Defense of the Faith - The Resurrection of Christ Part II

I was excited about the lesson last week, and I have to say that this week I'm even more excited. As I was looking through the scripture passages, and if you've looked at the handout at all, you'll see there's lots and lots of scripture passages in here. We're not going to read all of them because there's so many that it would take way more time than we have for this one class.

All that to say that If last week didn't convince you that the Resurrection was a historically significant event that seems to be provable based on historical context, then this week will hopefully seal that even more. The first headline that you see here on the top of this page is the ability to readily verify the disciples' claims. So when someone heard the gospel message, they heard the simple message that Christ died on the cross, was buried and resurrected according to scriptures, resurrected on the third day according to scriptures, and they believe that, that's nice, but if they weren't sure, That's awesome that they're believers, but if they weren't sure, they could go verify it. They could go look and talk to a bunch of people. And so this first page is a bullet point list of witnesses that could be interviewed.

And we're not going to delve into every nuance of each one of them, but we will take a quick look at each one of them. I think it's important to recognize that the skeptical or secular perspective is often that we don't get to have any witnesses or anybody involved but the disciples, and they had a political agenda or a religious agenda. But when we look at this list, you'll find that the disciples are on the list, but they're not alone on the list. So let's take a look at who someone at the time of the writing of the New Testament could have gone. Not just the writing of the New Testament, but the time of the New Testament.

So the first item on here is the testimony of Jewish and Roman forces who arrested Jesus and were involved in some aspect. How many of you remember in the Garden of Gethsemane that they brought a slew of soldiers to arrest Christ? It wasn't one soldier, it wasn't two soldiers, it was a bunch of folks, including the Pharisees. So the arresting party was pretty substantial.

That would mean that there would be a number of people you could actually interview that were witnesses and were involved. So at this point in time, just with this first bullet point, there's already a large number of people that could be interviewed and asked. But as you can see with those scripture verses, there are some multiple chapters, so we're not going to read those out loud. But it's worth taking your time and reading those later on if you have some time to do so.

The second bullet point here is the testimony of eyewitnesses to the crucifixion, including the chief priests, Roman soldiers, Simon of Cyrene, and the women. If you saw Christ on the cross and saw Christ dying as a witness, you could verify that He died. We're going to take a look in a few moments at a Bible verse where the soldiers went and testified on penalty of if you lie, you're going to die, that Jesus was dead. But they saw Him on the crucifix or on the cross and being crucified. And so now we have a larger group. Now where is Golgotha on the layout? If you remember in the picture, where is Golgotha? It's on a roadway that everyone can see.

Because what's the purpose of crucifixion? What's Rome telling those who come through? They're telling you don't mess with Rome, right? They're telling you this is someone who's a criminal and don't mess with Rome because we take justice seriously. It could cost you your life. So it's a public crucifixion, it's not a private, you know, in some private room. Today, if someone is going to be lethally injected or something where they have capital punishment, it's a private ceremony inside of a private room and there might be a few people who are viewing, but it's otherwise a very small private ceremony.

Rome didn't want to mess around with that. They wanted to make sure that everybody knew that Rome meant business. The witnesses to the crucifixion would have certainly been at least this, plus those who were going by and wanted to see the spectacle. Because let's face it, human beings love a spectacle, even if it's gory. So this is a real thing.

The next one here, and we'll take a look at the scriptures on this one, Luke 23, verses 50 through 56. the testimony of those who had carried out Jesus' burial, so Luke 23, 50-56. And a man named Joseph who was a member of the council, a good and righteous man, he had not consented to their plans and action, a man from Arimathea, the city of the Jews who was waiting for the kingdom of God. This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus and he took it down and wrapped it in a linen cloth and laid him in a tomb cut into the rock where no one had ever laid. It was the preparation day and the Sabbath was about to begin. Now the women who had come with him out of Galilee followed and saw the tomb and how his body was laid.

