Quotes about Witnesses

But here's the thing: shepherds were despised. They couldn't keep the ceremonial laws while traveling about the hills, they were often regarded as thieves, and because they were considered unreliable, they were not permitted to give evidence in court. Yet this was whom God chose for his witnesses and entrusted with his good news.

In the New Testament Christ calls the Apostles and the disciples witnesses, requires them to witness to Him. Let us see now what is to be understood by this. These are men who by the renunciation of all things, in poverty, in lowliness, and thus ready for every suffering, were to go out into the world which expresses mortal hostility to the Christian way of life. This is what Christ calls witnesses and witnessing.

If any man can show just cause, why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his peace.

The primary witnesses to Christmas are the accounts of Matthew and Luke. They were written as history, though for two different audiences, each with its own culture and conventions for preserving history. Matthew, the early records tell us, wrote originally in Hebrew for a Jewish-Christian audience. Luke wrote for Greek-speaking Gentiles and Jews.

And truly, God does not make known his will to us, that the knowledge of it may perish with   us; but that we may be his witnesses to posterity and that they may deliver the knowledge received through us, from hand to hand, (as we say,) to their descendants.

Shame is the deep sense that you are unacceptable because of something you did, something done to you, or something associated with you. You feel exposed and humiliated. Or, to strengthen the language, You are disgraced because you acted less than human, you were treated as if you were less than human, or you were associated with something less than human, and there are witnesses.

The individual is not a cog in a monstrous machine; it is within his power to modify the very laws which imprison him and the very relationship maintained by the Judge with the accused and witnesses. If it is true, as the Baal Shem says, that it is possible for man to hide the light of dawn emanating from the forest simply by shielding his eyes with his hands, still it is no less true that he can rediscover it by merely moving his hands.

Which leads to another question: When Matthew tells us that some of Jesus's followers doubted, does this undermine the story, or is this the exact kind of honesty that reflects how people actually are? When each of the Gospel writers includes the part about the women being witnesses, why risk it? What a strange thing to include knowing it would discredit their story, unless women actually were the first witnesses.

Describing the relationship between the biblical witnesses and the theologians who come after, the author challenges that the theologian is not to correct the notebooks of the biblical writers like some high school teacher. Instead, our theology is always subject to what THEY say, as we willingly submit our notebooks for their approval.

Humble us, O God, under your mighty hand, and let us rise, not as professionals, but as witnesses and partakers of the sufferings of Christ.