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April, 2021 (Vol.55-No.4) |
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Preached by Dr. Gene Scott on March 30, 1986 This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses. Acts 2:32 JESUS DIDN’T DIE ON A FRIDAY, and He didn’t rise on a Sunday. Easter is a Babylonian heathen custom. Even the word “Easter” is a cognate of the name of a heathen goddess, Ishtar. My faith has always been centered on sound historical church doctrine. In fact, I was responsible for writing the doctrinal statement of one of the major denominations in this nation. I am not a legalist. There are legalistic cults in this nation that have returned to Sabbath-day worship, which is an absolute retreat from the teaching of the New Testament. The New Testament teaches that Jesus is the “Lord of the Sabbath.” God inspired the writer to the Hebrews to remind us that the Old Testament Sabbath has now changed in its function. Hebrews 4 says, “There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.” The Greek word translated “rest” literally means a “sabbath-keeping” or a sabbathing. Thus we could translate this verse, “There remains a sabbathing to the people of God.” God said in the Old Testament book of Leviticus, “These are the feasts of the LORD.” Literally, it says, “These are the set-times of the LORD,” and the list begins with the Sabbath. In the New Testament, Paul said that these set times were “shadows of things to come.” The “things to come” were Christ and the new covenant: the new way of salvation and the new way of righteousness. Christians don’t have to keep a certain day. Rather, we are “sabbathing” when we cease to rely on our own righteous works and we rest in the finished work of Christ. We are sabbathing when we are acting in faith. So any church that returns to keeping the Old Testament Sabbath day falls outside of the New Testament frame. To use Paul’s words, they have fallen from grace, because if they are relying on the law for salvation, they must perfectly keep the whole law, which no one can do. There is a certain kind of doctrinal hypocrisy in the established church when it comes to the holidays. The established church draws back from any groups that deny the central doctrines of the faith, such as cults that deny the Trinity. Though I believe in the Trinity, I am not sure if anyone really understands it. It is an article of faith, poetically embraced and not possible to explain logically in spite of hundreds of years of church council debates on the subject. But the point I am making is that some members of mainstream churches have judged others as cultic if they have the courage to teach the truth about the origins of Easter. But those same church members will traipse off to amphitheaters and mountaintops to keep a heathen festival which welcomes the rising of the sun! Easter is a heathen holiday. The word “Easter” occurs only once in the King James Version, in Acts 12:4, where it was used to translate the Greek word pascha, meaning Passover; so it is a mistranslation. The New Testament Christians never heard of Easter. The event we now call Easter, in which we commemorate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, was originally celebrated on the Passover. Jesus was keeping the Passover on the night He took bread and wine with His disciples. The ancient Passover feast was a “shadow of things to come.” If you follow a shadow far enough, you will eventually come to the substance that cast the shadow. Christ is the Substance, which is why Paul could say, “Christ is our Passover.” The early church commemorated the Resurrection on Passover, until the state-sponsored church met in a council and changed the date to the Easter holiday. The heathen Roman world was already celebrating Ishtar on that date; so the church leadership reasoned that if you can’t beat them, then join them. That was also their rationale for changing the date of the birth of Christ to correspond to a pagan holiday. Jesus wasn’t born on Christmas. He was born in the fall. It is about time for some churchmen to take their heads out of the sands of tradition and start telling the church world the truth. Many Christians say, “At least people think about Christ at Christmas and Easter, so we should all go with the flow,” but there is still the risk of making your children vulnerable because they will learn the truth someday. If you raise your children in traditions and don’t tell them the truth about the origins of the holidays, there is a risk they might learn it from a cult. And their reaction might be to embrace what the cult teaches and abandon the teachings of the historical church. That is one of the many reasons it is so crucial that the historical church have a reformation. More voices need to be raised to challenge the traditions and finish the work of reformation, so that young people growing up in churches don’t become disillusioned when they learn the truth. Now it is Easter time, and every year around this time I preach about the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is the basis for the Christian faith. It would be more fitting to have a Saturday evening service around sundown. But at least I am qualifying my preaching by pointing out that Jesus didn’t come out of the tomb on a Sunday morning. Christianity is based upon a fact. The first Christian preachers didn’t debate over some of the things modern scholars preoccupy themselves with. They didn’t quarrel over Greek diphthongs and adjectives. They presented a fact for which eyewitnesses could be assembled to testify. They didn’t have to worry over which words in the Gospels were really Christ’s words and which words should be omitted. The New Testament Christians didn’t have to worry about the doctrine of the Trinity. No one even thought about the issue. And they didn’t have to worry about whether they should be Baptist, Pentecostal, or Catholic. They were confronted with a fact that forced attention on a Man who claimed to be very unusual. And if Jesus were not what He claimed to be, then He was either nuttier than a fruitcake or an outright fake. If anyone came around today saying the things that Jesus said about Himself, he should either be committed to a mental institution or be exposed for the liar that he is. But if he claimed he would die and rise again on the third day, and if he did in fact rise, I would have to take another look at him. That was the central issue of Christianity in the early church. The Gospels had not been written yet. The first Epistles had not been written yet. The people living in that day were confronted with a fact of history. Now, all facts of history become relative when you can no longer be an eyewitness yourself, but exposure to the available evidence creates an unavoidable psychological reaction to that evidence. I lost my faith while I was in college because of certain unbelievable church traditions that were subsequently proven to be untrue. But I knew enough about Jesus Christ to make me unwilling to accept the substitutes that were being peddled in place of my faith. Jesus went around making impossible claims about Himself. This is not based upon any one particular translation or any particular set of Jesus’ sayings. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are collectively known as the “Synoptic Gospels” because they are similar in the way in which they record what Jesus said and did. Mark wrote the first Gospel; Luke and Matthew quoted portions of Mark’s Gospel. When you read the original Greek texts, you can see a change in style in certain passages where Matthew quotes from Mark, and you can see similar style changes in portions of Luke’s Gospel. But you will find other sections in all three of these Gospels which are similar yet differing in style from each of the three writers. These style changes gave rise to the belief that the writers also quoted from another document, known as they hypothetical “Q” document, which supposedly was circulated in the early church and contained an early record of the sayings and events surrounding Christ. It is also possible to identify a body of sayings that were preserved in the earliest church hymns. If you accept that Jesus was a historical person, you must name your source. And regardless of the source you use, you will find sayings of Christ that are organically a part of and inseparable from that source. And if you examine that source, you will find Him making ridiculous claims about Himself that no mortal man could make. Jesus seated all authority in Himself. Intelligent, sane people know that authority cannot rest in themselves. When someone makes an authoritative statement, we usually expect them to tell us the basis of that statement. Not so with Jesus. He went around saying things like, “You have heard it said unto you before in olden times, but behold I say.” Imagine if I had made such a bold statement as that. You would probably say, “Okay, but what do you base that on? What gives you that right?” Suppose that I replied, “I said it, and that’s all the authority you need!” How would you like to have to deal with someone like that? You might say to me, “You can’t possibly believe that you have all authority!” Now suppose I went on to say, “If you build on what I say, you build on a rock. If you build on anything else, you build on sand.” These are the kinds of claims that Jesus made about Himself. We don’t normally respect people who seat authority in themselves. Yet Jesus was the only respected founder of a religion who went around making these kinds of claims. Buddha didn’t seat all authority in himself. His message was, in essence, “I had an experience. It worked for me. Try it, and it will work for you.” Muhammad didn’t seat all authority in himself. He claimed that Allah had spoken to him in a vision. Of all the founders of the world’s respected religions, only Jesus expected everything He said to be taken as true simply because He said it. Jesus thought He was perfect. Again, this claim doesn’t rest on one isolated verse. Rather, it is organically woven throughout all of His revealed experience. He told us to not judge because we might be judged. No one feels comfortable judging other people, if they have any sense. You don’t know my heart and I don’t know yours. Yet Jesus looked at the Pharisees and said, “Blind guides! You strain out gnats while you swallow camels. You are like whited sepulchers, painted white on the outside, but inside you are full of stinking flesh and dead men’s bones!” Jesus told a parable of a Pharisee who stood and prayed, “I thank God, I am not like other people,” while some poor scoundrel cried out, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner!” Jesus said that the Pharisee’s prayer wouldn’t be answered, but the other man’s prayer would be. Jesus forgave sins. Who is any man to forgive someone else’s sins? How could I possibly forgive your sins? If I forgive enough of them, I will eventually name one that I am also committing. Now for purposes of this discussion, it doesn’t matter whether Jesus was actually perfect or not; the point is that He thought He was. We normally don’t make saints out of people who think they are perfect. There is one statement Jesus made that critics try to use to prove that He didn’t think He was perfect. A man came to Jesus and said, “Good Master,” and Jesus answered, “Why do you call Me good? There is none good but God.” So critics point to this exchange as proof that Christ denied His own divinity. No, He didn’t. When you read the whole passage in its context, it is clear that Jesus refused to let anyone call Him good unless they were also willing to recognize that only God is good. The purpose of His teaching was to prove that no man can be good, only God can be good, and a good God must redeem bad men. Jesus wasn’t denying His own divinity; if anything, He was declaring it! In other words, He was saying, “If you are going to call Me good, then recognize who I am! You are not good, but I am, because I am God.” Jesus talked about heaven with an insider’s view, the way you or I might talk about our own homes. He didn’t say He had received visions as Muhammad did. Rather, Jesus said things like, “Before Abraham was, I am,” and “I saw Lucifer cast down,” and “There is joy in heaven when a sinner repents.” No one outside of the church believes any of these things. They pay no attention to Jesus, the Man, and what He is actually recorded as having said in the Gospels. Most people outside of the church dismiss Jesus as merely another “good and wise” teacher. But those who call Jesus “good and wise” have never paused long enough to acknowledge how ridiculous these claims are if Jesus were merely a mortal man. Jesus talked about heaven as though He had been there and was going to go back. He said that He would go away, prepare mansions for us, and then come to get us and take us there. If I found myself enrolled in a college course where the professor started making these kinds of claims about himself, I would have checked out! I would have thought that any professor who made such claims was crazy. Jesus put Himself at the center of the religious universe. Every other respected founder of religion defined salvation or enlightenment by an experience outside of himself. The Gautama Buddha offered the Eightfold Path, an experience that he claimed worked for him. Muhammad joined others in worshipping Allah. Confucius based his claims on a logical analysis of society. But not one of these respected founders of religions ever made themselves the center of the religious universe. Only Jesus preached Himself. Again, you don’t have to rely on one verse of Scripture; this concept is found in everything He taught. He said, “I am the light. I am the water. I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved. If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.” Jesus did not come preaching an ethic apart from Himself; He came preaching Himself as the light of the world. The essence of His message was “Salvation comes only by Me.” Buddha didn’t do that. Confucius didn’t do it. Muhammad didn’t do it. Only Jesus taught that the key to eternal life was found in how you related to Him and His claims. Jesus said that there was something wrong with the whole world that could only be set right if He died in our place. None of us could make such a ridiculous claim; I could die and it wouldn’t save a chicken. Just think about this claim for a moment: the whole world was separated from God because of our sins, but Christ bought us all back by offering Himself as a ransom. Most Christians have heard this so many times that it doesn’t even register with them. People glibly say that Jesus was divine, without really understanding what they are saying. But imagine if someone you knew well had declared that his death would save the whole world. Such a man should be subjected to a mental examination! Furthermore, Jesus said that after He died, three days later He would come out of the grave. As C. S. Lewis said, when you analyze the claims of Christ, you are faced with a startling alternative: you have to conclude that Jesus was as crazy as a man who thinks he is a poached egg, or he was an outright fraud. Most people really don’t know anything about Jesus, and the proof is their readiness to accept Him as a mere man, a “good and wise” teacher, but not as supernatural. Jesus was either a nut or a fraud and not worthy of a second look – or, if He is what He said He was, then that is all the definition of God I need. If Jesus is the one and only morally perfect one, then He had the price to stand in for all of us. If He had an inside knowledge of the eternal world, which is our destiny, then He is the one who can take us there. If He has quite properly put Himself at the center of the religious universe, then I should follow Him. And if He died to redeem me, I can be thankful that all my sins are covered. And the claim of Christianity is He rose from the dead to prove that the Source of life can change me into what God intended for me to become. That is all I need to be a Christian. I don’t need a list of rules or the church’s traditions. Christ is enough. Therefore, I need to settle the matter as to whether He did in fact rise from the dead. How do you settle such a matter? Like any other historical fact, you must study it. Very few people are willing to run the risk of applying disciplined thought in regard to Christianity. Paul said, “If Christ be not risen from the dead, our faith is vain. We are liars, because we falsely testified that God raised Him from the dead.” In short, Christianity has no basis without the Resurrection, thus it has no meaning and we have no reason for gathering together at church today. The Resurrection is a subject that can be studied like any other historical subject, such as Caesar’s Gallic Wars. It is well worth spending the time to expose yourself to the available evidence. There are churches where people love to sing the song, “You ask me how I know He lives? He lives within my heart!” Unfortunately, the message of that song cannot prove anything to anyone. It is only a form of Gnosticism. It is setting your own personal experience up as a universal criterion of faith. But that is not how Christianity began. Christianity began with a historical person, doing historical things, and dying in a specific place. These facts must be presumed before you can talk about the Resurrection. In fact, you must always begin with some basic assumptions before you can logically discuss anything. For example, if you want to have a debate about how well I preached at church today, you must first assume that I exist and that I preached. And you must assume that there is a place called Faith Center in Glendale, California, and that there is a day called “today.” Certain things must be assumed before you can discuss other things. Likewise, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ presumes certain other things, and before we can have an intelligent conversation about the Resurrection, we must start with certain assumptions. Number one: Jesus lived. Why talk about the Resurrection if you don’t believe that Jesus lived? Even Tacitus, the heathen Roman historian admitted that Jesus lived. Even modern critical scholars no longer question that Jesus lived. But if I were to meet someone who didn’t believe that Jesus lived, then everything else I said about Christ would be irrelevant. Why bog down in an argument about whether or not He rose from the dead? But even if you don’t believe that Jesus ever lived, I think you would still agree in principle that it would be much easier to prove that He lived than to prove He rose from the dead. You don’t even have to believe in miracles to believe that Jesus lived. Number two: Jesus was crucified by the hands of the Romans and at the instigation of certain Jewish leaders who brought the charges against Him. Not all the Jews were to blame, but only certain leaders of that day, particularly the Pharisees. You might say, “I don’t believe that.” And I would say “Well, fine. Then I have an easier job.” There is no sense talking about the Resurrection if there wasn’t a means of death, and the fact that He was crucified is much easier to prove than His Resurrection. Number three: Jesus was considered dead. Notice at this point I didn’t say He was actually dead; for the purpose of this discussion, the assumption is that He was considered dead. You don’t normally put someone into a tomb unless you believe that they are dead! Number four: Jesus was buried in a known, accessible tomb in the city of Jerusalem. We don’t know with certainty where the tomb is today, but people in that day certainly knew. If you don’t believe that, I only ask if you would concede that if would be easier to prove that Jesus was buried in a known, accessible tomb in Jerusalem than to prove He rose from the dead. If all it would take to convert the whole world is these four facts, it would be a piece of cake. Even Jewish teachers will concede these facts. But these facts must be presumed to be true before you even start talking about the Resurrection. Number five: It was preached that Jesus rose from the dead, that He ascended, and that His tomb was empty. All three elements comprised the first Christian preaching. If you are not certain that these three things were preached, I am doing it right now, and it has been done from the beginning. In the eyes of the onlooking world, the church was finished when Jesus’ body was laid in a tomb and a giant stone was rolled into place to seal it. But suddenly, people were going about preaching that Jesus was raised from the dead, that He ascended into heaven, and that His tomb was empty. Would you agree it would be relatively easy to prove that these three things were all part of the first Christian preaching? I am not saying it would be easy to prove the truth of their message, but it would be easy to prove that they preached that these things occurred. Number six: The Jewish leaders were much more concerned about disproving the preaching and putting a stop to it than you and I could possibly be today. This is a natural deduction. For the Jewish leaders, there was much at risk if the preaching were true. Spiritual leadership can exist only where people have confidence in that leadership. Other kinds of leadership can exist on other bases; but if people lose confidence in religious leaders, those leaders would be out of a job. If, as we have already assumed, the Jewish leaders brought about Jesus’ crucifixion by declaring Him a blasphemer, and if in fact He rose from the dead, ascended and the tomb was empty, then they stood to lose more than a little face. They would lose their position; and in that stormy era of history, they might lose their lives as well. It was a bread-and-butter, life-and-death issue to them. Therefore, the Jewish leaders would be more psychologically motivated to disprove the preaching than some academic over 1,900 years later. This leads us to number seven: Every one of Jesus’ disciples was terribly persecuted for preaching this message. They were not persecuted over fine points of Christian doctrine. They were not persecuted for their belief in the Trinity. They were not persecuted as a result of a dispute over the proper method of baptism. They were not persecuted because of the ridiculous things that divide the church today. They were told to stop preaching the message that Christ rose from the dead and ascended, which put the stamp of divinity on Christ. And when they would not stop preaching that message, they were all persecuted, and many were put to death for their faith. If you need proof of these things, read Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. But again, it is much easier to prove that the disciples were persecuted for preaching this message than it is to prove that Jesus rose from the dead. Number eight: The tomb was empty. This is more of a logical deduction if you assume that the Jewish leaders were more concerned than we could ever be. If you assume Jesus was buried in a known and accessible tomb, it is just common sense: anyone could have gone to the tomb and found the body. That would be the surest way to shut up everyone who was preaching about the Resurrection. Jesus’ tomb became unimportant. For four centuries, no one cared where it was, because there was no body in it. It was only in later years, when relic worship and the infusion of heathen idolatry into the church had increased the importance of such things to the Medieval mind, that people went to the Holy Land to try to find His tomb. People still debate over the tomb’s exact location to this day. The Greek churches claim one area, while most Protestants identify a different area. Protestants go to the so-called Garden tomb made famous by General Gordon, and the rocky hill he identified as Calvary that is situated directly above a bus depot in Jerusalem today. Why would Jesus’ tomb be lost to history? There are all kinds of tombs in that land. You can find Abraham’s tomb, David’s tomb, and the tombs of many lesser-known people. With all that Jesus said and did, do you think His tomb would have disappeared from history if there had been a body in it? There was no body in it, therefore it wasn’t important to remember its location. With these eight facts in view, we can now intelligently treat the subject of the Resurrection. I don’t believe we should even discuss the Resurrection with someone who refuses to assume these eight facts, because their refusal demonstrates they are unwilling to make a serious study of it. Most people assume that a resurrection cannot occur; therefore it didn’t occur. Therefore, anyone who says it did is either deluded or a poor reporter, because a resurrection cannot occur. Therefore, anyone who makes such a claim is obviously not telling the truth, because a resurrection cannot occur, as any intelligent person knows. Rather, you can write it off as poetry because a resurrection cannot occur and anyone who says it did is not very intelligent. This is simply arguing in a circle. Someone might say, “I don’t want to find out about it! It might make me change my lifestyle!” Well, fine, that is your choice. But if you want to talk about the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, we need to assume these eight facts. And if you don’t want to accept these eight facts, then at least give me the easier job of proving them. Now because of the impact of the Resurrection message, many theories have been propounded to explain it. The first theory is the disciples stole the body. That was the earliest theory: the tomb was empty because the disciples stole the body. The second theory is that the Romans took the body. The third theory is that the Jewish leaders themselves took the body so it couldn’t be stolen. The fourth theory is that the women went to the wrong tomb. It was a simple misunderstanding. They went looking for the tomb in the early morning light, with their eyes swollen from crying. They found an empty tomb and began to preach “He is risen!” But it was simply the wrong tomb. The fifth theory is that the disciples had hallucinations, or glorified daydreams. The sixth theory, which has recently regained popularity, is that Jesus didn’t really die. He was considered dead, but He didn’t really die; and in the coolness of the tomb, He resuscitated. Imagine Jesus saying, “Phew! Glad that’s over with! Now, how do I get out of these wrappings? How do I roll the stone away? What am I doing in here?” Forgive me for being ludicrous, but that is a popular theory. The seventh theory is that the disciples lied. They made up the whole story. The eighth theory is that the disciples told the truth of what they genuinely experienced, saw and heard. Each one of these theories seems plausible at first glance. But if you assume the eight facts, there are really only two possibilities: the disciples either lied or they told the truth. Let’s look at the theories in light of our eight facts. If the disciples stole the body, then they obviously lied. What if the Romans took the body? It is simply not plausible. If you assume that the Jewish leaders had some influence on the Romans, and you assume their concern to disprove the preaching, it would have been easy for them to have obtained a statement from Pilate that the Romans had taken the body. In fact, it would have been easier to obtain such a statement than to get Pilate to carry out the crucifixion in the first place. The Romans and the Jews were concerned about the possibility of riots in the city. They could have easily silenced the preaching without any persecution by simply obtaining either the body or an affidavit from the Romans. But assuming the theory is plausible, it still only explains the empty tomb. It does not explain the preaching of a resurrected Savior who partook of food with His disciples. It does not explain the accounts of His ascension. So, even if the theory were plausible, the disciples would still be liars because they made up about 90 percent of their message. What about the theory that the Jewish leaders took the body? If you take into account their concern, they would have simply produced the body and said, “Here! Look at it! We took it!” It is too foolish to even qualify as a serious theory. What about the theory that the women went to the wrong tomb? If you assume Jesus was buried in a known, accessible tomb, and you assume the concern of the Jewish leaders, then it would have been easy for anyone to go to the right tomb and say “Here’s the body. Now, stop preaching!” But again, even if these theories were plausible, they still only explain the empty tomb. They don’t explain the total message. So, if any of these theories are true, then the disciples would still be liars. What about the hallucination theory? Again, all anyone would have to do is go to the tomb and see the body in it; that would dispel any hallucinations. Further, psychologists tell us there needs to be a certain state of mind to bring forth hallucinations, and every record shows that these disciples were in the exact opposite state of mind. One account says that the resurrected Christ appeared to over five hundred people in one place. How could five hundred people have had the same hallucination? The theory is simply untenable. What about the resuscitation theory? One does not revive from a Roman crucifixion! But even if the theory were valid, it only explains the empty tomb, along with an impossibly wounded, staggering, and recuperating Savior. It doesn’t explain the vital Savior they preached about after the Resurrection, nor does it explain His ascension. Anyone who takes a rational look at these theories ultimately has to bite the bullet and conclude that the ones who propagated the story were either lying scoundrels or honest reporters telling what they had seen and experienced. Applying disciplined study of the foundations of Christianity brings you to two crossroads. I am not a bibliolater; I don’t worship the Bible itself. If we are discussing the truth of the Resurrection, it doesn’t matter to me if you have never believed the creation accounts in the book of Genesis. It doesn’t matter to me which church you go to or which version of the Bible you read. Christianity forces a decision at two critical junctures of historical events. In the case of the Resurrection of Christ, there are more historical facts available than there are for many other historical events that most people accept without controversy. You must come to two crossroads. The first one we have already named: the only Jesus to be found in history went around making such ridiculous claims about Himself that you must dismiss Him as either a nut who ought to be committed or an outright fraud who ought to be exposed, certainly not someone to respect. Or, if He is neither a fraud nor a nut, He is who He said He was: God in a tent of human flesh, who in the presentation of His own nature gives an adequate definition of God to serve throughout your life; you don’t need anything else. That crossroad must be faced by any historical approach to Jesus the Christ. It is the same choice that the people in Jesus’ day had to make when they didn’t have a Bible to read and their only Scripture was the Septuagint Greek version of the Old Testament. Jesus was either a nut or a fraud, or He is the center of history. The second crossroad is in regard to the criterion of His Godness. As Paul said to the philosophers on Mars’ Hill in Athens, it is through the Resurrection that God authorized Jesus as the Christ. The Resurrection is the one thing that gives validity to Jesus’ other remarkable claims. It lifts Him above the claims of other religious leaders. And when you come to the Resurrection, you are brought to another juncture. All of those theories try to explain away the preaching without paying attention to the undergirding facts. There is no explanation for this one message that birthed the Christian church, short of an either/or decision: either the disciples who preached it were lying and knew they were lying, or they were honest, sincere men telling their experience truthfully. And when you are driven into that corner, then the issue of the Resurrection revolves around the veracity of their testimony. Were those disciples lying or telling the truth? There are four main reasons why I believe they were telling the truth. The first is what historians call intrinsic evidence of truthfulness. When you read someone’s writings or listen to someone speak, there are certain kinds of indirect evidences of honesty that leap out. There are many examples of these in Scriptures. Let’s start with Mark’s Gospel. Scholars agree that Mark’s Gospel was written to Gentiles, not to Jews. There is some debate about whether it was written to Romans or Egyptians; but there is no debate that it was written to Gentiles. Mark’s purpose was to convince the Gentiles that Jesus Christ was the Son of God. Yet remarkably, Mark records Jesus referring to Himself as “the Son of man.” Why would Mark do this? If I were going to tell a lie to save face and propagate that Jesus was the Messiah, I would not have to be careful with my quotes. Suppose I am writing to people who will never see the Holy Land, and I am trying to prove Jesus is the Son of God. Why would I have Jesus refer to Himself as “the Son of God?” Now if Mark had written to Hebrews, using the appellation “Son of man” would have made perfect sense: it was a Messianic term. The Jews in that day were steeped in the apocryphal book of Enoch and the book of Daniel that both depict the Son of man coming as the Messiah on clouds of glory. But to a Roman or an Egyptian, the words “Son of man” simply meant “the son of a man.” The intrinsic evidence is that Mark honestly recorded what Jesus actually said. He reported the truth even though it hurt his own case. Furthermore, most scholars agree that Mark was under the care of Peter. Read every Gospel and you will find that the worst picture of Peter, the most detailed expose’ of his failures, is recorded in Mark’s Gospel. Peter was his mentor and it makes sense that we would have a more graphic portrayal of Peter’s failures from Mark because Peter was the man behind the scenes giving Mark the facts to write his Gospel. But if they were liars, it is not the nature of a liar to make himself look bad. Mark certainly could have painted a better picture of Peter. But the Gospel writer who uses Peter as his source makes Peter’s failures look the worst. Again, this is another indicator of honest people writing what they had experienced. Another indication of honesty is found in the hundreds of little records within the Gospels that show great attention to detail. Jesus was with a multitude in a wilderness place. It was growing late and the people were hungry. One Gospel records that Jesus asked Philip, “Where can we buy bread?’ We read in another passage that Philip was from Bethsaida. But you have to refer to another Gospel to learn that the place where Jesus asked the question was near Bethsaida. You must put all three passages together and only then does it make sense: Jesus asked Philip where they could buy bread because they were near Philip’s hometown. But if the disciples were liars, why would they record these facts in such detail? We would have to bring together the writings of different liars in order for the record to make sense. This attention to detail serves as an indirect proof, an unconscious indicator that the Gospels were written by honest men. Even the fact that there is a hypothetical Q document is an indirect proof of honesty. As many as three different writers in three different places are said to have quoted some underlying source that was circulated by the early church. That doesn’t sound like something a liar or a fiction writer would do. Liars likely would have fabricated their own versions of the story. These are only a few examples of the many indirect indicators of honesty found woven into the Gospels. The second proof that the disciples were not liars is that they were all cataclysmically changed. Peter was shown as being unstable and unpredictable. Yet after some event occurs, Peter becomes “the rock,” never wavering in his faith. James was one of the brothers of Jesus. The Gospels record that Jesus’ kinfolk would not believe Him when He started making impossible claims about Himself, and they tried to lay hands on Him. But suddenly, after some event occurred, James was changed and ultimately became the leader of the church in Jerusalem. John was called “the son of thunder.” He would call fire down from heaven on people who opposed him. Yet every scholar agrees that John became the most loving and gentle of the apostles. Thomas is shown to be a perennial doubter. Something changed him. Thomas went on to cross the Himalayas to tackle the toughest evangelistic assignment by taking the gospel to India. There are personality vignettes written into the Gospels, and it is hard to believe they are just accidental. Let’s take a closer look at Thomas. He is always presented as being skeptical. Jesus was about to go on a dangerous journey, when Thomas says, “Let us go also with Him that we may die with Him.” Thomas didn’t understand Jesus when He had said, “No man taketh My life from Me” and “The Shepherd lays down His life for the flock.” Thomas remained a realist. To him, there was a danger, therefore he volunteered to go. It was a courageous and loving gesture, but still very humanistic. In John 14, Jesus was talking about heaven. He said that He was going to go away and prepare mansions for us. He said that He would come to get us and take us to be with Him. Then Jesus declared, “And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.” I am sure that most of the disciples were still shouting “Hallelujah!” about the mansions, but not Thomas; he was listening to every word. He suddenly interrupts Jesus in the middle of His speech, saying, “We don’t know where You’re going! How can we know the way?” If this were not a true account, it would certainly be clever story writing; it is the same man doubting, every time. Who is the one doubting when the Resurrection is first reported? It is Thomas again. Why does Thomas always get to play the role of the doubter? It is Thomas who says, “I will not believe He is risen until I can put my hands in the prints of the nails!” Jesus offered to submit to the test, and Thomas was changed. He calls Jesus, “My Lord and my God.” Thomas is the one who took the gospel to India, never wavering in his faith again after Jesus showed him the signs he had asked for. Thomas ultimately died there, pierced with a Brahman’s sword near Madras, India. All of these men were dramatically changed for the better, and they were all changed at the same time. They didn’t have the courage to stand up for Jesus before His death. Suddenly they are changed into men of courage ready to die a martyr’s death. From instability to stability is a positive change. From disbelief to belief is a positive change, which cannot happen until you believe in something. From anger and volatility to love is a positive change. From doubt to faith is a positive change. Telling lies might change a person, but it is hard for me to believe that a group of men could make up a lie, perpetuate the lie, and then change for the better as a result of the lie. Number three: They all suffered inhuman persecution. People will not do that for a lie. And number four: Each of them suffered this persecution alone. I can believe that if a group of us had concocted this story, we might have a secret meeting and memorize the elements of the lie. And if we were all captured, imprisoned together, and interrogated, we might keep our lips sealed because of group pressure. No one would want to be the first one to break rank. But now, separate us and scatter us to the far-flung corners of the globe, and take away our modern means of communications. There were no telephones, televisions, radios, or airplanes. We are all liars and we don’t believe that a miracle happened anyway. The chances are that we will never