A Critical Examination of the Resurrection
One of the best websites I’ve found to get an insight into these kinds of things is Barna. They are a group that conducts studies regarding religion and Christianity in particular by interviewing people on various topics, such as “Christians: More Like Jesus or Pharisees?” or “Meet Those Who “Love Jesus but Not the Church”. They’ve been providing insights to theologians of all types for 40 years and have several well-known and well-placed clients.
One such study I recently read is in regards to whether Jesus was created or divine.
Everybody thinks you can talk about religion with your first words coming out of the cradle. Everybody’s an expert on religion. They assume you don’t need any brains to be a Christian, you don’t need any facts, you don’t need to study.
The truth is, Christianity is based on a fact. Growing up in the church, I know this to be true. But just because I believe this doesn’t mean my neighbor does too. It’s important to understand that your personal experience with Christianity may not help others.
But on the day of Pentecost, when a mocking mob gathered, and said of the disciples that they were mad, or drunk, Jesus didn’t look down on a scene, left out, and hear his chief apostle say ‘Well folks, if you could feel what I feel, you’d be jumpin’ around here and talking in tongues too.’
I’m sure he felt something. But Peter didn’t stand on the day of Pentecost and say “Men and brethren, you ask me how I know he lives, he lives within my heart.”
There never would have been a Christian church.
In the book of Acts chapter 2, they describe another important event to Christianity. On the day of Pentecost, they were all gathered together in one place, not a single mob was around. There were 120 of them in one room when suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Then, they saw what appeared to be cloven tongues of fire, which sat upon each of them.
There appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.
Now if the purpose of Christianity is to testify to our experience, then that is an experience that is worth talking about.
Their experience was so phenomenal, that it says when this was noised abroad, a multitude came together. They’re no longer among themselves in the upper room, now they’re down on the street.
And they were all confounded because every man heard them speak in his own language, and they were all amazed and marveled; saying one to another behold are not all these which speak Galilean? Why do we hear every man in our own tongue from where we were born?
Peter suddenly stood up to speak. He denied the accusation that they were drunk. Instead, he started by quoting the prophet Joel, saying that in the last days, God will pour out his spirit upon all flesh. Then he got down to the facts and said that Jesus of Nazareth was approved by God. He performed miracles, wonders, and signs, which God did through him in their midst. Peter didn’t ask them to stop thinking but instead started explaining things from where they were.
He didn’t say what I’ve heard people say to me all my life, ‘you just gotta believe!’
What they preached was:
Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God by miracles and wonders and signs, was crucified and slain by wicked hands. But God raised him up and loosed the pains of death because he could not be holden of it.
He then preaches from scripture because it’s Jews that have gathered, and repeats it. This Jesus who God hath raised up, whereof we all are witnesses,
And then, the crowd cries out, “What must we do?”, and 3000 are born into the kingdom in one day.
You go to the third chapter of Acts. You go to the fourth chapter of Acts. You go to the fifth chapter of Acts. You keep going all the way to the thirteenth chapter of Acts. Everywhere they went preaching, they didn’t say Jesus lives in their heart, even with the holy spirit in them. They proclaimed a fact.
When they told Peter to stop preaching Christ, he said “You killed the Prince of Life, but God raised him up”. In another message, he said, “You hanged him on a tree and desired a murderer to be granted unto you, but God raised him up from the dead”.
Paul when he began to preach said to the Corinthians, “I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received. How that Christ was crucified, according to scripture, died, and was buried. And on the third day rose again”. Then he cites living witnesses to a fact.
He confidently appeared and proceeded to name each one, and finally appeared to an audience of over 500 brethren at once. The vast majority of them are still alive and ready to testify at this point. The group stands as a powerful testament to the resurrection and cannot be ignored.
He said, “If Christ be not risen, our faith is vain. Furthermore we bear false witness of God because we have testified that he raised up the Christ”.
Everywhere you turn in the New Testament, there’s a fact.