Then they returned and prepared spices and perfumes, and on the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment." So they were still trying, because remember that if you're going to be an observing Jew, you need to make sure you comply with the Sabbath, and it was a great concern that Christ was being crucified so close to the Sabbath. They really didn't want to have any anyone have to violate the Sabbath because the law was holy and Jesus was a terrible violator of the law in their eyes, right? So the Jews were worried about it, but these disciples, these who were following, still were able to comply. But it was, as far as we could tell, kind of a tight schedule to get Jesus' body prepared and be able to be buried. But they still complied with the Sabbath.

So now we have not just a handful of people, but the witness grows. The testimony of the four to sixteen Roman soldiers who guarded the tomb, which was sealed with pilot's seal. So this group is kind of interesting. How many of you would be inclined to think that these soldiers after the resurrection would want to be hanging around and be accessible and talk about how awesome it was that the rock rolled away and they failed at their job. So it's a good chance with this group that they probably were going to be a bit hush-hush. But let's take a brief look at Matthew 28, 11-15.

Now while they were on their way, some of the guard came into the city and reported to the chief priests all that had happened. And when they had assembled with the elders and consulted together, they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers and said, you are to say his disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep. And if this should come to the governor's ears, we will win him over and keep you out of trouble.

So even though they were trying to set up a lie, now I just want to point out for a second, these are the religious leaders of Israel who were really concerned about obeying the law so that they could be righteous, but they've already schemed and plotted a lie, and they're willing to bribe and politically manipulate the leaders of Rome. I'm going to go with these guys are a bit shady. If lying about who Christ was already wasn't condemning enough, now they're also overtly bribing the soldiers and willing to bribe the governor. So, not a big fan, personally, of this group.

But now we have more soldiers involved, and we have the chief priests. So we have even more people that have been added to the list of what's going on. So the next group in this bullet point is the testimony of the women and the disciples who saw the empty tomb.

This is quite frankly one of my favorite stories, and you've got to read it through all four Gospels to get the whole picture, but let's take a brief look at Mark 16, 1-8. One of the things I love about the Gospels is it's easy to put yourself in their shoes as they're going through these actions. And so for me, as I was preparing and studying this, I just kept going, wow, this is really cool. And hopefully you will have a similar understanding of things. So Mark 16, 1 through 8, when the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome bought spices so that they might come and anoint him.

Very early on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb when the sun had risen. They were saying to one another, who will roll away the stones for us from the entrance of the tomb? Looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled away, although it was extremely large. Entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting at the right, wearing a white robe, and they were amazed.

And he said to them, do not be amazed. You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who has been crucified. He has risen. He is not here. Behold, here is the place where they laid him. But go tell his disciples and Peter, he is going ahead of you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you."

They went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had gripped them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. They didn't shout it all the way through the town. They went, and they were pretty well freaked out. I think I might sort of sympathize with that, being that it's not every day that you see an angel, and it's not every day that the body of your Lord is missing. And if you're confused, imagine the confusion being amplified by an angel's presence, and it would probably be an intense scenario. So they take off to go find the disciples. So we have an ever-growing witness, but these are The two gals are the first witnesses to the idea of the resurrection.

And they were folks who could be interviewed, folks who could be talked to, folks who could share their testimony again and again. I guarantee you the emotional fervor involved with that experience would not lead them to forget details. You're going to remember everything that happened there. It's going to be burned into your memory of what's going on there. Then moving on, and this is one of my personal favorite facts, the testimony of the 500 or more people who saw Christ resurrected. So let's take a look back at Matthew 28. We looked at 11 through 15, so let's look at 8 through 10.

And they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to report to his disciples. And behold, Jesus met them and greeted them, and they came up and took hold of his feet and worshipped him. Then Jesus said to them, Do not be afraid. Go and take word to my brethren. Leave for Galilee, and there they will see me." So we have this going to Galilee, and what happens in Galilee? Fishing. Alright, there's fishing, and there's There's all these relationships that begin to be surprised by seeing the Christ resurrected. People that knew Him in His earthly ministry suddenly seeing Him in physical form.