see one another again. So why would we stick to the story? Imagine you are Peter in Rome, or imagine being Thomas in India, on the other side of the Himalayas. I will imagine that I am Bartholomew. I am in Armenia, halfway between the two of them. Suppose we had agreed to tell this lie; but now we are separated. Thomas is out of my life forever, and Peter is thousands of miles away in Rome. I am up in the mountains around Anatolia where they tie me to a stake and start methodically skinning me alive with a whip. All I would have to do is say, “Hey, we made it up!” and I could catch the next camel out of town. And if I were to meet Peter in Rome, I could say, “Look at the marks I suffered for Jesus!” I would never have to tell him that I finally said, “Hey, we made it up.” Thomas is in India with a Brahman’s sword poised at his neck. All he has to do is say, “I want to convert to Brahmanism.” That’s what a liar would do! Yet all these men suffered alone to their death. It is psychologically inconceivable that not one of them ever broke under pressure and said, “Hey, we made it up!” There is no way that a band of men could make up this lie, be scattered to far countries in the conditions of that day, and then die alone after suffering terrible persecution and not once ever reneging on their story. I remember when I presented these proofs to one of my professors. He had carefully followed my presentation, and when I finished, he said, “You’ve convinced me! Those disciples believed what they were telling. So,” he concluded, “one of your eight assumptions must be wrong!” I thought, “Now I have you. Those eight assumptions are easy to prove!” Christianity is based on the fact of the Resurrection. So what if Jesus came out of the tomb? The same life is promised to you and to me, if we will do what He did: trust His Father to raise Him from the dead. Jesus had a simple promise from the Father that if He would die for us, God would raise Him from the dead. That is why every record of the preaching of the Resurrection specifies, “This Jesus hath God raised up” or “whom God raised from the dead.” God kept His word. We have the same promise. If we would trust God and hang on to His promises, the same Spirit that raised up Jesus from the dead shall also dwell in us and quicken our mortal bodies. God’s Spirit will begin to change us and one day will take us home. The way of faith is the way to go. Jesus rose! Now, on what day did Jesus rise from the dead? He was crucified on the Passover, which was on a Wednesday. The Bible says that the next day was a “high day” Sabbath, and not a regular Sabbath. The record also says that the ladies who bought the spices for Jesus’ burial had to wait until the Sabbath was over, which required a day between the two Sabbath days. The day after the crucifixion was called a “high day” because it was the start of the Feast of Unleavened bread. Jesus was in the tomb from Wednesday night to Thursday night, Thursday night to Friday night, and Friday night to Saturday night, for a total of three whole days and three whole nights. He came forth from the tomb the moment the first day of the week started, which would have been approximately 6 P.M. on Saturday. Jesus had to be crucified on the Passover. The Jewish leaders tried to prevent that from happening. Jesus had to be the Passover Lamb. In the Old Testament, the children of Israel were told that the Passover lamb must be slain “between the two evenings.” Jesus could partake of the Passover after sundown on a Tuesday night. He could become the Passover on Wednesday and be buried on Wednesday night which begins the Feast of Unleavened Bread. He then had to come out of the tomb on the Feast of First Fruits, which fell on the first day of the week within the week of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Therefore, He had to be crucified in a year when Passover fell on a Wednesday because He had to remain in the tomb three days and three nights and still come forth on the Feast of First Fruits. Fifty days after First Fruits, the Feast of Pentecost came exactly on time, and the church was born on that day. There are three more feasts left to be fulfilled: the Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles. Jesus will return on a Feast of Trumpets in the fall. Those of God’s people who had refused to accept Christ as their Messiah, both the Jew and the house of Israel, will endure suffering for their sin during the Great Tribulation, which will fulfill the Day of Atonement. They will finally look on Him whom they have pierced, as prophesized by Zechariah. Christ will rescue them and they will be ushered into the Millennium to keep the Feast of Tabernacles for a thousand years. God established these feast days as prophetic shadows. Jesus is the fulfillment, and He is always right on time. He was right on time to fulfill the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. He was right on time to fulfill the Feast of First Fruits when He came out of the tomb. He was exactly on time when He sent His Spirit on the day of Pentecost. And He will be on time in some distant Feast of Trumpets in the fall of the year. He will be on time when the wrath of God is poured out on this earth, and He will be right on time to come to the rescue of His people and usher in the joyful Millennium and the Feast of Tabernacles. I don’t build my faith on one or two sayings of Christ. The whole book of God drives me to Christ, the risen One. The fact that I am preaching it on the day of a heathen festival is fine as long as you know the difference. The particular day is unimportant; the fact of His rising is the message. Aren’t you happy you serve a risen Savior? 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