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 THE RESURRECTION: THE BASIS OF OUR FAITH
Preached by Dr. Gene Scott on April 3, 1988 And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. 1st Corinthians 15:14 HAVE YOUR EVER MET SOMEONE WHO THOUGHT he was perfect? Aren’t people like that despicable? We are not prone to like people who think they are perfect. Thomas Carlyle once said, “The greatest of all faults . . . is to be conscious of none.” We usually don’t make saints of people who think they are perfect. The true mark of saints who are respected in history is their consciousness of sin. The apostle Paul called himself the “chief” of sinners. Isaiah said, “Woe is me! . . . I am a man of unclean lips.” Jacob said, “I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies.” All of them had a sense of moral inadequacy; yet Jesus thought He was perfect. Notice I am not assessing whether or not Jesus was perfect; that has been debated through the centuries. I am talking about His opinion about Himself: He thought He was perfect. Critics often point to the passage in the Gospels where a rich young ruler came to Jesus and addressed Him as “Good Master,” literally, “Good Teacher.” Jesus corrected him and said, “Why callest thou me good?” So critics take this passage out of context and say that Jesus denied His own goodness, but that is nonsense. Read the passage in its context: Jesus said, “Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God.” Jesus was not denying His own goodness. Rather, He knew that the young ruler was trying to promote his own limited view of goodness. This young man believed that outward conformity to God’s law was sufficient, and he expected Jesus to agree with his theology. Jesus corrected him and said, in essence, “Don’t call Me good unless you are also prepared to recognize that only God can be good. Thus, if I am good, I must be God.” Jesus also thought that He knew it all. Have you ever met a know-it-all? They are not very likeable people, are they? Yet the only Jesus you encounter in history acted like a know-it-all. He said, “If you build on what I say, you build on a rock; if you build on anything else, you build on sand.” “All authority in heaven and earth is given unto Me.” He made statements that changed longstanding traditions and gave no authority for doing so other than the fact that He said it. He said, “You have heard it said unto you in the olden times, but behold, I now say this . . .” Jesus also forgave sins without blinking an eye. He didn’t say, “The Lord forgives you;” He simply said, “Thy sins be forgiven.” You can look at any source of Jesus’ sayings that passes the test of historicity, and you will find Him making these kinds of statements. Jesus would have us believe that He knew heaven from the inside. He spoke of heaven in the same way we might talk about our own living room. He said the most astounding things and said them in a way that implied we would be foolish to question them. Jesus said, “Before Abraham was, I am” and “I saw Satan cast down from heaven.” Jesus put Himself at the center of the religious universe. Every other respected founder of a major religion centered his religious experience in something outside of himself. Only Jesus made allegiance to Himself the criterion of eternal life. He did not preach something apart from Himself, He preached Himself. He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved.” “I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever.” “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. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.” “He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.” Only Jesus preached Himself. Wherever you look at Jesus on the stage of history, any credible and accepted historical source has Him making these kinds of claims about Himself. Jesus taught that there was something wrong with the whole world that only He could set right by His death, and that His death offered salvation to the world. He described His death using a word for “ransom” in a context well-known to the community in His day. A ransom was the price paid for someone who was facing death for the wrongs he had done. A ransom was also the price paid to redeem a lost inheritance. Jesus taught that His death was necessary in order that the whole world, all mankind, might be saved. And He added to this the startling claim that after He died, He would come out of the grave 72 hours later. All credible sources that speak of Jesus’ death include the anticipation of His Resurrection. And all credible sources accepted by the church throughout the centuries, and even quoted by agnostics and atheists, include the record of these claims. No other respected founder of a major religion ever made those kinds of claims about himself. Muhammad never thought he was perfect. Don’t ever call a Moslem a “Muhammadan,” because they don’t worship Muhammad: they say that there is only one God, Allah, and Muhammad is His prophet. Muhammad didn’t speak of heaven with an insider’s view: he didn’t claim to have lived there in previous centuries. He claimed that Allah showed him visions of a heaven that a desert man would look forward to, full of oases. Muhammad did not seat all authority in himself; the visions that he recorded in the Koran were his authority. Muhammad’s death didn’t save anyone, and he never claimed that he would rise from the dead. After his death, some of his followers tried to stamp divinity onto him; they built the Dome of the Rock in the place where he supposedly ascended into heaven. Muhammad can