WEBVTT 00:08.420 --> 00:14.660 Jesus, I would say no doubt lived as a person, but to the extent of what he did, 00:14.760 --> 00:15.280 I'm not sure. 00:15.480 --> 00:22.100 If he comes walking into where I work, shows me the signs of the stigmata and 00:22.100 --> 00:25.280 tells me he's a son of God, I might start believing. 00:25.660 --> 00:29.080 I don't believe in God, first of all. 00:30.100 --> 00:32.800 Maybe because I grew up in like an age of science. 00:33.100 --> 00:37.880 I have a lot of different thoughts and theories on Jesus, but I don't think 00:37.880 --> 00:40.780 coming back from the dead is really possible. 01:49.740 --> 01:54.080 I just thought the idea of an all-powerful, all-loving creator of the 01:54.080 --> 01:56.960 universe was just an absurd idea on the surface of it. 01:56.980 --> 01:58.700 It wasn't even worth my time to check out. 01:58.700 --> 02:02.180 As far as Jesus was concerned, I thought that if he existed, and I wasn't 02:02.180 --> 02:05.580 sure whether or not he ever did, he was probably a nice guy. 02:05.700 --> 02:08.560 He was probably an excellent teacher, but he certainly wasn't the Messiah. 02:08.960 --> 02:10.660 And he certainly wasn't the son of God. 02:11.520 --> 02:14.360 Now my wife was more in spiritual neutral. 02:14.540 --> 02:18.720 She was more of an agnostic, whereas I was more antagonistic toward Christians. 02:21.020 --> 02:23.340 I just didn't know where all the pieces fit together. 02:23.520 --> 02:26.660 I didn't know who Jesus was or how he fit into the picture. 02:26.660 --> 02:29.480 Lee was antagonistic towards God. 02:29.620 --> 02:30.920 I was simply confused. 02:31.080 --> 02:34.400 There really was no room for God in my relationship with Leslie when we were 02:34.400 --> 02:35.620 dating and when we got married. 02:35.700 --> 02:36.280 But you know what? 02:36.440 --> 02:37.140 We were happy. 02:37.300 --> 02:38.540 We didn't have any problem with that. 02:39.080 --> 02:43.240 When I first started going to church, Lee responded very negatively. 02:44.160 --> 02:47.600 He basically told me that this is not what he had signed up for. 02:48.180 --> 02:52.740 That when we had gotten married, he had life planned in a way that did not 02:52.740 --> 02:53.700 involve church. 02:53.700 --> 02:56.960 My biggest fear with Leslie was that she was going to turn into some religious 02:56.960 --> 02:57.900 prude or something. 02:58.120 --> 03:01.340 And I thought nothing good can possibly come out of this. 03:02.140 --> 03:05.340 But even though I had all these negative ideas of things that were going to happen, 03:05.540 --> 03:09.480 in the ensuing months, I began to see positive changes in her character and in 03:09.480 --> 03:12.200 her values and the way she related to me and the children. 03:12.300 --> 03:13.880 And it was winsome and it was attractive. 03:14.080 --> 03:18.260 And so when she invited me to go to church with her on January the 20th of 1980, 03:18.360 --> 03:19.020 I thought, you know what? 03:19.020 --> 03:19.560 I'm going to go. 03:19.960 --> 03:22.320 Get her out of this cult, you know, that she's gotten involved in. 03:22.320 --> 03:27.340 He did go in with his reporter's notebook so he could take notes and try to find the 03:27.340 --> 03:27.680 scandal. 03:28.060 --> 03:31.700 Well, the pastor gave a talk that day called Basic Christianity, and he just 03:31.700 --> 03:34.120 systematically laid out what it is that Christians believe. 03:34.280 --> 03:38.960 And I was, my mind was blown because I had all these misconceptions and he really did 03:38.960 --> 03:40.400 straighten me out on a lot of things. 03:40.960 --> 03:43.320 And I remember walking out that day saying two things. 03:43.780 --> 03:45.000 First of all, I was still an atheist. 03:45.320 --> 03:47.240 He didn't convince me that day that God exists. 03:47.720 --> 03:53.220 But secondly, I realized if this is true, this has huge implications for my life. 03:53.580 --> 03:55.620 Lee's approach was very different from mine. 03:55.780 --> 03:58.300 Mine was mostly a heart issue. 03:59.000 --> 04:04.700 I wanted to know that God was real and the way that was real for me was 04:04.700 --> 04:05.720 experientially. 04:06.580 --> 04:12.180 And for Lee, it was more about documentation, about being able to have 04:12.180 --> 04:13.840 facts that proved it true. 04:14.340 --> 04:15.100 Well, I was a journalist. 04:15.100 --> 04:18.560 So there was really no problem with me picking up the phone and calling a scholar 04:18.560 --> 04:19.860 and saying, hey, I'm Lee Strobel. 04:19.920 --> 04:21.060 I'm with the Chicago Tribune. 04:21.440 --> 04:23.820 I'd like some background information about the New Testament. 04:24.280 --> 04:25.700 And so I would do that. 04:25.740 --> 04:30.680 And I thought it was going to be so easy to expose the fallacious thinking behind 04:30.680 --> 04:31.340 Christianity. 04:31.600 --> 04:36.340 But as it turned out, it took me almost two years of my life to investigate these 04:36.340 --> 04:36.660 issues. 04:36.920 --> 04:41.460 It really was, in a sense, the most exciting story I'd ever pursued as a 04:41.460 --> 04:41.840 journalist. 04:44.950 --> 04:50.390 I think, unfortunately, because the documents, the New Testament specifically, 04:50.890 --> 04:56.970 were written so far after Jesus' death, that it's really hard to say. 04:57.470 --> 05:00.650 I don't know if myself that it was real, I was not there, but people were there at 05:00.650 --> 05:01.230 that time. 05:01.470 --> 05:08.290 So their account of things that happened back 2,000 years ago has been passed down. 05:08.490 --> 05:10.810 As an attorney, I rely on evidence. 05:11.310 --> 05:15.670 And so, you know, it would be tough to get evidence at this late date. 05:16.090 --> 05:19.590 Well, I began my investigation by looking at the gospel accounts. 05:19.830 --> 05:23.310 How did I know that the New Testament was telling me the truth when it talked about 05:23.310 --> 05:23.630 Jesus? 05:23.870 --> 05:27.990 Now, obviously, I didn't accept the New Testament as being the inspired word of 05:27.990 --> 05:28.210 God. 05:28.290 --> 05:30.930 I certainly didn't accept it as being inerrant. 05:31.310 --> 05:35.530 But what I had to accept it as being, which it undeniably is, is a set of 05:35.530 --> 05:37.050 ancient historical documents. 05:37.050 --> 05:41.690 And I knew that historians had criteria that they could apply to determine whether 05:41.690 --> 05:43.210 or not these documents are trustworthy. 05:43.510 --> 05:45.750 So those are the kind of people who I pursued. 05:45.970 --> 05:47.230 I went after the heavy hitters. 05:47.370 --> 05:51.990 I went after the expert witnesses who could help me sort through these issues. 05:54.030 --> 05:54.870 J.P. 05:54.930 --> 05:56.750 Moreland, Biola University. 05:59.990 --> 06:02.310 Mark Strauss, Bethel Seminary. 06:05.010 --> 06:07.030 Craig Blomberg, Denver Seminary. 06:12.090 --> 06:15.130 Craig Evans, Acadia Divinity College. 06:17.490 --> 06:18.010 N.T. 06:18.050 --> 06:20.590 Wright, Bishop of Durham, United Kingdom. 06:23.290 --> 06:28.990 Over the last 250 years, it's been common coin in Western culture that, oh, 06:29.050 --> 06:31.310 you can't believe what's said in the Gospels, you know. 06:31.350 --> 06:32.590 It's even made into musicals. 06:32.610 --> 06:35.450 The things that you're liable to read in the Bible, they ain't necessarily so. 06:35.450 --> 06:41.050 And that's sort of, that skepticism has wormed its way into much modern culture 06:41.050 --> 06:44.590 and indeed into many Christian circles, many church circles, where they'll say, 06:44.730 --> 06:48.450 well, Matthew probably made this bit up or Luke just added this bit on the end of the 06:48.450 --> 06:49.690 parable or whatever it is. 06:50.450 --> 06:55.910 I and others have spent some of the best years of our lives researching what was 06:55.910 --> 07:00.590 actually going on in Palestine in the first third of the first century A.D. 07:00.590 --> 07:05.650 And trying to get inside the minds of first century Jews, first century Romans, 07:06.170 --> 07:08.770 different Jewish parties and movements, et cetera, et cetera. 07:09.350 --> 07:14.330 And the more that I have tried to do that, the more I've found that what you find in 07:14.330 --> 07:18.190 Matthew, Mark, Luke and John comes up in three dimensions and says, my goodness, 07:18.290 --> 07:19.530 this actually belongs. 07:19.710 --> 07:20.430 It makes sense. 07:20.530 --> 07:21.070 It fits. 07:21.490 --> 07:25.790 It gives us very vivid portraits of who these people were and what they were 07:25.790 --> 07:26.030 doing. 07:27.850 --> 07:31.510 The New Testament Gospels are biographies of Jesus. 07:32.430 --> 07:36.930 While the authors do not identify themselves in the text, from very early in 07:36.930 --> 07:41.870 the Christian era, the Gospels have been attributed to Matthew, a disciple or 07:41.870 --> 07:48.790 follower of Jesus, Mark, a colleague of Peter, also a disciple, Luke, a historian 07:48.790 --> 07:53.510 and confidant of the Apostle Paul, and John, a disciple of Jesus. 07:55.070 --> 08:00.030 Both Matthew and John were among the twelve, Jesus' closest followers and 08:00.030 --> 08:01.990 constant companions throughout his ministry. 08:02.450 --> 08:05.550 They would have personally observed most of the events they described in their 08:05.550 --> 08:06.030 Gospels. 