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May 17, 2017

#4: 20 Reasons To Believe Jesus FACTUALLY Rose from the Dead – #4 The Marinovich Argument

Editor’s Note: I am currently blogging through my book Easter: Fact or Fiction, 20 Reasons to Believe Jesus Rose from the Dead. That book is available on Amazon by clicking the picture or link below. Please check it out! (Scroll down for links to the other parts to this post) (CLICK HERE FOR THE AMAZON LINK)

“Today the term ‘Jesus’ accounts for 1 out of every 10,000 words appearing in scanned books. How much more prominent could he possibly have ever been? There is not enough room for much upside here.”
– Who’s Bigger, a book that ranks the most famous people in all of human history. Jesus came in first place by far.

When I was a teenager, the number one high school recruit in the nation was a guy named Todd Marinovich. Todd was a great quarterback, who ultimately signed with Southern California, and went on to play pro football for the Oakland Raiders. Todd’s father raised him from a baby to be a quarterback, utilizing every opportunity possible to train his son. In fact, Todd was famous as the kid who had never eaten a hamburger (or much other junk food) by the time he signed with the Trojans. Perhaps unsurprisingly, things didn’t end up so well for Marinovich. While he did play quarterback at a high-profile college, and did play some football in the NFL, his career ultimately ended poorly due to drugs and other troubling issues. As of 2017, Todd has been arrested for wandering around naked with marijuana and amphetamines. It seems that it might be a bad idea to raise somebody to be a “Robo-quarterback,” from the age of two.

It does cause you to think, however. Let’s do a thought experiment: What if your goal was not to raise a great quarterback, but to raise your son to become the most famous person that ever lived? Let’s consider that you have a budget of 25 million dollars to make it happen, and you use a chunk of that money to hire some of the best ‘fame’ consultants that the world has to offer. After a year-long research period, these consultants come to you with the following 7 step plan: 1. Your son needs to be born in a dank and unsanitary room, unfit for human habitation, with urine and animal droppings all around. For good measure, they tell you, make sure your son sleeps his first few nights in an animal’s feeding trough. 2. Your son’s birth should be heralded and announced by some dirty and poorly thought of shepherds to proclaim his arrival. 3. Your son must stay almost 100 percent exclusively in an area the size of Rhode Island for his entire life. 4. Your son may never write a book or leave any art behind, or letter or even a self-portrait – only his memories and teachings. 5. Your son should have followers, but very uninfluential followers – ones that are possessed of little fame, money, or import. 6. You son must die before he reaches the prime of his influence, which for most men is in their mid-forties to fifties. 7. Finally, these consultants recommend that your son must be executed by the state in the most dishonorable way possible. For an American, that might be the electric chair, for a first century Jewish person, that would be a cross. Would such advice produce somebody likely to become the most influential or important person in history? Hardly!

I suspect that you would fire your advisers with extreme prejudice the moment they presented you with such a ridiculous plan. Not a single one of the seven steps above are even remotely conducive to becoming famous. Indeed, every single one of those seven steps would seem to favor anything but fame, import and influence. And yet, Jesus met all of the above criteria, and then some. He was born in a most embarrassing and unimpressive manner. His childhood was spent as an immigrant on the run, in a foreign country, from governmental officials that desired to kill him. To our knowledge, Jesus never wrote a book, or a letter, or any work of art whatsoever. There are no surviving pictures of Him, so we have no idea what He might have looked like. He lived in the tiny country of Israel, which is much smaller than most people realize. Consider the state of Alabama, which is 52,000 square miles in size. As the 30th largest state in the United States, Alabama is much smaller than its neighbor Georgia. And yet, one could fit six and a half Israel’s in Alabama and still have room left over for the cities of Birmingham and Montgomery and Huntsville! And, with maybe two exceptions, Jesus never travelled beyond the borders of his tiny nation. Finally, as noted above, He died the most ignoble death possible as a condemned enemy of both His home country, and the ruling power of the world at the time.

Given all of that, how in the world has Jesus become the most famous and influential person to EVER LIVE? It’s not like he had an army of followers – just 12 uninfluential men and a group of women that travelled with the Jesus Team to met their needs, per Luke 8. Jesus might have been somewhat famous in His own home country, but even there, He was quite unpopular with the rich and famous, with perhaps Simon the Leper and Joseph of Arimathea being the lone exceptions.

If there was no resurrection, then what might explain Jesus’ startling and sustained rise to fame and influence? The Bible, of course, would point to the fact that Jesus is the only person that ever lived who has permanently overcame death. (Lazarus, you will remember, only temporarily overcame death.) The Bible would also indicate that, after Jesus’ ascension, God sent the Holy Spirit to fill and empower all who followed Jesus, which enabled them to take His good news to every corner of the earth. But, if you don’t agree with the biblical account of the spread of Jesus’ fame, what is your explanation? And, in the name of science, do you think your theory might be repeatable? In other words, do you think it would be possible, given a skeptic’s explanation for the rise in fame of Jesus, for that process to be duplicated? Could somebody else with Jesus’ giftings (and geographical/technological limitations) become as famous as Jesus did?

I suspect not. Every hypothesis which attempts to explain the fame of Jesus apart from the resurrection of Jesus is ultimately not scientifically sustainable, since such a hypothesis could not be tested. Skeptics, like Jeffrey Jay Lowder, suggest that a claim like the resurrection of Jesus requires extraordinary evidence before one could logically accept it as true. I concede his point, and agree with him. However, I believe that there is PLENTY of extraordinary evidence that points to the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus, including the fame of Jesus, the spread of the Gospel, and the fact that almost 1/3 of the known world today worships a Galilean that was born over 2000 years ago. I suggest that, if you are going to doubt the resurrection, you should have extraordinary evidence that refutes it. I have never seen a skeptic produce any such evidence that would refute convincingly any Christian claim about the resurrection of Jesus. In that light, ponder the following statement from pastor and writer Tim Keller:

“The resurrection of Jesus was a major historical problem, no matter how you looked at it. Most modern historians made the philosophical assumption that miracles simply cannot happen, and that made the claim of the resurrection highly problematic. However, if you disbelieved the resurrection you then had the difficulty of explaining how the Christian church got started at all. “If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all he said; if he didn’t rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead.” That is how the first hearers felt who heard reports of the resurrection. They knew that if it was true it meant we can’t live our lives any way we want. It also meant we don’t have to be afraid of anything, not Roman swords, not cancer, nothing. If Jesus rose from the dead, it changes everything. Most people think that, when it comes to Jesus’s resurrection, the burden of proof is on believers to give evidence that it happened. That is not completely the case. The resurrection also puts a burden of proof on its nonbelievers. It is not enough to simply believe Jesus did not rise from the dead. You must then come up with a historically feasible alternate explanation for the birth of the church. You have to provide some other plausible account for how things began.”

