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April, 2024 (Vol.58-No.4) |
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Preached by Dr. Gene Scott on March 26, 1989 For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us… 1st Corinthians 5:7 And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ… 1st Corinthians 15:14-15 IN TODAY’S MESSAGE, WE WILL CONTINUE to examine the historical and logical basis for our faith: the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. But we will begin by looking at the origins of the Easter holiday itself and see how it actually obscures the true significance of the Resurrection. We are introduced to Abram in the book of Genesis. God chose Abram and his descendants to be His oracle people to set the stage for the revelation of His Son. But Satan was at work crafting a substitute plan to cover up God’s master plan of redemption. When God called Abram out of Ur of the Chaldees, the rebel-king Nimrod was already ruling with his evil wife, Semiramis. Nimrod’s name means “rebel,” and he built a kingdom in open rebellion against God. It was Nimrod who presided over the building of the Tower of Babel. Abram was called out from that atmosphere. Indeed, so were Noah and Shem, who were still living at the time. According to apocryphal literature, Abram’s father Terah served Nimrod. Nimrod sought to kill Abram because he had been warned in a dream that Terah’s son would usurp his throne. So Terah sent Abram away to live with Noah and Shem. Abram was then taught by Shem, the last of the pre-flood priestly line. That is what the apocryphal record claims. Well past nine months after Nimrod died, Semiramis gave birth to a son, Tammuz. To provide an explanation for his birth, she claimed that her late husband was an incarnation of the sun god and, having returned to his divine state as the sun, he had made her pregnant by virtue of a sunbeam. Tammuz was supposedly the rebirth of the sun god. Semiramis made both her late husband and her illegitimate son into the same deity and thereby instituted a false system of worship in rebellion against God. All of this was Satan’s counterfeit fulfillment of God’s prophecy that salvation would come by the seed of a woman. This complicated “mystery religion” from Babylon passed into Egypt through the descendants of Ham, and later came to Rome via Pergamos. By the time the Catholic Church became a state religion, there was already an established heathen priesthood with established rituals. The church was not able to compete with these, so they just stamped Christian names onto ancient heathen festivals. The legends of Nimrod, Semiramis, and Tammuz passed into other language frames, where they took on new names. “Semiramis” became “Ishtar,” from which we get out word “Easter.” The traditional Easter sunrise service has its origins in heathen sun worship. This practice is far removed from the Hebrew frame of reference into which the Son, as the revelation of God, came in a tent of human flesh called Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus rose from the dead on the first day of the week. According to the Hebrew calendar, the day begins at sundown, not at sunrise! Jesus rose from the dead on a Saturday evening, not at sunrise on a Sunday morning. The sunrise service is nothing more than a reenactment of an ancient heathen worship practice that traces back to Babylon. The truth has been painted over with a caricature of the facts surrounding the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. I once visited a church in Turkey that had been turned into a mosque, in which someone had crudely painted over an iconic painting of Jesus. The garish paint had started to flake away and I could see little sections of Jesus peeking out from behind it. This is a good analogy to what happens when we study the history of Easter celebration: the true image of Christ emerges when we peel away the layers of traditions that make void the word of God. The traditional church mistakenly commemorates Christ’s crucifixion on “Good Friday.” The name “Friday” itself comes from either Frigga or Freya, which are Scandinavian names for Semiramis. Jesus did not die on a Friday, and He did not rise on a Sunday morning. The Bible says that when people asked Jesus to show them a sign, He said there would be no sign given other than the sign of Jonah. He then interpreted the book of Jonah, saying that as Jonah was in the belly of a great fish for three days and three nights, He would likewise be in the tomb for three days and three nights. Therefore, Jesus had to die on a Wednesday and rise on a Saturday evening immediately after sundown. Jesus came to fulfill prophecy, and as Matthew’s Gospel points out, the fulfillment of this prophecy is one among many that prove His Sonship. God does things according to His set times, and He will not relinquish His control over history. Galatians 4:4 says, “When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son…” In the Old Testament, God said in Leviticus 23:4, “These are the feasts of the LORD…” The literal meaning is, “These are the set times of the LORD.” God then outlined these set times, starting with the Sabbath. In the New Testament, the book of Hebrews teaches that the Sabbath represents the life of faith and our continuing acts of faith. The other