The nature of this time is there's about 40 days that Christ is still on the earth before He is ascended, which is what we see in Acts chapter 1. So for 40 days, Christ is showing up to the disciples that are gathering together in different places. And one of the time, of course, Thomas isn't there, right? So he has to be doubting Thomas, so we have a good story and a nickname, right? But there were other disciples that were there, and they saw him in person.

Now, let's take a look at Luke 24, 50 and 51. This is the ascension of Christ. And that, to me, is a obviously a pretty remarkable and powerful story or illustration of the miraculous nature of what was going on at that time. So the testimony of the disciples who saw Christ to sin, 24, 50, and 51.

And he led them out as far as Bethany, and he lifted up his hands and blessed them. And while he was blessing them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven. And then I'll read 52 and 53, because they're awesome. And they, after worshiping Him, returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the temple, praising God.

So the ascension happens as Christ is blessing His disciples. And I think, first of all, getting blessed by the resurrected Christ would have been an intense thing to go through. And while He's doing that, He ascends up into the heavens. I would call that a pretty remarkable event. So now we have a resurrected Christ. He's shown up. He spent time with his disciples. And then he's ascended. And again, you could discuss this with the disciples. Not only was it written about, but they were available for discussion. So you could go ask them these questions. If you were skeptical, you could find out.

On top of that, the Jews had legal documents where they would store things. We would have the life of Christ recorded in his genealogy. That would have been at the temple up until 70 AD. And then the last bullet point on there, which I think is important to consider, is that a lot of these writings and a lot of these stories would have been geographically located.

And so you could go in and you could hear the story of something that Christ did and then go see the place and talk to it and there might be witnesses that are there too. So the relationships of human being to first source information was very real. When we talked about the historiography or how reliable do we know our history is, we talked about having first source witnesses. You could do an interview with a real-life person who witnessed it rather than it being 17 generations away. I think I remember reading about this somewhere, or somebody told me, somebody told me, somebody told me, it was very direct and reliable information.

And the geography was verifiable. Even today, in certain court cases, we send juries out to go observe certain things, or a judge might go out and observe certain things to validate that, you know, this is physically impossible, this couldn't happen here in this situation. Or this is how it happened, and you could observe and look for peculiarities.

How many of you have ever been to the JFK Museum in Dallas? Wow, I'm the only one. That is shocking. Of course, I lived there for five years. There's the museum that's there dedicated to the assassination of JFK. And as it turns out, the president of the seminary that I went to with Jessica, and also where my dad went, was a news film man who filmed there at the assassination.

So there are dozens and dozens of recorded interviews with Dr. Malkauch, he's passed away now, where people talk to him. And he taught some of the classes that Jessica and I took, so it was interesting because sometimes he would just, you know, we'd take a break and he would start talking about being a witness there, but he was a first person witness.

We could ask him, we could talk about it. And then we could actually go look at the, we could drive down to Dallas and we could go look and see the roadway and see the, we could observe those things. and say, is this valid? Is this a thing that took place? And those same qualities are true of what could be done with a testimony of Christ's death, burial, and resurrection with many, many witnesses. The next three paragraphs on the top of page two are fundamentally focused on the idea that if someone at the time that the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ took place had evidence to the contrary, it could have easily been aired. It could have been brought to the surface. It could have been brought to the attention of all kinds of people.

But we don't have any recorded contrary evidence. We don't have any recorded, well, okay, so here's what really happened. This is not what happened at all. The disciples are making stuff up. Here's what really happened. We don't have that. It's not there.

The Romans had all kinds of legal writings and they could have certainly prosecuted a bunch of people spreading lies about what happened and that the Roman government had failed to execute justice. Because that's what the resurrection is. The Romans tried to execute justice and then Christ was resurrected. That would have not been satisfactory for them. They would have hunted him down and finished the job if it was a thing that they could do. I'm going to read the whole of the third paragraph down here.

Both Jews and Romans would have had motivation to discredit the apostles' claims had any contrary evidence been available. The magnitude of the evidence available in Jerusalem within the first three decades of Christ's ascension would easily discredit the apostles' claims. Were anyone able to find such evidence? The total absence of the contrary evidence within these times speaks volumes.