Essentially then, I am arguing here that Jesus’ coming from utter obscurity to time dominating ultra-relevance is a proof, so to speak, of the veracity of the Bible, and the plausibility of the resurrection. Before you scoff too much at this, my dear skeptic friend, consider well how you would explain Jesus’ meteoric and sustained rise to relevance absent the resurrection.

FULL CHAPTER.

Remember that, even in tiny and insignificant Israel, that Galilee and Nazareth were both considered tiny and insignificant.

Steven S. Skiena and Charles Ward, Who’s Bigger? Where Historical Figures Really Rank (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 32.

(Note: This is a partial preview of my book, you can continue reading FREE on Amazon via Kindle Unlimited, or you can purchase the book for a few pennies, OR you can find a friend reading it and take it when he isn’t looking!)

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Published on May 17, 2017 13:02

#5: 20 Reasons To Believe Jesus FACTUALLY Rose from the Dead – #5 The Lithuanian Argument

“Everyone knew that the Messiah, the son of David, must come from Bethlehem, the city of David, as the prophets had foretold. But Jesus came from Nazareth, not only an obscure village with no royal connections, but also located in Galilee, which, as John 8:41-52 reminds us, was no place for a Messiah to come from.”
-R.T. France

The Lithuanian argument is a sort of subset of the Marinovich argument, and takes a similar approach to demonstrating the reasonableness for the resurrection. Can you name (without Googling) which countries border Lithuania? Could you locate Lithuania on a globe without country names? What about the capital of Lithuania? Most Americans, at least, know very, very little about Lithuania. I know this for a fact, because I have asked over one thousand college students in my various classes (World History, New Testament and Old Testament) what the capital of Lithuania was, and I cannot recall a single student ever getting the correct answer.

This is actually kind of sad, because Lithuania is a lovely country that is, for the purposes of this discussion, approximately 3 times larger than the country of Israel. Consider this: The Roman Empire at its height was roughly 51 percent the size of America in square miles Therefore, Lithuania to America in 2016 very roughly corresponds to the size and influence of Israel to the Roman Empire in the first century. In fact, Lithuania is actually a little bit larger proportionally, compared to the U.S., than Israel was to the Roman Empire in the first century.

At least from a mathematical perspective, we can perhaps get a vague understanding of how citizens in The Roman Empire viewed Israel by thinking about how Americans presently view the country of Lithuania. You might, of course, argue that Lithuania is significantly farther away from the United States vs the distance of Israel to Rome, and you’d be correct, but remember that it would take the average American about 8 hours to fly to Lithuania in the present time, while a journey from Israel to Rome in antiquity would likely take two weeks, possibly more. Though the U.S. is further on the globe away from Lithuania, in practical terms, that country is far closer to the States than Rome was to Israel in the first century.

Imagine then that a teacher of a new and radically different religion arose in Lithuania in the 1700s. Imagine that this particular teacher had no television shows, no operas, no compositions, no music, no books, art, or anything. He didn’t even have any famous and important followers, and yet, within about 200 years of his ignominious death, his followers would be well on their way to dominating the religious landscape of America. Can you imagine it? Americans suddenly worshipping and telling others about this amazing Lithuanian teacher?

This is, euphemistically speaking, what Jesus and His followers did. Historically and factually – a teacher and His followers from a largely unknown, small and unimportant country came to dominate an entire empire within a short time after the death of that teacher. People MUST have a rational theory to explain how Christianity spread so far and wide in such a short amount of time without military power or economic riches! Such a thing has never happened before in history and hasn’t happened since.

Keep in mind that the Jesus movement from the first few centuries spread across all cultures and languages, gaining adherents from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds, many of whom were openly hostile to the Jewish people. Remember also that there were dozens of claimants to the title of messiah around the time of Jesus, and none of them ever amounted to anything historically significant except Jesus. I propose that a public, bodily resurrection of Jesus is a plausible answer to how Christianity came to dominate the greatest civilization in world history. In fact, I am honestly not sure that there is another answer that could be proposed to explain the cross-cultural dominance and appeal of Christianity in the first five centuries A.D.

Skeptical theories (i.e. that Jesus never existed – which no almost no peer reviewed scholar, atheist or otherwise, believes…or that an impostor took His place, or that the resurrection was invented by His followers, or that they hallucinated Him, or even that Jesus was simply a good teacher who had his reputation greatly enhanced by legendary exaggeration decades after his death.) don’t account very well at all for the explosion of Jesus’ followers all across the world – permeating multiple cultures and languages.

FYI, the countries that border Lithuania are: Latvia, Poland, and Belarus. The capital city of Lithuania is Vilnius. And a world conquering king coming out of a small town in Lithuania is about as likely as one coming out of a small town in Israel. And yet, it happened. Tiny, insignificant (at the time) Israel produced the most famous and influential person the world has ever known, an indisputable fact that only makes sense in light of the resurrection.

Perhaps you’ve heard skeptics raise objections about the supposed fact that nobody (other than ALL of the writers of the various books eventually collated into the New Testament) ever mentioned Jesus in writing during His lifetime, or shortly after? First, as you will read shortly, that is quite an exaggeration, there are extant documents from over 40 people that wrote about Jesus within 150 years of His death and resurrection. If that number seems small to you, then consider that there are only extant works from 10 people who wrote about Tiberius Caesar within 150 years of his lifetime, and He was the emperor of Rome for over 20 years at the height of its impact!

Very likely, there were many more people than 43 who actually wrote about Jesus, but many, many books and writings from 2000 years ago have disappeared for a wide variety of reasons. In keeping with our Lithuanian thought experiment, consider this: If a worker of miracles and great teacher really did arise in Lithuania in the 1700s, even if that man were to also genuinely come back from the dead, how many Americans do you think would write about him within 100 years of his lifetime? Of those that did, how many of those writings would survive almost 2000 years? If the Bible accounts of how Jesus lived His life are exactly true – and I believe they are – then there is very little reason nor means that the Romans (or Greeks) would have known about Jesus during His lifetime, or even decades afterwards. In the same way that an 18th century American would be highly unlikely to write about a Lithuanian holy man – even one that legitimately did miracles – a first century Greek/Roman would also be highly unlikely to write about a Jewish Messiah.

R T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, The New International Commentary On the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Pub., 2007), 41.

