Defense of the Faith - The Resurrection of Christ Part I

Alright, so this morning I actually normally I wouldn't start off with anything that happened this morning because especially I got low amounts of sleep but this morning I was asked by a friend on Facebook what I thought about a situation that was in a news article in the Washington Post I think it was where they were talking about how churches were dwindling in attendance and it was focusing on the Southern Baptist denomination in this particular article, but what was happening was that small Arab churches, Arab-speaking churches, were forming in these communities and were actually, in certain cases, being able to take over the once English-speaking church. And I thought it was kind of interesting, but my friend who included me on the Facebook post with the article asking for opinions was curious.

Okay, why is this happening? That was his thought. And because we're talking about apologetics in this class this morning, I thought it was particularly relevant to ask why is it that the church body would not be growing in numbers or at least maintaining. We'll start with that because it leads right well, I think, into our topic this morning. Any guesses? Good.

I won't be upset if you have an answer I didn't come up with. It's not politically correct. One reason I think is because the various things we're talking about right in this elective are not being well presented in churches. And the skeptics often times failing to do proper study, just like we're looking at Bart Ehrman, are persuading people who don't know how to think critically and don't understand how do I analyze what's being said. Yeah, there's a lot of complexity to the answer to that because it's probably conditional depending on which church it is and what's going on here.

But one thing that I've appreciated about Holly Hills is the understanding of spiritual growth and how spiritual growth drives us towards Christ and drives us into relationship with him rather than it being a liberalism or a legalism, it's relationship with our Lord, and it's understanding that we grow and we walk in Him. If we abide, as abiding believers, is the Spirit going to preserve the Church? Will the Spirit draw us to evangelize and reach out to those who He is wooing?

I think the answer to that is yes. But the problem is not programs that we're missing in churches entirely, although obviously it is valuable if we have apologetics, but we have a church that's steeped in formulas and process and religion instead of relationship.

Now I say all that because the next topic that we have for this week and next week is dealing with the issue of the resurrection of Christ. And if there's ever a historical event that matters to our faith, this is in parallel of importance to the birth of Christ, the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. We really need those two items coming together to have the faith that we have.

We're going to look at a subset of the issues that actually can be looked at when we talk about the Resurrection. I was telling my dad yesterday on the phone, I've got the Baker Encyclopedia of Apologetics, and in that is pages and pages and pages on the Resurrection alone and defending the Resurrection and looking at it from a bunch of different angles. We're going to look at a subset of those. If this is really piquing your interest and you want more, not only is that an awesome reference for apologetics, but it's got just really well thought out arguments.

We have issues that are historical, theological, sociological, psychological, and scientific that come from the resurrection. Science really hates the idea of the resurrection, right? Because it doesn't fit into the paradigm. It's not a testable hypothesis where you're like, all right, OK, we're going to resurrect him and see what happens. We don't get to do that. It's a supernatural event, but it has an impact on science.

So this morning, as we're going through this, Remember that we're only hitting a subset of that. And there's lots of things to explore and research. But as I was going through this, I found it very stimulating. And hopefully you'll find the same thing. So what we're going to cover this morning, we need to build on the foundation of what lessons we've brought and looked at before. So the first one, you'll see this bullet point here, and I think it's important.

History, how do we know what we know? If we don't have reliable resources for the resurrection of Christ, as a historically documented event, that's a problem. The Bible, how do we get it? It's not a reliable source. So sure, we have 75 copies of a thing, but it's fiction. That doesn't matter. or evidence for Christianity outside of the Bible? Is the report of the New Testament reliable in corroborating with other historical events? And is the Bible a myth?

So we're going to take all of the topics there and we're going to kind of focus those together on the resurrection. So the next, you've got three bullet point paragraphs there. The next one, the New Testament documents, when assessed according to the three classical tests of historiography, easily meets or exceeds the marks of historical veracity of that for any other ancient document.

So, why does it matter if it's historically reliable? The historiography is reliable for the resurrection? I got a lot of smiles. That doesn't show up on the tape as much as if you have an answer. The reality is that if it's not historically recorded, what would that make it? If we have, you know, 300 years later, we have this story that was passed down.

Then you can start getting into the world of mythology, right? But the historiography, we looked at that, how do we understand what is historical? Are the accounts recorded in the New Testament first-person in many cases? Or interviews with first-person witnesses?

