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When Abundant Evidence is Not Enough

Mary Jo Sharp writes in her book, Why I Still Believe, “There’s something else going on here. Humans don’t always ‘believe it when they see it.’” She then offers the example of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was careful to document his visit to a concentration camp during the Second World War.

In an April 1945 letter to George C. Marshall, he wrote this about his visit to a concentration camp in Germany: “The things I saw beggar description … The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick … I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to ‘propaganda.’”

Eisenhower ordered the collection of documentation of the Holocaust, resulting in 80,000 feet of film footage, which was used as evidence in the Nuremberg trials. Eisenhower also collected numerous photos, including ones of himself at concentration camps to provide evidence of first-hand witness.

Yet it didn’t take long for Holocaust deniers to appear. These deniers are people who have access to an abundance of testimony and evidence of the existence of the Holocaust. Somehow, with all the evidence available, the Holocaust deniers remain unconvinced of this horrific event in human history.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Apologetics; Resurrection of Christ; Unbelief – So also many deny the resurrection of Jesus, in spite of “many convincing proofs that He was alive” (Acts 1:3) and hundreds of eyewitnesses (1 Cor. 15:6).

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