Absence of evidence, of course, could be, you know, someone could argue that it's like the argument from silence or something like that, except for that we have all the arguments not from silence towards Christ's resurrection. And that's where it's not just an argument from silence, it's that there is none.

And that's significant. Let's take a look briefly at Acts chapter 2 verse 32. This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses. And who's speaking here? These are the disciples. We are all witnesses and we saw it. We're testifying and we're swearing that we saw the resurrected Christ. And so, even when pressed to shut up and to go away and to stop talking about the resurrected Christ, they wouldn't do it. They followed through and they stepped forward and they continued to share the gospel. Alright, so the next section here is the records by and about witnesses.

So, let's say that I create a scarecrow pretend person that's a witness. The skeptic says, these people didn't really see it. They're fake. They're not real. Well, if the skeptic tries to take that position, we can validate the veracity and the reality of who these disciples are. Again, they would have been witnesses, but we can find that their existence is not just mythically made up, and we invented these people to help sell a story. The reality is there.

If we look at the Gospel of Matthew, we can take a look at Matthew 9.9 and 10.3.

So Matthew 9.9, as Jesus went on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting in the tax collector's booth, and he said to him, follow me. And he got up and followed him. And then in 10.3, Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew the tax collector, James the son of Alpheus and Thaddeus. We've got this listing of the disciples that followed.

These are real people that were at real places that you could have gone and checked out the tax collector booth and you would have actually had a contract with Rome as Matthew saying, I'm going to bring Rome this much in taxes. Of course, that's why the Jews hated him because then anything he brought in past that was his own income.

So you're stealing from us, right? But he would have had a contract, there would have been a legal document and he would have had a place that he worked out of That would have been a known place and you could go ask people and you could go say, hey, was Matthew here? Was he a real person?

Or you could find out, you know, if there's some discrepancy, what that is. And then that error would be raised up and people would find out about, well, can't trust this Matthew thing. This is not real. But we don't have that. The Gospel of Mark, likely a witness, of things directly, so Mark 1452. But he pulled free of the linen sheets. Wait a minute, that's not right. I have a wrong reference here, so I'll have to look that up afterwards and fix that.

But Mark was an associate of Barnabas and a relative, according to Colossians 4.10, and Paul and Luke and Peter. So we have these people that were involved, and those are tied together. The Gospel of Luke, Luke was associated with Paul, and we can see those relationships there.

The Gospel of John, one of the disciples, Acts 1.13. The Book of Acts, written by Luke and an associate of Paul. 1 Corinthians 15, 3-7, written by Paul. So let's take a look at that. 1 Corinthians 15. This is familiar. At least I'm hoping it's familiar to you.

For I delivered to you, as of first importance, what I also received, that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day, according to the Scriptures. And that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve, and after that he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep. And he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. And last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared to me also.

So Paul, also a witness of Christ. Of course, that's part of the validation of an apostleship, right, is that you saw Christ. So Christ revealing of himself, his resurrected and ascended self would have been what qualified Paul as a disciple or as an apostle. So the witnesses we have records about, and we have these people that are tied together intimately with Christ, but they're independently verifiable.

When you watch the news, look at the kinds of sources that they have on some of the stories. And think about how we trust the news. I mean, obviously there's some skepticism. Oh, you're watching this channel? Well, that's a channel that I don't agree with their ideologies or something, so sometimes we'll have skepticism there. But often with news, we'll have...

That's okay. That's all right. This train is bound for glory. Wayne got all excited. But if you look at what's going on here, you see that there's real people that could be interviewed and we have multiple witnesses and they can talk about it in detail.

But when we look at the news, often the news would be like one person says a thing, that's the sound bite, and we all go, it must have happened, and we don't spend a lot of time doubting it. But the skeptic, the skeptic looks at all the records and all the accounts and what we have here and still says, don't believe it. they're more likely to watch the news and buy into what is there, because it confirms a pattern that they're familiar with, more than they would if they looked at the scriptures and evaluated what was in place. And at the bottom of page three, so the documents that we have are all either written by direct eyewitnesses of the facts or by those who would direct in substantial contact with those who are eyewitnesses. Each author of the above also had a substantial opportunity to be or become familiar with the specific places at issue to cross-check testimony among numerous witnesses and study, verify, and assess the contents of various public and private documents as well as inscriptions.

