JESUS CHRIST THE GREATEST LIFE
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This work began nearly 2,000 years ago when the Holy Spirit inspired four different individuals to write about the life of Jesus Christ, addressing four different audiences for four different purposes.
The four Gospels were placed side by side in the canon of Scripture called The New Testament. These four books make up approximately 46% of that portion of God’s Word. The first three books, referred to as the Synoptic Gospels, tell what Christ did and the fourth tells more specifically who He is.
All four books in the Bible that tell the life of Jesus Christ: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are inspired, critically important and stand alone. Each was written to a particular audience to portray a unique aspect of Jesus’ life. When these four reports are combined into one complete flowing narrative, we gain new insights.
This combined account gives us the chronological order of every known fact about Jesus’ life and teachings found in the four Gospels. It includes every chapter and verse, with nothing added, and nothing left out.
Jesus Christ The Greatest Life together with footnotes and illustrations, will help you visualize the life of Jesus Christ. As you study the four Gospels comparatively, this book will help you see the unity of their message.
Jesus Christ The Greatest Life combines two previously published works. The first is The Life of Christ in Stereo copyrighted in 1969 by Western Seminary, and the second is The Greatest Story copyrighted in 1994 by Western Seminary. This book incorporates both books with the addition of maps, graphics, timelines and editorial comments. It also includes a numbering of the thirty-five major recorded miracles and pictorial representattions in the form of nearly one hundred icons of the major recorded events and teachings in His life.
This work presents the Gospel’s account of Jesus in a continuous story with strict adherence to the original grammar, while preserving the best English equivalent. The result is that by omitting duplications of the message the four books can be fitted completely into one. The result is not a hodgepodge or a mere literary curiosity but forms a more convincing and readable story than any of the four alone.
FOREWORD
Can you imagine four authors writing separate biographies of the same individual and those four biographies dovetailing perfectly without contradiction? That has happened only once in history.
The subject was Jesus Christ, and the authors were Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Arising from different eyewitness accounts of His life, each of their biographies has a distinct flavor and a unique story line. In spite of their uniquenesses, however, it is possible to weave all four of them together completely and without contradiction—adding nothing, deleting nothing—using only the data provided by the authors.
Such a compilation had never been done in more than 1,900 years until Johnston (Jack) Cheney completed it at age seventy-six, after twenty-three years of work that began on what was supposedly his deathbed. This accomplishment would have been impossible for anyone, however, if the four Gospels did not have a Divine Author. As the apostle Peter points out, “No prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation [or “origin”], for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:20–21, NKJV).
Thus, Jack Cheney was a further human instrument to do a phenomenal service in demonstrating the superintendence of God in writing the life of His Son, Jesus Christ.
A Lion Uncaged
In these days when the words of Jesus in the Gospels are again under severe attack (as in the recently published book The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus), what a significant and exciting product Cheney has provided for us. The London preacher Charles Spurgeon once said, “The Bible is like a lion. It does not need defending. Simply open the cage and let it out.” Jack Cheney’s work has helped open that cage, compelling us to see the mighty hand of our God at work.
Jesus Christ The Greatest Life is a book for everyone. Not only does it have apologetic value in demonstrating the divine supervision of the human authors and the consequent accuracy of the Gospels, but its transforming potential makes the life of Christ more valuable than anything else believers can look at.
Consider the words of the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 3:18 (my life verse):
But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.
The word rendered “transformed” here is the Greek metamorphao from which we get the English “metamorphosis”. Even a child can understand the marvelous transformation of an ugly caterpillar into an elegant swallowtail butterfly. Not only is this beautiful for us to see, but the change is also great for the butterfly: it no longer crawls in the dirt and dust, but instead enjoys an entirely new power—flight so that it’s able to flit from flower to flower, enjoying the sweet nectar of God’s wonderful floral creations.