So we have very real, historically viable sources for this. That's the historiography. And there are multiple witnesses. So that matters a lot. So when we start talking about Jesus being resurrected, a lot of people will say, well, somebody made it up after the fact. They did a phenomenal job of constructing a cast of characters that would never be put together.

So the historiography, definitely important. the historical context given, names cited, geographical places named and put together, all of that would be verifiable by the people that were being told these things in the letters, in the writings that were being passed around. So if you had a document that came through that was proclaiming religious or spiritual truth, and it had a bunch of geographical and chronological and historical figure problems in it, do you think you'd hold on to that and make copies of it and pass it around? No, you're not going to do that. It might include some miraculous content, such as the resurrection, such as healing, such as demons being cast out, but that doesn't mean that it's not believable, you have a lot of context here that starts to build up as evidence.

And the last point in this list here is, any statement to the effect that Christ's resurrection is simply a myth or a legend does not hold up to a broad spectrum of comparison studies regarding the development of real-world myths and legends. When people take a skeptical argument and they say, oh, a lot of the New Testament was written hundreds of years later and kind of forced back into the time period, that just doesn't hold. It doesn't stand up.

The reason they're saying that is because they want, again, this myth or legend strategy to try to subdue the Christian faith. But that's not historically true. The slander that they're bringing forth is motivated by an agenda. They're trying to get you to stop believing in Christ because there's a better, more rational way, right? There's the agenda. And yet those people believe in evolution.

Yeah, which sounds kind of mythical and legendary. So those are all issues dealing with the historiography and the historical nature of the New Testament because we want to have that as a starting point and a foundation Because when we talk about the resurrection, it's very divisive. It definitely makes people angry if they don't believe in Christ, and it makes people angry if they believe in some other religious view, like Islam teaches that Christ was a prophet, but they teach that he did not die on the cross, And that was something that was not historically reliable. Well, that matters a lot.

I mean, to us, obviously, for our salvation, but for them, for their salvation. Oh, I can believe in Islam, it's not a problem for me to believe in Islam, because Christianity got it all wrong. They had a prophet, and then somebody screwed it up. But if you can start to go back and look and see the reliability of what's there, in fact, and I can't think of the guy's name. Dad, what's the Muslim teacher that you turned me on to that was talking about apologizing, or not Muslim, former Muslim whose grandparents were both...

Abdul Qureshi. Yeah. He has written a book called Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus. Yeah. And there's a whole series from him on YouTube. Definitely recommend it for watching just to have an awareness of how to reach out to Muslims. But one of the things that was powerful in that was he talked about being raised up with this idea that the resurrection was unverifiable and unreliable as a historical event and he met a guy in med school who was a believer and they had this very real heart-to-heart conversation and then he started to research it and dig into it because he wanted to show his friend how wrong he was only he said he came up realizing after seeking to disprove the resurrection and the life of Christ that suddenly it was very hard to do that and it was a very reliable historical event that's a very substantial thing But talking about that this morning, it's definitely important to realize that there's a lot of evangelistic value to be able to defend this and understand it. All right, so the next header section we have here is the disciples' expectations. Let's ask this. What do the disciples expect when Jesus comes up and he meets them and he says, hey, come follow me?

What are they expecting? Stan? The kingdom. They are expecting the Kingdom. They are expecting to defeat Rome. Earlier than that, we have these miracles that are taking place, and we have this person of Christ shows up, and he's definitely different, right? He's not like some of the other rabbis. But their expectations were not that Christ was going to die on the cross. for them and be resurrected and do that, he was going to come in and usher in the kingdom. It was going to be awesome. You should have imagined what they imagined. It was very exciting. It just wasn't what happened, right?

So Christ was not simply fulfilling long-standing and deep-seated desires of the disciples. So imagine again from the skeptic's position of, oh, someone went back in and wrote this in. Would you write in a bunch of disciples totally befuddled? Would you do that? I mean, it might make for some interesting tension in literature, but I don't think you'd go to the depths and detail that is put in here or in the scriptures, not in this handout, to have such tension and difficulty in the expectations.

At the top of page 2, the Gospels repeatedly record the nature of the expectations among the disciples as to who Christ was, and that record was not consistent with Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection, or even the range of possibilities the disciples were considering immediately prior to his ascension. So this morning in this class I'm really excited because we get to spend a lot of time in scripture. We've talked a lot about philosophical things, but now we're at this particular lesson, we get to spend a lot of time on the scripture.

