Schonfield, the central mystery of Jesus' death and resurrection was carefully planned to fulfill biblical prophecies. His crucifixion was targeted for the day before the Jewish Passover in the knowledge that the bodies would be taken down before the Sabbath. A drug administered to Jesus, perhaps in the sponge mentioned in John 19:29, slowed his heartbeat and put him in a state of suspended animation. Friends and disciples had arranged to recover his body and start reanimation efforts as soon as possible. - The plan failed when a Roman soldier ran a spear into his side John 19:34. 

Jesus actually predicted his death three times (Matthew 16:21; 17:22-23; 20:17-19). Jesus knew exactly what he was walking into when he walked into Jerusalem for Passover the year he was crucified. 

BUT this is not a plot but a prophecy. Telling what is going to happen in the future is prophecy. Having it come true perfectly in every detail is the fulfillment of prophecy.

 Josh McDowell quotes Peter Stoner’s book Science Speaks to determine the chances of one man fulfilling just eight prophecies.  Stoner concluded that the odds would be 1 in 1017.  He likens these odds to the possibility of one man given one chance to find a marked silver dollar in a field of silver dollars two feet deep and the size of Texas (695,662 km)

The simple truth of the matter is that a mere man could not have accomplished all that Jesus did despite what Schonfield claims.  C.S. Lewis convincingly defends the deity of Jesus Christ in his book Mere Christianity.  He wrote:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’  That is the one thing we must not say.  A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.  He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell.  You must make your choice.  Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.

You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God.  But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher.  He has not left that open to us.  He did not intend to.”

So what does Jesus fulfilling the many specific prophecies concerning Him prove? Not that He plotted His own death, but being God voluntarily gave His life for us because only God has the power to lay down His life and to take it up again.

Quote: 

“All of heaven is interested in the cross of Christ, hell afraid of it, while men are the only ones to ignore its meaning.” ― Oswald Chambers 

Prayer: 

Lord I thank you that fulfilled all the prophecies concerning You. The possibility of a mere human being doing so is impossible. Thank You as God you died for me so that Your death would be the perfect payment for my sin. Amen