In like fashion, we who are in Christ are also a brand-new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). The veil that once separated us from God has been removed. And we are “unveiled,” Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:18, so that as we spend time looking at Jesus in the Gospels, we reflect His image. We become like Him.
The Powerful Pattern
Why is it that the epistles time and again direct our attention back to the Gospels? The apostle Peter states: “for to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps” (1 Peter 2:21, NKJV). The apostle John emphasized the same point: “he who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked” (1 John 2:6). Likewise the writer of Hebrews exhorts us to be “looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith …” (Hebrews 12:2a).
Why this pointing to the Gospels? The answer is simple, but tremendously important: the four Gospels alone contain the account of the only perfect life ever lived. Everyone needs a pattern for life, and the Gospels provide it to perfection. The earthly life of Jesus Christ stands unique in human history as the flawless model for all believers.
It is distressing to me, therefore, to find so little attention given to an intensive study of the life of Christ. As I move around the churches, I find a great emphasis upon the death of Christ, but very little on His life. I find much emphasis on the past tense of salvation (salvation from the penalty of sin), but little emphasis on the present tense (daily salvation from the power of sin).
I believe there is a significant connection between lack of attention to the life of Christ and the general impotence against everyday sin. The life of Christ is basic to daily deliverance from sin’s power. While the death of Christ is primarily a birth message, the life of Christ is a growth message. Today’s churches are witnessing little genuine growth, and there is a great need for messages geared to maturation. Lambs need to become sheep (capable of reproducing more lambs), and there is no better way to mature in Christ than to give careful study to His life.
A Deathbed Pursuit
I believe that Jack Cheney, under God, has brought to the fore what may prove to be one of the most significant tools in history for bringing about a renewed emphasis on the life of Christ. This unique compilation of the Gospels was not merely an exercise in mental gymnastics for him; it was rather the blending of mind and heart in a serious attempt to reconcile apparent discrepancies in Scripture which previously had caused him to surrender his trust in the Bible’s integrity.
Ever since his boyhood, Jack Cheney expected to become a minister like his father. In college he followed a preministerial program in which he specialized in English, the humanities, public speaking, and Greek, as well as three years of Bible. While there, he was shown apparent contradictions in the Gospel accounts which seemed to him to undermine their historicity. He summarized this experience in a written testimony years later: “I lost my faith in the supernatural authority of the Scriptures, and abandoned preparation for the ministry—after which the First World War took me.”
Following his World War I service, he became reestablished in his faith under the ministry of W. B. Hinson at Eastside Baptist (now Hinson Memorial) Church in Portland, Oregon. Cheney’s testimony continues:
I took fresh interest in the Scriptures because of this renewed faith, did some teaching of adult Bible classes through the years, memorized some ninety favorite chapters, joined the Gideons and became their local president, and found places of other usefulness …
All the time I had a feeling that somehow I was to prepare a book someday based on the Scriptures, and especially to prove their real character.
It took a bout with a deadly disease to bring fulfillment to the calling Cheney sensed. Shortly after World War II, he was diagnosed with a double case of tuberculosis. He expected shortly to finish out his days. “I decided,” he recalls, “that as a job I could do in bed, I would make a scrapbook of the Scriptures. In the course of this … I discovered by pure accident (humanly speaking) that the three accounts of Jesus’ baptism, for example, could be made into one account … without losing anything.”
This was a process, Cheney discovered, that could apply “to every part of the story.” This blending of the Gospel accounts “remained only a sick-bed hobby,” he wrote, until he made two significant discoveries: 1) the four-year length of Jesus’ earthly ministry “and how this removed insuperable difficulties”; and 2) an excellent solution to the particularly difficult task of blending the four accounts of Peter’s denials (he determined that Peter actually denied the Lord at least six times—three denials before the morning rooster crowed once, and three more before it crowed a second time). These discoveries gave Cheney a convincing demonstration that the Gospels were carefully designed by One Author.