08:07.610 --> 08:12.550 Mark and Luke were also contemporaries of Jesus and wrote their biographies based 08:12.550 --> 08:15.170 upon information provided by many eyewitnesses. 08:19.740 --> 08:23.920 I knew from my years as a legal journalist the importance of eyewitness testimony. 08:24.320 --> 08:28.040 In fact, the first question that anybody asks is, how many eyeballs are there? 08:28.260 --> 08:30.360 How many eyewitnesses do you actually have? 08:30.520 --> 08:35.120 And I needed to determine whether or not contemporary scholars have ascertained 08:35.120 --> 08:38.560 whether or not the Gospels are rooted in eyewitness testimony. 08:38.880 --> 08:42.360 It's become evident to scholars of the first century that the Gospels were 08:42.360 --> 08:44.840 actually attempts to write biographies of Jesus. 08:45.260 --> 08:49.740 Not in the modern sense, because the Gospels are not particularly interested in 08:49.740 --> 08:50.840 his early years. 08:50.840 --> 08:55.300 But when it comes to Jesus' adult life and his activities, these are biographies. 08:55.780 --> 08:59.800 They're very clearly attempts by eyewitnesses to describe exactly what 08:59.800 --> 09:00.760 Jesus said and did. 09:01.260 --> 09:04.840 And the consensus of New Testament scholarship has moved in that direction. 09:06.420 --> 09:10.800 Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled 09:10.800 --> 09:15.900 among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were 09:15.900 --> 09:18.420 eyewitnesses and servants of the word. 09:19.180 --> 09:21.980 Luke chapter 1, verses 1 and 2. 09:22.860 --> 09:24.540 Luke's Gospel begins with a prologue. 09:24.620 --> 09:27.680 It's actually one of the finest Greek sections in the whole New Testament. 09:28.340 --> 09:30.700 Luke was clearly a literary artist. 09:31.320 --> 09:36.580 But in that prologue, he points out that he has carefully investigated the material 09:36.580 --> 09:39.500 that he presents in the Gospels, that he's checked with eyewitness 09:39.500 --> 09:41.780 accounts, those who are actually present. 09:42.400 --> 09:45.720 If you read that prologue and you see, this is the work of a historian. 09:45.720 --> 09:48.200 This was someone who has done his research. 09:50.320 --> 09:54.480 Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the 09:54.480 --> 09:58.940 beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, 09:59.340 --> 10:04.060 most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have 10:04.060 --> 10:04.660 been taught. 10:05.260 --> 10:08.100 Luke chapter 1, verses 3 and 4. 10:09.320 --> 10:13.400 You have to understand that people in the first century valued eyewitness testimony. 10:13.400 --> 10:18.940 And this is why, from the second century on, it was important to the early church 10:18.940 --> 10:23.620 fathers that the people who were alleged to have written the Gospels actually wrote 10:23.620 --> 10:26.960 them and that they were eyewitnesses of the things they wrote. 10:27.100 --> 10:32.340 We have actually very early attestation of the authorship of the Gospels. 10:32.980 --> 10:36.720 The early church father Papias, for example, as recorded by the church 10:36.720 --> 10:41.960 historian Eusebius, identifies Mark's Gospel as essentially the eyewitness 10:41.960 --> 10:43.340 account of Peter. 10:43.920 --> 10:48.560 Well Papias was a disciple of the Apostle John, so we are only one generation 10:48.560 --> 10:50.300 removed from Jesus himself. 10:50.480 --> 10:53.860 That's a pretty close testimony and strongly suggesting that in fact the 10:53.860 --> 10:56.380 Gospels are based on eyewitness accounts. 10:56.740 --> 11:01.040 Now, of course, it's not what you would have seen if you had a video camera there, 11:01.180 --> 11:05.340 because after all, if you put a video camera on a street corner, even in 11:05.340 --> 11:07.600 Washington, you'd get politicians coming to and fro. 11:07.600 --> 11:09.760 You wouldn't actually have a story that would make sense. 11:09.860 --> 11:12.840 You'd have a string of random, unsorted events. 11:13.100 --> 11:15.880 That doesn't mean that none of it happened, that it's all made up. 11:16.120 --> 11:18.940 It's just to acknowledge what is blindingly obvious, that it has been 11:18.940 --> 11:23.220 edited and no doubt shaped by the needs of the community, because people tell the 11:23.220 --> 11:27.020 sort of stories that they want to tell, because this matters to us urgently here 11:27.020 --> 11:27.420 and now. 11:30.940 --> 11:37.100 Most historians date Jesus' birth between the years 7 and 4 BC, and his death no 11:37.100 --> 11:38.640 later than AD 33. 11:39.960 --> 11:43.920 Jesus' public ministry began with the choosing of his disciples, and lasted 11:43.920 --> 11:48.960 approximately three years, culminating in the Passion Week, and his trial and death. 11:49.720 --> 11:53.880 Scholars generally agree that the Gospel of Mark was written first, sometime 11:53.880 --> 11:56.820 between the years 60 and 75 in the first century. 11:58.120 --> 12:03.040 Matthew and Luke were probably authored shortly after, followed by the Gospel of 12:03.040 --> 12:03.380 John. 12:06.340 --> 12:11.320 The New Testament Gospels are by far our earliest and most reliable records of 12:11.320 --> 12:12.200 Jesus of Nazareth. 12:12.740 --> 12:15.440 All of the New Testament Gospels were written in the first century. 12:15.800 --> 12:19.720 Not only are they remarkably close to the events themselves, but in fact, 12:19.820 --> 12:21.280 eyewitnesses are still around. 12:21.560 --> 12:25.720 If they were passing on untruths, if they were not passing on reliable 12:25.720 --> 12:30.940 history, then we would expect eyewitnesses to say, wait a minute, this isn't what 12:30.940 --> 12:31.400 happened. 12:31.400 --> 12:33.460 But eyewitnesses are around. 12:33.600 --> 12:35.620 Eyewitnesses could confirm what they said. 12:35.960 --> 12:40.540 All of the Gospel writers either were eyewitnesses or interviewed eyewitnesses 12:40.540 --> 12:43.500 to gain the information that they gained about Jesus Christ. 12:46.640 --> 12:50.600 As I scrutinized the Gospel accounts even further, I realized that it was important 12:50.600 --> 12:54.740 to find out not just whether or not the information was rooted in direct and 12:54.740 --> 12:58.780 indirect eyewitness testimony, but I needed to know, was this information 12:58.780 --> 13:03.260 reliably preserved during the time period before it was finally written down? 13:04.520 --> 13:11.900 We have to put ourselves into the ancient world without modern media, without even a 13:11.900 --> 13:20.620 print-based culture in which the only and the standard way of preserving information 13:20.620 --> 13:26.380 was through oral tradition, most of which was memorized. 13:28.780 --> 13:33.300 Young rabbis were often forbidden to comment on a passage of Scripture until 13:33.300 --> 13:34.960 they had memorized it perfectly. 13:35.980 --> 13:41.720 In fact, it was not uncommon for rabbis of Jesus' time to commit the entire Torah to 13:41.720 --> 13:42.060 memory. 13:44.320 --> 13:47.820 I've sometimes heard people say, look, I've been in a situation where I 13:47.820 --> 13:51.820 whisper something to someone, they whisper it to someone else, and it goes through 10 13:51.820 --> 13:56.280 or 11 people, and by the time the last person tells what was said, it's totally 13:56.280 --> 13:58.420 different from what I told the first person. 13:59.140 --> 14:03.060 And we can't trust the Gospels for the same reason, because it was transmitted 14:03.060 --> 14:04.400 over a long period of time. 14:04.580 --> 14:09.000 That illustration is really a bad analogy, and you have to understand that the first 14:09.000 --> 14:13.940 century apostles who passed on information about Jesus were deeply concerned to get 14:13.940 --> 14:18.260 this information correct, because they saw it as sacred, holy tradition. 14:18.800 --> 14:22.440 It wasn't about what Joe was eating for dinner last Wednesday night. 14:22.800 --> 14:28.340 In our day of instant media, and everything has to be on film or tape 14:28.340 --> 14:32.720 recorded, we are more skeptical of oral tradition, but we don't really understand 14:32.720 --> 14:34.400 the nature of oral tradition. 14:34.820 --> 14:36.960 Oral tradition is a community event. 14:37.440 --> 14:41.380 A story is passed down by individuals within that community. 14:41.720 --> 14:45.160 Well, if they get it wrong, you've got an entire community that's going to correct 14:45.160 --> 14:45.380 them. 14:45.520 --> 14:47.820 So it is self-correcting all the way. 14:47.820 --> 14:53.400 These stories were passed on reliably because they were passed on by the 14:53.400 --> 14:54.680 community of disciples. 14:55.000 --> 14:58.620 In fact, we now have scholarly studies that have been done of oral cultures, 14:58.940 --> 15:03.740 and we know that through several generations, oral tradition can be 15:03.740 --> 15:07.000 preserved and passed on without changing a thing. 15:07.520 --> 15:11.800 Even though I became convinced that ancient cultures could pass along oral 15:11.800 --> 15:16.800 tradition reliably over time, I still had an obvious objection to the New Testament, 15:16.980 --> 15:19.980 and that was, isn't it really filled with contradictions? 