They didn’t have to study Genesis. They didn’t have to determine how old the earth was. They didn’t have to do any of the things that Christians worry about today. They didn’t have to take a bible course. They didn’t have to swear allegiance to every comma, period, and question mark in the bible.
At this point, all I’m saying is what the bible says people did. If you can get to that point, then follow along – it’ll be worth it. All I’m saying so far is that all these instances I’ve mentioned were just people proclaiming a fact as they experienced it.
A man had gone around making claims about himself. The man’s claims about himself were so outrageous that one can only conclude that he either needs to be committed for believing the impossible about himself; or, he is an absolute fraud intentionally deceiving people.
If what he said about himself were true, then Christianity is real. If what he said about himself were true, then you don’t need any better starting point for God than what Jesus claimed about himself. He seated all authority for His argument in himself. His claims can only be proven by Himself.
And Jesus put himself there, in that situation. He had that sense of morality that qualified him to be the ransom for a lost world, and he looked at the world saying something was wrong with it, and it could only be set right if he died for it. And he put himself at the center of the religious universe.
You didn’t have to learn a lot of theology; you just have to accept his mastery.
You can spend the rest of your life solving every other problem, but Christianity starts right there. Either Jesus Christ was a nut or a fraud, or – if he was what He claimed to be, then He was the most important personage walking on this earth, anywhere on the stage of history, and He is deserving of the allegiance that he demanded.
I’m tired of people saying well, you know, what’s a Christian?
Well, You stop doing this, whatever it is that’s good, fun, alive, enjoyable, profitable, anything that you like to do, you stop doing it. Christianity is misery, producing miserable people, that you’d rather be in hell than go to heaven with. You have to believe this or that; Heaven or hell, or the Dead Sea Scrolls or Enoch, you have to believe in the book of Revelations, and every other last word in the bible. Nonsense.
Christianity is Christ. Period.
The only truly natural person, who moved out of the invisible world and as John has said “no man hath seen God but Christ declared him”, the word is exegesis, and it means leading from behind a curtain and putting on display.
And the claim of Christ is if you want to know what God’s like take a look at me. If you want to know what the glory of God is that every man falls short of, take a look at me. And having displayed that, you’re all lost and without hope but I’m going to ransom you, and as a gift, give your life back.
And when people said show us a sign, and they’re running all over town, that if you put up a spiritual signpost anywhere, here they come. They said show us a sign, Jesus says, only one.
They asked for a sign, and he gave them just one. Since then, they have been searching for more signs.
Paul, a biblical figure, said that Jesus Christ rose from the dead after being buried. This, he said, would prove that Christianity was true and that God had vindicated Jesus. Paul believed that the story of Jonah, who was swallowed by a whale and then emerged unharmed three days later, was a sign that God would raise Jesus from the dead. Without this resurrection, Christianity would be a fraudulent religion.
Paul said, “If Christ be not risen our faith is vain”.
In church growing up, I was a redheaded stepchild until I had all the experiences.
Not every psychological experience is spiritual, but every spiritual experience is a psychological experience because all that psychological experiences are, is you having an experience.
So unless somebody else had it, if you have it, it’s psychological. If they had it, it’s psychological to them. Either way, it can be explained away.
When you ask God for something, remember that He won’t give you something bad in return. He is in control and stronger than anything in the world. Once you act strong faith, you can trust that you will receive what you ask for from God, not from anyone else. That’s what Faith means.
But without that foundation, you can be ripped apart by your faithing actions and too much of Christianity is scared to even try.
I heard a preacher get up and say “You’ve got to first believe that God is personal, and then you’ve got to believe that it’s the nature of a person to reveal himself, and then you’ve got to believe that being that is his nature, if you look you’ll find his revelation, and then when you come to this one”, and that sounds idiotic.
Now I can’t see Him the way the first-century witnesses could. But I can attack it like any other historical problem.
Now the problem with Christianity, nobody thinks they should tackle it like any other historical problem. They want to grab a few things here and get into an argument about it. Too many people want to prove Jesus to themselves by winning arguments with others.