be respected as a religious leader; he never made ridiculous claims about himself. Gautama Buddha never made such claims about himself either. He was a prince in India. He believed that the evil which held all mankind in bondage was “taṇhā,” a “sense of thirst:” that drove man into sin. He had tried the way of the sensualist and the way of the ascetic. Still feeling bound by his sense of taṇhā, he began to live a life of self-discipline and study. Out of this experience came what he called the “Middle Way” or the “Eightfold Path,” which he claimed would bring one to Nirvana, the Buddhist’s idea of salvation. Buddha claimed to have touched it in a trancelike state in which he ceased to feel an identity with himself or this world, which thus stopped the process of “karma” that kept him going around the “wheel of life.” He said he became at one with ultimate reality, “the that which is behind all that,” a reality that is indescribable and indefinable. Buddha offered that experience; he didn’t offer himself. He never said that his death meant anything; he essentially said, “My death means nothing. All I leave you is the way that I have followed.” He never claimed that he would rise from the dead. Indeed, he didn’t want to rise because he believed that once he died, he would finally escape the wheel of life. Confucius never put himself at the center of the religious universe. He never thought he was perfect or that he knew it all. He offered a logical analysis of society and believed that society’s problems could be solved by doing certain things. When people asked him about the next life, he supposedly said, “I can’t solve the problems of this life, so don’t ask me about the next one!” He never spoke of heaven with an insider’s view, and never seated all authority in himself. Respected founders of religions don’t make those kinds of claims. Yet everywhere you encounter Jesus the Christ in the historical frame, you will find Him making those claims about Himself. The world says of Jesus, “It’s all right to respect Jesus as a good and wise teacher – as long as you don’t attribute to Him the status of supernatural Son of God and believe all of His claims!” But there is no better definition of God than this: Someone who is perfect, in whom all authority is seated, who experienced heaven from the inside, who is the center of the religious universe, and who removed the barrier between God and fallen man by His death and Resurrection. That is all the definition of God you need. If I made all those clams about myself, you would think either that I was crazy or that I was putting you on. A respected, intelligent man does not make those kinds of claims. Jesus could be good and still believe all those things about Himself, but He would not be wise because no sane, mortal man can make those kinds of claims. Or Jesus could be wise enough to know that those claims are not true, but He would be a fraud because He was using those false claims to manipulate His religious followers. Therefore, according to that logic, He cannot be both good and wise. Most people have never really taken a good look at Jesus. When we analyze the claims of Christ, we are faced with what C.S. Lewis called the shocking alternative: we must conclude that Jesus is as crazy as a man who thinks he is a poached egg, or we must accept Him for what He claims to be. How can we resolve this issue? Jesus made these astounding claims about Himself, including the claim that His death and Resurrection would offer salvation to the whole world. That is good news! If you made those claims about yourself, I might laugh or wonder if you should be confined to a mental institution. But if you then died and rose again on the third day and sailed off into the sky, I would take another look at you. The event of the Resurrection makes the difference. If Jesus rose from the dead, then the rest of His claims are true! His claims give me a basis for a relationship with God that I can work with for the rest of my life. When I was in university, I was made to believe that I could never be an intellectual unless I abandoned my faith in Christ’s Resurrection and its implications that He was the supernatural God. Yet my professors considered it very intellectual to accept their view that Jesus was merely a “good and wise” teacher. I knew enough not to accept that view, because the same sources people used to show that Jesus was “good and wise” also had Him making those astounding claims about Himself that precluded that option. Therefore, I had to settle the matter: if the Resurrection is true and Jesus came out of that tomb, then that gives me the basis for believing the rest of His claims. If I could get over the hurdle of proving that Jesus rose from the dead, then His Resurrection would become the foundation of my faith. There are some people who get very “religious” on Easter. They go to church only on that one day of the year, thinking that is enough to make them “holy” for the rest of the year. If you stop a hundred Christians today and ask them if they believe that Jesus rose from the dead, they will say “Yes,” but most of them really don’t. But Paul said, “If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.” Paul was not speaking of some kind of subjective, personal spiritual experience. Some Christians 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. Paul was speaking of a fact of history for which he could assemble eyewitnesses to the event in that day. Eyewitnesses to the Resurrection are no longer available to us today, but the available evidence can still be