What in all that are you claiming is so unique as to make Jesus meaningfully different from every other literary character in history?

Alice stated how Jesus Christ came into his heart and changed his life, turning his entire world upside down and allowing him to see clearly for the first time.

“When you get out there you realize that you’ve had every car, you’ve had every house and all that, you realize that that’s not the answer, that there’s a big big nothing out there at the end of that,” he added. “Materialism doesn’t mean anything. A lot of people say that there’s a big God-shaped hole in your heart and when that’s filled, then you really are satisfied.”

A significant part of Cooper’s testimony was his fight for sobriety after his wife, Cheryl, threatened to leave if he did not quit drugs and alcohol.

“After about two weeks, Cheryl had gone to Chicago and said ‘I can’t watch this.’ But the cocaine was speaking a lot louder than her,” Cooper told Greg Laurie in a recent interview. “I looked in the mirror and it looked like my makeup, but it was blood coming down, I think, I might have been hallucinating.

“I flushed the rock down the toilet and went to bed for three days, and I woke up, and I called her and I said, ‘It’s done,’” he recalled. “She goes, ‘Right, you have to prove it.’ That was the beginning of our relationship coming back.

“One of the deals was we start going to church,” he continued. “I was a poster boy for everything wrong and then when I got sober and came back to the church, I realized that’s where I belonged.”

Cooper said that both the doctrine of God’s justice and Jesus’ sacrifice helped him come to Christ.

“I came to Christ because of my fear of God,” he confessed. “I totally understood that hell was not getting high with Jim Morrison, hell was going to be the worst place ever. In fear I came back to the Lord, but I went to another church and that pastor preached the love of Christ, which, now you put the two together, and it was exactly right.”

Cooper noted that his lifestyle immediately changed after his salvation.

“I knew that there had to either come a point where I either accepted Christ and started living that life or if I died in this, I was in a lot of trouble and that’s what really motivated me,” he said. “I don’t think we accept Christ. I think we accept the fact that He accepted us.”

“You can’t put that into words,” he added. “It’s because God opens your eyes and it’s supernatural. When the Lord opens your eyes and you suddenly realize who you are and who He is, it’s a whole different world.”

Even after Cooper’s salvation, baptism, and getting plugged into his church, he felt like he had to give up on his career as Alice Cooper, the rock star.

“I went to my pastor and I said ‘I think I got to quit being Alice Cooper now,’ and he goes, ‘Really? Do you think God makes mistakes? Look where he put you, he put you in the exact camp of the philistines and you were basically the leader. Now what if you’re Alice Cooper but what if you’re now following Christ, and you’re a rock star but you don’t live the rock star life? Your lifestyle is now your testimony.’”

In a 2006 interview, Cooper explained why he continued to pursue his career in rock ‘n’ roll as a Christian.

“Christianity is basically a one-on-one relationship with Jesus,” he said. “If you’re a disciple of Jesus… [it] doesn’t say anywhere in there that I can’t be a performer. It doesn’t say anything in there that I can’t be an artist.

“I don’t do Christian rock, but I’m a Christian that does rock,” he added.

God has a never-ending love for all, and He will continue chasing after the lost, hoping they turn to Him. However, the ultimate decision of whether we accept Christ or deny Him is up to us.

Romans 5:8 “But God has made clear his love to us, in that, when we were still sinners, Christ gave his life for us.”

This content originally appeared on GodTube.com; used with permission.

Now, a few more words spoken by Christ (allegedly.) Who else spoke like He did? This is another sample. More to come, if you’ll let me.

4 “You know the way to the place where I am going.”

Jesus the Way to the Father
5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”

6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really know me, you will know[b] my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”

8 Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”

9 Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. 11 Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves. 12 Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. 13 And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.

5 “If you love me, keep my commands. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— 17 the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be[c] in you. 18 I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. 21 Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”

22 Then Judas (not Judas Iscariot) said, “But, Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?”

23 Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. 24 Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.