set times are Passover, Unleavened Bread, Firstfruits, Pentecost, Trumpets, Atonement, and Tabernacles. These are all “feast days” on the Hebrew Calendar. Jewish people still commemorate these feast days, in addition to other days that have been added in memory of specific events in their history. In Colossians 2:17, Paul calls the feast days “a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.” An alternative translation is “the substance is of Christ.” If you follow a shadow, it leads you to the real substance that casts the shadow. The shadow is not the reality. Paul lays down the principle that each of these set times was a shadow that either was fulfilled or will be fulfilled in Christ. The first feast day Jesus had to fulfill was Passover. Jesus was destined to be offered as the Passover sacrifice. He could not die before this set time. In John 7, Jesus’ brethren pressed Him to go to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles in the fall. But Jesus replied, “I go not up yet unto this feast; for my time is not yet full come.” Jesus knew that the Pharisees resented Him, and if He went openly to Jerusalem, He might be arrested and killed before God’s set time. Paul said in 1st Corinthians 5:7, “For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us…” God established Passover on the night the children of Israel were delivered from Egypt’s bondage. The children of Israel were instructed to slay a lamb for each household and apply its blood to the doorposts and lintels of their houses. That night, the angel of death would “pass over” every house that had the blood applied. But if the blood were not applied, the angel of death would slay the firstborn in the house. The death of the firstborn typifies the condemnation we are all due because of our sins. This condemnation passed over us because Christ died in our place. So Passover was an educational instrument, prophetically pointing to the Substance to come. Christ had to die on Passover; he could not have died at any other time. At first glance, that might not seem too difficult a task for God to accomplish. All He would have to do is keep Jesus out of Jerusalem until the right day. But in reality, this was no small feat. God did not have the option of having Christ die on just any Passover. He had to die on a specific day in a specific year. Passover falls on the fourteenth day of a particular month based upon the Hebrew lunar calendar. Passover can occur on a different day of the week, depending on the year and the movement of the heavenly bodies. Christ’s death had to occur in a certain year and not any other year, because there were other set times that had to be fulfilled. He not only had to die on a specific Passover, He also had to fulfill the Feast of Unleavened Bread and come out of the tomb as the Firstfruits of the Resurrection exactly 72 hours after His death. The Feast of Unleavened Bread begins at sundown at the end of Passover and lasts for seven days. The next set time, Firstfruits, is a feast that occurs within a feast: it occurs on the first day of the week within the Feast of Unleavened Bread. If the Feast of Unleavened Bread began on a Monday, the Feast of Firstfruits would occur on a Sunday six days later. If the Feast of Unleavened Bread began on a Tuesday, then the Feast of Firstfruits would still occur on the following Sunday, but only five days later. God’s Son gave His life as the supreme Passover sacrifice. It could only occur in a particular year in which Passover fell on a Wednesday, so the Feast of Unleavened Bread would start of Thursday, allowing exactly 72 hours before Firstfruits, which begins on Sunday. God’s plan had to take into account the lunar calendar, the solar calendar, and even the precession of the equinoxes in its nearly 26,000-year cycle. If the crucifixion had happened one year earlier or one year later, Passover would have fallen on a different day. Jesus could only be placed in the tomb at sundown on a Passover when it was possible for Him to come out of the tomb on Saturday at sundown, which was the beginning of the first day of the week on the Hebrew calendar. Many people have wondered how Christ could have remained in the tomb for three days and three nights if He was crucified on a Friday and rose from the dead on a Sunday. Even though that is not possible, many Christians have tried to explain it using faulty reasoning. They say that Jesus was crucified on Friday, which is one day. He was in the tomb on Saturday, which is two days. And He rose on Sunday morning, which makes three days. I wish our workweek could be calculated like that! This kind of silly reasoning has caused thinking people to turn off on Christianity. This reckoning cannot be true, because Jesus specified that He would be in the tomb for three days and three nights. That means He had to be crucified on Wednesday. He had to fulfill the Feast of Unleavened Bread by being placed in the tomb on Thursday, that is, after sundown on Wednesday. Remarkably, modern Jews unknowingly symbolize Christ’s burial and Resurrection in a ritual in which a piece of unleavened bread is hidden and brought out at the end of the Passover meal. Jesus rose on the first day of the week to fulfill the Feast of Firstfruits. To fulfill God’s set times, Jesus had to remain in the tomb for three