They could go look and see where Christ had been buried. They could go look and check out and take in the geographical and the historical and the sociological scenario, and it doesn't become a problem. So the historical veracity is strong there. Now we want to also take into consideration Christ was buried, right? He died on the cross and we read that passage where Christ was buried.

He was wrapped in the linen garment and then they put the spices on him. There's nothing like a dead body to need, you've got to do something with it or else it's going to be stinky, right? So the Jews had practices to try to help cover that smell. Rotting meat is gross. Rotting human is, I'm assuming, just as gross as other animals.

And so they had Jewish traditions and practices that were common at the time to bury Christ in a pattern that would be expected. So the Jews, by Mosaic law and its extensions according to tradition, had to bury a body by the sundown marking the start of the Sabbath, and the Roman centurion in charge was recorded as testifying to the fact that Jesus was in fact dead, allowing Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus to bury the body of Jesus.

So you don't just get to take any old body off the cross and bury it until the Roman soldiers have verified the death. And then they have to do this quickly. Again, we talked about the compressed timeline because they had the Sabbath coming and they really needed to make sure that before Friday sundown everything was taken care of because you can't be out and working on the Sabbath. Otherwise you might be stoned. which is really the opposite of what you want to be doing when you're trying to take care of the body of someone who's already just died.

The next point there, the body was prepared for burial by use of a substantial amount of myrrh, aloes, and then wrapped the body in linen burial cloths. This wasn't just Jesus. This was not something that would have been like, ooh, Jesus gets special treatment.

This was a regular practice. You could go verify it and you could probably even find the person who sold the spices and the aloe and the myrrh, right? I bought it at that shop over there. I had to haggle for a really long time because he wanted way more for the myrrh than I was willing to pay, right? You could talk about those things.

Burial was usually on a stone shelf carved into the rock, with there being a means of sealing the entrance to prevent disturbance, mostly with the intent of preventing animals from entrance, but at times also preventing the entry by other humans, in which case extraordinary measures were taken. In the case of Jesus' burial, it was noted that the stone over the entrance to the tomb was extremely large, which might be expected of a rich man's tomb.

Now, extremely large. Why is it extremely large? It's covering the hole, and it's a big hole. And why is it a big hole? It's a big hole because Joseph of Arimathea was a wealthy man, and he had a tomb you could actually enter, which is why they found the angel sitting on the stone, right? The angel was sitting on the stone slab inside of the burial chamber.

If you were poor, you might have a really small body-sized nook. which would require how big of a rock comparatively, right? So you've got this large stone as part of fitting into the narrative that's here. There's consistency. It follows through and there's not contradiction within the story.

From about 10 AD to 60 AD, within the environs of Jerusalem, the Jews buried their dead, initially in a tomb, and then placed the bones a year later in a stone box called an ossuary. OK, so when we were talking about the historical evidence and past classes, we talked about the ossuary of James, right? The brother of Christ, we've found his ossuary. So when he died a year later, they put the bones in.

And that's a powerful pattern and a practice. So they're going to do things when they bury Christ. Christ can tell them that he's going to be resurrected. They're still not really sure what to do with that, right? The disciples are like, we're going to do the thing we always do.

Wrap you in linen and put the spices on you. And somebody's probably already looking out to find the right ossuary to put Christ's body in in a year's time. Maybe you can get a good Memorial Day sale. I don't know what it is, but they're going to go get a 4th of July sale and get a good ossuary price.

In the last bullet point, their Jewish tradition held that a person was certainly dead after three days. So with Lazarus, it had been three days. So the Jews said, OK, if he's still not moving and we can't find a pulse, then he's dead. It's been three days. Well, with Christ, it had been three days. They were coming in on the three days. and then he's not there. Then the team is empty.