For any historical problem, you start out with certain things, called your frame of reference.
If somebody tells you that I preached awful today, that assumes that I was here preaching. Now if nobody believes that I was here, why get into an argument about how I preached? I mean, let’s settle the first fact first.
If I’m here, we might decide whether I’m preaching or not. But if I’m not here, it’s sure a wasted energy to discuss my sermon. And if there’s no Houston, why argue about what we did here?
If you’re intelligent you start with certain things that you take for granted, and then you build your argument. Don’t ever talk about the resurrection if you don’t believe Jesus lived.
There are some people who don’t believe that He even existed.
The truth is, that you can’t prove you live. I’ve never met someone who will stand in front of a streetcar to prove his point.
So let’s start with that point and go from there.
1 Did Jesus live?
It’s easy to prove that Jesus existed. Even the Roman historian, Tacitus, admitted it.
2 Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem, at the hand of the Romans, or their authority, instigated by Jewish leaders.
That’s easy too. He was crucified by the Romans at the request of some Jewish leaders. Not all Jews were involved. Jesus and his disciples were Jewish too. However, the Jewish religious leaders were responsible for instigating it, and the Romans carried it out. Tacitus or Josephus shows us that.
3 Jesus was considered dead. That does not say he was, it just says, they thought he was. You don’t normally bury people you think are alive, do ya’?
4 Jesus was buried in a known tomb, and an accessible tomb.
You can visit that tomb today. Easy.
5 It was preached immediately that He was raised, ascended and the tomb empty. They didn’t just preach an empty tomb. They preached a living savior that they touched, that they fellowshipped with, that they ate with, that they talked with, that they walked with, and that he ascended up into the heavens.
All three, are inseparable as part of the New Testament gospel preaching. Nobody can argue with that.
6 Takes a minute of talk:
If Jesus is not the Son of God, it doesn’t affect us, who are 2000 years away, today. Solving this problem is not essential to your job either. It is common sense that if someone’s position, prestige, job, livelihood, or life depends on disproving something, they will try to disprove it harder than an ordinary passerby. This is not a fact, but a conclusion. Do you agree with that?
The Jewish leaders, who instigated the crucifixion, called him a blasphemer. If he rose and ascended, and that tomb was empty, they’re psychologically more motivated to disprove that message than you and I could ever be today.
If you’re trying to approach this critically, this is a hugely important point.
Jewish leaders were way more concerned and thusly way more involved than you or I. And therefore they persecuted the New Testament preachers for telling that message.
Every record, from the earliest day, says to “stop saying what you’re saying about him raising from the dead.” They said to Peter, stop preaching this message. He said “Shall we obey God or man? You desired a murderer to be granted unto you, and hanged Jesus on a tree, but God raised him from the dead. And we’ll obey God and not man,” they kept preaching.
Every record shows the New Testament preachers were horribly persecuted, because of the preaching of this message.
And this is a conclusion that forces me to believe a fact.
Now, hear what I’m doing, I’m laying a platform. I will not discuss the resurrection of Jesus Christ with anybody, anywhere, who does not believe these things. It’s a waste of time. It’s much easier to prove each of these than it is to prove the resurrection. So if you’re not willing, any person, to accept them, then let’s stop there.
These same Jewish leaders because of their involvement in his crucifixion would be more concerned with disproving the preaching than you or I will ever be because it threatened their religious leadership, it threatened their reputation, it threatened their livelihood, and it could threaten their lives. They were very concerned about disproving it so they persecuted the preachers, and told them not to preach this. And on that basis, I know the tomb was empty.
Why?
If he was buried in a known, accessible tomb, and if the Jewish leaders were as involved, and wanting to disprove the preaching, as they would be because of the threat on their position, all they had to do to shut up the preachers was go to the tomb and produce the body.
You may say, well it’s only true if these facts are true. That’s right. That’s what I said. That’s what I’ve been saying for the last 10 minutes.