days and three nights. From Wednesday sundown to Thursday sundown is one day and one night, or 24 hours. Then from Thursday sundown to Friday sundown makes two days and two nights, or 48 hours. Then from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown makes a total of three days and three nights, or 72 hours. Jesus came out of the tomb the moment the sun went down on Saturday night. Thus, He perfectly fulfilled everything that the shadows had pointed to. To further demonstrate God’s control of history, Pentecost comes 50 days after Firstfruits. Pentecost is a harvest feast. It is symbolic of the harvest of souls that began when the Holy Spirit fell on the church and about 3,000 were “harvested” into the kingdom in one day. Christ’s body, the church, began to take shape on that day. Three more set times remain to be fulfilled: the Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles. On the Feast of Trumpets, two trumpets are blown, symbolizing Christ’s first and second comings. Jesus was not born on December 25; He was born on the Feast of Trumpets in the fall, fulfilling the first trumpet. He will return one day on the Feast of Trumpets, when the church will be caught up to meet Him in the air. That will be the ultimate fulfillment of this feast. The Day of Atonement also points to more than one event. Jesus was our Atonement when He suffered on the cross in order that we might live eternally. But the Day of Atonement will ultimately be fulfilled in the future, when God’s wrath is poured out during the Great Tribulation. God will use affliction to drive His people to recognize Christ. The book of Zechariah says that God’s people will look on Him “whom they have pierced” and finally accept Jesus’ atonement. Zechariah also makes it clear that the Feast of Tabernacles will ultimately be fulfilled during the Millennium, which is the thousand-year reign of Christ after Antichrist is put down and Satan is cast into a pit for a thousand years. Every one of God’s set times will be fulfilled. Many people have wondered how Jesus could partake of the Passover supper with His disciples and also be our Passover by dying on Passover. In Exodus 12:6, God instructed His people to kill the Passover lamb “in the evening.” Literally, it says, “between the two evenings.” Remember, the Hebrew day runs from sundown to sundown. In the year that Jesus was crucified, Passover began at sundown on a Tuesday night and ended at sundown on Wednesday night. So Jesus could partake of the Passover supper with His disciples on Tuesday night “between the two evenings” and die on Wednesday afternoon, which was still Passover. God wound up an amazing clock and kept His prophecies in every detail. For years, the church has been divided over exactly when to celebrate the death and Resurrection of Christ. Many Christians celebrate at Easter, but that tradition is not based on the Scriptures. The word “Easter” does not even occur in the original Greek New Testament. It does occur once in the King James Version, in Acts 12:4, where it translates a Greek word from which we get the word “paschal,” as in the expression “paschal lamb.” The King James Version translators should have used the English word “Passover,” but they substituted it with the word “Easter.” It was important to God that Jesus go to the cross at that time as proof of His control over history. The early church commemorated Jesus’ death on Passover. But when heathen religions became engrafted into the church and “painted over” the Christian Way, the Roman church eventually won out. By official decree, Easter was established to celebrate Christ’s Resurrection. All of that background was to show how far traditions have departed from the Judeo-Christian frame of reference. Few people are willing to even consider such things. It really does not matter to me what day you want to celebrate anything, because to those of us in Christ, every day is the Lord’s. But I lament that the truth of God’s marvelous planning has been covered up along with His absolutely awesome ability to make things happen His way. Such knowledge increases our faith that God will continue to fulfill all of His set times. Now we turn our attention to the Resurrection, when Jesus became the Firstfruits of all of those whom God will raise up at a future time. That introduction was simply to say that you should use your brain when you become a Christian. Christianity is not primarily a religion of feelings. I said in the previous message that I lost my faith because I put my confidence in professors who normally would not speak on a subject they were not experts on; but everyone thinks he is born an expert in religion. I constantly confronted pressure from people who had convinced themselves that Jesus could not have risen from the dead; therefore, He did not rise from the dead; therefore, anyone who believes that He rose is mentally deficient and anyone who wrote that He did is a poor reporter; therefore, no one should bother to read their writings, because Jesus could not have risen from the dead. Yet those same people who make that circular argument would also have us believe that Jesus was a “good and wise” teacher. Supposedly, once you have peeled off all the supernatural stories, Jesus deserves the same respect as other founders of major religions. The