And that's significant. The next section here is on the character of the Roman military. One of the things I think is important to realize is that if you're the Roman government, you want everybody to be compliant, right? If you're the Roman government, you don't want to revolt, especially when you've come in and you've conquered this really rowdy group of Jews. You want to keep everybody in submission. And you want to keep that going on. So the Roman military, because they had been a conquering army and they had hundreds of years of conquering time, the Roman military would have certain practices and things that they would put in place that would actually prove out the veracity of things but also make it very difficult to fake things.

Like what do we read about The soldiers on their way from the tomb, what did they say? They went and stopped with the Jewish leadership, and what did they say? Not the military, but the... Well, the military, they said they gave an account, and what did the Jewish leaders say? What were they responding with?

Or to? They were responding to The fact that the Roman military had a very strong expectation of the behavior of what the soldiers were going to do and what the right way and procedures are. My brother-in-law David and his brother Abe are both in the army and if there's one thing that the army really loves, it's writing the rules and the practices that you will do and you'll follow those things over and over and you'll drill through them till they've locked them in your brain. because they don't want you to deviate from the pattern. This is what you will do. Guess what you're going to do? You're going to do the thing that's in this code here, and you're going to follow through these steps, and you're going to follow them to a T, because that's what we do, because we're the military. We can't break rank. We can't break form. We have to do these things. So the Roman military has very similar expectations for the soldiers, because they need to make sure that the outcome is always the same.

You can't have people almost dying on a crucifix. That's inconvenient, and some people might think, well, if I can just fake dead long enough, we'll fool the soldiers. They don't check. That's not what's going on. So at the top of page four, Scripture indicates that there were four Roman soldiers assigned the task of crucifying Christ, and those either side of them. One of them, a centurion. Their assignment was to carry out the crucifixion so as to bring about the maximum fear among the populace, standing guard to assure that the crucified man or woman was not rescued prior to death. So the soldier is there to make sure that they're not rescued and that they are dead.

So Christ wasn't kind of dead. He wasn't mostly dead. Sorry, that wasn't an intentional Monty Python reference. Christ was dead on the cross, certified by a soldier, because if he lied, his life was on the line, that he was dead. Death by crucifixion would normally take some days, since death was not by loss of blood or by direct injury to essential organs, but by suffocation, rather from the exhaustion of the thigh muscles and the extreme tension on each arm. But to the surprise of the Romans, Jesus died within six hours. of his crucifixion.

Let's take a quick look at Mark 15.25 and verses 34 and 37.

So Mark 15.25, it was the third hour when they crucified him, or about what we would call 9 o'clock.

And then The next verse is 34-37. We see, at the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, which translates, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? When some of the bystanders heard it, they began saying, Behold, he is calling out for Elijah. Someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed, and gave him a drink, saying, Let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down. And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. So it's been about six hours and Jesus dies.

Sorry, I'm a little emotional. It's a very stirring passage. That's abnormal, right? But Christ gave his life of his own will, of his own volition. Up there on the cross, He said, I'm ready to be the sacrifice. And he breathed his last. Six hours. So the Romans were a little put off, or surprised by that. It's like, this is not the normal procedure.

And so at that point in time, at verse 39, when the centurion who was standing right in front of him saw the way he breathed his last, he said, truly this man was the Son of God. But he was the soldier. He was the soldier there watching, guarding, being the military representative to make sure that Christ really was on the cross all the way to the end. And then verse 40. There were also some women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James, the less, and Joseph and Siloam. And so then they took him and they buried him.

But the soldier was there the whole time and he said truly this is the Son of God. He was fulfilling his duties. He would have made it very difficult. And now he says this is the Son of God. Now he's really not going to just let anybody take Jesus' body. He believes, okay? Your job is to take care of Jesus on the cross and make sure he stays there and make sure he dies and make sure he suffers. And he does. And the Spirit strikes him. But this is the truth. This is reality. Roy, you mentioned reality last week and I think that this is reality. Truly, this is the Son of God. So the Roman army definitely making it difficult to be skeptical. Definitely making it difficult to fake resurrection. Fake a crucifixion and pretend your way through this.

