Why would they die for a lie???

Question

Matthew, Mark, Luke, Paul, Thomas, Bartholemew, Phillip, Peter, Jude, EVERY single one of the 11 apostles except John, Stephen, Mattias, and countless others were cruelly tortured, murdered, and persecuted for their faith in Jesus. Why would the eye-witnesses like Mark, Luke, and all the apostles except John die for a lie? If you believe that Matthew just made up his Gospel, why did he bother dying for it? Same with Luke, Mark, Paul, Peter, etc etc.

John was thrown into a pot of boiling oil but he came out unscathed because of miracle.

What would the point be? They could have easily denied it all if it was a lie!? What was the point of their deaths if it was all a "lie?"

I don't think J.K. Rowling would gladly die for her books on Harry Potter. C.P. wouldn't die for Eragon. J.R.R. Tolkien wouldn't die for Lord of the Rings. Why would the apostles die for their Gospels on Jesus?

Thanks ahead of time, please give honest intelligent answers.

G.B.

Answer 1

History is full of people who died for what they believed in. A lot ofthe time, they are looked at as psychos who didn't know what they were talking about (i.e. David Koresh). Point is that just because someone believes their beliefs are true to the point that they will die doesn't guarantee that they were right. You are right that none of the other authors would die for their works because they know they are fictional. It is stupid to compare those writers to the writers of the Gospels. Now, this only means that John and the others believed their Gospels were 110% true. You have your faith that tells the Gospels are true. I believe pretty much the same thing (everyone's a little different). The fact is that none of us can prove any of it. Philosophers have been trying to prove God's existence for a long time. Recently, religious people have rebuked evolution as anti-Christian. My understanding is that evolution is based on science. Since the beliefs that religion is based on can't be proven right or wrong, you can't use the scientific method to analyze any religion. You either have faith or you don't. The truth will be proven to each of us when we die. If it's the way I believe it will be, I have nothing to worry about. If I did miss something in life and got it completely wrong, well, I lived my life according to my own beliefs, and that's all any of us can do. Can't worry abut the possibility that we may be wrong about the afterlife.

Answer 2

You are basing this on the perspective of your faith. You are using a book that many do not believe to try and support it. The events you document are from the book you are trying to support.

FYI the apostles did not write the gospels, the people who did never met Jesus and were retelling what was told to them.

As to your comparisons it would not be J.R.R. Tolkien but Frodo who would die for it.

Answer 3

You make a fair point. What people are willing to sacrifice their lives for says something about them.

HOWEVER you are overlooking what this really means. The apostles' willingness to die for their cause proves that it was really important to them. It does not prove that it is true.

Take, for example, some less mentally balanced individuals (no, I do not mean to say that the apostles are insane... I just try to use easy examples!). Some few people jump off building and get themselves killed because they think they can fly. They are obviously very deeply convinced that they are right to take such risks - most of us get nervous even standing on top of tall things, much less jumping off of them. Yet none of them could fly. Their belief was wrong.

And I think most non-believers would say the same thing about the apostles. Though there are a few who choose to believe the origin of Christianity was just some kind of scam, it seems more plausible that all these men did honestly believe that what they were doing was right.

In that sense, they are like the men who started many of the other religions that are around today: three of the four men sometimes regarded as Islam's disciples were killed for their beliefs, the founder of Mormonism was killed for his beliefs, Ghandi was killed for his beliefs, and the list goes on and on. These guys can't ALL be right, even though they all died for what they believed!

Answer 4

Er, is this supposed to be an argument in favor of religion? Notice that it's every bit as good an argument for, well, essentially every religion ever, as well as all of the purported reasons for every war ever fought. Does that mean that you believe that those are ALL true? That'd be the height of gullibility.

They'd die for the lie because either they believed it from the start, or they eventually invested so much of themselves in it that they couldn't back out. Both of those are all too common.

John did not survive being thrown into a pot of boiling oil. That's just ridiculous, and repeating lies doesn't turn them into the truth.

Answer 5

38 people committed suicide following Marshall Applewhite in the Heaven's Gate cult. Six male members of the cult willingly underwent castration - which can't have been too pleasant. In the end, they all willingly killed themselves.

Here is a wonderful link to the Wikipedia listing of what happened to the followers of The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments ofo God.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_for_the_Restoration_of_the_Ten_Commandments_of_God

Here's another link in Wikipedia to a list of cults.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Destructive_cults

People who have a weakness, either mentally or emotionally, have long been preyed on by charismatic leaders. Now, I'm not trying to say that Jesus was on the level of Marshall Applewhite, but just because people were willing to die for him doesn't make him the messiah, or the stories of him true.

)O(

Answer 6

This is GOOD evidence. Joesph Smith died because he 1. Broke the law raising a private army that threatened the established Government. Would he have ever come out in open warfare against the United State ... I doubt it. That along with His betrayal of the Masonic order giving the secret keys and signs he had sworn blood oaths to protect to non masons. At this point in time people really took such thing serious. He wasn't killed for his testimony of Christ, his teachings, or of his Book of Mormon. The real Apostles died for their faith not for power, fame, or money... Jim

Answer 7

Remember when GWB sent UN weapons inspectors to Iraq? And after a delayed entry into the country of many weeks, THEN no WMDs were found. Why is it that the rest of the world understands that the WMDs were transported to Syria, yet the brain trusts in Washington DC just don't get it? Why is it that here in Israel it is common knowledge that the WMDs from Iraq went to Syria?

Answer 8

The only record of their deaths comes from the religious sources. How do you know they didn't in fact beg and plead for their lives?

If we were to find, for example, a reliable roman text that described Peter's death as that of a sniveling coward who renounced everything he had said, would that shake your faith?

If so, then your faith is based entirely on the testimony of men, and men are fallible.


Also, posit this scenario -- they steal the body, drag it off to the desert, where after only a few days it would be irrecoverably buried under the dunes. The romans capture the apostles and they cry out that they were lying, that the body is out in the desert... and the romans give them an opportunity to go find the body... but can't. This will seem all the more miraculous to those who WANT to believe! And to the Romans, who see that the apostles can't provide the stolen body, proceed to kill the apostles -- and to those who WANT to believe, this makes them martyrs!

Christianity has itself set up in a win-win scenario, and you should never trust a win-win scenario... it means someone's hiding the losing proposition.

Answer 9

People will die for what they truly believe in. Many communists did so in Vietnam, with no promise of an afterlife.

But it is two different thing to say that a person will die for their beliefs and to say that the beliefs are true. The people thought they were true.

Answer 10

How do you know how they died? Were you there to witness it? If not, how can you say that for sure?

History hasn't always been properly documented, like Paul Revere's ride for instance. If you do believe in the documented history, many people have died for their ideas, even in science. Just because they believe it doesn't make it fact, nor that it is accepted. They may just have thorough belief in their ideas and that alone could be enough for persecution in the days of old. Just a thought.