There’s another reason I believe the tomb was empty, which is inferred. Nobody knows where the tomb is. They fight to this day in the religious community regarding which of 2 sites selected today, represents the tomb of Christ. Nobody knows where his tomb is. Nobody, for centuries, could find Christ’s tomb. It was lost to history. Because at the time nobody cared.
Only Christians today care about that tomb. The early Christians served a living savior. My God is living. Who cares about a tomb when there’s no body in it?
The amount of care going into it today is simply Pagan influence. It’s Idolatry.
The Jewish leaders were so concerned to disprove the preaching, that they not only persecuted the disciples, but before they started persecuting them the first thing they said was the disciples stole the body.
The second story is the Romans took the body.
The third story is the Jewish leaders themselves took the body.
The fourth story is wrong tomb. Women went to the wrong tomb, got overly excited, ran out screaming, ‘he lives!’ And the Christian movement springs from that error.
5th story, Resuscitation. Or Revived.
He was considered dead but he wasn’t. When he got into the coolness of the tomb, he resuscitated.
He had a stab wound in his side, he’d been beaten, he’d been nailed to a cross, he was considered dead, he was wrapped up like a mummy.
But in the tomb, he resuscitated, unwrapped himself, and shoved that rock aside by himself.
6th story: Hallucinations.
7th story: They made up the whole thing.
Or, the 8th story: They told the truth. They told what they saw. They told what they encountered. They told what they witnessed as honest men.
The usual argument is that a resurrection can’t occur. Why? Cause it would be a miracle. And miracles can’t occur. Therefore anybody who says it did occur, can’t be telling the truth. Or they are too gullible. So we will reject the report. Cause the resurrection couldn’t occur. Cause it’s a miracle. And miracles can’t happen. And anybody that says they do, is a poor reporter. Cause miracles can’t happen. And resurrection’s a miracle. And since miracles can’t happen, the resurrection didn’t happen.
And it sounds idiotic.
The Christian says miracles are what they are. Beyond natural.
I’m convinced by the facts.
As human beings, anything you study for real and long enough, you are naturally driven to a conclusion.
In a conversation, it’s important for me to know where you stand on an issue. I don’t like when people are too afraid to take a position. You don’t have to convince me, but it helps me trust you if you’re transparent and honest about your beliefs.
All this represents an intellectual semantical massage to avoid the issue. The issue is it is hard to discount the sincerity of these preachers.
If your argument is that you are not someone who believes that miracles occur, then you have to explain the passion of the preaching. They preached it until they brutally tortured and killed.
But there are only two choices. Everything else is a semantical massage. They either lied and knew it, or they were telling truthfully what they witnessed.
What they preached was threefold:
- Empty tomb,
- Resurrected body, and;
- Ascension.
If the disciples stole the body, then they lied, right?
Now if the Romans stole the body, it’s untenable. The Jewish leaders were more concerned than you and I would ever be to disprove it, all they had to do was ask the Romans, and with the stirring up of strife in the city, the Romans themselves would have announced the fact they took the body.
I’m not convinced by this theory anyway, because it only explains the empty tomb. It doesn’t cover the preaching of the ascension or the preaching of a living body that was moving around for 40 days and eating with people. The theory only explains part of the message.
They had to make up the rest of it, they’re still liars.
If Jewish leaders took the body, again it’s untenable. Why would they need to persecute the witnesses and try to get them to shut up? If they took the body all they had to do was say “Hey! We took it!” Case closed.
The wrong tomb is also untenable. The tomb was known, and accessible, the Jewish leaders were trying to disprove the preaching. All they had to do was go to the right tomb to make those women look silly.
Resuscitated?
Again untenable. Have any of you ever been crucified? In trying to explain this story, it looks stupid.
How did he get through the rock? The giant rock was still in place when they got there, they had to roll it aside to check if Jesus was in the tomb.
Also, the ascension is still not explained. They would have had to have made that up. They’re lying in part or whole no matter how you look at the story.