problem is that the only Christ you encounter in history went around saying things about Himself that no other respected religious leaders could get away with saying. Jesus made ridiculous claims about Himself that force us to conclude He was either a madman or a fake, if He is not what He claimed to be. Only someone supernatural would be entitled to make such claims about Himself. But suppose we encountered someone who not only made all those claims but also said He would be crucified and come out of the tomb three days later. If He actually came out of the tomb, we would have to take another look at Him. I was confronted with the ignorant attitude, so prevalent in academia and the media, of those who say, “Since no one can rise from the dead, don’t bother me with the story.” News anchors often try to sound very spiritual around Easter and Christmastime. “It is wonderful poetry,” we are told by ignorant people wo read teleprompters, “but no one is really supposed to believe this stuff.” There are also many people who do not take Christianity seriously but still go to church to wave at God on Easter once every few years. I was a preacher’s kid. There was a time when I wanted nothing to do with a Christ who had been represented to me as the Bogeyman of the world. But once I understood the startling alternative, I concluded that most people in academia who talk about Christ have never looked at Him. I also concluded that if He came out of the tomb, then I had found a concrete exhibition of God in human flesh, One to whom I could relate. I had found in His claims the best starting point for a definition of God that could be found: someone with all authority, who was perfect, who had an insider’s knowledge of heaven and could tell me how to get there, and whose perfect life was the price sufficient to redeem all mankind. Therefore, I had to settle the matter of the Resurrection. Before we can intelligently discuss the Resurrection, we must first assume certain facts are true. Every fact of history takes for granted other facts; that is, we must assume certain things in order to discuss other things. For example, if you were to claim that I preached too long or too short a sermon here at church today, you would first have to assume that we had church service today and that I was the one preaching. Why waste time debating a question about the length of my sermon if you do not even believe I preached? Yet it would be easier for us to prove the underlying assumption – the fact that I preached – than it would be for us to agree on whether the sermon was too long or too short. In other words, it is often much easier to prove the underlying facts than the assumptions that stand upon those facts. Most people never think of performing a logical analysis on religious subjects. They would say, “Don’t ruin religion by thinking! Don’t ask me to assume certain facts. Let’s get right to the point: a resurrection didn’t happen because it couldn’t happen, and therefore anyone who says it did is a liar!” Most people avoid applying their minds to this subject, but you cannot discuss the Resurrection of Jesus Christ without assuming certain facts. I will not discuss the Resurrection with anyone who does not accept the following eight facts, at least for the purposes of argument or in arguendo, as someone might say in a courtroom. And these eight facts are much easier to prove than the Resurrection itself: Number 1: We must assume that Jesus lived. There is no point to discussing the Resurrection if Jesus never lived. Even Tacitus, the heathen, Roman historian, admits that Jesus lived. It is easier to prove that Jesus lived than it is to prove that He came out of a tomb after someone had killed Him. I think you would agree with that. If you do, then we can proceed. Number 2: Jesus was crucified, a horrific form of execution, at the hands of the Romans and at the instigation of certain Jewish leaders. I am aware there are people who would object to this assumption. I am sorry, but some horrible things have happened in history; and while many people would like to rewrite history and say those things never happened, they still happened nonetheless. I want to be clear that not all Jews who were living in that day participated in this act. Further, it is evil to use this fact of history to justify any anti-Semitic thoughts or behavior. It was a limited group of Jewish leaders who brought the charges against Jesus that led to His crucifixion. Their motivation had as much to do with their desire to perpetuate their own power as it had to do with their religious convictions. If you do not want to believe this factual assumption, I would say, “Fine. It is much easier to demonstrate that this assumption is true than it is to demonstrate the miracle of the Resurrection.” But for purposes of discussing the Resurrection, I ask you to assume that this fact is true. Number 3: Jesus was considered dead. Notice I did not say that Jesus was actually dead; I said, for the sake of discussion, that He was considered dead. There originally was not much argument against that claim. There is more recent theory that Jesus faked His own death, which is being peddled in popular novels and in more serious attempts to rewrite history. According to this theory, Jesus developed a method of going into a trancelike state