15:21.760 --> 15:25.720 One of the issues people often raise is the question of apparent contradictions 15:25.720 --> 15:28.880 between the synoptic Gospels, where there's a parallel story. 15:28.980 --> 15:33.780 For example, Matthew tells the story of two blind men being healed, whereas in 15:33.780 --> 15:35.660 Mark's account there's only one blind man. 15:35.700 --> 15:37.680 How can we get this contradiction? 15:37.680 --> 15:42.360 The vast majority of these apparent contradictions, however, are quite easily 15:42.360 --> 15:42.900 resolved. 15:43.380 --> 15:48.860 Mark describes only one of the two blind men, the one who is most prominent, 15:49.040 --> 15:52.360 obviously, or perhaps even the one who became a disciple of Jesus and became 15:52.360 --> 15:53.980 prominent in the later church. 15:54.080 --> 15:57.700 So most of these apparent contradictions are quite easily resolved. 15:58.020 --> 16:04.780 Had every single account given us exactly the same detail, we might have accused 16:04.780 --> 16:09.200 them of some form of collusion, of having gotten together and carefully 16:09.200 --> 16:14.660 planned out how they were always going to tell the story with the exact number of 16:14.660 --> 16:15.240 details. 16:15.520 --> 16:19.460 But then one doesn't have independent testimony at all. 16:19.700 --> 16:22.980 It's natural when you have multiple eyewitnesses to the same event, 16:23.100 --> 16:24.660 you're going to get different perspectives. 16:25.120 --> 16:25.780 And that's okay. 16:25.880 --> 16:26.620 You want that. 16:26.960 --> 16:30.940 What you're looking for is a core to the testimony that's the same, that's 16:30.940 --> 16:34.680 consistent, even though there may be some variation in the incidental details. 16:35.160 --> 16:39.460 If you're in a court of law and you have multiple witnesses come in and testify to 16:39.460 --> 16:44.180 the exact same thing, the first objection that's brought up is to say collusion. 16:44.440 --> 16:45.340 They got together. 16:45.660 --> 16:48.880 They orchestrated their testimony and their credibility is shot. 16:49.340 --> 16:54.080 The earliest known copies of the Gospels were written on sheets of papyrus and 16:54.080 --> 16:55.480 scrolls made of animal skins. 16:56.100 --> 16:59.380 They are among the oldest existing manuscripts of antiquity. 17:00.020 --> 17:03.000 The Codex Sinaiticus was authored between A.D. 17:03.100 --> 17:04.380 330 and 350. 17:05.140 --> 17:09.200 It contains almost all of the New Testament and a significant portion of the 17:09.200 --> 17:14.100 Old, while the Codex Vaticanus from the same era is a nearly complete Greek copy 17:14.100 --> 17:15.220 of the entire Bible. 17:16.180 --> 17:20.180 A papyrus fragment from the 18th chapter of John dates to A.D. 17:20.260 --> 17:24.600 125, less than a single generation after the Gospel was originally written. 17:25.600 --> 17:30.220 When I found out that we have no original survivors of the manuscripts of the New 17:30.220 --> 17:32.120 Testament, I became very skeptical. 17:32.580 --> 17:36.000 Because if all we have are copies of copies of copies of copies of copies, 17:36.180 --> 17:40.480 then how do we know that what we possess today bears any resemblance to what the 17:40.480 --> 17:41.140 originals said? 17:42.240 --> 17:46.500 We have better manuscript attestation for the New Testament than any other ancient 17:46.500 --> 17:46.980 document. 17:47.280 --> 17:53.180 For example, the Bible of the Greeks, Homer's Iliad, is preserved in maybe 600 17:53.180 --> 17:53.760 manuscripts. 17:53.760 --> 17:57.220 The oldest of them a thousand years after the document was actually written. 17:57.520 --> 18:01.440 The New Testament, we have something like 5,000 Greek manuscripts. 18:01.840 --> 18:05.640 So everyone agrees, whether liberal or conservative, that we have an incredibly 18:05.640 --> 18:07.400 reliable New Testament. 18:07.720 --> 18:11.020 We have thousands of manuscripts of the New Testament. 18:11.460 --> 18:16.400 We also have virtually the entire New Testament preserved in the quotations of 18:16.400 --> 18:21.680 the Church Fathers in the first four centuries, so that if we had no copies of 18:21.680 --> 18:25.640 the New Testament, we could reconstruct the New Testament from quotations from the 18:25.640 --> 18:26.560 early Church Fathers. 18:28.640 --> 18:32.400 Following the pattern of my investigation, my next step was to determine whether or 18:32.400 --> 18:36.320 not there was any evidence outside the New Testament that corroborates what the New 18:36.320 --> 18:37.240 Testament tells us. 18:37.620 --> 18:40.720 Jesus, of course, wasn't the emperor of the Roman Empire. 18:40.940 --> 18:44.020 He wasn't some autocrat that had conquered half of the world. 18:44.360 --> 18:49.820 But he did leave an impact in his own environment and created a movement that 18:49.820 --> 18:50.640 grew from there. 18:50.800 --> 18:54.880 And there is a remarkable amount of documents and corroboration. 18:55.020 --> 18:56.780 Josephus refers to him. 18:57.280 --> 19:00.920 The Roman historian Tacitus refers to him. 19:01.280 --> 19:04.540 Suetonius, the political writer, refers to him. 19:05.320 --> 19:07.060 Critics refer to him. 19:07.640 --> 19:10.380 And so it's like a stone thrown into a pond. 19:10.520 --> 19:14.080 The ripples go out and out and everywhere are felt. 19:14.080 --> 19:16.500 It's a very impressive record taken as a whole. 19:21.240 --> 19:27.520 In AD 93, the Jewish historian Josephus published his work, Antiquities of the 19:27.520 --> 19:27.900 Jews. 19:29.160 --> 19:33.380 Scholars generally agree that the following text accurately records 19:33.380 --> 19:34.840 Josephus' record of Jesus. 19:37.320 --> 19:42.300 Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, for he was a doer of wonderful 19:42.300 --> 19:42.820 works. 19:42.820 --> 19:47.260 A teacher of such men as received the truth with pleasure. 19:48.360 --> 19:52.160 He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. 19:53.240 --> 19:57.640 When Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned 19:57.640 --> 20:02.300 him to the cross, those that loved him first did not forsake him. 20:03.260 --> 20:08.180 And the tribe of Christians, so named for him, are not extinct to this day. 20:10.060 --> 20:14.380 In a court of law, the rebuttal case is an opportunity for the other side to present 20:14.380 --> 20:15.120 their evidence. 20:15.660 --> 20:19.080 In recent years, there has been a proliferation of books and articles about 20:19.080 --> 20:21.080 the so-called Gnostic Gospels. 20:21.440 --> 20:26.340 And I wanted to figure out, does this represent the mainstream of academic 20:26.340 --> 20:26.900 scholarship? 20:27.880 --> 20:32.340 The Gnostic Gospels are a collection of religious writings from the 2nd and 3rd 20:32.340 --> 20:32.740 centuries. 20:33.420 --> 20:38.120 They blend the teachings of Jesus with a variety of ancient philosophical beliefs. 20:39.460 --> 20:44.220 According to the tenets of Gnosticism, the universe was the creation of a flawed 20:44.220 --> 20:45.140 and wicked God. 20:46.120 --> 20:47.660 Therefore, all matter was evil. 20:48.900 --> 20:53.200 Salvation from this world could only be attained through secret knowledge about 20:53.200 --> 20:54.820 the spiritual nature of man. 20:55.680 --> 20:58.880 There has been a lot of talk about the Gnostic Gospels, the Gospel of Mary 20:58.880 --> 21:01.340 Magdalene, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Thomas. 21:01.800 --> 21:06.440 These documents are almost universally recognized to be much later than the New 21:06.440 --> 21:12.060 Testament Gospels and not to record historically reliable material related to 21:12.060 --> 21:12.380 Jesus. 21:12.860 --> 21:17.520 Well, the New Testament Gospels give us a portrait of an early 1st century 21:17.520 --> 21:20.200 Palestinian Jesus of Nazareth. 21:20.600 --> 21:25.400 The Gospels from the 2nd century, which are mostly Gnostic Gospels, 21:25.400 --> 21:30.720 such as the Gospel of Judas, or the Gospel of Thomas, or the Gospel of Philip, 21:31.460 --> 21:35.040 or the Gospel of Mary, they give us a very different Jesus. 21:36.000 --> 21:37.700 Now you can pick and choose if you want. 21:37.780 --> 21:41.000 You can say, well, I like the 2nd century Gnostic Jesus better. 21:41.900 --> 21:45.260 Others might want the early 1st century Palestinian Jesus. 21:45.400 --> 21:47.880 But if you're going to be a scholar about it, and you're going to talk about, 21:47.960 --> 21:52.800 well, which Gospels really do give us earlier traditions that more reliably 21:52.800 --> 21:57.280 reflect the actual historical Jesus, you've got to go with the New Testament 21:57.280 --> 21:58.380 Gospels every time. 21:59.360 --> 22:04.400 There's a view among some that there were all of these different competing views of 22:04.400 --> 22:10.180 Jesus Christ and that the one that won out became the Orthodox perspective of Christ 22:10.180 --> 22:12.060 reflected in the Gospels. 22:12.640 --> 22:14.700 All the evidence runs contrary to that. 22:14.800 --> 22:21.720 Jesus was a 1st century Jewish teacher who revealed and demonstrated himself to be 22:21.720 --> 22:22.260 the Messiah. 22:22.800 --> 22:26.740 That's the presentation we get in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the New Testament 22:26.740 --> 22:27.340 Gospels. 