Hallucinations.
Well, I don’t want to get into a long psychological discussion. Let me just explode it simply. The empty tomb would not have been empty if all they had was hallucinations. And anybody that knows anything about psychology knows that if they went and took the body out, and stole it, they’re in a state of mind now of deceit that they can’t manufacture hallucinations.
What are we left with? Two.
You can’t escape it. It comes down to the same argument, the actions of Jesus on the stage of history make Him either a nut or a fraud, or he’s what he claimed to be.
Jesus Christ brought no unique teaching. I can find everything that Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount out of the riches of the Pharisee literature.
The uniqueness of Christ is what he claimed about himself. And that forces a choice on us.
We can’t address the issue in depth or casually without having to decide if He’s either the Son of God as he claimed he was, or he’s a nut or a fake, and you ought to forget this Christian business.
He is the Son of God if he came out of that tomb. And as you study that fact you are forced into the same corner.
The choice of veracity boils down to the witnesses. They either lied and made it up, and knew it. Or, they were telling the truth about what they experienced. When I was finally cornered, I knew I was either going to abandon Christianity totally and forget it or if I got hooked on the evidence of the resurrection I was gonna’ finish the trip.
And the evidence of the resurrection cornered me.
It is settled on this one point alone. Those guys who told the story were lying and knew it, or they were reporting what they honestly encountered.
And there are 4 reasons why I believe they were telling the truth.
One I can sum up with two words:
Internal evidence.
Have you ever seen a liar who doesn’t embellish his story to help himself? Liars anticipate when they’re getting in trouble. And then they overkill.
I’ve done this before, and if you think about it then you’ll know we all do. But I’ll give you an example of this.
Mark.
Mark wrote his Gospel specifically for Gentiles. Everybody agrees with that. His is the shortest gospel, he wrote to Gentiles.
All evidence indicates he was the young lad who ran away in the darkness the night that Jesus was crucified. And somebody tried to catch him and grabbed his garment and he ran away naked. His mother owned the house where the Last Supper was held.
When he became a young preacher and an evangelist, he wrote the shortest gospel. Everybody agrees he wrote it to Gentiles. Now if you’re a liar and you know you’re a liar, you’re going to try to tell a convincing story. He wrote to non Jews, and his purpose in writing was to prove that Jesus was the son of God. That’s the lie he’s concocting.
If you’re going to tell your neighbors that somebody is the Son of God, does it make much sense, if you know you’re lying, to refer to the man you’re going to try to prove is the son of God as the son of man? To an ordinary Gentile, son of man means, he’s a man’s son.
You can count ’em. Writing to heathen, trying to prove that Jesus is the Son of God, Mark, in the shortest gospel, has Jesus referring to himself as the son of man more than any other gospel writer.
What does that indicate? If the guy went around calling himself the son of man, I believe Mark would just change it. And have Him refer to Himself as the Son of God. That’s what a liar would do.
But Mark, being true to the fact, even though it hurt his presentation to the heathen, trying to prove that Jesus is the son of God, has Jesus, every other breath, referring to himself as the son of man. Why? Because that’s what Jesus did. The only thing that makes sense is he was being accurate.
When Jesus spoke, Jesus was speaking to a Jewish audience. To the Jewish people who grew up reading the book of Daniel and the apocryphal literature, the term “son of man” meant the Messiah. Their scriptures, like the book of Enoch or the book of Daniel, describe the son of man as coming with lightning on clouds of glory to set up his kingdom. So, it was reasonable when Jesus spoke to the Jews in the audience when Jesus spoke, for them to understand Jesus’ teachings in the context of the Holy Books they all learned in school. This is the context, and why so much of the New Testament refers to the Old. To the people writing it, they grew up reading it and knew what it meant. Just like nowadays, we can say ‘Brandon’ and know that it refers to the crowd at the race chanting something and a reporter lying about what they were chanting. It’s a kind of shorthand.