and then bringing Himself out of it. He supposedly first practiced this method on Lazarus, although there is nothing like this recorded in the Gospels. The Gospels say that when Lazarus was sick, one of his sisters sent for Jesus, but Lazarus died before Jesus arrived and she got angry at Jesus for taking so long to get there. She said, “Lazarus has been dead for so long that he already stinks!” because decomposition had already set in. Overlooking the Gospel record for a moment, the theory is that having practiced on Lazarus, Jesus did not really die. He staged the crucifixion at a place where people could watch from a distance but not come close enough to really check. And having faked the crucifixion, He came down off the cross. It was all a hoax. But even those who believe that Jesus’ death was a hoax are willing to grant that some people considered Jesus to be dead. Number 4: Jesus was buried in a known, accessible tomb. It was accessible until the Jewish authorities prevailed upon the Romans to post a guard there, which proves that the location of the tomb was known. Number 5: It was preached that Jesus rose from the dead, that He ascended into heaven, and that the tomb was empty. All three of these declarations characterized the earliest preaching. Number 6: The Jewish leaders were more concerned about disproving the preaching than you and I could ever be. This assumption is really a deduction, if you assume that the Jewish leaders instigated the crucifixion. Imagine that you were one of those leaders. If your livelihood, image, and ability to function in society were dependent upon the preaching not being true, then I think you would be concerned about disproving the preaching. If the message of the Resurrection gained enough credence that everyone who had brought about Christ’s death would lose their position and maybe their lives as a consequence, you would likely take an active interest in trying to disprove it, because you had done the dastardly deed of destroying the Man who was declared to have risen. You would have more than a merely academic interest in the subject. That is common sense. Again, any one of these facts is much easier to demonstrate than the Resurrection itself, because there are no miraculous elements in these facts. It is much easier to demonstrate that it was preached in the very city where Jesus had been crucified that He rose and ascended, and that the tomb was empty, than it is to demonstrate that He actually rose from the dead. It is easier to accept that these things were preached than to believe they really happened. Number 7: The disciples were persecuted unmercifully for preaching this message. Because of the Jewish leaders’ concern to disprove the preaching, the disciples were beaten, thrown into prison, and put to death. Historians will point out that Christians were persecuted in later years by the Romans, but that was for a different reason. In the days of Nero, the Roman government was looking for a scapegoat to cover their own dereliction, so they blamed the Christians for all the ills of the Empire. But every record agrees that the earliest persecutions were precisely for preaching that Jesus came out of the tomb and ascended into heaven. The Jewish leaders were determined to silence the message that Jesus rose after He died as a result of His crucifixion for “blasphemy,” as they called it. Their position, reputation, livelihoods, and very lives were at stake if the message of the Resurrection was true. Number 8: The tomb was empty. This can be proven by two logical deductions from history. The first is that if the Jewish leaders were concerned about the preaching, and since the tomb was known and accessible, they could have simply gone to that tomb and produced the body to immediately put a stop to the preaching. That is why the Jewish leaders concocted the story early on that the disciples stole the body. If their livelihoods were at stake, they would have immediately gone to the tomb, produced the body, and said, “here it is: still wrapped up!” The fact that they did not tells me the tomb was empty. The second deduction is based on the fact that no one to this day can convincingly demonstrate where Jesus’ tomb is located. You can find Abraham’s tomb, David’s tomb, and a host of other famous tombs; but no one can with certainty find Jesus’ tomb. The traditional churches have proclaimed one particular site to be Jesus’ tomb for years. There is a second site that was advocated by General Gordon in the 1800s. Some believe that this site fits the historic description of the location better than the traditional site. For years, the church has debated over which of these two sites is the real tomb in which Christ was buried. The reason the tomb was lost to history is that no one cared about it any longer; there was no body in it! One does not normally revere a tomb that has no one buried in it. The authorities in Jesus’ day would have made sure that no one could revere it, so as not to draw attention to the fact that the tomb was empty. As the living resurrected Christ became the subject of the New Testament church, the tomb passed into obscurity. It was lost to history until years later when the church began to ascribe importance to relics and people began to search for it; but people have never been able to agree