22:27.880 --> 22:32.080 These later Gospels, these Gnostic Gospels, present a very different Jesus, 22:32.220 --> 22:37.540 almost a Greek philosopher, an esoteric Gnostic Jesus that's clearly not the 22:37.540 --> 22:38.740 authentic historical Jesus. 22:39.040 --> 22:43.400 What I've come to discover is that the Gospels in the New Testament, Matthew, 22:43.500 --> 22:47.180 Mark, Luke, and John are our best sources for Jesus. 22:48.020 --> 22:49.900 And I've also found that they are reliable. 22:50.980 --> 22:55.960 And that from these sources we can form a picture that I believe is very accurate, 22:56.300 --> 23:00.720 that tells us about Jesus, what he taught, how he was perceived by his 23:00.720 --> 23:03.920 contemporaries, and what his life was really all about. 23:08.410 --> 23:13.190 Everything from Jesus' parables, to his healings, to his controversies, 23:13.390 --> 23:18.090 to his warnings, and all of that, the reason they were telling this stuff is 23:18.090 --> 23:22.570 that not just it was good advice for them in their own day, but that it actually 23:22.570 --> 23:24.750 mattered, that it actually happened. 23:25.170 --> 23:29.310 And if it hadn't happened, you're into a totally different worldview, a worldview 23:29.310 --> 23:34.090 which is about ideas, which is about self-realization, hugely popular in our 23:34.090 --> 23:36.550 culture just now, discovering who I really am. 23:37.050 --> 23:41.270 For goodness sake, Jesus didn't come to help me discover who I really am. 23:41.410 --> 23:46.810 He came to tell me who he knew I really was, and to do something about it. 23:47.030 --> 23:48.490 And that's much better news. 23:50.350 --> 23:54.110 After a while, as the evidence would accumulate more and more, it was like 23:54.110 --> 23:57.590 there were these scales and they began to tip increasingly. 23:58.130 --> 24:03.330 And I began to go from a hard-hearted, cynical atheist to someone who was still 24:03.330 --> 24:07.750 skeptical, but who was more open-minded, maybe more of a spiritual seeker, 24:07.870 --> 24:11.150 someone who was willing to follow the evidence wherever it took me. 24:31.530 --> 24:35.070 This whole time I was on this investigative journey, Leslie and her 24:35.070 --> 24:38.970 friends behind the scene were praying, because they knew that I was checking in 24:38.970 --> 24:42.890 the evidence, I was looking into these issues for myself, and they just wanted me 24:42.890 --> 24:45.010 to be open-minded about the evidence that I found. 24:45.530 --> 24:50.710 I was feeling like my whole world was opening up into something new and way more 24:50.710 --> 24:54.230 exciting and fulfilling than what we had been on. 24:54.390 --> 24:58.710 And it was that frustration of trying to help him to recognize that that was the 24:58.710 --> 24:59.110 case. 24:59.310 --> 25:02.590 Leslie tried several things during this period to try to spur me on in my 25:02.590 --> 25:03.190 investigation. 25:03.450 --> 25:04.490 It didn't help very much. 25:04.550 --> 25:08.750 For instance, she would leave Bible tracts around the house, or she would take a 25:08.750 --> 25:12.210 Christian book and highlight certain passages and leave it open on a coffee 25:12.210 --> 25:13.210 table, things like that. 25:13.350 --> 25:14.450 It really didn't help. 25:14.510 --> 25:17.910 I told her it was not helping, and she understood that. 25:18.030 --> 25:24.010 But I think sort of the whole time she was holding her breath, because this was not a 25:24.010 --> 25:25.350 very smooth investigation. 25:26.050 --> 25:28.950 He would take two steps forward, three steps back. 25:29.050 --> 25:33.730 Sometimes it looked like he was really getting it, and other times he would just 25:33.730 --> 25:37.250 turn into an angry, frustrated person again. 25:37.690 --> 25:41.290 And so it was a very frustrating time for both of us. 25:42.010 --> 25:44.130 I believe Jesus was a real person. 25:44.670 --> 25:45.990 I believe he did live. 25:46.070 --> 25:49.210 I guess there are some exaggerations in the Bible, I'd have to say. 25:49.510 --> 25:54.270 I don't believe we'll ever know if Jesus was really what everyone thinks he is. 25:54.810 --> 25:56.930 I think it's a lot of folklore. 25:57.270 --> 26:00.470 I think it's a lot of historical misrepresentations. 26:00.590 --> 26:02.110 I think it's a lot of wishful thinking. 26:02.690 --> 26:05.570 But I don't think we know, and I don't think we'll ever know, and I don't think 26:05.570 --> 26:09.790 there's any way to prove what has been claimed about Jesus for all these years. 26:10.340 --> 26:14.210 The biographies of Jesus in the New Testament gave me a lot of information 26:14.210 --> 26:14.870 about him. 26:15.150 --> 26:18.150 But Christians were saying that he is the Son of God. 26:18.310 --> 26:21.070 That's a huge step to take, to believe that. 26:21.470 --> 26:25.510 And so I sought out more scholars so I could pose to them this question. 26:25.930 --> 26:27.570 Who was Jesus? 26:38.950 --> 26:42.550 Michael Rydelnik, Moody Bible Institute. 26:50.450 --> 26:52.930 Ben Witherington, Asbury Seminary. 27:01.750 --> 27:05.730 Now this is one of the things I love about Jesus, and it says something to us. 27:05.990 --> 27:07.350 His identity is complex. 27:07.690 --> 27:08.970 He can't be pigeonholed. 27:09.090 --> 27:10.370 He fits no one formula. 27:10.770 --> 27:13.130 There's a lot of aspects to who he is. 27:13.570 --> 27:19.170 But always he presents himself as a challenge to the status quo, to 27:19.170 --> 27:23.250 precondition thinking about what Son of God, what Messiah must be. 27:23.690 --> 27:25.310 He's carving out his own niche. 27:25.350 --> 27:26.570 He's doing his own thing. 27:26.670 --> 27:31.830 Like a great and creative artist, he is not simply replicating anything from 27:31.830 --> 27:32.370 the past. 27:32.470 --> 27:37.730 He is taking bits and pieces of prophecies and ideas and wisdom literature and law 27:37.730 --> 27:41.210 and you name it, and he's made a whole new gumbo. 27:41.790 --> 27:42.870 And he's serving it up. 27:43.010 --> 27:44.310 And people don't know what to think. 27:44.830 --> 27:49.530 He goes in a synagogue and says some of this stuff and they go, wow, a new 27:49.530 --> 27:51.690 teaching and with authority. 27:52.690 --> 27:53.130 Shazam. 27:54.130 --> 27:57.550 Amazingly, people say, you know, no one teaches like him because he spoke 27:57.550 --> 27:58.710 with his own authority. 27:59.810 --> 28:03.850 Our sages, our rabbis always thought that you have to teach in the name of someone 28:03.850 --> 28:04.150 else. 28:04.690 --> 28:07.250 You know, rabbi so and so says in the name of rabbi so and so. 28:07.490 --> 28:09.850 That's the way rabbis were taught to teach. 28:10.730 --> 28:15.430 Yeshua came and said, you've heard it said, but not what my rabbi taught me, 28:15.510 --> 28:17.030 but I say unto you. 28:17.030 --> 28:21.810 And he would clarify, even overrule in some ways, the Old Testament law. 28:22.230 --> 28:27.390 Well, this law was given by God himself for Jesus to say, I am the authoritative 28:27.390 --> 28:28.790 interpreter of the law. 28:28.950 --> 28:31.170 I am the one who has come to fulfill the law. 28:31.470 --> 28:35.390 That's an extraordinary claim, a claim to essentially the authority of 28:35.390 --> 28:35.750 God. 28:37.430 --> 28:42.750 The spirit of the sovereign Lord is on me because the Lord has anointed me to preach 28:42.750 --> 28:43.970 good news to the poor. 28:44.310 --> 28:49.030 He has sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim freedom to the 28:49.030 --> 28:49.630 captives. 28:50.530 --> 28:52.110 Isaiah 61, 1. 28:53.330 --> 28:57.870 It's interesting because when Yeshua went into the synagogue, that was the passage 28:57.870 --> 28:58.330 he read. 28:58.870 --> 29:01.690 And he says, this day, this verse is fulfilled in your hearing. 29:02.370 --> 29:05.490 And basically he's saying, I'm the servant that's described here. 29:05.570 --> 29:07.010 I'm the one who fulfills this. 29:07.710 --> 29:10.430 Philip comes to Jesus and asks him to show us the Father. 29:10.610 --> 29:13.310 And Jesus says, the one who has seen me has seen the Father. 29:13.730 --> 29:17.230 Jesus clearly presents himself as the self-revelation of God. 29:17.330 --> 29:20.710 Those who meet Jesus are, in fact, meeting God. 29:20.850 --> 29:25.430 When Jesus is brought before Caiaphas, the high priest, and some of the Sanhedrin 29:25.430 --> 29:29.170 members that have gathered the evening that Jesus is arrested, they're trying to 29:29.170 --> 29:31.050 find incriminating evidence. 29:31.250 --> 29:35.230 They're trying to find incriminating testimony, and they're not doing real 29:35.230 --> 29:35.450 well. 29:35.530 --> 29:40.690 And finally, the high priest asks Jesus directly, tell us plainly, are you the 29:40.690 --> 29:41.950 Messiah, the Son of God? 29:42.670 --> 29:43.790 And Jesus says, I am. 29:43.950 --> 29:47.670 And you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand, coming with the clouds of 29:47.670 --> 29:47.850 heaven. 29:48.210 --> 29:52.930 And there Jesus has combined phrases from Daniel 7 and Psalm 110. 29:53.370 --> 29:57.370 Jesus sees himself as this heavenly figure. 