25 “All this I have spoken while still with you. 26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

28 “You heard me say, ‘I am going away and I am coming back to you.’ If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. 29 I have told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe. 30 I will not say much more to you, for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold over me, 31 but he comes so that the world may learn that I love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me.

“Come now; let us leave.”

What in all that are you claiming is so unique as to make Jesus meaningfully different from every other literary character in history?

A beginng

I did give you examples. Specify what you mean by “spoke like Jesus” and there are countless examples. If you mean “said similar things,” countless examples. If you mean, “spoke poetically,” countless examples. I cover many in my book On the Historicity of Jesus.

If you do not want to accept this, I cannot help you.

Your qualifications are exemplary which convinces me, despite that, you really cannot cite one other human being who spoke like that guy. Why? Because no one ever did. Significance? You know why: “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” Also, I asked you for the motivation of someone who would make up the words attributed to Christ. The point is, no one, even with the greatest motivation, could create the content attrubuted to what Christ spoke, and no one ever has. Not one human being, not that you of, ever has.

I don’t “simply dismiss these things.” I have spent thirty years studying them, through four college degrees, all the way to a PhD, and I have multiple peer reviewed publications in the subject, and have debated it with dozens of major Christian apologists over decades.

You are the one who is demonstrating you have not done this. You do not know what mainstream scholarship has discovered. And I am telling you how to catch up and get up to speed. You are way too behind the curve here.

The men and women who brought the message of His resurrection to the world initially, and often gave up everthing to do so, didn’t sacrifice their lives for lies that they made up. You cannot simply ignore the work of the scholar Bruce Metzger who said the disciple’s belief that Christ rose from the dead is a valid fact of historical significance. You can write them off, but they aren’t going anywhere.

Look at the work of the Oxford don who taught mathematics John Lennox, and the way he crushed Dawkins in a debate.

You presume that if I studied those ideas/books, I’d have to come to your conclusions, yet there are many scholars who understand their theories and facts they advance who believe Jesus was God. I am familiar with many of them.

I always believed that the real scholars in the world, the true inrellectual giants with a hunger for understanding, welcomed debate, welcomed challenges, genuinely. Their passion for increasing understanding propelled them where their research led them, as Antony Flew said.

What you have not done Richard, is to put into your own words a concise refutation for the specific questions I raised. That is all I asked when I first sought your opinions.

I may be wrong, but I think if I was curious and a scholar, I would seek Him experientially, if for no other reason to prove He isn’t. (In fact, that is what I did, having no doubt that He was pure myth, complete and utter nonsense, a ridiculous, silly faiy tale.)

Assuming what you mean to ask here is “Where is the evidence Jesus wasn’t a God?”

Start with something basic like my book Why I Am Not a Christian. It’s just ninety pages.

If you need more, I next suggest:

Richard Schoenig, Where Christianity Errs: A Fair and Clear Philosophical Assessment (2024)

I next suggest you complete the Loftus series for the best general survey:

The Christian Delusion (2010)
The End of Christianity (2011)
Christianity Is Not Great (2014)
Christianity in the Light of Science (2016)
God and Horrendous Suffering (2024)

It is impossible to rationally continue believing in Jesus after completing that entire series. And they all have kindle versions if you prefer that format.

Any single route of analysis has even more studies that complete the depth of what can be known. For example, on resurrection apologetics, nothing is more comprehensive than Jonathan MS Pearce, The Resurrection: A Critical Examination of the Easter Story (2021); on the development of the New Testament, meanwhile, see what I already recommended above (from Ehrman and others). And so on.

Every subject has at least one article of my own coverage on my blog. So you can even choose your adventure here: pick a specific sub-topic, and do a keyword search with my blog’s search engine (upper right), and locate and read the highest listed article whose title sounds the most-on point to what you are looking for. My articles tend to further cite sources and other scholarship if you want to continue your dive.

There are countless testimonies like the 2 listed above. What they represent is the certainty that His claims are worth examining very, very carefully. No other figure has had more of an impact on the world than this guy.