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Published on May 17, 2017 12:54

#6: 20 Reasons To Believe Jesus FACTUALLY Rose from the Dead – #6 The 500(!) Eyewitnesses

“He was crucified, died, and was buried, and the third day He arose.’ Although the Gospels have most clearly testified concerning the evident fact of the Lord’s Resurrection, which was further proved a reality by many men, the Apostle preached that the Saviour ‘arose’ from the dead ‘on the third day.’ If He had risen on the same day He died, or in the night which followed, some people would scarcely believe that He truly died. So, you see, the postponement of the Resurrection was a confirmation of His death; conversely, the truth of His death was the authority of reason. Unless you show me that a man has been bent down, you will not convince me that he has been raised up; on the other hand, you will easily prove he was stretched out in sleep, if you show that he has been aroused. ‘And that he appeared to Cephas, and after that to the Eleven; then he was seen by more than five hundred brethren at one time.’ O wonderful, inestimable goodness of the Lord! He thought it would not strengthen the faith of the Church enough if all the Apostles saw Him after the Resurrection unless He would show Himself to the crowds who stood around”
–From a sermon preached by Caesarius of Arles in ~500 A.D.

“Trot out one of those 500 witnesses or give us something that they wrote, and we will accept that as reliable proof or evidence.”
– Resurrection skeptic and agnostic, Farrell Till

The biblical messenger Paul makes a startling claim in the 15th chapter of his letter to the Corinthians – that claim is, essentially, that all of Christianity hinges on the historical truth of whether or not Jesus rose from the dead. If He did not rise from the dead, “then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain,” Additionally, Paul says that Christians should be the people in the world most looked down on and pitied IF Jesus did NOT rise from the dead. (vs. 19) Here’s the whole passage, please read it, as it is one of the most critically important passages in the entire Bible:

“ For I passed on to you as most important what I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that He was buried,

that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve. 6 Then He appeared to over 500 brothers at one time; most of them are still alive, but some have fallen asleep.7 Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one abnormally born, He also appeared to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by God’s grace I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not ineffective. However, I worked more than any of them, yet not I, but God’s grace that was with me.11 Therefore, whether it is I or they, so we proclaim and so you have believed. Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say, “There is no resurrection of the dead”? 13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; 14 and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation is without foundation, and so is your faith. 15 In addition, we are found to be false witnesses about God, because we have testified about God that He raised up Christ—whom He did not raise up if in fact the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, Christ has not been raised. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. 18 Therefore, those who have fallen asleep in Christ have also perished. 19 If we have put our hope in Christ for this life only, we should be pitied more than anyone. But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21 For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead also comes through a man. 22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.” (1 Corinthians 15:3-2)

Those are strong words! To Paul, the historical resurrection of Jesus wasn’t merely a belief, or facet of Christianity, it was the basis and foundation of the whole thing! The central and core heart of Christianity is the resurrection. If Jesus rose from the dead, then all humans should follow Him, and devote their lives to Him. If Jesus rose from the dead, then likely all of His other teachings are true, and must be obeyed. If Jesus rose from the dead, then He is unique in all of the history of humanity and is therefore worthy of our highest praise.

If Jesus did NOT rise from the dead, then what are people doing going around and worshipping a teacher who has been dead for almost 2000 years? What an absurdity! A recent survey of British ‘Christians’ conducted by the BBC revealed some startling facts: over thirty percent of those surveyed (who claimed to be Christians) did NOT believe in life after death. Additionally, nearly one-quarter (almost 25 percent) of the surveyed ‘Christians,’ did NOT believe Jesus rose from the dead! What an astounding statistic! I would love to sit down with them, and ask them why in the world they identify as Christians if they don’t believe Jesus rose from the dead – it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Those ‘Christians’ should be reminded of Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 15:17, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still dead in your sins.”

Thus it is remarkably important that Paul mentions that over 500 people actually saw Jesus after His death. There were over 500 eyewitnesses! This is not a small claim! Paul is effectively challenging the Corinthians in the chapter by telling them that the historical/factual resurrection of Jesus is the central core of Christianity, and if any of them doubt that it happened, most of the 500 people who witnessed the risen Jesus are still alive and can give testimony of the fact that they saw Jesus after He died and was buried. This demonstrates that Paul is not merely claiming a spiritual resurrection for Jesus; nor does it allow for the idea that Jesus is coming back and somehow symbolically visiting those who were important to Him. No, 1 Corinthians 15 makes it crystal clear Paul believed that Jesus bodily (not metaphorically) rose from the dead and factually appeared to 500+ people, many of whom could still attest to that appearance as eyewitnesses at the time Paul wrote His first letter to the Corinthians.

Additionally, as mentioned by Michael Licona and Gary Habermas, there are at least 42 writers from antiquity (only nine of which are in the Bible), that reference Jesus within 150 years of His life. Almost all those ancient writers show clear evidence of believing in the factual and historical resurrection of Jesus. Here are some examples of believers in the resurrection of Jesus that wrote about it shortly after His death:

The Epistle of Clement: “Let us consider, beloved, how the Lord continually proves to us that there shall be a future resurrection, of which He has rendered the Lord Jesus Christ the first-fruits by raising Him from the dead.” AND, “The apostles have preached the Gospel to us from the Lord Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ [has done so from God. Christ therefore was sent forth by God, and the apostles by Christ. Both these appointments, then, were made in an orderly way, according to the will of God. Having therefore received their orders, and being fully assured by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and established in the word of God, with full assurance of the Holy Ghost, they went forth proclaiming that the kingdom of God was at hand.” This letter was written by Clement, probably around 90ad and possibly before the book of Revelation. This is perhaps the earliest extant church letter outside of the Bible, and gives indisputable evidence that the early church not only believed in the resurrection of Jesus, but that they based their future hope AND proclamation of the Good news of Jesus on that hope…

This Chapter is continued in the book.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-39...

Caesarius of Arles, Saint Caesarius of Arles: Sermons (1–238), ed. Hermigild Dressler and Bernard M. Peebles, trans. Mary Magdeleine Mueller, vol. 1, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press; Consortium Books, 1956–1973), 57–58.

Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004), 247.

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Published on May 17, 2017 12:44

#7: 20 Reasons To Believe Jesus FACTUALLY Rose from the Dead – #7 The Uncracked Conspiracy

“This…is that carpenter’s son, the son of prostitution, that Sabbath-breaker, that Samaritan and devil-possessed! This is he whom you purchased from Judas! …This is he whom the disciples secretly stole away, that it might be said he had risen again, or the gardener abstracted that his lettuces might come to no harm from the crowds of visitors.”
– Tertullian, quoting a Jewish conspiracy theory of the second century, which identified the gardener, or disciples of Jesus as those who stole His body from the tomb.