29:59.610 --> 30:04.630 More than 80 times in the New Testament Gospels, Jesus is identified as the Son of 30:04.630 --> 30:04.950 Man. 30:05.890 --> 30:10.950 While the human connotations of the phrase are obvious, a broader interpretation is 30:10.950 --> 30:14.530 found in an Old Testament scripture written by the Jewish prophet Daniel. 30:16.210 --> 30:21.770 In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a Son of 30:21.770 --> 30:24.030 Man coming with the clouds of heaven. 30:25.010 --> 30:28.670 He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 30:29.590 --> 30:30.890 Daniel 7.13. 30:32.130 --> 30:35.910 Many Christians and non-Christians hear the phrase Son of Man, they think Son of 30:35.910 --> 30:40.530 God refers to his deity and Son of Man refers to his humanity. 30:40.790 --> 30:45.750 That's in part true, but in fact Son of Man has a much greater significance than 30:45.750 --> 30:46.430 that as well. 30:46.930 --> 30:51.610 The title Son of Man, Jesus draws that title from Daniel chapter 7, where a 30:51.610 --> 30:57.310 glorious messianic figure comes before the Ancient of Days, a reference to God. 30:57.470 --> 31:00.810 And he is given all glory and power and majesty. 31:00.810 --> 31:07.110 That portrait of this glorious messiah is the one that Jesus identifies himself 31:07.110 --> 31:07.470 with. 31:07.590 --> 31:09.270 He is the Son of Man. 31:09.370 --> 31:11.830 So Son of Man doesn't just mean a human being. 31:13.270 --> 31:19.110 His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom 31:19.110 --> 31:21.290 is one that will never be destroyed. 31:22.250 --> 31:23.710 Daniel 7.14. 31:24.490 --> 31:32.190 Actually the phrase Son of Man refers to his humanness and his more than humanness. 31:32.870 --> 31:37.790 Because no human being can rule forever unless he is a forever person in some kind 31:37.790 --> 31:38.190 of way. 31:42.520 --> 31:46.280 In addition to the claims that Jesus makes about himself in the New Testament, 31:46.680 --> 31:50.940 there are also reports that he performed the miraculous, that he walked on water 31:50.940 --> 31:55.520 and healed the sick and turned water into wine and raised the dead and did 31:55.520 --> 31:56.320 exorcisms. 31:56.440 --> 32:02.760 And so I had to know, is there evidence that these miracles are a result of his 32:02.760 --> 32:03.560 divine nature? 32:04.880 --> 32:09.880 Jesus' contemporaries, that is people who liked him, people who were indifferent, 32:10.200 --> 32:15.120 neutral, and people who opposed him, all acknowledged he did extraordinary 32:15.120 --> 32:15.600 things. 32:15.680 --> 32:20.780 Now of course the people who liked Jesus and believed in him and followed him said, 32:21.120 --> 32:24.560 Jesus did these powerful works because of the spirit of God. 32:24.780 --> 32:30.220 People who opposed him would say, well I admit he does these amazing things 32:30.220 --> 32:32.800 but it's because the devil is helping him. 32:33.240 --> 32:36.600 The Talmud actually speaks of some of these things. 32:37.000 --> 32:43.160 In some of the passages that deal with Yeshua, it has him as a magician. 32:44.540 --> 32:46.140 Now why do they describe him as a magician? 32:46.380 --> 32:47.600 It's not flattering. 32:48.080 --> 32:51.880 There is a historical recognition here that when Yeshua came he did miracles just 32:51.880 --> 32:55.380 as Isaiah 35 indicates in the messianic age. 32:55.680 --> 32:59.800 When the Messiah comes he'll be able to make the blind see and the lame walk. 33:01.180 --> 33:06.080 The New Testament Gospels record at least 40 separate miracles performed by Jesus 33:06.080 --> 33:07.580 during the course of his ministry. 33:08.320 --> 33:13.560 They include healings, exorcisms, mastery over nature, and even raising of 33:13.560 --> 33:13.980 the dead. 33:15.520 --> 33:19.280 Christian theology has always held that these miracles are part of a total picture 33:19.280 --> 33:22.180 that displays the attributes of God himself. 33:23.300 --> 33:30.360 Unlimited power, total knowledge, ever present, unchanging, eternal. 33:32.640 --> 33:36.380 There's no question that the biographies of Jesus describe him as a worker of 33:36.380 --> 33:37.100 mighty deeds. 33:37.620 --> 33:41.200 But I wanted to know, does this make him any different than the other miracle 33:41.200 --> 33:43.720 workers and magicians of the ancient world? 33:43.880 --> 33:47.900 Miracle workers that we find occasionally in the first century are magicians. 33:48.040 --> 33:54.360 They use incantations, they use spells, they try to coerce gods or divine figures 33:54.360 --> 33:55.420 to work on their behalf. 33:55.500 --> 33:56.940 That's very different than Jesus' miracles. 33:57.120 --> 34:01.280 Jesus' miracles were to demonstrate the power of the kingdom of God. 34:01.400 --> 34:05.500 When he healed the sick, he pointed back to Isaiah's prophecies that when God's 34:05.500 --> 34:09.060 kingdom would come, when God's salvation would come, the lame would walk, 34:09.120 --> 34:09.980 the blind would see. 34:10.100 --> 34:13.040 This was the demonstration that God's kingdom was arriving. 34:13.460 --> 34:14.540 He's an exorcist. 34:14.920 --> 34:16.700 You don't find any of those in the Old Testament. 34:17.180 --> 34:19.680 People were not looking for messianic exorcists. 34:20.140 --> 34:21.920 He carves out his own niche. 34:22.300 --> 34:24.680 He reveals his identity in his own way. 34:25.460 --> 34:29.700 It becomes clear that he is somebody who can take on the powers of darkness himself 34:29.700 --> 34:30.340 and win. 34:31.460 --> 34:32.800 What kind of person is that? 34:33.960 --> 34:37.960 And he doesn't have to use recipes and formulas like other ancient exorcists. 34:38.240 --> 34:42.020 He can just call the demon by name and that boy's out of there. 34:42.280 --> 34:46.000 One of the most astonishing things that Jesus did was when he claimed to forgive 34:46.000 --> 34:51.180 sins in Mark's Gospel, chapter 2, a man is brought to him, a paralyzed man, 34:51.500 --> 34:54.700 and the crowds around him are expecting Jesus to heal him. 34:54.760 --> 34:57.580 But instead, the first thing Jesus said is, your sins are forgiven. 34:58.140 --> 34:59.660 Only God forgives sins. 34:59.840 --> 35:04.760 Now some might say, well, Jesus may have been forgiving sins on behalf of God. 35:05.240 --> 35:08.300 But in fact, that's not the way his listeners understood him because 35:08.300 --> 35:11.460 immediately the religious leaders responded to that. 35:11.540 --> 35:13.040 Who is this that forgives sins? 35:13.120 --> 35:15.320 Only God forgives sins, they claim. 35:15.380 --> 35:17.560 But Jesus claims the ability to forgive sins. 35:18.000 --> 35:21.720 And to confirm that he has that authority, he then heals the man. 35:24.320 --> 35:26.780 And so a very obvious question arises. 35:27.100 --> 35:32.360 That is, is Jesus the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One, the one sent 35:32.360 --> 35:35.240 by God to be the Savior of Israel and the world? 35:35.820 --> 35:39.900 Christians told me that there are dozens and dozens of ancient prophecies contained 35:39.900 --> 35:43.640 in the Old Testament of the Bible, and that they predict the coming of this 35:43.640 --> 35:48.060 Messiah, and that Jesus, against all mathematical odds, fulfilled those 35:48.060 --> 35:48.700 prophecies. 35:48.780 --> 35:52.060 And I thought, you know, this is a little bit like the fingerprint evidence you see 35:52.060 --> 35:52.780 in a court of law. 35:53.480 --> 35:57.700 I remember covering one particular case where the murderer went through the purse 35:57.700 --> 36:02.920 of the victim, and he left one thumbprint on the cellophane wrapper of a package of 36:02.920 --> 36:03.420 cigarettes. 36:03.800 --> 36:07.420 And it was that thumbprint that led to his conviction for murder. 36:08.180 --> 36:12.920 And I thought, in an analogous way, could it be that these ancient prophecies 36:12.920 --> 36:15.060 are sort of like that thumbprint on the cellophane? 36:15.260 --> 36:20.080 Do they create a thumbprint that only Jesus Christ, in all of history, 36:20.720 --> 36:22.260 manages to match? 36:30.750 --> 36:34.470 This is Yashiyahu 53.6, or Isaiah 53.6. 36:45.610 --> 36:49.950 All of us, like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way. 36:50.890 --> 36:53.770 But the Lord has laid upon him the iniquity of us all. 36:54.530 --> 36:58.370 I had a friend who wrote this out on a piece of paper. 36:58.430 --> 37:00.570 He typed it up on his computer, without any verse notations. 37:01.030 --> 37:06.050 And he took it around to everyone in his office. 37:06.590 --> 37:09.950 He worked in a big office for a motor vehicle bureau in one of the big states in 37:09.950 --> 37:10.350 our country. 37:10.670 --> 37:15.250 And he showed it to everyone in the motor vehicle bureau, and in the state capitol. 37:15.950 --> 37:21.230 And he said, just tell me who this is, and where it comes from. 37:21.710 --> 37:25.290 And every single person that looked at it, Jew or Gentile alike, it didn't matter. 37:25.730 --> 37:27.910 Everyone that looked at it, read it, and he said, who is this? 37:27.950 --> 37:30.270 They said, it's obviously Jesus of Nazareth. 37:30.430 --> 37:31.130 That's who it is. 37:31.550 --> 37:32.430 And it's from the New Testament. 37:33.250 --> 37:35.990 And then my friend would say, but no, it's not from the New Testament. 