The Question That Matters Most—Was Jesus Christ
The Jewish Messiah?
Imagine you are standing at a crossroads. Before you is the most significant question any person will ever face: "Was Jesus of Nazareth truly the promised Messiah of Israel?" The stakes couldn't be higher. This isn't just a historical trivia point; it is the hinge upon which your eternal destiny swings. The Bible presents a mountain of evidence—prophecies, miracles, and eyewitness accounts—that points to a resounding “Yes." However, we immediately run into a wall. If the evidence is so "overwhelming," why doesn't everyone believe it?
The Van Til Perspective: There’s No Such Thing as Neutrality
Enter Dr. Cornelius Van Til, a well-known Christian defender of the faith. Van Til was a Reformed theologian who believed that fallen human beings are never neutral toward the Bible or toward the evidence presented in its defense. He argued that unbelievers reject Jesus as the Messiah not because there is insufficient evidence, but because they possess a deep-seated prejudice in their hearts against the truth revealed in Scripture. Van Til was convinced that non-Christians are profoundly biased against spiritual truth and that, apart from grace, they consistently reject the faith and deny what Scripture plainly teaches.
If unbelievers ever come to faith in Christ, it is only because the Lord, in His sovereign grace, has chosen to regenerate them and grant them the gift of saving faith. Van Til insisted that people are never “neutral” observers. We like to imagine ourselves as objective judges weighing facts in a courtroom, but he maintained that the hearts of all people are deeply biased.
According to the Apostle Paul, people do not merely “miss” the truth; they actively suppress it (Romans 1:18). It is like holding a beach ball underwater—the truth remains present, but tremendous effort is exerted to keep it out of sight because of a moral conflict with God. Since all people are fallen, they struggle with authority. By nature, they are rebels against God and resist His rightful rule. They also have a problem with morality. For these reasons, they reject the Bible not because it lacks proof, but because they do not want it to be true. At the root of unbelief lie issues of morality and authority.
The Three Pillars Of Evidence That Prove
Jesus Is The Messiah
Van Til didn't say evidence was useless; he said it must be understood and viewed through the right lens. He presented the case for Jesus as Messiah through three main pillars:
The First Pillar: The Sacred Scriptures Of The Old
And New Testaments
Van Til believed the Bible is self-authenticating. It doesn't need a scientist or a historian to "prove" it is God’s Word; its power and consistency prove itself. The authority of the Bible itself and Bible prophecy overwhelmingly prove the Bible to be true: Ancient markers of Bible prophecy like Isaiah 53 (the suffering servant) and Micah 5:2 (the birthplace of the King) aren't just coincidences. Messianic prophecies are a lock, and Jesus is the only key that fits perfectly.
The Second Pillar: The Resurrection Of Jesus
To Van Til, the Resurrection isn't just a "maybe" or a "nice story." It is the climactic proof that Jesus was the Messiah. He argued that the Resurrection proved that Jesus is the "Lord of History." When Jesus rose from the dead, God was shouting to the world that this man was indeed the Son of God (Romans 1:4).
The Third Pillar: The Person Of Jesus Himself
Jesus is not a random character who appeared out of nowhere. He is the finish line of a race that began in Genesis. Every animal sacrifice, every Jewish feast, and every promise made to King David, and every Messianic Prophecy was a "type" or a shadow pointing to the coming of Jesus.
The Turning Point: The Witness of the Spirit
Even with all this evidence, Van Til argued that a person can still remain "spiritually blind." You can show a blind man a beautiful sunset, but he won't see it until his eyes are opened.
This is where the Holy Spirit comes in. True recognition of the Messiahship of Jesus isn't an “intellectual victory” it’s the result of a "heart" transformation. This is regeneration: A person must be born again by the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus spoke to a religious leader in Israel and said, “…you must be born again.” John 3:3. It takes the Holy Spirit to give life to those who are spiritually dead so that they can see with new spiritual eyes and therefore recognize that Jesus is truly the Messiah. When the Spirit regenerates or gives life to a person, the evidence that once seemed "doubtful" suddenly becomes "undeniable."
Why Evidence Alone Cannot Produce Faith
At the heart of Cornelius Van Til’s theology is the rejection of the myth of neutrality. Van Til argued that no one approaches Jesus or the Bible as an objective observer. Every person comes with presuppositions—deeply held beliefs that shape how evidence is interpreted. The unbeliever begins with the assumption that the Bible is not God’s Word and therefore suppresses its truth in order to preserve personal independence from God. The believer, by contrast, begins with the conviction that Scripture is divine and authoritative. As a result, evidence does not fail because it is insufficient, but because the human heart—the judge—is already biased against God, the defendant.
Van Til also insisted that evidence can only be understood within a proper framework. Facts do not speak for themselves; they make sense only within the worldview of Scripture. The Bible is self-authenticating and does not require external permission to be true. Within that biblical framework, the resurrection of Jesus is not a mere historical curiosity but the central event that gives meaning to all of history. Likewise, the messianic prophecies of the Old Testament find their fulfillment in Christ, who stands as the true logic and goal of history itself.
Because of this, unbelief is not primarily an intellectual problem but a moral one. People do not reject Jesus because they lack information or need one more piece of evidence. They reject Him because they are in rebellion against God, resist His authority, and are spiritually blind. The issue lies not in the mind alone but in the heart, which by nature refuses submission to divine truth.
This leads inevitably to the necessity of the Holy Spirit. Since fallen people are spiritually dead and blind, neither logic nor human free will can bring them to saving faith. Only the Spirit of God can open blind eyes and change the heart. True faith is born when the Holy Spirit testifies inwardly to the truth of God’s Word—a miracle Scripture calls the new birth. Jesus taught this in John 3:1–8, and the Apostle Paul illustrated it in the conversion of Lydia, whose heart “the Lord opened” so that she believed (Acts 16:14). She did not open her own heart; God did. In this way, salvation is shown to be entirely the work of sovereign grace.
Summary Of This Chapter
In this chapter, we see that Jesus Christ is, without a doubt, the promised Jewish Messiah. All the evidence points overwhelmingly to this fact. No other person in history could produce the kind of credentials and evidence that Jesus did to prove that He was the Messiah. In light of this, unbelief is inexcusable. If a person dies as a non-Christian, he or she will have to explain how it was that, in the presence of such overwhelming evidence, they chose to reject the facts and the truth that stood before them the entire time. I have called this book “The Great Debate.” In reality, however, it is not much of a debate at all. The evidence is so compelling that, to remain an unbeliever, one must be willing to put his head in the sand and ignore everything that God the Father has revealed and made so plain. The only valid explanation for unbelief is the one we have already stated: men, by their very fallen nature, struggle with moral issues and resist divine authority.
Is Jesus of Nazareth the promised Jewish Messiah? The answer is absolutely yes.