analyzed. If you have ever sat on a jury, you know you are supposed to start out with an open mind. As you encounter the facts and the evidence, you eventually undergo a psychological experience: either you remain unsure about the defendant’s guilt or innocence, or you begin to lean toward finding the defendant guilty or not guilty. It is impossible to keep that from happening. You will begin to form an opinion about the credibility of the witnesses as you listen to their testimonies. You might think that some witnesses are being honest and some are not. Eventually, after exposure to enough evidence, you will decide who was honest and why you think they were honest. The problem with most fundamentalist churches is that they spend too much time focusing on nonessential matters like whether women should wear makeup or what kind of clothes they should wear or whether it is okay to go to the movies. The modern church has produced a generation of Christians who are completely ignorant of the evidence for the basis of our faith. Without the Resurrection, our faith is vain. We ought to be able to talk intelligently about the Resurrection, and in order to do that, we must take certain things for granted. There are eight facts that we must first assume in order to have an intelligent debate about the Resurrection. Number one: Jesus lived. If you don’t believe that Jesus lived, why bother talking about the Resurrection? There are some people who don’t believe that Jesus even lived. New theories are proposed every year regarding the quest for the historical Jesus, but even heathen historians admit that a person named Jesus lived, who was viewed as the Christ. It is much easier to prove that Jesus lived than to prove that He rose from the dead. So if you want to have a discussion with me about the Resurrection, you must first accept that Jesus lived. Number two: Jesus was crucified by the hands of the Romans and at the instigation of certain Jewish leaders. This may be a painful subject for some people to address, but it is not meant as an anti-Jewish statement; I can find many things in history that Christians have done wrong. But there is no sense talking about the Resurrection if we cannot first assume this fact. Number three: Jesus was considered dead. Notice that I am not saying He was actually dead, but that He was considered dead. If He were not dead, then it was a cruel act for Him to be wrapped up and put into a tomb. There are some people who promote the theory that it was all a great conspiracy and that Jesus faked His own death. He supposedly first practiced on Lazarus. He then figured out how to bring Himself into a trancelike state where He appeared to be dead so that He could be taken down from the cross, be wrapped up, and be buried in order to pull off this massive hoax. That would mean Jesus was a fraud. In any case, Jesus was considered dead. Number four: Jesus was buried in a known, accessible tomb. There has never been a question throughout history that Jesus was buried in a known, accessible tomb. It was accessible to the people until the Jewish authorities prevailed upon the Romans to post a guard there, which proves that the location of the tomb was known. Number five: The disciples preached a threefold sermon: that Jesus rose from the dead, that He ascended, and that the tomb was empty. This was the first message of the church, and it continues to be preached to this day. The proof of this fact is that I am preaching this very message today. Number six: The next fact we must assume is really a logical deduction if we assume that the Jewish leaders brought about Jesus’ death. Their position and their very livelihood depended upon their religious pronouncements. They had pronounced Jesus a blasphemer and had engineered His death for His blasphemy. Jesus had said that He would rise from the dead, and the disciples were preaching that He in fact rose from the dead. To these Jewish leaders, it was a bread-and-butter matter. Their position of authority would not last very long if the man they killed rose from the dead! Therefore, they were more concerned with disproving the preaching of the Resurrection than you and I could ever be 2,000 years later. Number seven: The disciples were persecuted unmercifully for preaching the Resurrection. People will argue that in later years, under Caligula and Nero, Christians were made the scapegoat for the problems of the Empire and were persecuted for that reason. Yet every historical record is consistent in stating that the first persecutions were for the preaching of the Resurrection message. We read in Acts 3 that when Peter was commanded not to preach about Jesus, he said, “You desired a murderer to be granted unto you; you killed the Prince of life.” In Acts 5, Peter said, “We ought to obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree.” Peter would not shut up! All the earliest persecutions were for the preaching of this message. The Jewish leadership would have been destroyed if this message were true, so the first thing they did was try to shut up the preachers. Number eight: The tomb was empty. A little common sense will tell you that it was empty. If you assume that the Jewish leaders brought about Jesus’ death and that they were concerned about silencing the preaching of the Resurrection, all they had to do to stop the preaching was go to the tomb and produce the body. And all the Roman authorities had to do to put a stop to the controversy was produce the body. But there was no body in the tomb. Today, no one knows for certain where Jesus’ tomb is. We can locate Sarah’s tomb and David’s tomb; in fact, that area is a land of identifiable tombs traced back through the centuries. But there are two locations considered to be the tomb of Christ, and no one knows for certain which one is the right one. One location is known as Gordon’s Tomb. It now has an Arab graveyard on top of it. The other location has traditionally been considered by the church to be Jesus’ tomb. Why do people still debate over the location of Jesus’ tomb? Jesus’ tomb was lost to history because there was no body in it. The earliest message of the church was of a resurrected, living Christ; no one really cared about an empty tomb. It was not until centuries later, when relics became the foci of worship in the church, that anyone became interested in locating Jesus’ tomb. That tomb was empty. Now, if you assume those eight facts, then we can have an intelligent discussion about the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. You can spend the rest of your life settling those eight facts, but they are much easier to prove than the Resurrection. Very few people doubt the power of the Resurrection message, so the world is forever coming up with theories to explain away the message. The earliest theory is that the disciples stole the body. Another theory is that the Jews took the body. Another theory is that the Romans took the body and dumped it on some trash heap somewhere. There is another theory that the women who first reported the Resurrection went to the wrong tomb. Saddened with grief and blinded by tears, staggering around trying to find the body, they went to the wrong tomb, found it empty, and reported that Jesus had risen from the dead. Another theory is that the disciples hallucinated: they had glorified daydreams and saw things that did not happen. Another theory is that Jesus resuscitated: He was considered dead, but in the coolness of the tomb. He revived. It must have been quite a task for Him to have unwrapped Himself! Then there is the theory that the disciples lied. They had bet on the wrong horse; their leader died. So they sat around and moaned for seven weeks, and then said, “We’ve got to do something! We thought Jesus was for real, but now that He is dead, we need to make up a good story to save face!” So they lied and made up the whole thing. And the last theory is that the disciples honestly told the truth as they experienced and saw it; they were honest reporters. I repeat, any exposure to the only Jesus to be found in history forces you to a crossroad: either you are dealing with a fraud or a megalomaniac who believed those impossible claims about Himself, or you are dealing with the most unusual Person on the stage of history. Likewise, if you expose yourself to the facts concerning the Resurrection, you are brought to another either/or choice. Your choice boils down to only two theories; either the disciples were a bunch of liars who made up the story to save face of they were honest reporters who told what they saw and experienced. It took me three and a half years of study to bring myself to this point: the entire issue of Christianity revolves around the honestly of the reporters. When we expose ourselves to the facts, we can make a decision like a juror makes: the matter ultimately boils down to the veracity of the witnesses. There are really only two possible explanations. All the other theories are just that – theories. If the disciples took the body, that means they were liars. The theory that the Jews stole the body is untenable because they were the ones who had brought about the crucifixion. They had more of a reason than anyone else to want to dispel the preaching; so if they had stolen the body, all they would have had to do was produce it. And even if this explains the empty tomb, it does not explain the preaching that Jesus ascended, which was equally a part of the disciples’ preaching. The same is true about the theory that the Romans stole the body. The Romans had the authority: all they had to do to silence the preaching was produce the body. However, if the Romans or the Jews took the body, it still does not explain the preaching of the Ascension, and it still would mean that the disciples were liars. If the theory that the women went to the wrong tomb were true, then all they had to do was go to the right tomb. Then there is the theory that all the witnesses hallucinated. If they simply had hallucinations, then all the Jewish leaders had to do was show them the body. That would have quickly dispelled their hallucinations! All of those theories are easy to disprove, and again, they all boil down to only two possible choices: either the disciples made up this story and were liars or they honestly reported what they saw and experienced. And if they honestly reported what they saw and experienced, then Jesus came out of that tomb and He ascended into heaven. If I can believe that Jesus came out of that tomb, went through a rock and through a locked door, and ascended into heaven, then the rest of His claims are easy to believe. The issue totally revolves around this question: did the disciples concoct a lie to save face, or did they honestly report what they actually experienced and saw? There are four reasons why I concluded that the disciples were honest reporters. First, the Gospel records contain many subtle intrinsic indicators that make the disciples sound like honest reporters and not liars. If the disciples were lying, they would not have known that their story would become the worldwide movement it has become today. It would not have occurred to them that people would be analyzing their every word as canonized Scripture 2,000 years later. If they were dishonest men, their only motive would have been to save face for the moment and profit for themselves. Yet their writings repeatedly show honest attempts to tell what they saw and experienced, even when such honestly hurt their own story. Scholars agree that Mark wrote his Gospel to Gentiles, either to Egyptians or to Romans, but certainly to non-Jews. He wrote to heathen who were not steeped in the Old Testament Jewish traditions. If he, by his own affirmations in his Gospel, desired to prove that Jesus is the Son of God, why would he have Jesus refer to Himself as “the Son of man?” To someone not trained in Hebrew theology, the expression “the Son of man” simply means “the son of a man.” To a Roman or an Egyptian, “the Son of man” meant that Jesus was like you and me. But to a Jew living in that day, the expression “the Son of man” would be very familiar because of its use in Hebrew eschatology: “the Son of man” is mentioned in both the book of Daniel and the apocryphal book of Enoch. The expression “the Son of man” was used to describe the Messiah coming on clouds of glory to set up His kingdom. But if you were a liar trying to prove that someone is the Son of God and you were writing in a non-Jewish frame, why would you hurt your own story? Yet Mark’s Gospel has Jesus identifying Himself as “the Son of man.” I can imagine that if Mark were on trial, his defense attorney would have told him, “Don’t ever use that expression ‘the Son of man’ again!” Mark would reply, “But that was what Jesus said!” And the attorney would say, “I don’t care what He said; we are lying anyway!” Even though it defeated his purpose to the Gentiles, Mark was true to what Jesus had said because Jesus was speaking to Jewish believers who understood that “the Son of man” portrayed the Messianic Deliverer of God’s people. This is evidence of his honesty. There are many other internal evidences in the Gospels that show that these disciples were honest men. In one Gospel, you read the passage of Jesus performing the miracle of feeding the multitude. Jesus asked Philip, “Where can we buy bread, that these people may eat?” Why did Jesus ask Philip this question and not one of His other disciples? One Gospel says that this even took place in a desert near the city of Bethsaida. You have to go to another Gospel written in another country by a different writer to read that Jesus asked Philip. And you have to read a different passage of that Gospel, written about a different event, to learn that Philip was from Bethsaida, so Philip was the right person to ask. You need to read all three passages to make the story fit together. Philip was the right person to ask because they were in the area where he lived, and he would know where to buy bread. You don’t usually find that kind of attention to detail and accuracy in fraudulent stories written by liars. The Gospels present the disciples as simply reporters who were incapable of concocting such a lie; they adhered to the facts even when the facts hurt their story. Why did the disciples wait seven weeks after the Resurrection before publicly proclaiming on the day of Pentecost that Jesus rose from the dead? Critics say that they needed those seven weeks to fabricate their story. But if they were smart enough to concoct the lie, they would have also been smart enough to know that the seven-week wait would hurt their credibility. They waited seven weeks because Jesus told them to wait in Jerusalem until they were “endued with power from on high.” That is what happened on the day of Pentecost: they were finally free to be Jesus’ emissaries and tell the whole world about the good news of the Resurrection. They sound like honest, obedient followers of what the resurrected Christ had told them to do. The second reason why I believe that the disciples were telling the truth is the cataclysmic personality change they experienced after the Resurrection. They were all changed for the better. Woven into the Gospels are the personality traits of all these men. They were a dreadful bunch before the Resurrection. Peter was always depicted as unstable and impetuous. John and James were called “sons of thunder.” They wanted to call down fire from heaven upon their enemies. They were so self-serving that they even sent their mother to ask Jesus to give them the best seats in His kingdom. Thomas was always portrayed as a realist and a doubter. When Jesus faced a dangerous journey, Thomas said, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” That is courage and loyalty, but it is also naturalism. Thomas expected that Jesus would be killed by human hands. He didn’t understand Jesus when He said, “No man takes My life from Me; the Shepherd lays down His life willingly.” Jesus spoke to His disciples about heaven, saying, “In my Father’s house are many mansions…I go to prepare a place for you…I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.” It was Thomas who interrupted Him and said, “We don’t know where You are going! How can we know the way?” Thomas was a hardheaded realist. When the disciples first testified that Jesus had risen from the dead, who was the doubter? The same person. Thomas said, “I will not believe that He rose from the dead until I put my hand into the very prints of the nails in His hands and into His side where He was pierced.” I can imagine Thomas telling the other disciples, “You crazy people can believe it if you want to, but I saw Him die! The women must have gone to the wrong tomb, or someone must have taken the body!” The personality sketches of the disciples are not interwoven in just one record; they are interwoven with consistency by all the Gospel writers. Their personalities were all changed for the better. Thomas crossed the Himalayas to bring the gospel to India, never wavering in his faith. James became the missionary to Spain, and John became known as the apostle of love. Peter became a stable leader of the church. He became “the rock,” which is what Jesus had named him earlier when he made his declaration of faith. Something happened to change these men, something cataclysmic in nature. I believe that telling a lie can change someone, but seldom for the better. Yet every one of these men was changed for the better. The doubter became a man of faith, the contentious person became a man of love, and the unstable person became a rock. They all changed for the better as a result of telling their story. The third proof of the honesty of the witnesses is that each of the disciples paid the price of inhumane suffering for the story they told. People usually are not willing to suffer what the disciples suffered for a lie. Yet every disciple suffered terrible persecution for preaching the Resurrection. The fourth and greatest proof is that the disciples suffered and died alone. All of them, save John, died a martyr’s death. Let’s imagine for a moment that we are those men. Imagine that I am Bartholomew in Armenia, and I am about to be skinned alive with a whip. You are the apostle Peter, most likely in Rome, and you are about to be crucified. Or imagine that you are Thomas in India and you are about to be slain with a Brahman’s sword, which is how he died according to the best traditions. Suppose that we are known frauds who have agreed to perpetuate a lie to save face. Jesus was obviously a fraud too because He made those ridiculous claims about Himself. He got Himself crucified, and none of His claims came true. We are now separated, and we are all telling our story with great vim and vigor, until they tie me up and are about to skin me alive, and they are about to crucify you upside-down, or they are about to pierce you with a sword. All you have to do to escape death is say, “Hey, it was all a lie! I’m willing to sign a statement that it was all a lie!” Since we are all separated and in different areas of the world, the other disciples would never know that you recanted. You can just catch the next boat out of town and sail away. Who is going to rat on you? They didn’t have television, newspapers, or mail in that day. I don’t know where you are, and you don’t know where I am. So you simply say, “It was all a lie!” There is something about group pressure: if we had made up this lie as a bunch of frauds and we stayed together, there would be pressure not to be the one to break rank because we might get the group in trouble. I believe that as long as we were together as a group, psychological pressure would enable us to bear the persecution and we would continue to tell the story. But if we were separated and ended up in far-flung corners of the globe with threats of being skinned alive, crucified upside-down, and pierced with a sword, who would know if one of us broke rank? It is psychologically inconceivable that one of the disciples would not have broken. They were separated and alone, and they all stayed true to the telling of their story. They all died alone for their testimony of Christ’s Resurrection. I still remember sharing these proofs of the Resurrection with one of my professors. After I finished, he said, “Yes, I’m willing to agree that those eight facts should be assumed as the historical Christian basis for the Resurrection.” And when we went over the evidence concerning the disciples’ personalities, he said, “I am convinced that these disciples believed what they were saying.” Then he concluded, “So some of your eight facts must be wrong!” And I thought, “Those facts are easy to prove alongside the claim of the Resurrection!” There is no way that Jesus’ disciples did anything other than honestly report what they had seen and experienced. Hence, Jesus rose and ascended, which means His other claims are true. He is the God of glory! Isn’t it wonderful to know that He offers us His grace and His peace? The same Spirit that raised up Christ from the dead can also dwell in us for a simple act of faith. I think we ought to keep on faithing, don’t you? Reprinted with permission from Pastor Melissa Scott | December, 2022 Wingspread | November, 2022 Wingspread November, 2022 Wingsprea | October, 2022 Wingspread | September, 2022 Wingspread | August, 2022 Wingspread | July, 2022 Wingspread | June, 2022 Wingspread | May, 2022 Wingspead | April, 2022 Wingspread | March, 2022 Wingspread | February, 2022 Wingspread | January, 2022 Wingspread | | Year 2019 Wingspreads | August, 2016 Wingspread | 2016 Wingspreads | 2014 Wingspreads | 2013 Wingspreads | 2012 Wingspreads | 2011 Wingspreads | 2010 Wingspreads | 2009 Wingspreads | 2008 Wingspreads | 2007 Wingspreads | 2006 Wingspreads | 2005 Wingspreads | 2004 Wingspreads | 2003 Wingspreads | 2002 Wingspreads | 2001 Wingspreads | August, 2001 Wingspread | November, 2001 Wingspread | December, 2001 Wingspread | 2000 Wingspreads | 1999 Wingspreads | 2015 Wingspreads | Year 2017 Wingspreads | 2018 Wingspreads | Year 2020 Wingspreads | Year 2021 Wingspreads | Year 2022 Wingspreads | Year 2023 Wingspreads | | Return Home | Current Wingspread | Wingspread Archives | Contact Us | |
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