37:36.230 --> 37:37.250 It's from the Hebrew Bible. 37:37.410 --> 37:39.850 It was written eight centuries before Jesus came. 37:40.130 --> 37:41.010 Can you believe this? 37:41.030 --> 37:42.110 And he showed it to them from Isaiah. 37:42.450 --> 37:43.690 And people really had a hard time. 37:43.890 --> 37:49.030 Because if you read this passage without any kind of presuppositions or bias, 37:49.350 --> 37:53.770 you will read it, and it will be really clear that this is the life of Yeshua. 37:54.230 --> 37:57.610 Now, could he have fabricated this, or is this just a big coincidence? 37:58.530 --> 38:01.410 In the Old Testament, you really have two kinds of prophecies. 38:01.570 --> 38:05.870 We have prophecies that are fulfilled uniquely in Christ, and prophecies that 38:05.870 --> 38:08.230 are fulfilled typologically in Christ. 38:08.310 --> 38:10.090 And I do think we need to distinguish between the two. 38:10.570 --> 38:15.030 Those that are fulfilled uniquely in Christ were once and for all fulfilled by 38:15.030 --> 38:15.350 Jesus. 38:15.610 --> 38:19.830 And those are the ones that we can really point to, to have apologetic value. 38:19.830 --> 38:24.230 That is to demonstrate that Jesus was the only person who could have possibly 38:24.230 --> 38:25.050 fulfilled this. 38:25.210 --> 38:27.490 His birth in Bethlehem is one of those prophecies. 38:28.010 --> 38:32.510 His role as the suffering servant of Isaiah 53 is one of those prophecies. 38:32.790 --> 38:36.590 His entrance into Jerusalem on a donkey from Zechariah chapter 9. 38:37.010 --> 38:40.990 These are clear evidence that Jesus is fulfilling the Old Testament. 38:41.910 --> 38:45.710 The most amazing part of Isaiah's prophecies is in Isaiah 9, it speaks about 38:45.710 --> 38:49.130 the son of David coming to be the king, to sit on the throne of David and have an 38:49.130 --> 38:50.150 eternal righteous kingdom. 38:50.770 --> 38:52.430 And everyone knows it from Handel's Messiah. 38:52.610 --> 38:54.530 Unto us a son is born, unto us a child is given. 38:55.010 --> 38:58.750 And the idea of this verse is that the Messiah will actually be born, 38:59.570 --> 39:01.090 physically born. 39:01.790 --> 39:02.330 And then it says, 39:07.130 --> 39:10.130 In other words, he's the creator, the author of time. 39:10.130 --> 39:15.090 Some skeptics have said that Jesus could have engineered the fulfillment of these 39:15.090 --> 39:15.850 prophecies. 39:16.390 --> 39:19.190 Of course, Jesus could not have determined where he was going to be born. 39:19.330 --> 39:21.930 So to be born in Bethlehem, obviously he could not have engineered that. 39:22.310 --> 39:25.450 Also, as the suffering servant, it would have been difficult for him to 39:25.450 --> 39:28.330 engineer such a specific fulfillment of Isaiah 53. 39:28.710 --> 39:34.150 But on the other hand, the fact that Jesus performed certain actions that in fact 39:34.150 --> 39:37.410 fulfilled prophecies only demonstrates that he was indeed the Messiah. 39:37.410 --> 39:41.870 Anyone who enters Jerusalem riding on a donkey, an obvious fulfillment of 39:41.870 --> 39:45.550 Zechariah 9.9 is saying, Yes, I am the Messiah. 39:45.810 --> 39:49.430 So we certainly have a glimpse in that fulfilled prophecy of the 39:49.430 --> 39:53.530 self-consciousness of Jesus, that he truly believed that he was the Messiah. 39:58.230 --> 40:01.790 Scholars have determined that Jesus fulfilled at least four dozen major 40:01.790 --> 40:05.750 prophecies, each written a minimum of three centuries before his birth. 40:07.250 --> 40:12.170 Their content ranged from specific details about his life to the symbolic 40:12.170 --> 40:13.790 implications of his death. 40:16.950 --> 40:22.050 Psalm 22 gives a poetic picture by David, written in the first person, of what the 40:22.050 --> 40:23.930 Messiah will be like in his suffering. 40:24.610 --> 40:29.190 And one of the things he says is that they will pierce my hands and my feet. 40:29.870 --> 40:35.510 David wrote before crucifixion was known, probably by about 300 years. 40:36.190 --> 40:38.590 Isaiah 53 says he was pierced through. 40:38.650 --> 40:39.730 It gives us the reason for his death. 40:39.970 --> 40:43.110 He was pierced through for our iniquities. 40:43.330 --> 40:44.070 So there's a purpose. 40:44.190 --> 40:48.070 He dies not just because he's a martyr, but because he's a substitution for sin. 40:50.150 --> 40:54.730 A college professor of mathematics and science named Dr. Peter Stoner wanted to 40:54.730 --> 40:57.990 determine what the odds were that any human being throughout history could 40:57.990 --> 40:59.510 fulfill the Messianic prophecies. 40:59.830 --> 41:04.050 So he had his students come up with very conservative estimates of the likelihood 41:04.050 --> 41:06.550 of any human being fulfilling certain of these predictions. 41:06.910 --> 41:08.470 And then they just ran the numbers. 41:08.550 --> 41:13.350 And what they determined is that the odds of any human being fulfilling 48 of these 41:13.350 --> 41:17.790 ancient prophecies would be one chance in a trillion, trillion, trillion, 41:18.030 --> 41:21.830 trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, 41:22.010 --> 41:22.310 trillion, trillion. 41:24.410 --> 41:27.630 It is mathematically virtually impossible. 41:28.150 --> 41:33.030 To me, just as significant as all of those unique prophecies that were fulfilled in 41:33.030 --> 41:37.450 Christ is the complete drama of the Old Testament. 41:37.590 --> 41:42.350 The fact that the Old Testament is the story, the narrative of God's redemptive 41:42.350 --> 41:42.710 movement. 41:42.890 --> 41:45.470 His movement to deliver and save humanity. 41:46.010 --> 41:48.930 And Jesus is the climax of that movement. 41:49.170 --> 41:51.610 He is the climax of salvation history. 41:51.610 --> 41:53.830 The one who brings it off to fulfillment. 41:53.950 --> 41:56.550 You read the Old Testament, it's building, building, building. 41:57.210 --> 41:59.930 Jesus arrives on the scene and he is the fulfillment. 42:00.250 --> 42:06.870 And he recognizes himself clearly as the climax of God's plan of salvation for all 42:06.870 --> 42:07.410 humanity. 42:07.910 --> 42:11.470 This whole case was sort of like one of those jigsaw puzzles where you don't know 42:11.470 --> 42:12.890 what the ultimate picture is going to be. 42:13.350 --> 42:14.930 You just put together the pieces. 42:15.210 --> 42:19.770 And as I was putting together all of the evidence, it started to take shape. 42:19.770 --> 42:25.150 And I sort of stepped back and I could see that it was a portrait of Jesus Christ. 42:43.960 --> 42:46.720 This was not just an intellectual journey. 42:47.520 --> 42:50.700 There was a very real emotional component to this. 42:50.820 --> 42:55.900 Because I would find things along the way that would challenge me and my worldview 42:55.900 --> 42:57.080 on a very deep level. 42:57.760 --> 43:00.740 And I would recoil from it and I wouldn't want to believe it. 43:01.500 --> 43:07.600 I mean, there were so many reasons why I didn't want there to be a God. 43:07.740 --> 43:11.000 Because I did not want to be held accountable for my life. 43:11.240 --> 43:14.000 I didn't know at the time why Lee was so angry. 43:14.380 --> 43:16.180 I thought it was just being stubborn. 43:16.680 --> 43:20.400 He says, after coming through it, that it was conviction. 43:20.820 --> 43:25.340 It seemed that the more Leslie's values were changing and her character was being 43:25.340 --> 43:29.360 transformed and the way she related to me and the children was changing, 43:30.000 --> 43:33.760 it would highlight the contrast with my life. 43:34.060 --> 43:40.860 I was feeling fearful and angry as well that he was being affected by it in the 43:40.860 --> 43:41.820 way that he was. 43:42.120 --> 43:44.420 I mean, the truth is, I felt like I was losing Leslie. 43:45.140 --> 43:48.740 She was being pulled away from me into this Christian subculture. 43:49.420 --> 43:50.380 I didn't fit in there. 43:50.440 --> 43:51.040 I'm the atheist. 43:51.240 --> 43:52.180 I'm the skeptic. 43:52.360 --> 43:55.460 And yet I felt like she was being pulled away and I loved her. 43:55.580 --> 43:56.700 I didn't want to lose her. 43:57.640 --> 44:01.080 And it got to the point where I was so angry over the whole thing. 44:01.140 --> 44:04.400 One day I just reared back and I kicked a hole in our living room wall. 44:04.500 --> 44:07.120 Just out of rage over the situation. 44:07.260 --> 44:11.300 It was a very ugly scene right in front of Leslie, right in front of our little girl. 44:11.360 --> 44:15.820 They were crying and I just... I didn't want to lose her. 44:21.200 --> 44:23.400 Jesus' body was never found. 44:23.400 --> 44:26.480 And they predicted it. 44:27.020 --> 44:31.560 He talked about it and it was predicted and it happened. 44:32.520 --> 44:35.320 I mean, it's as simple as that. 44:35.740 --> 44:37.380 We just tend to complicate it, man. 44:38.640 --> 44:40.420 No, not physically. 44:40.980 --> 44:42.520 Not his physical body. 44:43.240 --> 44:48.400 So when they came the following morning and rolled back the great stone in front 44:48.400 --> 44:51.620 of the tomb and he wasn't there... 44:53.560 --> 44:56.100 No, no, it must have been dark in there. 