WHO IS THIS MAN SC: The Unpredictable Impact of the Inescapable Jesus - Softcover

Ortberg, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0310340497 ISBN 13: 9780310340492

Verlag: HarperChristian Resources, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

The day after Jesus' death, whatever small mark he made on the world seemed destined to disappear. Instead, his impact on human history has been unparalleled, leading believers and nonbelievers alike to ask, Who Is This Man?

In Who Is This Man, bestselling author John Ortberg explores the paradox of Jesus, history's most familiar figure while simultaneously the man no one knows. Who Is This Man traces Jesus' incredible life and legacy from his days on Earth to the present moment, showing us:

• How his vision of life continues to haunt and challenge humanity
• The ways his influence has inspired movements in art, science, government, medicine, and education
• How his lessons about dignity, compassion, forgiveness, and hope continue to influence humanity

Join John Ortberg as he shares how Jesus' influence has swept over history and how his vision of life continues to impact us today.

Praise for Who Is This Man?:

"Sometimes in the clutter and noise of 'religion,' we lose sight of who Jesus is. Once again, John Ortberg helps us do what he does best: he helps us see God as he really is and connect with him amid all the noise. This book is a gift."

--Dr. Henry Cloud, psychologist, coauthor of the bestselling Boundaries books

"We live in a period where the divide between the secular and the sacred has never been greater. Who Is This Man? bridges this gap by sharing in his inimitable and entertaining style the undeniable and profound impact of Jesus Christ on our world. His impact, over two thousand years later, is more profound on the day-to-day lives of people--believers or not--than the impact of any other person at any point in history. John shows how Christ came to teach us how to live and in the process changed the world forever and for good."

--Ron Johnson, CEO, J. C. Penney

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

John Ortberg is the senior pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church (MPPC) in the San Francisco Bay Area. His bestselling books include Soul Keeping, Who Is This Man?, and If You Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat. John teaches around the world at conferences and churches, writes articles for Christianity Today and Leadership Journal, and is on the board of the Dallas Willard Center and Fuller Seminary. He has preached sermons on Abraham Lincoln, The LEGO Movie, and The Gospel According to Les Miserables. John and his wife Nancy enjoy spending time with their three adult children, dog Baxter, and surfing the Pacific. You can follow John on twitter @johnortberg or check out the latest news/blogs on his website at www.johnortberg.com.

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Who Is this Man?

By John Ortberg

ZONDERVAN

Copyright © 2012 John Ortberg
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-310-34049-2

Contents

Foreword by Condoleezza Rice, 7, 
Acknowledgments, 9, 
1. The Man Who Won't Go Away, 11, 
2. The Collapse of Dignity, 21, 
3. A Revolution in Humanity, 33, 
4. What Does a Woman Want?, 46, 
5. An Undistinguished Visiting Scholar, 59, 
6. Jesus Was Not a Great Man, 74, 
7. Help Your Friends, Punish Your Enemies, 87, 
8. There Are Things That Are Not Caesar's, 102, 
9. The Good Life vs. The Good Person, 116, 
10. Why It's a Small World after All, 127, 
11. The Truly Old-Fashioned Marriage, 137, 
12. Without Parallel in the Entire History of Art, 150, 
13. Friday, 164, 
14. Saturday, 175, 
15. Sunday, 186, 
Epilogue: A Staggering Idea, 197, 
Sources, 203, 

CHAPTER 1

The Man Who Won't Go Away

On the day after Jesus' death, it looked as if whatever small mark he left on the world would rapidly disappear. Instead, his impact on human history has been unparalleled.

After his disappearance from earth, the days of his unusual influence began. That influence is what this book is about. Rightly seen, this effect on past and current history will cause any thoughtful person—apart from their religious ideas about Christianity—to ask, "Who was this man?"

You can miss him in historical lists for many reasons, perhaps the most obvious being the way he lived his life. Jesus did not loudly and demonstrably defend his movement in the spirit of a rising political or military leader. He did not lay out a case that history would judge his brand of belief superior in all future books. He did not start by telling his disciples, "Here are proofs of my divinity; affirm them and I'll accept you."

Normally when someone dies, their impact on the world immediately begins to recede. As I write this, our world marks the passing of digital innovator Steve Jobs. Someone wrote that ten years ago our world had Bob Hope, Johnny Cash, and Steve Jobs; now we have no Jobs, no Cash, and no Hope. But Jesus inverted this normal human trajectory, as he did so many others. Jesus' impact was greater a hundred years after his death than during his life; it was greater still after five hundred years; after a thousand years his legacy laid the foundation for much of Europe; after two thousand years he has more followers in more places than ever.

