Christian Deconverter Half-inch Challenge: Jesus' Response IN THE PRESENT is Evidence of His Reality -- Past or No Past

I have noticed that many people deconverting from Christianity argue that there is no empirical evidence of a literal, historical Jesus Christ. I have looked at much of the evidence given as proof that there was a historical Jesus, and I have to agree with the deconverters--I find it lacking. I also find it to be utterly and absolutely unnecessary. What Biblical archeology reveals about God and Jesus does not actually prove that a literal, historical Jesus Christ has ever existed. I believe the Devil and the anti-Christian Jews were especially thorough in eradicating every vestige of any sort of evidence of a literal and historical Jesus Christ. Do you think they would leave newspaper clippings and photos of Him laying around? They scrubbed the earth, but it was too late.

I would argue that we do not even know what a "literal and historical" Jesus Christ actually is. What Jesus Christ actually is, I believe, we have to discover through present-day experience of Him, not through records or artifacts of the past, for the only valid evidence of Jesus Christ's being in the past is His action in the present. If the divine Jesus Christ--verily God--does not act among us in the present, then we have no reason to believe that He was ever among us in the past; while if He DOES respond among us in the present, we then have every reason to put our trust and confidence in Him as a real, present, living, and powerful Being. Look up "the proof is in the pudding."

I believe in Jesus Christ because I personally have witnessed literal and historical miraculous acts performed by Him IN THE PRESENT. The first act I noticed was His opening my mind's eye to see a demon who had been influencing me toward the occult and possible demon possession. Well, that vision was subjective and imaginal, so I could discount that as being empirical. The second act was my baptism in the Holy Spirit, which again was an emotional and imaginal event. The third act was when Jesus spoke to me "audibly" within my brain. I put 'audibly' in quotation marks because while I clearly heard His substantive voice in my skull, no one else could. More recently, a throbbing pain in my shoulder vanished when I said to God's intelligence, "You can heal me." These miracles do not yield much that can be presented to deconverts as evidence for a real and present Jesus Christ. After all, they occurred within me, where Jesus is, and they were personal works for ME. Christian converts and would-be deconverts need to experience miraculous personal works by Jesus within and for THEM.

Which brings me to my half-inch challenge:

I have do have one distinctly overt, and for me historical, irrefutable, empirical evidence of Jesus Christ's PRESENT existence--whatever He be. While I was a student at Melodyland School of Theology, Charles Hunter spoke at Melodyland Christian Center's Charismatic Clinic--a gathering of Pentecostal fanatics to celebrate and worship God and His Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, to become better at it. Charles asked everyone in the audience to stretch out and then bring together their arms, to compare their lengths. I stretched my arms out several times, and each time my left arm came up about a half-inch shorter than my right arm. It could have been five-eighths of an inch, more or less, I don't know--it has been 45 years now, but my left arm was definitely shorter.

"It's not the shirts," I thought to myself. Long-sleeve shirts had always bound more tightly around my right wrist, causing me to constantly tug at them. I thought I had just been buying cheaply made shirts, seconds, because I was poor. It never occurred to me that my arm lengths were the reason the cuffs were tighter on one wrist than the other.

Anyway, Charles had us hold out our arms and hold still, and then he asked Jesus to make our limbs all the correct length. All right, it was only about a half an inch or so, but I WATCHED as my left arm grew out that half-inch at just that moment, as Jesus responded to Charles' prayer. Jesus could not have responded if He wasn't what the Bible says He is. Jesus proved to me that He is real and present Spirit-stuff.

When Jesus first intervened and opened my mind's eye in my imagination, I was a bum living in a pickup truck in Hawaii. I wondered why He, God's Son, was monitoring the mind of a bum on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I was just one of a couple of thousand people in that audience at Melodyland Christian Center, and my arm lengths were only off by what? a half-inch or so? YET JESUS MOVED TO DEMONSTRATE TO ME, AND TO EVERYONE ELSE THERE THAT NIGHT, THAT HE IS LORD, PRESENT AND POWERFUL, JUST AS THE BIBLE SAYS HE IS.

It was just a half-inch of flesh, but Jesus' present-day response at Melodyland is my irrefutable proof that He is alive and real--powerful-- and was in some way historical in those New Testament days, whether or not there be any other evidence of it. I do not need any other evidence.

I am asking you, challenging you, if you lack convincing and compelling evidence of Jesus Christ's presence and power within you, that He is conscious of you and is monitoring your thoughts, give Him half an inch. The half-inch I gave Him was my unequal arm lengths. Others gave up their leg lengths. I ask that whatever you give be something physical, not necessarily your body, but something you can see transition in shade or shape. My arms are still the same length, so it wasn't a temporary hypnosis that fooled me. I felt the throbbing stop when I asked God to heal my shoulder; it was real, but it could be argued that I was self-hypnotized, and so self-healed. Fair enough, but I WATCHED my arm/fingertips grow out to match the other hand--just then, at the asking of Jesus. Ask Jesus, and let Him give you a half-inch or WHATEVER IS RIGHT.

I do not know what else might constitute a half-inch, a mismatch that corrected will demonstrate His presence and power. Might you ask a tumor to leave, a hangnail to disappear, a tattoo to dissolve, an infection to heal, a break to mend, a leprosy to cleanse? Ask expecting, for He cares for you. Wait for it gratefully, ready to praise Him for it.