The last bullet point there is when the Jewish leaders concerned that something might happen to the body of Jesus appealed to Pilate to have the tomb of Jesus guarded. He authorized a guard and it's I see there's a note there about the Latin. It's the only time it's used in the New Testament. These would typically be at least four, but up to 16 soldiers under a centurion as with the crucifixion. These were to guard the sealed tomb, killing anyone who sought to break the seal.

They were supposed to stay awake. They were supposed to be fully, intensely engaged the whole time. No nap times. Not, well, we're all going to take you know, a good amount of time to sleep and we'll hear somebody trying to mess with this rock, it's big enough. No. Military standards are you stay awake and you're on post and we have no slacking.

Which is why when the resurrection happens and the angels show up and they get the snot scared out of them, they run to the Jewish leaders because they're like, hey, just so you know, this isn't going according to your plan and we'd like some money. taken a bribe, because now they know they're really in trouble. And so the Jewish leaders say, OK, we'll give you a bribe, and then we'll bribe your governor. But the military would not expect it. That would have been totally unacceptable behavior, right? Which is why they're on the run, which is why they're in trouble.

All right. That's the end of the lesson here. Are there any other questions, thoughts, things that? Pat? Yeah. On this account of the stone being rolled away and so on, it looks like there's a difference between Mark 16 and Matthew 3. Mark 16? Yes, 16 and 3. Okay. Except for the roll of stone away.

They saw that the stone had been rolled away over in 28. It sounds like there is a bigger quake. In verse 3 they say, who will roll it away, and in verse 4 he says, looking up they saw that the stone had been rolled away, although it was extremely large. They were concerned about, we're supposed to put on more spices, and we're going to have to get in there. So they're trying to figure out how they're going to get in and accomplish this task. Well, it sounds like I'm 28. Are you Matthew 28? Matthew 28.

It says there's a greater way for the angel of the Lord that descended from heaven came and rolled back the stone from the door and set it on. And in 4 it says, and the guard shook with fear. And in 5 it says, but the angel answered and said to the women, do not be afraid. So it sounds like the women were there when he rolled away the stone. What he's talking about in 1 through 4 in chapter 28 is the sequence of events that took place to cause that stone to be rolled away. The women don't come in until verse 5.

Well they were coming to look at the grave and then these things had happened. It's kind of like a parenthetical. Okay, so you're saying they haven't arrived yet. They haven't arrived yet. And when they get there, the angel is already sitting there. Which, if that's a parenthetical, that's how that is. If it's not, then we have a problem. But it looks like it's a parenthetical statement that's talking about what's going on. The stone's rolled away.

We don't have any interaction with the guards in the other accounts. And so here, the guards are freaked out and take off. Well, the other question he had, he says, go quickly and tell his disciples he has risen. And then in page, it says, so they went out quickly with great joy and ran to bring his disciples' word for his end. Mark, Kate.

They said nothing to anyone. They were afraid. They went and talked to the disciples, but they didn't talk to other people on the way there is how I would understand that. Because clearly, if they're in a state of shock, they're just making a beeline to get back to wherever they need to get. And they're not going to stop and talk to everybody which would have delayed their getting to the disciples, they're going straight there.

That's how I understand that. That account there at the tomb and that first interaction with the angel is pretty substantial. situation, because these are the first two human beings. And one thing that's not in the handout, but I think that is interesting, is that by Jewish tradition, the women couldn't technically be witnesses. You always have to have a man verify it, because, well, apparently they have a Jewish tradition that by today's standards is sexist. So the men have to come and check it out and verify that this is the case. But God, because he's God and he doesn't care about Jewish tradition, He shows it to the women first.

And I think that's cool. God's so counter-culture. Any other thoughts or questions? Otherwise, I think Brian's going to hit that second buzzer here any second now. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time that we have had to take a look at the resurrection and the historical veracity and the power of the life that we have in Christ. And imagine that that life is in us day to day. It's an amazing thing. Lord, we pray for your gospel to go out, that we may preach it and those you've called would preach the gospel and be a light and be able to offer the hope that you have and your spirit would draw them to you. And we thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.