There is Matthew 16, 21 and 22. From that time, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed and be raised up on the third day. Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, God forbid it, Lord, this shall never happen to you.

That is... There are so many things wrong with that situation, right? Here's Christ saying, this is what the Father... He's a rabbi, right? He's the teacher, He's the leader, He's the one that's supposed to be guiding them and taking them through this. He's done miracles in front of them. He's taught them things. And He says, I have to go be killed and persecuted. Peter's like, THAT'S NOT GONNA HAPPEN! That's why I love Peter, right? No filter, right? But even their expectations after his death and resurrection don't fit into that. So let's take a look at Acts chapter 1 verses 1-11. I'll go ahead and read that out loud so that you can follow along.

The first account I composed, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after he had by the Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles whom he had chosen. To these he also presented himself, alive after his suffering, by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over a period of forty days, and speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God. Gathering them together, he commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised, which he said, You heard of from me. For John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. So when they had come together, they were asking him, saying, Lord, is it at this time you are restoring the kingdom of Israel?

Again, expectations. Still there. Still hungry. Still waiting. Alright, Jesus, you're not going to die. That's crazy talk. And then he dies. Okay, well that wasn't part of our plan, but still our plan. Still the plan. Still is the kingdom coming. The disciples had no expectation for the resurrection. They had expectation for the kingdom. And even after the resurrection, expectation of the kingdom. Now, it was not unreasonable to expect the kingdom, because that is a thing that is coming. We know that prophetically that's an expectation. But Christ was just saying, wait, God's going to do something. And even still, they're like, yeah, the kingdom, right? It's just, they're locked in.

As a kid, my dad told me about the Gila monster. It's a lizard type thing that lives in southern Nevada. that once it bites onto something it gets like lockjaw and it doesn't let go of it. And as a kid I was always afraid that if we were in the car someday there would be a Gila monster when I had to go out to the bathroom or something and it would bite me, right? And they'd have to surgically remove it or something. But the disciples were the same way. They had lockjaw. They were Gila monsters on this kingdom thing and they weren't prepared for what was going to happen.

In verse 9, after he had said these things, he was lifted up while they were looking on, and a cloud received him out of their sight. And they were gazing intently into the sky while he was going. Behold, two men in white clothing stood beside them. They also said, Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will come in just the same way as you have watched him go into heaven. The kingdom is coming. He is going to come back.

But now we have this big gap, because their expectations have not been met. Even after the resurrection, even after that, their expectations aren't there. All right, so if the disciples came up with the story after Christ died, they were weird. They were really messed up, right? If this is all being pushed back into the context that the skeptic says it is, this isn't how you would do it.

This is bizarre behavior. But it does fit into a historically Jewish perspective, right? There's historicity to this. This is not shocking from a Jewish perspective and a Jewish leaning. It just doesn't fit into the backwards shoving it into place context. The next section here is the disciples radically change character. And this to me is a very compelling argument. The resurrection happened. If it's myth, If it's fictional, why did the disciples' behavior change so radically?

Stan? And I think along with that, what did they do when Jesus was raised and before he came back? They went back fishing. They went back to their previous jobs. And if this was a mess, would that not have been what they would have done? I mean, they wouldn't be out there preaching. They would be back in their business doing what they did before.

They would have just gone back, oh, we lost our rabbi in a really horrible, gruesome death. And we'll go fish. We'll go fish, we'll go do the thing. Or Matthew, go tax collect. Everybody loved Matthew. But nobody did that. That's what's huge. went back to what they previously did? Well, during the 40 days Christ interacts with them, and they actually do, they are fishing in the case, but they didn't go back to that long term.

Their life and their behavior and what they were, the great commission that they were sent out to go do, they went and fulfilled. So the first sentence under this section, the disciples' character changed radically from what was pictured in the Gospels to what we see pictured in the books of Acts in the New Testament epistles. How much of what happened during the Gospels is reflective of the lifestyle and the character of their behavior after the resurrection and the initiation of the Church in Acts chapter 2? It's a radical departure. Before, fishing, collecting taxes, doing various things. After, healing people, raising people from the dead, going out and traveling across this Roman Empire preaching the gospel, reaching out into Asia.

That doesn't sound at all like previous behavior, which you would certainly not have with a rabbi strategy, if he was just a rabbi, or just a good guy, or just died. And we're going to talk about that at the end of this lesson. Don't get ahead of us, Wayne. I was thinking about how a person's prior worldview and perception colors how they interpret things.