which is the right one. The tomb was therefore empty. Now with these eight facts, we can have an intelligent discussion about the Resurrection. Again, I do not want to discuss the Resurrection with anyone who is not willing to assume these facts. When will people finally understand that it takes intelligence to be a Christian? The Bible says that when you have the Spirit of Christ, you have the mind of Christ. Without the Spirit of Christ, you are no part of Him, and thus you cannot be a Christian. I have had enough of the church and the world depicting ignorance as a mark of spirituality, and I have had enough of Christianity being represented by people who would be better suited as carnival barkers at a freak show. Christianity is based upon demonstratable facts. Any one of these eight facts is much easier to demonstrate than the Resurrection itself, but you cannot sever the branches from the trunk of the tree. The preaching of the Resurrection has continued until this day. To explain away the power of the message, the world has offered various theories. The first and perhaps the most logical theory is that the disciples stole the body. That means the disciples were connivers who had bet on a loser. So, to reestablish their credibility, they stole the body and hid it away while they plotted for seven weeks. Then, on the day of Pentecost, they came out preaching that Jesus had risen from the dead. The second theory is that the Jewish leaders took the body. Why would they have done this? After all, their own law decreed that a person was made unclean by touching a dead body. But even if they had taken it, once they heard that the disciples were preaching that Christ had risen, the first thing they would have done was produce the body to put a stop to the preaching. The third theory is that the Romans took the body. This theory is also untenable, because the Jewish leaders had influence with the Romans and would have been able to obtain the body from them. But if it were true, why would the Jewish leaders say that the disciples stole the body? The fourth theory is that Jesus’ body was still in the tomb, but the women went to the wrong tomb. According to theory, a band of miserable, emotionally drained, teary-eyed women wandered around in a graveyard in the early morning light trying to find and honor the Lord’s body. But they went to the wrong tomb and found it empty, so they cried out, “Our Lord is gone!” Then they ran off and told the other disciples, who started to preach “Christ is risen!” based upon that misunderstanding. The fifth theory is that the witnesses to the Resurrection all had hallucinations or gloried daydreams. They all thought they saw Jesus alive, but He was still there in the tomb, dead. The sixth theory is that Jesus was not really dead, and in the coolness of the tomb, He resuscitated. If this were true, I hope that someone would have thought of putting breathing holes in His wrappings, because He might have resuscitated and subsequently suffocated! This theory also begs the question of how Jesus might have unwrapped Himself. But according to this theory, Jesus was not really dead and the disciples were victims of an elaborate hoax. They did not see a resurrected Christ; they saw a resuscitated Christ. The seventh theory is that the disciples told a lie. They simply made up the whole story. The eighth theory is that the disciples honestly told what they saw and experienced. These eight theories have been propounded by intelligent people throughout the centuries to explain the preaching of the Resurrection. Now, I want to show you that when you analyze these theories on the basis of the assumed facts, you are forced to a choice between only two of the theories. I was a history major in college. Some people might claim to be “objective” historians, but there really is no such thing as true objectivity. It is psychologically impossible to expose yourself to any subject matter without eventually forming an opinion about it. You should be able to separate your opinion from the facts and understand why you came to your conclusions based on the facts. On the subject of the Resurrection, once you can break free from using circular reasoning, you cannot expose yourself to the facts without forming an opinion. And if the facts I have presented are assumed, then there are not really eight theories but only two: the disciples either lied or they told the truth. Let me show you. If the disciples stole the body, that means they lied. The theory that the Jews took the body is untenable; but even if they did, all that explains is the empty tomb. It does not account for the rest of the disciples’ preaching. They did not merely preach that the tomb was empty; they also preached about a resurrected Savior, One with whom they conversed. They said that He partook of food and did other things that only a natural body could do, resurrected, divine, and immortal though it may be. The disciples claimed to have encountered a whole substantial body. They also preached that Christ ascended into heaven. Even though the first two theories might explain the empty tomb, they still do not explain the rest of the message. The disciples still had to invent that part of the story, so they were still liars. If the Romans took the body, that would also explain the empty