44:56.120 --> 44:56.720 I don't know. 44:57.040 --> 44:57.800 They must have missed him. 44:57.920 --> 45:01.640 No, I don't think physically a physical body can rise. 45:02.320 --> 45:07.240 I don't think that he was yanked out of that... well, physically walked out and 45:07.240 --> 45:08.620 walked down the street and met with him. 45:08.800 --> 45:10.380 It just doesn't make any sense to me. 45:11.140 --> 45:15.500 For more than a year I'd investigated the historical record for the reliability of 45:15.500 --> 45:16.120 the New Testament. 45:16.400 --> 45:17.900 I'd looked at the identity of Jesus. 45:18.400 --> 45:22.600 But now it was time to look at the ultimate evidence for who he really was. 45:22.600 --> 45:25.820 The purported resurrection of Jesus from the dead. 45:26.120 --> 45:29.880 And for that I went to the best scholars that I could track down. 45:52.700 --> 45:55.840 Michael Lacona, North American Mission Board. 46:01.730 --> 46:05.970 You see, while Jesus was on earth, he made some really radical claims. 46:06.550 --> 46:09.410 He claimed to be the uniquely divine servant of God. 46:09.930 --> 46:13.130 And he claimed that the only way that we could get to God would be through him. 46:13.930 --> 46:17.710 Now, I submit to you that if one of your professors made some claims like that, 46:17.750 --> 46:20.810 you would think that he or she was a few french fries short of a happy meal. 46:21.310 --> 46:23.570 Those are some really audacious claims. 46:25.150 --> 46:28.950 Well, a lot of Jesus critics responded to him the same way that you or I would 46:28.950 --> 46:30.670 respond to someone making those claims today. 46:31.110 --> 46:31.750 Oh yeah, pal? 46:31.950 --> 46:33.270 You really think that's who you are? 46:33.670 --> 46:35.350 Well, tell you what, why don't you show it to us? 46:35.690 --> 46:36.810 Why don't you give us a sign? 46:36.890 --> 46:38.330 Show us a miracle or something. 46:39.030 --> 46:41.490 And Jesus said, well, I'll give you one miracle, one sign. 46:41.770 --> 46:43.090 My resurrection from the dead. 46:45.670 --> 46:49.210 The resurrection of Jesus really is the pivotal event of history. 46:49.210 --> 46:53.390 Anybody can claim to be the son of God, as Jesus clearly did. 46:54.070 --> 46:56.390 The question is, can you back it up? 46:56.950 --> 46:59.350 What evidence is there to support your claim? 46:59.630 --> 47:01.310 What credentials do you have? 47:01.510 --> 47:06.430 And if Jesus really did return from the dead, that's excellent evidence that he is 47:06.430 --> 47:09.190 who he claimed to be, the one and only son of God. 47:11.390 --> 47:15.790 To weigh the validity of Jesus' resurrection, we must first consider his 47:15.790 --> 47:16.150 death. 47:16.870 --> 47:21.670 Many skeptics have proposed that Jesus merely fainted on the cross, or was 47:21.670 --> 47:24.630 drugged, and later escaped as part of a conspiracy. 47:26.310 --> 47:31.270 By contrast, the four gospel narratives collectively describe the events of his 47:31.270 --> 47:35.190 public beating, death by crucifixion, and burial. 47:38.370 --> 47:42.810 Pilate had Jesus flogged and handed him over to be crucified. 47:44.450 --> 47:46.230 Mark 15, 15. 47:48.810 --> 47:52.250 Chances of surviving crucifixion were extremely bleak. 47:53.010 --> 47:57.750 Crucifixion and the tortures that normally preceded it was the worst way to die in 47:57.750 --> 47:58.350 antiquity. 47:58.770 --> 48:02.270 A person was scourged to the point usually that their intestines, arteries, 48:02.510 --> 48:03.770 and veins were laid bare. 48:04.210 --> 48:08.290 And then after that, a person was dragged out where they were impaled to a cross or 48:08.290 --> 48:11.770 a tree, and then left hanging there in excruciating pain. 48:11.770 --> 48:15.690 In fact, the word excruciating comes from the Latin, out of the cross. 48:16.210 --> 48:19.450 Jesus was being tried and executed as a rebel leader. 48:20.230 --> 48:24.210 Now, in the Roman army, if you were responsible for looking after one prisoner 48:24.210 --> 48:28.070 of war, even if he was a rather insignificant prisoner of war, 48:28.250 --> 48:33.450 if you let him get away, your life would be forfeit in place of his, and life was 48:33.450 --> 48:34.010 very cheap. 48:34.570 --> 48:39.670 If you were looking after the execution of a rebel leader, and you let him get away, 48:39.970 --> 48:41.270 you're in deep trouble. 48:42.290 --> 48:44.670 You're not going back home to your wife and kids. 48:44.730 --> 48:45.190 No way. 48:45.310 --> 48:45.850 Game over. 48:46.390 --> 48:49.170 The Romans were very, very good at killing people. 48:49.370 --> 48:50.530 They specialized in it. 48:50.610 --> 48:51.990 They prided themselves on it. 48:53.610 --> 48:57.810 Perhaps the most definitive statement of Jesus' death at the hands of the Romans is 48:57.810 --> 48:59.490 recorded in the Gospel of John. 49:00.470 --> 49:05.370 One of the soldiers pierced Jesus' side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of 49:05.370 --> 49:06.410 blood and water. 49:10.670 --> 49:15.050 Medical experts have concluded that this account from John, an eyewitness of the 49:15.050 --> 49:20.430 crucifixion, is evidence that as he suffocated on the cross, Jesus' heart had 49:20.430 --> 49:20.870 ruptured. 49:24.650 --> 49:28.410 There came a rich man from Arimathea named Joseph. 49:29.270 --> 49:34.710 Joseph took the body, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and placed it in his 49:34.710 --> 49:37.170 own new tomb that he had cut out of the rock. 49:41.470 --> 49:45.990 All four Gospels tell us that Jesus was buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. 49:46.350 --> 49:50.990 That's a remarkable statement, and certainly a historical statement. 49:51.130 --> 49:55.130 The evidence for that is, first of all, Joseph of Arimathea is identified as a 49:55.130 --> 49:58.490 member of the council, the Sanhedrin, that condemned Jesus. 49:58.830 --> 50:04.650 The presence of Joseph of Arimathea in the empty tomb narrative indicates that this 50:04.650 --> 50:08.330 is a historically reliable account of what really happened. 50:08.730 --> 50:12.790 His name would have been known to people in those days very much like a United 50:12.790 --> 50:14.790 States senator would be known today. 50:15.430 --> 50:20.330 It would have been very clear where his tomb was, so that there would have been no 50:20.330 --> 50:22.950 question about the location of Jesus' burial. 50:22.950 --> 50:29.510 It also, I think, indicates that the burial account of Jesus could not have 50:29.510 --> 50:30.170 been made up. 50:30.510 --> 50:37.390 It is highly unusual to find that the person who alone has the courage to go to 50:37.390 --> 50:45.270 Pilate and give Jesus an honorable burial is not members of his family, faithful 50:45.270 --> 50:47.690 disciples who followed him to the end. 50:47.690 --> 50:54.290 Instead, it is a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin, the very high court, 50:54.530 --> 50:59.090 all of whom, Mark says, had condemned Jesus of Nazareth to the cross. 50:59.370 --> 51:04.290 The fact that it is Joseph of Arimathea who is the person responsible for giving 51:04.290 --> 51:08.550 Jesus an honorable burial is an awkward and embarrassing fact for the early 51:08.550 --> 51:13.010 church, and yet this tradition is faithfully preserved in almost all of the 51:13.010 --> 51:15.790 traditions that we have about the burial of Jesus. 51:25.200 --> 51:30.360 If Jesus really was killed by the Romans, if his body really was buried in the tomb 51:30.360 --> 51:35.520 of Joseph of Arimathea, then the next focus of my investigation became obvious. 51:36.060 --> 51:41.500 On the first Sunday after the crucifixion, was the tomb of Jesus Christ really empty? 51:43.360 --> 51:47.800 On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices 51:47.800 --> 51:49.760 they had prepared and went to the tomb. 51:50.880 --> 51:52.400 Luke 24, 1. 51:53.500 --> 52:00.180 The empty tomb story also has a very embarrassing feature of it that is 52:00.180 --> 52:05.320 preserved in the memory of the early church, namely the discovery of the empty 52:05.320 --> 52:07.060 tomb by women. 52:07.620 --> 52:10.980 Now, in order to appreciate this, you have to understand something of the 52:10.980 --> 52:15.260 status of women in Palestinian Jewish society. 52:16.080 --> 52:22.080 In that society, which was a patriarchal society, women were frankly second-class 52:22.080 --> 52:22.860 citizens. 52:23.720 --> 52:30.260 If you were going to invent an account about an empty tomb, then why on earth 52:30.260 --> 52:36.340 would you invent witnesses, primary witnesses, whom no one would believe? 52:36.460 --> 52:38.720 In fact, they would scoff at that later on. 52:38.720 --> 52:41.980 Supposing you were inventing the story of the resurrection of Jesus. 52:42.100 --> 52:44.740 Many people have said, oh, this was all just dreamed up later on. 52:45.260 --> 52:46.760 Well, how would you have done that? 52:47.240 --> 52:51.360 The one thing you wouldn't have done would have been to have not only a woman, 52:51.620 --> 52:57.060 but a woman who's got nobody quite knows what, but a fairly shady past as your 52:57.060 --> 52:58.220 prime witness. 