Evidence That The Thief On The Cross Is Normal, Not An Exception To The Rule

One of the subjects that sometimes comes up in the context of Good Friday is the thief on the cross. Advocates of baptismal regeneration and other forms of justification through works often dismiss the thief as a soteriological exception to the rule.

He Will Never Fail To Succor His People

Writing of the Garden of Gethsemane, Matthew tells us that Jesus took some of his disciples with him, but "went a little beyond them, and fell on his face" (Matthew 26:39). That's a useful metaphor of how we can share in Jesus' suffering in some ways, but not fully, how there are significant differences between our suffering and his.

You Have To Move From Theory To Fact

Critics of religion and the paranormal are often overly focused on hypotheticals. Too much time in the abstract, too little time in the concrete. They claim a certain prior improbability for miracles, go on and on about how unreliable human memory supposedly is, the problem of bias, the potential for hallucinations, how an overactive imagination often misleads people, etc. That sort of consideration is valid up to a point. But there's also a point where it becomes suspicious, if the facts involved in a particular situation aren't being addressed adequately.