But if you transpose Jesus in a book out of that frame and try to describe him to Egyptians and try to prove to Egyptians or Romans that he is the son of God, it would be reasonable to just change it a little bit. You don’t have to stay true to the text. You’re lying anyway. The fact that he stayed true to what Jesus really said makes him sound like an honest witness, not a liar.
You find things like these interwoven in the scriptures.
Jesus is out in the desert and a multitude follows him. And it says he looks to Phillip. Well, there are 3 different accounts. One account says he said to his disciples where can we buy bread? You go to any other gospel, written in another country, at another time by another man, and you have the same incident described. Only in this second description, there’s another fact added. He didn’t just say to his disciples where can I buy bread? He said to Phillip, “Phillip, where can we buy bread?”
Now you go to another part of the Middle Eastern world, another time, another year, another writer, another place, and you read the third description of the same incident. This time you read in a separate writer, that he’s calling Phillip to be a disciple and Phillip was from Bethsaida. Now you go back and check your records. In another gospel you find that the place where he is asking where can I buy bread is near Bethsaida.
It takes all four accounts scattered among different places, and different writers to put it together.
Why did he ask Phillip? Phillip was from Bethsaida. He knew the area. The only man of his disciples expected to know where you could buy bread in that territory was Phillip. If you’re just making up a lie, why be that accurate?
You might say, does that convince you alone? No.
But they don’t sound like liars. I’ve listened to some real royal liars. The more you study these biblical accounts, the more they sound like simple-minded accurate reporters of what they saw.
Some people argue that the delay in sharing the story is proof that it’s a lie. They suggest that during that time, the storytellers carefully crafted the lie. However, if they are smart enough to tell the lie convincingly, wouldn’t they also be smart enough to come up with the story earlier? It’s something to consider. Why wait 7 weeks? When you know it’ll hurt your story?
The picture is of honest people to whom Jesus said to be my witness, but don’t you leave Jerusalem until something happens to you.
It happened exactly on the feast of Pentecost. And that’s when they began to preach it. They sound more like honest people who were stunned at the resurrection. And now, when he tells them to wait until they are imbued with power, they’re not leaving that place at Jerusalem until the experience comes. I could talk about the standards for honesty for a long time, but that alone still wouldn’t be enough to convince me. However, when I consider these internal criteria along with other factors, it’s difficult for me to believe that they were lying.
Number 2.
These men have undergone a significant transformation. It’s as if, if you drew a line, you would see a clear distinction between their past and present selves. Previously, James and John were selfish and self-centered. They even went so far as to ask their mother to secure high-ranking positions in the kingdom. On the other side of some event, John, everybody agrees, becomes the epitome of love. Total contrast with the fire-breathing Son of Thunder on the other side.
Peter is known for being unpredictable. He tends to speak out of turn and act impulsively. For instance, when Jesus announced that he was going to the cross, Peter immediately objected, only to be rebuked by Jesus. Despite his good intentions, Peter often says the wrong thing at the wrong time. When Jesus took him to the Mount of Transfiguration, he fell asleep when he was asked to wait. Later, when he woke up and saw Elijah and Moses talking to Jesus, he spoke without thinking, putting his foot in his mouth once again. “Let’s build 3 tabernacles here, one for Moses, one for Elijah, one for Jesus”. He couldn’t even stay awake. How’s he going to build a tabernacle? Overkill.
Peter, one of Jesus’ followers, once boasted about his loyalty to Jesus, claiming that he would even die for him. However, when Jesus was arrested and put on trial, Peter denied knowing him three times. Jesus later sent a message to Peter, telling him to go to Galilee and wait for him there. When Jesus arrived slightly later than expected, Peter grew impatient and decided to go fishing instead.
But suddenly something changes him, the encounter of the resurrection. Peter becomes the rock.
The record of Thomas is the one that always has overwhelmed me.
