Four Gospels, Four Different Perspectives

Before I go much further into the study of the Matthew, I want to discuss a question that comes up all the time and causes a lot of people to question the validity of the Word of God. That question is: If the gospels are supposed to be the word of God, why are there four different accounts of the same events? For instance, why is what Matthew says about the birth of Christ different from what Mark, Luke, or John. Doesn’t that prove that the gospels are inaccurate or even contrived?

Quite the contrary. What we have when we look at the gospels is not contrary information. What we have is the same information but from a different perspective. It’s similar to what happens when there is a car accident. The police make it a point to talk to everyone at the scene to find out each witnesses perspective. With each witness, the police will get a different story. Based on what each person says, the police will be able to piece together what happened and how it happened.

Each of the stories will be similar, but slightly different, not because some are telling the truth, and some are lying, but because each person has a different perspective. If for some reason the witnesses gave exactly the same information however, describing the incident in exactly the same way, even using the same phrases, then the police would know that each of the so-called witnesses had gotten together to coordinate their stories. The police would then have to delve deeper into why the witnesses coordinated their stories. The fact that the information was exactly the same indicated that the stories were contrived.

Because the gospels were written from different perspectives and offers different information, like the police at the scene of the accident we can better perceive the actual events. For this same reason, we can also conclude that the gospels were based on eye-witnesses rather than contrived at a later date.

Matthew is said to be written from the perspective that “Jesus was the Messiah, the King of the Jews .” Mark was written from the perspective that “Jesus was God’s servant”. Luke was written from the perspective that “Jesus was the perfect man”. Finally John was written from the perspective that “Jesus was God the Son.

This year I will be focusing this blog on the four gospels. Today we have looked at how the gospels offer different perspectives of the life of Christ.. Please let me know if you’ve enjoyed this post and comment below. Also I would love if you would check out my other projects. Under my pseudonym Author Cygnet Brown I have written two Christian Historical Novels in The Locket Saga–When God Turned His Head and Soldiers Don’t Cry. I am currently working on the third book in the series: A Coward’s Solace.