What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life—and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us—what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. These things we write, so that our joy may be made complete.
1 John 1:1–4
Joe Coffey on the significance of eye-witnesses to the New Testament narratives of the life of Christ:
This matter of having contemporaneous witnesses is really important. Consider that John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. Now, suppose I was so enamored with Kennedy that I considered myself his disciple and wanted to start a cult about him in my town. And suppose I know I would have to exaggerate and lie to get it going, but I used the handy excuse that the ends justify the means. I would start preaching, “President Kennedy was a great man, but he was much more than that. When he made his campaign stop here in Hudson, he got out of his car, healed a bunch of blind and sick people and then went to the Redmond Funeral Home and raised a couple people from the dead!” Somebody would say, “Wait a minute! I was there that day and none of that ever happened!” I would ignore the outburst and say, “Hey, the next afternoon Jack took a Happy Meal fed the whole town with it.” And someone else would say, “You nutcase! I was in Hudson the next day and he did nothing of the sort!” That’s probably about the time I would give up on my plan the start a Kennedy Cult.
Since the apostles told their stories about Jesus to people who were alive at the time and place where Jesus lived, the credibility of their testimony goes through the roof. Because if their stories were made up, they could never have gotten away with it.
—Joe Coffey, Smooth Stones: Bringing Down the Giant Questions of Apologetics (Cruciform Press, 2011), 45–46.
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