Paul would also emphasize that the Gospel is so basic in our understanding, so easily presented, that he says in 1 Corinthians 2:2: "For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified."

The Gospel is a simple truth: God has entered the world by becoming Man. God has done for man what man could not do for himself This is the very ground of the Apostle Paul's worldview. But, worldviews do not stand in a vacuum. Festus, a skeptic, weighs in on Paul's assertions.

Festus' Worldview: The Study of the Scriptures and the Belief in Christ is Maddening (v. 24). Festus interrupts Paul and yells out that Paul has studied so much of that stuff for so long that he's gone crazy. Such a simple Gospel, such a view of history, such a hope for mankind is essentially insane according to Festus' worldview.

The worldview of unbelief is essentially fatalistic. "Man is born, he lives a few years and dies and rots. That's it. No more. History is a disconnected series of events, governed only by chance, and perhaps some alien despotic force, if we are given to that sort of thing." That is the worldview of Festus and those like him. In that view, to think that a sovereign God is in control, that He is a personal God of love who would come down and save us by dying on a cross, and then to say that He would rise again -- the first fruits of others who would also rise again -- is ludicrous in the minds of naturalists like Festus.

Nothing has changed. That worldview continues and possess the minds of many today. Again, the distinctively evangelical Christian worldview is not advanced in a vacuum. This is what we face.

What does Paul say?

Paul's Worldview in Response: The Gospel is not maddening but rather Truthful, Reasonable, and Fully Provable (vv. 25-27). This is the force of Paul's response to Festus, and so he refutes the skeptical, naturalistic view of Festus by confidently declaring that the Gospel is not a fanciful idea, not insane, but, to the contrary, the Gospel is true and, he adds, reasonable.

Why? He turns to Aggripa again and says that the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ "did not happen in a corner." He is saying that "because none of these things have escaped the attention of the world -- the coming of Christ, the miracles of Christ, the resurrection of Christ, the miracles surrounding His resurrection, the changed lives of His followers, including his own life -- Christianity is true and reasonable. Christianity is rational. It cannot be linked to the primitive pagan religions which make a god in their own image. The God of Christianity is, rather, out of this world, yet come into this world.

Our God cannot be imagined. The glorious message of the Gospel is so inconceivable, the love of God so remarkable, that none could have ever created such a story! The amazing and unique character and content of our message, thus, all the more proves our point. And more than that: Our God does His wonders in the course of history and in time and space and His works may be attested by human beings.