Here's Lazarus, raised from the dead, back to this life, about a week before Christ himself was resurrected. So the Jewish leaders discover that Lazarus has been raised, and what do they want to do? Instead of saying, oh wow, this Jesus really is a miracle worker, they start setting up a plot to kill Lazarus.

It's like, no, we can't handle this evidence. We can't have this walking around. The nature of resurrection, whether it's Christ or Lazarus, or the people that says other people, the dead were raised after Christ's resurrection, that's shocking and disturbing. And if you've got an agenda, it's even more shocking and disturbing. So let's take a look at this Matthew 26 passage here.

Then Jesus said to them, You will all fall away because of me this night. For it is written, I will strike down the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered. But after I have been raised, I will go ahead of you to Galilee. But Peter said to him, Even though all may fall away because of you, I will never fall away. Jesus said to him, truly I say to you that this very night before a rooster crows, you will deny me three times. Peter said to him, even if I have to die with you, I will not deny you. All the disciples said the same thing too. And then in 2656, but all this has taken place to fulfill the scriptures of the prophets.

Then all the disciples left him and fled. So we have this prophetic event, but it's a prophetic event that records failure. It shows this weakness of these disciples that if I were trying to record a historical event that you should believe in, I might, if it was from a selfish, carnal, earthly perspective, I might cut out some of this, pretty it up a little bit. Who wants to follow the disciples who ran away like a bunch of chickens? Well, as it turns out, I do, but it's because they didn't stay chickens, right? So he keeps going here, moving on to the top of page 3. Once Christ had been resurrected and ascended, the disciples from Acts 2 on displayed a radically different character than that seen in the Gospels.

A radically different character is something that we cannot explain from natural causes. There's no psychological explanation for, yes, this person just totally changed their entire behavior and their lifestyle radically like this. You don't get this. There's no explanation for this.

So let's read Acts 4.13-20 here.

And even if seeing miracles and seeing the things that Jesus did was all that was necessary to change his character, then the Pharisees and so many of the other people would have also changed. But it's a very specific, very limited group of people, even though it becomes larger and larger, that are changed. And in many cases, it's not the upper people. It's still open. And that's the reverse of what should happen. If it was meant. Right? Yeah, it would be completely convenient. We see political convenience introduced to Christianity years later. And that becomes a real problem, right?

But Acts 4.13-20, now as they, the Sanhedrin, observed the confidence of Peter and John and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus. And seeing the man who had been healed standing with them, they had nothing to say in reply. But when they had ordered them to leave the council, they began to confer with one another, saying, What shall we do with these men? For the fact that a noteworthy miracle has taken place through them is apparent to all who live in Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it." We cannot deny it. Here is a historical conference between these leaders in Israel, and this has happened publicly.

Because this is right after Pentecost, and they're there at the temple, if I have my chronology correctly here. And so if you're in the temple, or you're at the temple, and there's a public healing, It's not just Peter and John that were there. Right? It's not just the two guys, or the three guys, the healers and the guy who goes, Oh, I got healed miraculously! They're surrounded by people who see, He got healed miraculously. So they're a little stressed. This did not go according to their strategy, and how they thought things were going to go.

But in verse 17 it says, But so that it will not spread any further among the people, Now here's the thing that I think is just kind of callous and wicked. This is not resurrection focused, so it's a little rabbit trail. But if you're the spiritual leader of a nation, of a people, of all Jews theoretically in the world, hiding the miraculous work of God seems maybe counterproductive. just maybe, right? So they don't want it to spread. In verse 19, And then they had summoned them, and they commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus.

But Peter and John answered and said to them, Whether it is right in the sight of God to give heed to you rather than to God, you be the judge. Pretty good answer. I think that puts things in context. In verse 20, For we cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard. Why did their character change? Why did their behavior change? Because they had seen and heard Christ, the resurrection. They had seen and heard that behavior, and they're not going to stop talking about it. How does John open up 1 John? What is it that he says in the very beginning of 1 John? Louder, I'm sorry. We're telling you about the things which we've seen and heard and touched. He goes through the senses.

That's a very real resurrection, a real life, a real Jesus Christ, and it demands that they behave differently. It also is reflective of another truth, which we looked at in Acts chapter 1, that the Father was going to send the Spirit. The Spirit empowered and enabled them to talk about these things, and reoriented the focus of their lives. So this resurrection is very hard to ignore based on the historical shift in the behavior of the disciples. I'm sorry, I'm going to look at the clock real quick.