Do you believe that the government is suppressing evidence of alien interaction with humanity? Do you believe that John F. Kennedy was shot by more than one person, or that government agents somehow had a hand in the death of Martin Luther King Junior? Is it possible that militant atheists are actually using chemtrails (left behind by passing jets) in an attempt to poison heavenly angels? Some conspiracy theories are bizarre and strain credibility to the extreme (like the angel one…) other conspiracy theories are quite plausible, if unproven, such as the Martin Luther King Junior possibility. If you are a skeptic, you might be surprised to know that some of the most outlandish conspiracy theories are verifiably and historically true. We know this because almost always, co-conspirators break down, given a long enough time. There are death-bed confessions, and documents left behind. Big conspiracies usually leave some findable evidence.

For instance, did you know that the U.S. Government intentionally withheld life-saving anti-syphilis medicine from a group of Alabama citizens for decades in order to test how syphilis impacts the human body? In this experiment, approximately 400 men with syphilis were separated into two groups. One group was given real medicine, and one group was given a placebo. This ‘test’ was designed to last for 6 months, but it ended up going for over 40 years. Yes, the government told hundreds of men that they were being treated for their disease, while giving them a placebo medication that did absolutely nothing. How did they get away with it for so long? These men were African-American, from my own home state of Alabama. The United States government simply thought they could get away with it but ultimately they were caught by some intrepid reporters and forced to settle in a class-action suit. We learn several things from the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment: Racism is not limited to a few states in the south, people can be incredibly calculating and cruel, governments aren’t always to be trusted, and conspiracies are difficult to suppress!

Speaking of the government, did you know that the government added deadly chemicals to alcohol during prohibition, so that anybody who tried to drink alcohol not meant for human consumption would die? During 1926-27 in only one city, New York, over 1100 people died from this government poisoning! Whatever your feelings on alcohol, I suspect that you might find that fact disturbing. In a somewhat similar, but less intentional situation, were you aware that government-made polio vaccines that were distributed from 1954-1963 were tainted with a cancer-causing virus called Simian virus 40? I’m no anti-vaxxer, but the fact that this news has been somewhat suppressed is a bit concerning.

One more conspiracy theory, that is absolutely factual, and very timely, considering the current (as of 2017) allegations being put forward about possible Russian interference in the 2016 United States presidential election. Were you aware that Congress once had a Russian spy counted amongst its members? Yes, well before Joseph McCarthy began seeing communists behind every shrubbery, there was a member of the House of Representatives, Samuel Dickstein (D. – New York) who was on the payroll of the KGB, and did the bidding of the Russians.

Mr. Dickstein was born in Vilnius, Lithuania (shout-out to Reason to Believe # 5), and was elected to the U.S. House of Representative in 1923, defeating Socialist incumbent Meyer London. Good job on these elections, New York, though, to be fair, voters that year had a difficult choice: Socialist Meyer, or KGB spy Dickstein. Dickstein would go on to be re-elected 11 times, and would finish his political career as a justice of the New York Supreme Court. For the majority of his career, Dickstein was a paid Russian agent, who was leaking information to the Soviets AND doing their bidding in speeches, and other governmental activities. Perhaps most astonishingly of all, Dickstein was the initial creator and first chairman of the House Committee on Un-American Activities!! What was that committee charged with? Yep, you guessed it – they were in charge of rooting out socialist and communist influence from the United States of America. I don’t want to be redundant, but that bears repeating in case you missed it: The highest government organization in the nation devoted to anti-spying efforts, essentially an early version of the Department of Homeland Security, was founded and headed by a Russian spy! If you were to put that in a movie, it would be lambasted as unbelievable. And yet, it is true, and the truth of this conspiracy, was uncovered shortly after the death of Dickstein. It is hard to suppress the truth for very long.

Almost every conspiracy, especially the big ones, will ultimately be rooted out. It is very difficult for any grand scheme, especially one that involves the participation of multiple people, to be kept secret forever. How does that proposition relate to the resurrection? By way of explanation, please allow me to share a personal story.

Shortly after graduating from college, I happened upon a work of Christian fiction called A Skeleton in God’s Closet, by historian Paul L. Maier. It would become one of the most influential books I have ever read, because it opened my mind to consider and pray about the possibility of attending seminary. At the time, I had just finished Emergency Medical Technical school and was on my way to being a firefighter. I had never envisioned myself being a firefighter, but the job I had always desired – FBI agent – seemed a dim possibility, as I had dropped out of criminal justice graduate school upon learning that the FBI was not currently hiring. Thus it was that I had settled on training to be a fire-medic. Maier’s book introduced me to the world of biblical scholarship, something I, rather surprisingly, found myself fascinated by. In that fictional book, archaeologists discover what appears to be the bones of Jesus, and a note of confession from some of his closest disciples. The note is carbon dated to the first century and indicated that some of Jesus’ disciples had conspired to hide His body and perpetuate upon the world the greatest hoax in history: that Jesus had come back to life. In the story, this news shocks the world, and Easter is essentially cancelled for an entire year – only celebrated by a few die-hard adherents to Christianity.

In an ironic twist, however (SPOILER ALERT), the protagonists of the book discover that the bones of ‘Jesus’ and the letter from His disciples were both elaborate hoaxes, perpetuated by a bitter archaeologist. This would be a conspiracy theory inside of a conspiracy theory, which leads us to a good discussion point relative to the resurrection. Most skeptical scholars believe that something unusual did indeed happen in regards to Jesus’ death in 33 A.D. A significant percentage of those skeptical scholars who deny the resurrection of Jesus, hold to some version of the Hoax Theory, which proposes that some confederates of Jesus somehow pulled a fast one and perpetuated a deception that He rose from the dead.

Perhaps they did the ‘ole switcheroo, and an imposter took over for Jesus. Perhaps the disciples hid His body and merely claimed that He was resurrected (and people believed them.) Perhaps Jesus somehow survived the crucifixion in a normal, medical sort of way, and then He made up the story that He defeated death. Whatever hoax theory one might adhere to, I would point out that NONE of them have any evidence! Not only that – there has been NEVER been a discovery that would indicate anything like a conspiracy theory amongst the followers of Jesus. The fact that, despite centuries of diligent searching, no skeptic has come up with evidence of any sort of conspiracy is itself evidence that there is no conspiracy to be found!….Continued in the book.

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Reverend Alexander Roberts, ed., The Ante-Nicene Fathers: the Writings of the Fathers Down to A.d. 325 Volume Iii Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian -Three Parts: 1. A (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2007), 91.

