Proof by Contradiction

Pro. Devdas P., speaker for one of the Palm weeks in my childhood (8-10th class), spoke these or similar lines:

“Before Christ came, people had forgotten/doubted about the prophecy of His coming, but still He came and fulfilled the prophecy. Once more, people have forgotten about His second coming, yet He will return and surprise them just as He did two thousand years ago.”

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I was a God-fearing child, raised by a Sunday school mother and layman church speaker. "Salvation Experience" as such did not occur to me as it used to occur to people who have awesome testimony.

People's powerful testimony was always inspiring, as they shared how they were sinners and how wonderfully and miraculously God has touched and turned their lives. Bigger the sinner, the better his salvation story. 

At one time, probably when I was 9-10 years old, my mother asked me to take baptism, and my response was, I have not sinned yet, so how can I take baptism?" In my tender mind, I awaited the spark, touch, or voice that would transform me, as I have heard in various testimonies.

All my life, I never had a Christian's best friend; for me, either the Christian friend was very pious, which made me feel inferior, or they were too bad company, smoking and others. It was a non-Christian friend with whom I could more easily correlate. 

It was by the grace of God that I have Christian 'believer' parents, but I could not see how my non-Christian friends were any less than me. They are equally good human beings raised by good parents. Religion is like a vessel; similar to how the vessel is made from mud, all religions more or less have the same values and set of rules to keep mankind on the right path. Every religion has its origin story, has its miracles, and has its judgment day or post-death reincarnation theory. Every religion only tried to find an answer to the existence or purpose of the human race. Every religion, or at least those that survived the test of time, shares overlapping commandments from their god, which are to guide the individual to live an appropriate life, which in turn makes a good family, society, city, country, and world. And if you deviate from the established laws, you will experience the consequences of your actions, whether it's in this life, on the day of judgment, or in the next life by taking birth as a different species. 

Personal prayer and reading the Bible was always part of my day-to-day life, even though I may not have understood things, but I still did it obediently. And what I love about the Bible is that God did not discourage asking questions even if they were weird or insensible. In one Palm Sunday week, a visiting preacher said,

“Before Christ came, people had forgotten/doubted about the prophecy of His coming, but still He came and fulfilled the prophecy. Once more, people have forgotten about His second coming, yet He will return and surprise them just as He did two thousand years ago.”

I did not remember what the sermon was or in what context it was said. However, the sentence was the last jigsaw puzzle of my foundational faith. In one sentence, God answered me why Christianity is irrefutable. Other religions are surely man's quest to know about God. But it was in Christianity, which is based on very illogical and non-humanly facts, "virgin womb and empty tomb". I mean, did not other religions have gods and goddesses who were born of natural birth or died naturally? Their stories, miracles, and good teaching are enough to make their followers worship them. Why do early Christians even need to tell about not one but two illogical/unnatural facts? Would not such information have stopped people from believing in their god after two or three generations? Jesus' life and his teaching itself would be simply good enough to make him one of many gods on earth. He, anyway, has the significant following at His time and like other good men, his religion could have increased. 

But they indeed document the two illogical/unnatural facts, without caring about what the future or more modern generation will think of it, or ceasing the religion from spreading. However, gospel writers recorded these facts because they have documented evidence from previous generations. To us, it looks illogical—the facts of virgin birth and an empty tomb—because, like other gentiles, we consider Jesus' story begins from the New Testament in Bethlehem. But for the writers of the Gospels, they were just ascertaining what was already written or said as a legend from ages in Israel. They actually lived the prophecy and have a firsthand account of it getting fulfilled. 

Now we are in an era where the "second coming" seems to be a mythological or fictional event. I mean, if angels came and blew the trumpet as the advent of the rapture, there are more likely chances the media will cover it as an attack by an alien from a different galaxy than consider it as the 'Second Coming' of our Lord. But like His first coming is cemented in (His)tory, the second coming is inevitable.

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Epilogue

Years later, I got to know in one mathematics lecture about the principle of ‘proof by contradiction.’ It states that demonstrating the falsity of a statement's negation proves the original statement's truth. If you cannot directly prove a theorem, you might instead seek evidence that its opposite is true, which, if found, would be a proof of the original theorem by disproving its negation.

For me, that statement by Pro. Devdas P. works as a 'falsifying of the negation,' as in the first coming is similar to his second coming; both have illogical and non-human facts. But as in the first coming, those laws of nature got refuted; in the same way, when it was least expected, again the nature of law will get refuted, and our Lord will arrive in His full glory.