So let's take a look at Acts 4.27-31, which is just this next set of verses here. For truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the people of Israel. Okay, we have geography and we have historical figures. Again, if this was not a reliable witness, we could have thrown it out already, but those are historically accurate things.

To do whatever your hand and your purpose predestine to occur, and now the Lord take note of their threats and grant your bond servants may speak your word with all confidence. By your Holy Spirit, cause us to speak boldly and confidently Because we know this is the thing that we're supposed to be doing, which is not any part of the characteristics of a fisherman. Right? This is not the characteristics of, well, maybe it is of a tax collector, because you've got to kind of lie your way through that tax collecting thing the way that the system was in the Roman culture, right? In verse 30, while you extend your hand to heal and signs and wonders take place through the name of your holy servant Jesus, I guarantee you signs and wonders were not part of fishing or tax collecting, right?

And when they had prayed, the place where they had gathered together was shaken and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God with boldness. Big shift in character and change in behavior. One can read through the book of Acts how these men changed from scattering cowards who denied even knowing Christ to men who boldly proclaimed His death, burial, and resurrection, even to the point of proclaiming it at the cost of their lives. The next thing that is important and impressive to remember with the disciples in following Christ, either before and after the resurrection, is their individual backgrounds.

So I mentioned Matthew is a tax collector. Everybody here, I think, is at least moderately well aware of the fact that tax collectors were nowhere near the top favorite people in all of Israel. Tax collectors, heavily hated, Basically, they were perceived as the extortion arm of the Roman Empire inside of Israel. So being a Jewish tax collector, you were treated as a betrayer. Not only were you a betrayer, but you took one of the most valuable things that Jews had, which was their possessions, which had been plundered already. So now you're taking their possessions, you've betrayed the nation, Yay Matthew.

Everybody likes Matthew, right? But then we see that Matthew is actually interacting with other disciples just fine. The disciples know that Matthew is a tax collector. This is not a secret. It wasn't like Jesus was like, hey listen, your name is Levi, we're going to call you Matthew and we're going to just kind of whitewash over the tax collector-ness. No, Matthew is a tax collector.

And then we see at the top of page four, Simon the zealot is on the second paragraph there. The zealots were a part of a group who at the time were most radically dedicated to overthrowing the Roman government. So he wasn't a zealot for God, per se. When I hear zealot, that's what it makes me think of. Man, he was a zealot for God. No. He was a zealot for Israel nationalism. We're going to overthrow the Roman government. And so Matthew, or Levi, represents the Roman government. And Simon represents Israeli nationalism.

And the zealots would have been threatening not just mildly, like life-threatening, the Roman agents, which Matthew was. Except for that, following Christ, they set aside those things. After Christ dies, if you think, oh well, this Jesus thing didn't work out for us, Simon the Zealot would have Probably gone back to, well, I'm going to hate Matthew, and in fact, probably really knew where Matthew lived, so now he could go take care of that problem very directly. But that didn't happen. Revolts against Rome nearly always started in Galilee. Okay. So the Simon the Zealot, you know, was in the hotbed of revolt against Rome. Yeah, so there he was in the festering of revolution.

The worst of it, yeah. So the idea that the resurrection didn't happen doesn't fit in with that sociological situation, which would have been very severe. We'd have known about it. In the history books, even if Christ hadn't shown up, we would still be able to go back and look at history. And we'd say, wow, look at how these Israeli nationalists led these revolts. And we can actually read about that. I'm sorry. I should state that in the factual, actual state.

And yet, they worked together. And they were the disciples. And there's no record of them parting ways. and hating one another again so they were unified in Christ. Stan? And additionally, if it was a myth or if it was something like out of Shakespeare or whatever, you would see a lot of emphasis on the disciples and what they did and where they went and how they changed in their character and the focus would be on them as the actors in this particular story. But it's not. It's on God. It's on Jesus. It's on the gospel. The disciples just basically fall out, and we don't even know much about it.

That's the reverse of what would happen if it was a mythological story. We would build up grandeur, but instead it is focused on the gospel and Christ and what's going on that is spiritual truth, not building up of these names. which would have been politically convenient. But that's not the direction that things went.

This last section here is the cost of the disciples' claims. And this is what Wayne brought up earlier. The disciples persisted in their claim to the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ in the face of great opposition. Who is the first martyr in Acts? Stephen, I think. Yeah. I was like, oh, no. I've got it wrong. But Stephen, I think we could say is the first martyr at least recorded in the book of Acts.