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Published on May 17, 2017 12:37

#8: 20 Reasons To Believe Jesus FACTUALLY Rose from the Dead – #8 The Brother Factor

“The Jewish Festival of Tabernacles was near, so His brothers said to Him, “Leave here and go to Judea so Your disciples can see Your works that You are doing. For no one does anything in secret while he’s seeking public recognition. If You do these things, show Yourself to the world.” (For not even His brothers believed in Him.)

Jesus told them, “My time has not yet arrived, but your time is always at hand. The world cannot hate you, but it does hate Me because I testify about it—that its deeds are evil. Go up to the festival yourselves. I’m not going up to the festival yet, because My time has not yet fully come. “After He had said these things, He stayed in Galilee.

After His brothers had gone up to the festival, then He also went up, not openly but secretly.” John 7:2-10

“Then He went home, and the crowd gathered again so that they were not even able to eat. When His family heard this, they set out to restrain Him, because they said, ‘He’s out of His mind.’ Then His mother and His brothers came, and standing outside, they sent word to Him and called Him. A crowd was sitting around Him and told Him, “Look, Your mother, Your brothers, and Your sisters are outside asking for You.’

He replied to them, “Who are My mother and My brothers?” And looking about at those who were sitting in a circle around Him, He said, “Here are My mother and My brothers! Whoever does the will of God is My brother and sister and mother.’ “Mark 3:20-21; 30-34.

I still give my sister, Channing, a hard time about it. When I was about 13, and she was 7, I had her convinced that I was He-Man, the incredibly powerful champion of justice and foe of Skeletor on television. The way I convinced her was quite simple. I would take a medium sized rock, and ‘throw’ it high into the air, all the while never letting go of the rock. As her eyes followed the supposed trajectory of ‘thrown’ rock, I would surreptitiously slip it into my pocket. Then we would go for a long walk to look for the rock’s landing place. A few hundred yards later, I would deftly slip the rock out of my pocket, let it fall on my shoe (so as to not make noise) and then I would walk away until she actually found the rock. When she did, she would come away with the idea that I, her brother, could throw a rock over 500 yards, and therefore, as I explained to her, I was He-Man. QED. It is sort of easy to fool a seven year old with such tricks, it is quite another thing to fool an adult. Especially one that is fed up with you, and doesn’t hold you in nearly the same esteem level as everybody else does.

As the Scriptures show at the beginning of this chapter, Jesus had several run-ins with His family during His public ministry. He had a dispute with His brothers about going to the Passover, at which point He rebuked them about being too focused on worldly ideals. More seriously, at some point during the early part of Jesus’ ministry, Jesus mother and brothers came to where He was teaching and tried to “restrain Him.” Because they thought He had gone crazy. Yes, Jesus dealt with much of the same family drama as the rest of us do, though I can honestly say I don’t think my family has ever tried to have me committed for being crazy. At least not yet.

Enemy attestation is a fancy way of saying that whatever positive thing your enemy says about you, is likely true. For instance, a group of my critics might say, “That Chase Thompson, boy is he trouble. His hair is unkempt, he dresses funny, he eats enough cereal for five elephants, and preaches way too long…but, he does have good ears, so don’t talk about him behind his back.” Chances are, if all of that is said, then I really do have good hearing. Positive things your enemy says about you are strong testimonies.

Along those lines, we read in 1 Cor 15 that Paul mentions by name three eyewitnesses of the risen Jesus (Paul himself, James the brother of Jesus, and Peter) Two of those witnesses began as enemies of Jesus’ ministry: James, the brother of Jesus, who apparently wanted to have Him committed to a loony house; and Paul, who was a persecutor who breathed out murderous threats against the church, ultimately presiding over the murder of Stephen, the first martyr. Peter himself rejected Jesus before His death. Keep in mind too, that Jesus was worshipped as the risen savior by at least TWO of His brothers since the author of the penultimate book of the Bible, Jude, was also likely the (half) brother of Jesus. And yet, post-resurrection, all of these men did a dramatic and life-long 180, worshipping Jesus and declaring Him as the resurrected Son of God at the COST OF THEIR OWN LIVES.

If you can get your brother (i.e. James) to worship you as God…then that might be the best example of enemy attestation in world history! If you don’t believe me, go and try to convince your adult sibling, who has known you all of their lives, that you are something so special that you stand out above all of humanity. Good luck! …(Continued in the book)

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Published on May 17, 2017 12:31

#9: 20 Reasons To Believe Jesus FACTUALLY Rose from the Dead – #9 The Conversion of Saul

“Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord. He went to the high priest and requested letters from him to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any men or women who belonged to the Way, he might bring them as prisoners to Jerusalem. As he traveled and was nearing Damascus, a light from heaven suddenly flashed around him. Falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?”

“Who are You, Lord?” he said.

“I am Jesus, the One you are persecuting,” He replied. “But get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”

Acts 9:1-6

Things were going great, until he came along! During the first seven chapters of the book of Acts, the nascent church was growing explosively in numbers (Acts 2) and in love and unity towards each other (Acts 4). Though there were persecutions – various members of the apostolic team were arrested and beaten for preaching about Jesus – by and large, things were going swimmingly for the church, “They ate their food with a joyful and humble attitude, praising God and having favor with all the people. And every day the Lord added to them those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:47-48) Saul, a young and gifted Pharisee trained by the highly respected council member Gamaliel, aimed to disrupt all the prosperity that the early church was enjoying.

He was there when the first martyr of the church, Stephen, was viciously stoned for preaching truth. Not only was Saul there, according to Acts 8:1, he was there as a legal witness and representative that gave approval for the death sentence to be given to Stephen. There was no trial, and Saul was no judge, but he yet saw fit to give legal permission for an impromptu execution, and Stephen – one of the early church’s best and brightest – was brutally stoned. That didn’t seem to satisfy the anger and hostility of Saul at all. His one-man campaign against the followers of Jesus only grew after that point. Luke explains it like this, in Acts 8:3, “Saul, however, was ravaging the church. He would enter house after house, drag off men and women, and put them in prison.” The result of these focused efforts by Saul was that the entire church in Jerusalem was impacted, and many fled Jerusalem, scattering across the Roman world at the time. Unbeknownst to Saul, God was using his persecutions to spread the good news of Jesus beyond the borders of Israel!

Even after his persecutions and arrests had scattered the Jerusalem church, Saul’s mission continued unabated. Acts chapter 9 sees that Saul is “breathing murderous threats” against the church, and receiving the blessing of the high priest in Jerusalem to go outside the country of Israel in order to arrest followers of Jesus, and return them to Israel for trial. While on such a mission to the Syrian city of Damascus, Saul has a blinding and terrifying encounter on the road. During that encounter, he comes face to face with his enemy, Jesus. According to Saul’s testimony, Jesus confronts Saul for persecuting Himself and His followers, blinds him, and instructs him to go into Damascus for further instruction. While in Damascus, Saul meets a disciple named Ananias, who reluctantly prays for him, lifting Saul’s blindness. Ultimately, Saul converts, takes a new name (Paul), and becomes the great missionary and evangelist of the early church. As a side note of interest, if you read Paul’s THREE accounts of his meeting Jesus on the Damascus road, you might be surprised to find that there is no horse/donkey mentioned at all! Like the “apple” in the Garden of Eden, Saul’s horse is never mentioned in the Bible, but is the product of the imaginations of later artists, like Michelangelo, in this particular case.

If one desires to be a skeptic of the resurrection of Jesus, then there needs to be an answer given for the dramatic conversion of the apostle Paul. To say that He completely changed his mind on the basis of anything other than a convincing and certain encounter with the risen Jesus is to strain the bounds of credibility. It is rare, if not utterly unheard of, for a person to completely change the passionate course of their life based on flimsy evidence. To propose that Paul did such a dramatic 180 turnaround simply on the basis of having an imaginary encounter with Jesus is ridiculous….(Continued)

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Published on May 17, 2017 12:28

#10: 20 Reasons To Believe Jesus FACTUALLY Rose from the Dead – #10 Show Me The Power!

“[Christianity made life in the first few centuries] a lot more bearable. The Church didn’t clean up the streets. Christians didn’t put in sewers. So you still had to live with a trench running down the middle of the road, in which you could find dead bodies decomposing. But what Christians did was take care of each other. Their apartments were as smoky as the pagan apartments, since neither had chimneys, and they were cold and wet and they stank. But Christians loved one another, and when they got sick they took care of each other. Someone brought you soup. You can do an enormous amount to relieve those miseries if you look after each other.

Christian women had tremendous advantages compared to the woman next door, who was like them in every way except that she was a pagan. First, when did you get married? Most pagan girls were married off around age 11, before puberty, and they had nothing to say about it, and they got married to some 35-year-old guy. Christian women had plenty of say in the matter and tended to marry around age 18. Abortion was a huge killer of women in this period, but Christian women were spared that. And infanticide—pagans killed little girls left and right. We’ve unearthed sewers clogged with the bones of newborn girls. But Christians prohibited this. Consequently, the sex ratio changed and Christians didn’t have the enormous shortage of women that plagued the rest of the empire.”

Sociologist Rodney Stark, discussing the attributes of the early church.

Historical research shows with definite clarity that Jesus was not raised from the dead.… For two thousand years an abiding faith in Jesus’ resurrection has displayed enormous power, but because of its utter groundlessness we must now acknowledge that it has all along been a worldwide historical hoax
– Gerd Ludemann, Atheist Bible Scholar

If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead – what explains the spread of Christianity throughout the known world? How was this done by the bumblers we read about in the Gospels? Where did their change come from? What was their inspiration? If the only thing that comforted them in their grief over losing their master was that they had some sort of psychological/imagined vision of Him, how could that possibly explain the POWER that they had to bring upheaval to the entire world!? The impact of these people was so strong that they were known as world-disruptors by their enemies! (Witness Acts 17:6-7, “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here too, and Jason has received them as guests! They are all acting contrary to Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king—Jesus!”)

The earliest followers of Jesus would not have been merely convinced to live their lives in such a manner by a hoax, by a vision, or even by the mythical expansion of the Jesus narrative. None of those things adequately explain the power by which they testified about Jesus, and the lives of sacrifice, love, and care that they lived day in and day out. Remember that the early church was not just some hippie commune made up of college students that grew up and got regular jobs when they were older. They were not CUGs – Christians until Graduation – The church persisted, lovingly caring for each other, and the pagan world, and powerfully teaching about Jesus. You might deny the miracles that were recorded by Luke, and others, during the spread of the gospel. (I don’t) but one cannot deny the sociological impact of a group of Jesus followers that were somehow empowered to love and serve and sacrifice in a different way altogether than adherents of any other religion or philosophy. Apart from the resurrection of Jesus, and His Holy Spirit empowering these Christians, how might one explain the rapid spread of the Gospel and the way that the early church lived their lives?

Lots of Elvis followers (You can insert others like Tupac, The Notorious B.I.G., etc.) believe he is still alive, so why aren’t they changing the world? Simple belief that a dead person is not dead is not a sufficient propellant for world-changing exploits. Recall that there were dozens of Jewish Messiah claimants other than Jesus, some are even mentioned in the Bible. During their lifetime hundreds, if not thousands of people followed them zealously. After their death, however, their followers disbanded and dispersed in every case, with the singular exception of the followers of Jesus Christ of Nazareth…whose group grew exponentially AFTER the death of its founder. This dynamic is quite difficult for a secular historia or skeptic to explain.

Here is Dionysius, one of the leaders of the church in the third century, explaining how Christians cared for each other during natural disasters:

“Most of our brother Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another. Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ, and with them departed this life serenely happy; for they were infected by others with the disease, drawing on themselves the sickness of their neighbors and cheerfully accepting their pains. Many, in nursing and curing others, transferred or death to themselves and died in their stead…. the best of our brothers lost their lives in this manner, a number of presbyters, deacons, and laymen winning high commendation so that their death in this form, the result of great piety and strong faith, seems in every way the equal of martyrdom.

They heathen behaved in the very opposite way. At the first onset of the disease they push the sufferers away and fled from their dearest, throwing them into the roads before they were dead and treated unburied corpses as dirt, hoping thereby to avert the spreading contagion of the fatal disease; but do what they might they found it difficult to escape.”

Alternative explanations for the miraculous power shown by the early church AND the miraculous love shown by the early church fail to adequately account for the growth and expansion of Christianity in the first three centuries. The Gospel of Jesus leaped over cultural and language barriers, and engaged three entire continents of people representing hundreds of languages, cultures, and belief-systems. In the quote presented at the beginning of the chapter, Dr. Ludemann arrogantly contends that historical research has clearly shown that Jesus did not rise from the dead. This is an utter falsehood, as historical research has done no such thing. I do find it interesting, however, that even the atheistic Dr. Ludemann grants that the early church was propelled forward by an “enormous power,” though he never specifies what that power might be, beyond psychological delusion. I propose a risen savior as a superior answer and the most likely and most fitting explanation and answer to the question: ‘What power propelled the early church? (FULL CHAPTER)

Denise Janssen, Educating for Redemptive Community: Essays in Honor of Jack Seymour and Margaret Ann Crain (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2015), 13

Lüdemann (2004), 190; cf. 209; (1995), 135.[2]

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Published on May 17, 2017 12:24

May 8, 2017

20 Reasons To Believe Jesus FACTUALLY Rose from the Dead – #16 Skeptical Ancients, or Slack-Jawed Yokels?

Chapter 16: Skeptical Ancients or Slack Jawed Yokels?

“And while they were discussing and arguing, Jesus Himself came near and began to walk along with them. 16 But they were prevented from recognizing Him.17 Then He asked them, “What is this dispute that you’re having with each other as you are walking?” And they stopped walking and looked discouraged.

18 The one named Cleopas answered Him, “Are You the only visitor in Jerusalem who doesn’t know the things that happened there in these days?”

19 “What things?” He asked them.

So they said to Him, “The things concerning Jesus the Nazarene, who was a Prophet powerful in action and speech before God and all the people, 20 and how our chief priests and leaders handed Him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified Him. 21 But we were hoping that He was the One who was about to redeem Israel. Besides all this, it’s the third day since these things happened. 22 Moreover, some women from our group astounded us. They arrived early at the tomb, 23 and when they didn’t find His body, they came and reported that they had seen a vision of angels who said He was alive. 24 Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they didn’t see Him.” Luke 24:15-24

I know it is old school and quite dated, but I love the song “He’s Alive” by Don Francisco. That old hippie can sing, and every time I hear the song, I cry tears of gratitude. If you aren’t familiar with the song, here is the first part of the lyrics:

The gates and doors were barred And all the windows fastened down

I spent the night in sleeplessness And rose at every sound

Half in hope of sorrow And half in fear the day

Would find the soldiers breakin’ through To drag us all away

And just before the sunrise I heard something at the wall

The gate began to rattle And a voice began to call

I hurried to the window Looked down into the street

Expecting swords and torches And the sound of soldiers’ feet

But there was no one there but Mary So I went down to let her in

John stood there beside me As she told me where she’d been

She said they’ve moved Him in the night And none of us know where

The stone’s been rolled away And now His body isn’t there

We both ran towards the garden Then John ran on ahead

We found the stone and empty tomb Just the way that Mary said

But the winding sheet they wrapped Him in Was just an empty shell

And how or where they’d taken Him Was more than I could tell

Oh something strange had happened there Just what I did not know

John believed a miracle But I just turned to go

Circumstance and speculation Couldn’t lift me very high

‘Cause I’d seen them crucify Him Then I saw Him die.

I’m getting teary-eyed just reading the lyrics! The truth that Francisco’s song captures so well is the fact that the disciples DID NOT EXPECT JESUS TO RETURN FROM DEATH! Even though He had told them multiple times that He would rise again on the third day, they either didn’t understand, or take Him seriously at all, despite the fact that, according to Matthew, He plainly told the disciples THREE times, at least, that He would die and be raised up again. In fact, Matthew 27:63 notes that even the chief priests and the Pharisees knew that Jesus had said He would rise again; that is why they requested a guard to prevent anybody from rolling the stone away from the tomb!

So, of course, since Jesus told them that He would rise again on the third day, the disciples made a field trip to the graveyard that Sunday to wait, right? Right?! This is something I have never really understood about those guys. I don’t know that I would have believed that Jesus could come back from such a terrible and bloody death as the one represented by His crucifixion, but I do think I would have made the walk over to the cemetery Sunday morning just to see if something might happen, wouldn’t you have at least done that? The fact that NONE of the disciples of Jesus went to the grave that Sunday morning clearly demonstrates that they were not slack-jawed yokels that would believe anything because they were so primitive and dumb. They knew death was final just like people in 2017 know that death is final. In fact, due to most deaths occurring in and around homes (and not in hospitals) they were probably more exposed to death than most moderns are, and thus more confronted regularly by its hostility and finality.

C.S. Lewis calls the view that the ancients were dumb, primitive and uninformed, “chronological snobbery.” While it is true that they didn’t have iPhones, and they couldn’t call an Uber to get around to places, the fact is that they were actually quite intelligent, not jaded, and fully aware of the finality of death.

“Barfield never made me an Anthroposophist, but his counterattacks destroyed forever two elements in my own thought. In the first place he made short work of what I have called my “chronological snobbery,” the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited.”

While he disciples didn’t show up at the tomb of Jesus on the third day. The faithful women certainly did – surely they would be waiting with eager joy to see the promised return of their messiah, right? Actually, the women didn’t come to greet a resurrected Jesus, they came laden with burial spices, wondering who would roll away the tomb door. They came to prepare the corpse of Jesus for eons of rotting in a tomb. Even the faithful women did not believe that Jesus would be bodily resurrected.

Not only that, but even when Jesus appeared to the disciples in person after the Resurrection, the Bible states that “some doubted.” We might assume that first century people were much more likely to believe that somebody could rise from the dead, than we moderns would be, but the evidence shows that they would be just as incredulous – if not more so – than modern, scientifically oriented people. That they had a prompt change of heart about the possibility of resurrection demonstrates and gives some level of proof that something happened to change their mind and take away their doubts.

One more bit of evidence to the idea that the disciples and followers of Jesus were not expecting a resurrection. As noted in the Scripture quoted at the beginning of this chapter, a follower named Cleopas and his unnamed friend were walking on the Emmaus road on the first Easter Sunday. Despite the fact that Jesus had been raised from the dead, and had already appeared to the women at the tomb, Cleopas and the other disciple were discouraged and arguing. Surely they must have been discouraged because they hadn’t heard Jesus was raised from the dead yet, correct? Unfortunately, that is not the case. According to Luke 24, Cleopas and friend had indeed been told that the women had seen the resurrected Jesus in the flesh! Why were they discouraged? Because they DID NOT believe the women! They were so certain of the finality of death that, despite Jesus’ multiple statements that He would rise after death, and despite hearing about the women’s claims to have seen Jesus, they still didn’t believe. This clearly demonstrates that the majority of the disciples and followers of Jesus fully expected Him to stay dead, and also demonstrates the high unlikelihood of their being involved in some sort of resurrection scam.

C S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life, C.s. Lewis Signature Book (New York: HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2017),

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Published on May 08, 2017 15:51

20 Reasons To Believe Jesus FACTUALLY Rose from the Dead – #17 Minimal Facts Argument (Gary Habermas)

Chapter 17: Minimal Facts Argument:

“Habermas lists twelve facts that he claims the majority of scholars regard as historical. From these he developed a “minimal facts” approach in which he selects only four to six of the twelve facts and builds a historical case for the resurrection based only on these. Over time his approach has changed, and his present contention is that the hypothesis that Jesus rose from the dead can be demonstrated to be superior to the others if one were to use only those facts that the vast majority of contemporary scholars grant as historical. Though his lists have varied, Habermas maintains that the following three facts pertaining to the fate of Jesus are granted as historical by a nearly universal consensus of scholars writing on the subject since 1975.”
Dr. Michael Licona

Gary Habermas is a professor and resurrection expert who has earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy (from Michigan State) and is a bestselling author and noted debater. Of all of the dozens of professors I’ve ever had, Dr. Habermas is in the top 3 – maybe the best. He is engaging and interesting as a speaker, but is also very genuine and warm. I still remember crying in class as he told us about his first wife’s battle with cancer, and ultimate slow and painful death. He had been an expert on the resurrection of Jesus prior to slowly watching his wife die, but the reality of the resurrection, and the hope it provided, became clearer and more tangible in the aftermath of that great tragedy.

In his writing, debating, and teaching, Dr. Habermas utilizes an apologetics approach that he has dubbed the “Minimal Facts Argument,” which seeks to make the case that it is historically likely that Jesus rose from the dead. From his research Habermas has been able to show that of the 3,400 works that he studied, the majority of scholars (Christian, liberal, atheist and otherwise) accept the following 12 events as historical fact:

*Jesus died by crucifixion.

*Jesus was buried.

*His death caused the disciples to despair and lose hope, believing that his life was ended.

*The tomb was empty a few days later.

*The disciples had experiences that they believed were literal appearances of the risen Jesus.

*The disciples were transformed from doubters who were afraid to identify themselves with Jesus to bold proclaimers of His death and Resurrection.

*This message was the center of preaching in the early church.

*This message was especially proclaimed in Jerusalem, where *Jesus died and was buried shortly before.

*The church was born in Jerusalem and grew rapidly.

*Orthodox Jews who believed in Jesus made Sunday their primary day of worship.

*James, the half-brother of Jesus, converted to the faith when he saw what he believed was the resurrected Jesus.

*Paul was converted to the faith after his experience which he believed was with the risen Jesus.

From these “minimal facts,” Habermas believes it is not difficult to show the reasonableness of a belief in the resurrection. The key here with the Habermas approach is that he has compiled a data set featuring the opinions of over 3,400 scholars on the above issues, so that when he mentions that a majority of them believe each point of the Minimal Facts Argument, he means that literally and mathematically. While this argument does not prove the resurrection, it does paint a picture of several agreed upon and remarkable facts, which, when taken together, seem to demonstrate the occurrence of something extraordinary on the first Easter Sunday. Whether you are a skeptic or a Christian who wants more information, you should be pleased to know that Dr. Habermas has a lot of excellent free material on the Minimal Facts Argument (and other resurrection related issues) on his website, www.GaryHabermas.com

Michael R. Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (Downers Grove, IL; Nottingham, England: IVP Academic; Apollos, 2010), 463.

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Published on May 08, 2017 15:46

20 Reasons To Believe Jesus FACTUALLY Rose from the Dead – #18 – A Sabbath Switcheroo

Chapter 18: A Sabbath Switcheroo

“If you keep from desecrating the Sabbath, from doing whatever you want on My holy day; if you call the Sabbath a delight,

and the holy day of the Lord honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways,

seeking your own pleasure, or talking too much; 14 then you will delight yourself in the Lord, and I will make you ride over the heights of the land,

and let you enjoy the heritage of your father Jacob. ”For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

– Isaiah 5:12-14

“On the first day of the week, we assembled to break bread. Paul spoke to them, and since he was about to depart the next day, he extended his message until midnight.”

– Acts 20:7

“On the first day of the week, each of you is to set something aside and save in keeping with how he prospers, so that no collections will need to be made when I come.”

– 1 Corinthians 16:2

“Therefore, don’t let anyone judge you in regard to food and drink or in the matter of a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day. 17 These are a shadow of what was to come; the substance is the Messiah.”

– Colossians 2:16-17

The Sabbath day is a critically important Bible topic, especially in the Old Testament. The word itself is used approximately 150 times in the Bible, with several long and detailed discussions in the Old Testament that outlined how the Jewish people were to deal with the Sabbath day. Strangely enough, something radical changed after the resurrection of Jesus, because the Sabbath is only mentioned 11 times, including such verses as Colossians 2 above, which seems to imply quite strongly that individual Christians had liberty as to how they observed the Sabbath. Not only that, but it is quite clear from the Acts passage and the Corinthians passage that Christians, unlike Jews, met together for corporate worship on a Sunday, and not a Sabbath day (sundown Friday until sundown Saturday.)

This might not seem like a huge shift for some, but keep in mind that this represented the changing of thousands of years of Jewish history, and the change happened remarkably fast – in a few years or less. What was the catalyst for this massive calendar change? The resurrection, of course. All the church – even Jewish believers who had been worshipping on Sabbath/Saturday their entire lives, were worshipping on Sunday, post-resurrection. A major shift had happened, and happened quickly. The resurrection is a very plausible explanation for such a shift. As further evidence of this major shift, and the reasons behind it, here is one of the earliest descriptions of the gathering of the early church, written by Justin Martyr in the 150s A.D.

On the day which is called Sunday we have a common assembly of all who live in the cities or in the outlying districts, and the memoirs of the Apostles or the writings of the Prophets are read, as long as there is time. Then, when the reader has finished, the president of the assembly verbally admonishes and invites all to imitate such examples of virtue. Then we all stand up together and offer up our prayers, and, as we said before, after we finish our prayers, bread and wine and water are presented. He who presides likewise offers up prayers and thanksgivings, to the best of his ability, and the people express their approval by saying ‘Amen.’ The Eucharistic elements are distributed and consumed by those present, and to those who are absent they are sent through the deacons. The wealthy, if they wish, contribute whatever they desire, and the collection is placed in the custody of the president. [With it] he helps the orphans and widows, those who are needy because of sickness or any other reason, and the captives and strangers in our midst; in short, he takes care of all those in need. Sunday, indeed, is the day on which we all hold our common assembly because it is the first day on which God, transforming the darkness and [prime] matter, created the world; and our Savior Jesus Christ arose from the dead on the same day. For they crucified Him on the day before that of Saturn, and on the day after, which is Sunday, He appeared to His Apostles and disciples, and taught them the things which we have passed on to you also for consideration.

Thomas B. Falls with Justin Martyr, The First Apology, The Second Apology, Dialogue with Trypho, Exhortation to the Greeks, Discourse to the Greeks, The Monarchy or The Rule of God, vol. 6, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1948), 106–107.

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Published on May 08, 2017 15:43

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