When people experience Jesus, by an honest response it can lead to confessions which are effectively the substance of the gospel. This happened around the Nativity, played out by Christian school children at Christmas, but in reality, two thousand years ago coming from a collecting together of many religious supernatural experiences concerning the baby Jesus. The epistles of the apostle Paul emanate from his supernatural experience of Jesus on the Damascus road. The others who wrote New Testament scriptures did so because they encountered Jesus risen from the dead and realised it was the one they had all called ‘the Lord’ before the terrible crucifixion took Jesus from them. Whether to call it supernatural is questionable because it was no ghost that they saw, but the flesh risen walking and talking Jesus who still did miracles in front of them. I have met people who claim encounters with Jesus in these times in which we live today. Even I encountered the Lord in a miraculous moment out in a street near my home. The way the voice told me to put down my umbrella in a serious flood torrential rain storm and immediately as I lowered the umbrella the rain stopped dead so not a drop, it seemed, touched me, that made me say to myself in certainty ‘it is the Lord’. The further encounter to help me be even more certain, that night, over night, left me certain this was indeed the same Jesus found in the gospels and that this Jesus is so very much the master, even of my deepest being. We can know these things by testimony of others and even by, some of us, experiencing Jesus for ourselves. The truths we can express from these encounters supplies the content of the gospel message. It all contributes to the gathering of a body of many believers around this risen Lord: the Lord who we can all confess is the Jesus of the gospels risen from the dead. Want to not die in your sins? This is the way.