And what is the whole interaction when we read about Stephen? What's going on in that interaction? He won't deny his faith and the thing that is fascinating about this account of Stephen is that he talks about Christ and then the last thing he says, what's the last thing he says? Louder? I see heaven open. He's right there, he's focused on the Lord again. The resurrected Lord. The ascended Lord. And that's a powerful situation there. Each one of the disciples, except for John, as far as we know, died a gruesome death.

Would you die for a lie? That's a really, really important question. Dying for a lie is a really, really big deal. One person dying for a lie is a big deal. But when you're talking about a dozen people, and then really frankly and honestly beyond that, because Stephen, I don't believe he's a And along with that, would you die for the truth? Well, yeah, that's a good question.

I think it's much more rational to describe someone dying for truth than it is dying for a lie, right? But the reality is that there was a massive amount of persecution and torture that came along with being an apostle, with being a follower of Christ, going out and preaching the gospel. How many of you find inspiration and hope and encouragement during times of trial when you read Paul's 2 Corinthians 11 listing of all the things that he suffered through. If you don't find any encouragement from that, look at the faithfulness of this guy who was lashed 39 times. Remember why it was only 39 times? Why is it only 39 times?

Yeah, in case you miscounted, the Jews were very worried about breaking the law, so they made new rules around the law, right? The buffer laws. So you get 39 lashes instead of 40, just in case. That way, if you're off by one, it's only 38 or 40, but you're still within the range of acceptability, right? So Paul is in shipwrecks. He's persecuted.

God's faithful, God preserves him, but he's willing to go through those things and suffer because of the truth of the gospel, because of the truth of the resurrection, even though he had been an enemy of the resurrection. There's some substance here. Steve? I guess I could expand and say that Jesus Christ died for a lie. Anybody outside of Christ Well, that's true. But are they doing it volitionally? Are they doing it... Yeah. But these are people saying that they were witnesses of it. And that's the contrast.

But it is true that there are people who will die for a lie, but they don't believe it's a lie. But the thing is, I'm saying if I go into a court of law and I perjure myself, over something because it's politically convenient for me, I'm going to behave a certain way. But it's politically convenient for me, or whatever is there. But if you say, there's the gallows, or there's a cross, or there's lethal injection, or a firing line, or whatever it is we're going to say is my proposed demise if I don't renounce something, it's a very different threat. for the historicity of something, all you have to do is say it's this thing, because you're one of the proponents of it at the time of the birth of the church.

That's a different sort of thing. But I see what you're saying, but I think that the ability at that point in time for the historical truth to come out, if they were lying, would have been substantive we would have gotten that recorded somewhere and the church would have fallen apart more than likely. Stan?

Would you say Randy that in both those cases with Christians and also the example of the Muslims here and probably Jim Jones and a lot of other situations and also the deal at Waco they're spiritually motivated whether it's the Holy Spirit or whether it's other spirits because the rational mind would not do that. It has to be greater than the rational mind to die for anything. So there's some spiritual component. I would argue that the mind isn't very rational, but that's a different story.

I got all caught up in the Jim Jones comment, because I think there's some evidence that proves that it wasn't It wasn't a group sacrifice. But the issue is, in part, would you die for a lie? In most cases we could say, in general, no. In the case of someone dying for their faith as a martyr, that's an act of faith. And that's a different situation. I think that's really what Steve was getting at as well. But the concern of this statement is more in you have the chance, if it's a lie, and you're just trying to promote it for a political reason, which would be a skeptical argument, you'd have the chance to bow out.

You'd have the chance to back up and say, no, I don't I don't actually think that Jesus was resurrected. I really don't want to die. Sorry for the inconvenience. I apologize, Israel." Or Gentile idol-makers, or whatever it is that you're backing out on. But they're not. They're not backing up and retracting their statement. They're holding on to that statement.

As the bearers of the gospel, they're in a different position, the disciples or the apostles are in a different position than we are today as believers of the message that they brought. We're believing their story. Part of why we believe their story is the veracity of it, and part of why we believe their story is because they were willing to die for it. That is an element of looking at how reliable is that. Roy?

I just couldn't help but observe that we're in a spiritual realm, all of the veracity that you've been talking about and all the evidence that we have is a physical veracity of, yeah, the evidence is that they were changed, but how were they changed?

Were they changed spiritually? That's when Christ gathers them together in that Acts chapter 1 passage. He says, wait here, the Father is going to send the Spirit. Which affected the material world. It empowered their behavior and it changed. Yeah, the spiritual had an impact on the material for sure.

Hopefully, unless we have that Greek mind where what we believe has no bearing on what we do because we're thinking in a carnal way. But as believers, as abiding believers, what we believe changes our behavior. The spirit convicts us and draws us there. I'm thinking that the fact that we believe means nothing because people believe all kinds of things.

The thing that matters is that the life of Christ, something has happened to us. We have something that others around us don't have. We have the life of Christ. And the Spirit witnesses with our spirit that this is a reality. We know. How could we, how could I, stand up and say, no, this thing that God did isn't real. That's my foundation, the fact that it's real, not just the fact that I believe it. There is a life change in the spiritual element.

The focus of this lesson has been predominantly on, is this a rational thing when the skeptic comes to us, but the reality is that the impact of the resurrection and the life that comes from that is much deeper than that. And that's why when I started the lesson, I said, what are the historical and the theological and the sociological and the psychological and the scientific impacts of the resurrection? There's more than just those five things. The impact of the resurrection is universal.

And that impacts our behavior. It impacts our relationships. It impacts the way we look at science. It impacts the way we look at the world. our interactions with one another, and our behavior is part of that, but it's the spirit moving in us that causes those things.

Before you came in, and actually I was sad that you came in right after I asked the question, but I asked the question, I was talking about, shoot, I didn't write down the question, so I'm trying to remember the exact way I worded it, but there's a growing number of churches that are dwindling down to smaller numbers, and the gospel isn't being preached, and the number of believers is shrinking in this country, according to polls and statistics. Why is that? And part of it is, I think, a very solid and real answer is that there's a number of believers who are not abiding and walking in the Spirit, and therefore, because of that, the gospel isn't preached. The reality of the Christian faith is not seen by the world, and we have this void, this vacuum, and so they follow secularism or various other world religions. But the spirit moving in us is a very foundational element of how the Church exists and how it moves forward in history.

I want to touch on that reality is Christ. And from God's perspective, Christ revealed reality, grace of truth, or reality came from Him. And we enter into that reality by His grace, by believing what God has revealed about Himself. How great is it? It's great that we can enter into this true reality of Christ himself that the world can't see. All they can see is the effects of us entering into it.

They change lives. They change the perspective we have of each other. When they see our love for one another, they say, hey, you've been with Christ. Yeah. It's a very different It stands out. It's a very different life. And it's a different reality. That sounds almost new-agey, but I think you know what I mean. It's a reality that's based in Christ rather than a reality that's based in existentialism or post-modernism.

Well, they're false constructs, pitched and advertised with the right jingles and the right... Yeah. As lies. Yeah. Alright, that's the second bell. Any other thoughts or questions before we close in prayer? Yeah, I want to go back and correct what I said.

I might leave the wrong impression with someone that when I said that the fact that I believe this means nothing. It does mean everything to the Lord. But to the people that might be questioning me and trying to persecute me, it means nothing to them that I believe something, because everybody believes something, even if they believe it themselves. I would also like to say that if it was a man, then they would start from knowing basically everything that they wanted to present and then present it through the course of time. But what you find with the disciples in the Gospels is that they're growing into their faith and into their knowledge.

And it's a progressive thing. It's not starting off with the truth, the entire truth, and then presenting it. It's growing into that truth. You just can't, I mean you just wouldn't be able to do that ahead of time and make it work. It's just like from Genesis to Revelation, it's a progressive revelation. I mean it's from outside the book itself that it's written to reveal a progressive truth.

Yeah, there's this sequential event. And next week, we're going to talk about, there's a second round in the next lesson where we'll talk about the ability to readily verify the disciples' claims, the lack of viable objections, the records by and about the witnesses, the nature of Jewish burial practices. So we'll get into more material.

But the resurrection is a powerful thing. And it's life-changing, literally. And it's life-giving, literally. And it's a resurrection we're identified with, and that right there is pretty powerful. Let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father, thank you for this time that we've had to study your word and talk about this resurrection and its impact on the disciples and our own lives. Just pray, as we go into the coming week, if you don't return, or if Christ doesn't return, that we would be focused on Him and walk and abide by the Spirit so that we may be ready and able to serve at any moment. In Jesus' name, Amen.