100 Reasons to Believe New Testament History
54. The Paralysis of Christianity’s Enemies
Not only must we account for the early church’s enthusiasm and rapid expansion, we must also account for its enemies’ apparent paralysis. Secular historians agree that the Roman authorities executed Jesus, and Josephus adds that this was done at the insistence of the Jewish religious leaders. With these two great authorities opposing the new faith built on the historic reality of Jesus’ resurrection, one would expect to see early challenges to the faith on historic grounds. This is not the case A. Christians interpret this silence to mean there was no compelling evidence to advance. This interpretation is supported by the fact that in their attempt to squash the early church, its enemies had to resort to threats of imprisonment, torture and execution. These methods, we have noted, were absolutely unsuccessful.
54. The Paralysis of Christianity’s Enemies - Notes and References
A. “We have to account not merely for the enthusiasm of its friends, but for the paralysis of its enemies and for the ever –growing stream of new converts which came over to it. When we remember what certain highly placed personages in Jerusalem would almost certainly have given to have strangled this movement at its birth but could not – how one desperate expedient after another was adopted to silence the apostles, until that veritable bow Ulysses, the great persecution, was tried and broke in pieces in their hands – we begin to realise that behind all these subterfuges and makeshifts there must have stood a silent, unanswerable fact, a fact which geography and the very fates themselves had made immovable. We realise also why it was that throughout the four years when Christianity was growing to really formidable dimensions in Jerusalem, neither Ciaphas, nor Annas, nor any recognised member of the Saduccian camarilla, whose prestige and personal repute was so deeply affronted and outraged by the new doctrine, ever took the obvious short cut out of their difficulties. If the body of Jesus still lay in the tomb where Joseph had deposited it, why did they not say so?” Frank Morrison, “Who Moved the Stone?”, Faber and Faber, 1958, pp. 114-115