If someone's legacy will outlast their life, it usually becomes apparent when they die. On the day when Alexander the Great or Caesar Augustus or Napoleon or Socrates or Mohammed died, their reputations were immense. When Jesus died, his tiny failed movement appeared clearly at an end. If there were a kind of "Most Likely to Posthumously Succeed" award given on the day of death to history's most influential people, Jesus would have come in dead last.

His life and teaching simply drew people to follow him. He made history by starting in a humble place, in a spirit of love and acceptance, and allowing each person space to respond. He deliberately placed himself on a collision course with Rome, where he would have been crushed like a gnat. And he was crushed.

And yet ...

Jesus' vision of life continues to haunt and challenge humanity. His influence has swept over history like the tail of a comet, bringing his inspiration to influence art, science, government, medicine, and education; he has taught humans about dignity, compassion, forgiveness, and hope.

Since the day he did come—as G. K. Chesterton put it—"It has never been quite enough to say that God is in his heaven and all is right with the world; since the rumor is that God had left his heavens to set it right."

* * *

Jesus is history's most familiar figure. His impact on the world is immense and non-accidental.

Great men have sometimes tried to secure immortality by having cities named after them; the ancient world was littered with cities that Alexander named Alexandria and Caesar named Caesarea. While Jesus was alive, he had no place to live. Yet today I live in the San Francisco Bay area, which has its name because a man named Francis was once a follower of this man Jesus. Our state capital is named Sacramento, because Jesus once had a meal with his followers—the Last Supper—that became known as a Sacrament. You cannot look at a map without being reminded of this man.

Powerful regimes have often tried to establish their importance by dating the calendar around their existence. Roman emperors would date events according to the years of their reign; they marked past history by the founding of Rome itself. The French Revolution tried to enlighten everyone with a calendar that marked the reign of Reason. The USSR dated time from the deposing of the tsar and theoretically giving power to the people. It formed the "League of the Militant Godless" in the twenties to stamp out faith; a 1929 magazine cover showed two workers dumping Jesus out of a wheelbarrow. But the League's leader, Yemelian Yaroslavsky, grew frustrated at the stubbornness of faith. "Christianity is like a nail," he said. "The harder you strike it, the deeper it goes."

The idea of Jesus trying to impose a calendar on anyone was laughable. The beginning of his ministry was carefully noted by Luke according to the Roman calendar: "In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanius tetrarch of Abilene." From complete obscurity, Jesus came to public attention for the blink of an eye—maybe three years, maybe as few as one. Yet today, every time we glance at a calendar or date a check, we are reminded that chronologically at least, this incredibly brief life has become somehow the dividing line of history.

Famous people often seek to preserve their legacy by having others named for them. The Bible mentions various characters named Herod or even Herodias who were intended to remind us of Herod the Great. On the day after Jesus' death, no one in the tiny circle that knew his identity was naming their new baby after him. But today the names of Caesar and Nero are used, if at all, for pizza parlors, dogs, and casinos, while the names in Jesus' book live on and on.

The quickest and most basic mental health assessment checks to see if people are "oriented times three": whether they know who they are, where they are, and what day it is. I was given the name of Jesus' friend John; I live in the Bay area named for Jesus' friend Francis; I was born 1,957 years after Jesus. How could orientation depend so heavily on one life?

No one knows what Jesus looked like. We have no paintings or sculptures. We do not even have any physical descriptions. Yet Jesus and his followers became the most frequent subjects for art in the world. His image settled on in Byzantine art by around AD 400 is the most recognized in history.

He has been portrayed in movies by Frank Russell (1898), H. B. Warner, Jeffrey Hunter, Max von Sydow, Donald Sutherland, John Hurt, Willem Dafoe, Christian Bale, and Jim Caviezel as well as countless others. Songs about him have been sung by too many too count, from the first known song listed by the apostle Paul in the letter to the Philippians to an album ("Under the Mistletoe") released last Christmas by Justin Bieber.

Even in the field of mental health, if patients have grandiose identity disorders, it is Jesus they imagine themselves to be. (Milton...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: HarperChristian Resources
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0310340497
• ISBN 13: 9780310340492
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 224
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland