Portrait of Christ

There is a part of the opening routine David and I do during a performance where a silk scarf with a drawing of Jesus on it is produced and displayed for our audience. The drawing of Jesus on the silk scarf shows him with very fair skin and blue eyes - two physical traits that we serious doubt Jesus had, being of Jewish descent in the Middle East. David will usually say something to the effect of "This is just a drawing of Jesus. We don't know what He really looked like. It is simply to remind us of Jesus."

There have been many artists throughout the centuries who have tried to guess what Jesus might have looked like through images seen in painting, sculptures, etc. And I am sure that each of us in our own ways have tried to imagine what Jesus might have looked like while He was here on earth. I think we'll all be in for a great surprise when we finally see Him face to face. I don't think He's going to look anything like what we could possibly imagine.

I've been going through a book during my morning devotions called 100 Portraits of Christ by Henry Gariepy. In this book, the author has taken 100 of the many names and titles by which Jesus is referred to in the Bible and written a brief description about each. Some of these names and titles include: Alpha and Omega, Ancient of Days, Only Begotten Son, I Am, and Indescribable Gift. Reading through these has begun to create in my mind an awesome portrait of Jesus. It isn't a physical portrait...rather, it is much more than that. As we begin to see Jesus Christ as He is described in the Bible, we get a clearer and deeper image of who God is. We begin to see how Jesus can be nothing less than God Himself.

A couple of weeks ago, just before we moved to Missouri, I had the opportunity to speak with a couple of young Mormon (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) missionaries. They were coming up to our front door just as I was seeing David off on another commute to Kansas City. I had been hoping for quite some time that Mormon missionaries would stop by our house. I've done much studying about Mormonism since having lived in Utah, and I wanted to have a chance to share God's truth with a couple of them.

I invited them in, and we did have quite a nice discussion. I think I might have caught them off guard by how much I knew about their doctrines and was able to discuss it without being argumentative or combative. We talked for about an hour and a half. The conversation ended when they asked me to pray over the Book of Mormon. I politely refused, but I encouraged them to dig deep into the Bible to see what it had to say to them.

One of the things that I noted during our discussion was their inability to see the portrait of who Jesus Christ truly is. Because of the deceptive writings of Joseph Smith and subsequent Mormon prophets, their ability to see and recognize the true Jesus Christ is severly hampered. They do not know Jesus as the Mighty God (Isaiah 9:6) or as the great I Am (John 8:58) or as the Word (Rev. 19:13). Their vision of Jesus is blurred and obscured - enough that they miss out on the reality of Jesus that truly saves us.

My heart breaks for those two young men, and I continue to pray that something I said to them will cause them to question and search for their answers within the Bible alone. May they see a portrait of Christ emerge that is irresistable and life-changing.

A drawing, a painting, a sculpture, even an actor's depiction of Jesus - these things are not true representations of who Jesus is. The Bible gives us all we need to know about who Jesus is.

I do look forward to the day when I get to see Jesus face to face. I love the song, "I Can Only Imagine" because it speaks so much about my own anticipation of what it will be like. The day when imagining becomes reality will be a wonderful day, indeed!!