A Challenge to Theologians
Becoming ever more devoted to the task of compiling Christ’s life in a single narrative, Cheney memorized almost the entirety of the four Gospels in their original language. His intensive work would continue for twenty-three years from the day he first began his scrapbook. His testimony concludes:
From that time until now, it has been a matter of ever-new discoveries which, though made by a layman, seem to prove a challenge to theologians.
This “challenge to theologians” found reality with me when I first met Jack Cheney some twenty years after he started this project. I shall never forget how impressed I was by this man’s keen ability in the Greek of the Gospels. How challenged I was by the potential of this compilation, and how thrilled I was to become aware of the many solutions it offered to problems in Gospel studies.
Space does not allow me to tell of all the wonderful provisions I began seeing God make for this work. One such provision was that of a deeply interested specialist in the life of Christ, Dr. Stanley A. Ellisen of Western Seminary, who was equally challenged by the work and labored side by side with Jack Cheney for three years. His scholarly and editorial expertise proved to be an invaluable asset to the book’s original edition (and equally so in overseeing text changes and revising supplementary material in this new revision).
Finally, generous contributions by the author’s brother, Ralph G. Cheney of Seattle, and by Dr. W. H. Bueermann of Portland made possible the printing of the work in 1969. Jack Cheney at age seventy-six, learned how to operate a typesetting machine to type the text for the first edition.
Shortly thereafter I received a telephone call from his wife, informing me that Jack had suffered a stroke. I asked her to assure him that the book would soon be printed.
When she told him, Jack Cheney, now speechless due to the stroke, motioned for something to write with. There on his deathbed he penned his final words—”I love you all”—then passed into the presence of the Lord whose story he had labored so long to tell in a simple and seamless way.
I sincerely trust that the results of Jack Cheney’s labors will be as thrilling to you as they have been to Dr. Ellisen and me, who worked so closely with him in the final years of preparing the manuscript. The more we go over this thrilling and unique blending of the Gospels, the more we are impressed with the most exciting Life that ever lived. The principles of translation and interweaving are further explained by Stanley Ellisen on page 269.
For all who have ever prayed, “Lord, make me like You,” may this book be an answer to your prayer.
Preface to the Present Edition: The Miracle Continues!
In May of 1994, I was speaking at the Western Seminary—sponsored Memorial Day Conference at Cannon Beach, Oregon. At that conference were two couples: Bob and Sara Meltebeke and Ron and Darlene Harper. They had never been to a Cannon Beach Conference before. Both Bob and Ron had graduated from Western many years before and had later finished all of their course work for the Doctor of Ministry degree, but had not begun the final product required for graduation.
In God’s providence they sat at the same breakfast table and renewed their acquaintances. Bob was a developer and builder of homes in Eugene, Oregon; Ron had been a pastor and teacher of homiletics at Western Seminary. As they compared anecdotes from the past at the table, they learned, among other things, that they had both worked for the same grocery chain during their school years in Eugene. One thing led to another until they arrived at the present in the conversation about their doctoral product. A lengthy discussion led to their awareness that Bob, the home developer, was primarily visual by gifting, with a keen ability to envision a final product, and Ron, the preacher-teacher, was primarily verbal by gifting, with an equally keen ability to express the written product.
The climax of those conversations had them deciding to join their visual/verbal skills in creating a joint product on the person of Jesus Christ, the greatest life ever lived on earth. The Harpers moved to Eugene to the same community where the Meltebekes lived and the daily, arduous, conjoint effort began. They had not been at it many days, however, until on one day, very early in the morning, both of them were awakened out of their sleep with the strong conviction that they should use the text of the Life of Christ in Stereo as the work which they would advance using all of the media available to us today.
It is the prayer of all who have been involved that as you focus on the greatest life ever lived, you will find yourself being transformed into His image.
Earl D. Radmacher, President Emeritus
Western Seminary
Cheney, J. M., Ellisen, S. A., & Cheney, J. M.
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