tomb, but again, it still would not explain the rest of the message that was preached; therefore, the disciples still lied. If the women went to the wrong tomb, then anyone could subsequently have taken them to the right tomb: it was known and accessible. The disciples would still be liars. What about the hallucination theory? It is the most nonsensical of all the theories. First of all psychologists say there is usually a certain state of mind that precedes hallucinations. Yet every record of these disciples depicts them in the opposite state of mind: they had no hope or expectancy that Jesus would rise from the dead. Furthermore, if there had been a body in the tomb, anyone could have gone there and seen it, which would have quickly dispelled any hallucinations. Otherwise, the hallucination theory requires that someone first steals the body to set the stage for other people to have hallucinations! But even if the hallucination theory were used to explain the empty tomb, it does not explain all the other things that the disciples preached about Jesus. So again, the disciples would still be liars. What about the resuscitation theory? It explains the living Christ, somewhat, though He would have been half-dead. The theory is untenable when you consider what is actually involved in a Roman crucifixion: one does not “resuscitate” from a Roman crucifixion! But even if Jesus had resuscitated, the disciples did not preach a half-dead, emaciated Christ recovering from a crucifixion. They preached a vital and victorious Christ! Resuscitated people do not ascend into heaven, and so the resuscitation theory cannot explain the preaching about the Ascension. The disciples would still be liars because of all the things they added to their stories. We are now down to the last two theories. People have postulated a resuscitated Christ, a hallucinated Christ, a wrong-tomb Christ, and a Roman-stolen, Jewish-stolen, or disciples-stolen body of Christ; but there are really only two choices. The facts drive us into a corner: either these disciples made up the story and peddled it to perpetuate their position or they honestly reported what they saw and experienced. I taught earlier that a study of Christ brings you to a startling alternative where you must reject Him as being a madman or a faker, or acknowledge that He is who He claims to be. Likewise, a study of the Resurrection brings you to an inevitable intersection: the proof of the Resurrection, like other facts of history, stands or falls on the veracity of the witnesses. Either the men who peddled this story were knowingly and effectively peddling a lie or they were telling the truth, and there is no middle ground. When I studied the evidence, I was driven into this corner and concluded that these men did not lie but rather told what they honestly saw and experienced, and thus they were honest reporters. To become a Christian, you do not have to first settle every controversial social issue. You do not have to first decide whether you believe in the theory of evolution. You do not have to first decide when life begins and ends. Those are important issues, but they are peripheral issues. I am sure that many people would not only disagree with me but would also be angry at my suggesting that life-and-death matters are peripheral; but I am talking about faith in Christ. Your faith must be anchored to something. You must be able to stand on solid ground; then you can get up, hang your body on God’s word, and live your life accordingly. You can work on the gray areas for the rest of your life. The New Testament Christians never had a complete Bible. Most of the Gentile churches did not even have an Old Testament. In Acts 17, Paul came preaching to the philosophers on Mars’ Hill. He saw that they had a monument dedicated “TO THE UNKNOWN GOD,” and he seized on that and began to preach, saying, in essences, “Men of Athens! I see you even have a monument to a God you do not know about, but I will tell you who He is!” Paul proved this unknown God’s superiority by an appeal to the Resurrection. Whenever Paul came to a town, he asked people to respond to the Christ who died for them and rose again. That is the gospel message! Paul said in 1st Corinthians 15:14-15, “If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ…” In that day, the Resurrection was the most important issue. Today, everything else is made into an issue in the church. Maybe you have been bothered by certain things you have heard that Christians believe. Set every other issue aside: the Resurrection is the anchor and starting point of the Christian faith. Without the Resurrection, there is no Christian faith. You certainly do not have to start with all the garbage of church traditions. An intelligent analysis brings you to this crossroad. You must ultimately make your decision about the Resurrection based on the veracity of the reporters. In the following message, I will present why I believe the disciples told the truth. I will discuss what turned me around and took me from agnosticism to the courage of faith, when I finally said, “There is no other explanation: Jesus came out of that tomb.” I then asked myself, “What should I do next?” and I began to hang my life on God’s promises. To be continued next month. 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