Thomas is always skeptical. No matter what the situation is, he tends to be a bit stubborn. Jesus is going on a dangerous journey, and Thomas quickly suggests that they should go with him, even if they may die during the journey. While he displays courage in this, he’s also a realistic person. He thinks that Jesus could be killed or face danger on the journey, and he is prepared to go with him and risk his life for him.
That’s a human view. Jesus says no man takes my life from me. Thomas is a realist.
Jesus is talking about heaven and tells his disciples that he is going to prepare mansions for them and come back to take them with him. The disciples were happy and excited about this news. Jesus then said that they knew where he was going and how to get there, but Thomas was unsure and asked how they could know if they didn’t know where Jesus was going. Thomas had a reputation for being stubborn and doubting, even after the resurrection.
He says, “No I’m not going to believe it until I can touch it.”
Suddenly he’s changed. And Thomas takes the gospel on that day when Jesus said behold my hands and my side and he fell on his knees and said, my Lord and my God. And from that day forward no doubting again he takes the gospel and pierces the Himalayas to the toughest region to be a missionary, to be pierced with a Brahman sword near Madras India.
The cataclysmic change in every one of these people occurred at the same time. Before they started telling this story, they weren’t known for their spiritual value. Suddenly they changed.
Lies do not change people that cataclysmicly. Something changed them.
Third.
You don’t pay the price they paid for a lie. Best traditions say Bartholomew was flayed to death with a whip in Armenia. Tied to a stake and literally skinned with a whip. Thomas pierced with a sword. St. Andrew was crucified on that cross from whence it got its name. Mark was dragged to death by idolatrous priests. Luke was hanged from an olive tree, and given a chance to recant his testimony. Every disciple save John, died a horrible death for their testimony.
I still might not believe it, except for the fourth point.
And this is what Thomas Aquinas calls the great proof of the resurrection. They paid their price for their testimony ALONE.
I could believe, they planned something like this:
“We’re just a bunch of liars, but we’re losing face.”
“Man, we thought we were going to have a kingdom. And this dumb idiot that led us got himself crucified. What are we going to do? Let’s make up this lie.”
“Now we’ve got to stick to this story or we’re done in, right?”
Now keep them together as a group, and they might stick it out.
But separate them and remember there’s no telephone, there’s no television, there’s no satellite, there’s no radio there’s not even mail service that can get to us. Definitely no Twitter.
They’re suddenly faced with persecution and death for this story they’re telling.
All you’ve got to do to keep from being skinned alive with a whip is say “Hey! I renege”, catch the next boat, and when you see me up here wherever I am, and I say, did you hang in there? And you say yes sir, boy, I’m telling ya I’ve been telling it good.
I won’t know the difference.
You’re alone. Each of us is alone.
We got the historical perspective. We’ve been digging up the records for 2000 years. Nobody can convince me that it’s psychologically feasible that someone in this group will not break under the pressure and one of them somewhere persecuted to death will break and say it’s not true.
Find one.
As Thomas Aquinas said, the great proof of the resurrection is that not a single one of them in the pages of history ever backed off from their testimony, though they died alone for it.
I can’t believe they weren’t honest men telling the truth.
And skeptics will say: I’m convinced these men believed what they were telling, so there’s got to be something wrong with your first facts. That’s just another corner. We already covered them.
If they’re telling the truth, he came through that rock, he split the heavens, and he’ll come again one day as he said.
He is the seat of authority.
He’s the authority. I don’t need anybody else’s approval. He died for me. He covered me. AND HE TAKES ME AS I AM.
I don’t need to go through some of the maneuvers that Christians traditionally say you have to, to be a Christian.
I just have to look up and say dumb as I am “Lord, I accept this, you’re my Master. And I’m ready to listen anytime you want to call.”
I know that I fall short, as everybody out there does.
But I know that the one who knew that about me better than anybody while I was yet a sinner and still am a sinner, paid the supreme price to cover me.
I know he’s in control. I know that if God be for us who can be against us? I know that because he lives I can face tomorrow.
It makes a lot of difference.