“Then Jesus told him, “‘Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
~ John 20:29
Hi James and Ellen,
Are you accepting as being true everything that your teachers are teaching? Are you accepting as being true everything that a preacher is preaching? Are you accepting as being true everything that your dad and/or ma are saying? Are you accepting as being true everything that you are reading in a book, perusing in a newspaper and/or seeing in a television documentary? Truth assumes absolute fact, unqualified certainty and total reality. If you are told that a guy, gal or kid who you personally know has died, would you accept the news of what you have been told as being true or would you need to first have to eyeball the corpse before accepting the news as being absolute fact, unqualified certainty and total reality? Thomas needed to first eyeball his mentor – Who was Jesus, before he would accept what his pals were telling him – that his mentor was not dead. At least a week earlier, Thomas’ mentor had been lynched by a rabid crowd of Jews – Jews being God’s specially chosen guys and gals. Thomas had accepted as being true that his mentor had been put through the sheer ignominy and had suffered the utter disgrace from being tied and nailed to two crudely hewn beams that had been tied together in the form of a cross. Thomas had accepted as being true that his mentor had to have suffered horrifically during the hours that he was held by nails – that had been hammered through his hands and feet, to the cross that had been placed upright in the ground. Thomas had accepted as being true that his mentor’s corpse had been taken by a guy to his nearby sepulcher to be entombed and that a large, wheel-like stone had been rolled in front of the sepulcher’s entrance to keep grave robbers from entering into the sepulcher. Your grandpaa believes that Thomas personally witnessed all these events that unfolded rapidly that ultimately resulted in his mentor’s murder and then to his mentor’s entombment. Thomas the week before had gotten together with his mentor and eleven pals to eat a commemorative supper that was celebrated annually to celebrate what went down in Egypt over 1500 years earlier when God’s death angel passed over the homes of His specially chosen guys and gals who had painted lamb’s blood on the door jambs of their houses.
Your grandpaa does not know where Thomas was or what he was doing when he got word that his mentor was alive. Until Thomas had personally and physically put a finger into a nail hole in one of his mentor’s hands, Thomas would not accept as absolute fact, unqualified certainty and total reality that his mentor was alive. In spite of the fact that a gal – Mary Magdalene, who he knew personally, and a couple of his pals – Peter and John, had gone into the open sepulcher where his mentor’s corpse had been put and which had had a large, wheel-like stone covering its entrance only to find the sepulcher empty – with the burial cloth that had been used to cover the head of their friend and mentor neatly folded and the linen strips that had been placed around the body of their friend and mentor close to the neatly folded cloth, Thomas still refused to accept as absolute fact, unqualified certainty and total reality that his mentor was once again alive. Thomas did not accept as absolute fact, unqualified certainty and total reality the verbal accounts of Mary Magdalene, Peter and John that they had personally seen their friend and mentor. Thomas’ pal John wrote in his John Book – in John 20, about Thomas’ doubt that his mentor was really alive. John wrote what happened when Mary Magdalene went early in the morning while it was probably still dark to the sepulcher where her friend’s corpse had been put. When Mary Magdalene arrived at the sepulcher, she found that the large, wheel-like stone was no longer covering the entrance of the sepulcher. When Mary Magdalene saw that the sepulcher’s entrance was no longer sealed, she ran to find Peter and John to have them verify what she had found. John admits that Peter outran him to the sepulcher’s site where their mentor’s corpse had been entombed but he takes credit for being the first guy to go into the sepulcher.
Have you ever pulled a Thomas? To pull a Thomas is to refuse to accept as absolute fact, unqualified certainty and total reality the words that are written in an edited, canonized book – the Bible. The Bible is also known as the Living Word. The words that are found in the Bible are living testimonies of what life as a follower of Thomas’ mentor is like if accepted as absolute fact, unqualified certainty and total reality. John mentions in verse 29 what happened when Thomas finally got to see and feel the nail prints in his mentor’s hands, “Then Jesus told him, “‘Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.””’ Your grandpaa will always have imprinted in his mind the sense of peace that he felt when it suddenly occurred to him that what he had just read in the Bible one summer night in 1961 was something that he had come to believe as absolute fact, unqualified certainty and total reality. Your grandpaa had stayed that summer in Sioux Center, Iowa between the first and second year that he was a student at Dordt College – working for a local manufacturer, when your grandpaa told God that he was absolutely, unqualifiedly and totally sure of his faith in Him – as God the Son, and that your grandpaa wanted Him – as God the Father, to use his life in whatever way. It would be just a couple of months later that your grandpaa would meet a beautiful young gal who was rooming in the same house where your grandpaa’s oldest sis was staying while they were both students at Dordt College. Your grandpaa met this gal when his sis invited her and another gal to go to her home with her during a school activity break. Your grandpaa believes that God’s first response to what your grandpaa had promised Him was to send him your grandmaa to be his wife.
John 20 (626)