52:58.680 --> 53:03.100 And yet there she is, Mary Magdalene in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and particularly in 53:03.100 --> 53:03.460 John. 53:03.460 --> 53:06.800 And already by the middle of the second century, the pagans are sneering, 53:06.980 --> 53:10.500 oh, this is just based on the testimony of hysterical women, you can't believe that. 53:10.880 --> 53:13.800 But the early Christians stuck to their story, they stuck to their guns, 53:13.900 --> 53:14.980 they stuck to the women. 53:15.400 --> 53:16.980 They said, this is how it was. 53:17.500 --> 53:20.220 Now, they just would never have made that up. 53:20.440 --> 53:22.660 And that actually has enormous ramifications. 53:22.840 --> 53:28.240 If this is how the story was, and they didn't change it to airbrush Mary out, 53:28.540 --> 53:32.000 then this really must have been what happened on that first Easter day. 53:33.460 --> 53:35.660 The chief priests devised a plan. 53:36.600 --> 53:40.420 They gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, you are to say, 53:40.880 --> 53:44.800 his disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep. 53:45.660 --> 53:47.960 Matthew 28, 12, and 13. 53:48.480 --> 53:52.960 Matthew reports that the Jewish authorities were claiming that the 53:52.960 --> 53:55.620 disciples of Jesus had stolen his corpse. 53:55.620 --> 54:00.020 And this is verified by Justin and Tertullian a little bit later on, 54:00.100 --> 54:03.240 saying that the Jewish leaders were still saying the same thing in their day. 54:03.800 --> 54:04.600 Now, here's the question. 54:05.420 --> 54:09.080 If the body is still in the tomb, why are you saying that the disciples had 54:09.080 --> 54:09.640 stolen it? 54:10.380 --> 54:13.820 Well, if you think about that, the claim that the body was stolen 54:13.820 --> 54:18.340 confirms that Jesus' enemies acknowledged that the tomb was empty. 54:18.680 --> 54:21.700 If you've got a stolen body, you must have an empty tomb. 54:21.700 --> 54:25.400 If the tomb was not empty, Jesus' opponents would surely have gone and got 54:25.400 --> 54:29.120 the body and shown it as soon as the disciples began proclaiming the 54:29.120 --> 54:29.600 resurrection. 54:31.360 --> 54:35.140 I found the evidence for the empty tomb very convincing, but you know what, 54:35.200 --> 54:37.220 that didn't tell me what happened to Jesus. 54:37.980 --> 54:42.620 Is it true that hundreds of people really saw him alive after the crucifixion? 54:43.100 --> 54:47.040 My research took me to a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to the Church at 54:47.040 --> 54:51.440 Corinth, and it contains the earliest passage of all about what happened to the 54:51.440 --> 54:52.280 resurrected Jesus. 55:13.330 --> 55:21.520 1 Corinthians 15, 4-8 Paul, who is a first-generation Christian, having met and 55:21.520 --> 55:26.300 seen the resurrected Jesus, describes resurrection appearances to Peter, 55:26.560 --> 55:29.440 to the Apostles, to James, and finally to himself. 55:30.000 --> 55:33.960 And he also mentions 500 people who saw Jesus alive. 55:33.960 --> 55:40.300 So we have eyewitness firsthand account of someone who himself saw Jesus alive and 55:40.300 --> 55:44.060 knows of 500 people or so who saw Jesus alive. 55:44.140 --> 55:46.220 That's extraordinarily strong evidence. 55:46.660 --> 55:50.780 These people, Paul tells us, were still alive at the time that he was telling the 55:50.780 --> 55:51.820 Corinthians about it. 55:52.340 --> 55:56.500 And his implication is, we have hundreds of people who actually saw Jesus risen 55:56.500 --> 55:57.180 from the dead. 55:57.480 --> 56:01.400 If you don't believe me, you can ask them about it because they're still alive. 56:01.400 --> 56:06.060 In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul tells the Corinthian church that he passed on what 56:06.060 --> 56:06.740 he received. 56:06.860 --> 56:10.540 He uses the language, actually, of a formal transfer of tradition. 56:10.940 --> 56:14.660 What he received, and then he describes the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the 56:14.660 --> 56:16.140 resurrection appearances. 56:16.580 --> 56:22.700 This confirms for us that the accounts of the resurrection were creedal tradition 56:22.700 --> 56:24.800 that were passed on to Paul. 56:24.800 --> 56:29.760 So if 1 Corinthians was written in the early to mid 50s of the first century, 56:30.220 --> 56:32.720 these traditions were much earlier than that. 56:33.240 --> 56:36.870 Going back to the period of Paul's conversion in the 30s. 56:37.720 --> 56:41.240 So that pushes the accounts of the resurrection to a very, very early date. 56:41.720 --> 56:49.100 Paul seems to think that the best argument for this text is that he received it from 56:49.100 --> 56:50.200 trustworthy persons. 56:50.380 --> 56:51.760 I gave you what I was given. 56:52.120 --> 56:52.980 The answer's right. 56:53.120 --> 56:54.060 I went to the right people. 56:54.060 --> 56:59.040 And critics believe that Paul got this material, generally they say he received 56:59.040 --> 57:01.740 it in Jerusalem, about 35 AD. 57:03.040 --> 57:04.460 First of all, he's early. 57:04.600 --> 57:09.320 He's writing within 20 to 35 years of the purported event itself. 57:09.440 --> 57:14.240 Because he's quoting from a creed, an oral formula, tradition that predates 57:14.240 --> 57:15.460 the writing of the New Testament. 57:15.760 --> 57:19.560 For which most scholars state to between 3 to 5 years of the crucifixion itself. 57:19.560 --> 57:24.960 1 Corinthians 15, 3-7 provides evidence that belief in the resurrection was 57:24.960 --> 57:30.100 already present among Jews within 2 to 3 years after Jesus was killed. 57:30.340 --> 57:34.800 That means that the resurrection stories aren't something that evolved over 30, 57:34.960 --> 57:37.860 40, 50 years after the crucifixion of Jesus. 57:39.320 --> 57:44.620 So we have the empty tomb, we have the eyewitnesses, we have the early accounts. 57:45.440 --> 57:50.100 The question is, are there any other additional facts, circumstantial evidence 57:50.100 --> 57:51.800 to support the resurrection? 57:54.740 --> 57:59.380 While the Apostle Paul described hundreds of eyewitnesses to the resurrected Jesus, 58:00.060 --> 58:04.860 the full impact of the event is perhaps best measured by the subsequent growth of 58:04.860 --> 58:07.900 the early Christian church in the face of intense persecution. 58:08.720 --> 58:15.720 In the 2nd century, the Roman historian Tacitus wrote, Nero inflicted the most 58:15.720 --> 58:20.500 exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by 58:20.500 --> 58:21.200 the populace. 58:23.040 --> 58:27.740 Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty at 58:27.740 --> 58:32.280 the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate, and a most mischievous 58:32.280 --> 58:36.980 superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, 58:37.300 --> 58:38.240 but even in Rome. 58:39.680 --> 58:44.620 Even the most critical, skeptical scholars recognized that the earliest disciples at 58:44.620 --> 58:48.480 least believed that God had raised Jesus from the dead. 58:48.980 --> 58:50.960 In fact, they pinned nearly everything on it. 58:51.020 --> 58:56.220 Without belief in Jesus' resurrection, the early Christian movement could never 58:56.220 --> 58:57.140 have come into being. 58:57.820 --> 59:02.100 They recognized in Jesus something special, but they wondered if they were 59:02.100 --> 59:03.860 mistaken when he died. 59:05.000 --> 59:06.280 They didn't anticipate that. 59:06.440 --> 59:11.620 Suffer maybe, but die at the hands of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor? 59:12.640 --> 59:17.120 In fact, even when the first reports of his resurrection reached their ears, 59:17.280 --> 59:19.200 they were still doubtful and skeptical. 59:19.200 --> 59:26.720 But when they met the risen Lord, their skepticism was transformed into a 59:26.720 --> 59:31.820 very confident faith, a great joy, and a determination to preach the good 59:31.820 --> 59:33.380 news to everyone else. 59:33.840 --> 59:39.700 And I think that's the part that's awfully hard to refute, because we have this 59:39.700 --> 59:46.080 turnabout, this transformation of a discouraged and bewildered following on 59:46.080 --> 59:47.220 the basis of the good news. 59:47.220 --> 59:55.460 Somehow you have to explain the explosion from scared followers who run away to, 59:56.180 --> 01:00:01.360 let's worship him, let's sing to him, let's pray to him. 01:00:01.860 --> 01:00:05.160 If there was no resurrection, and more to the point, if there was no resurrection 01:00:05.160 --> 01:00:10.340 appearances of Jesus, to those who doubted and were discouraged and denied and 01:00:10.340 --> 01:00:16.140 betrayed Jesus, we would not be sitting here talking about this today. 01:00:16.140 --> 01:00:21.600 Other messianic figures had risen in the past, had claimed to be somebody, 01:00:22.160 --> 01:00:25.160 and had been suppressed and killed by the Romans. 01:00:25.800 --> 01:00:29.060 Yet no movement arose around those dead messiahs. 01:00:29.460 --> 01:00:35.120 But these disciples of Jesus were willing to go to the ends of the earth proclaiming 01:00:35.120 --> 01:00:38.560 the gospel message, were willing to suffer and die for that. 01:00:38.560 --> 01:00:44.240 The transformation from a bunch of defeated cowards to boldly, fearlessly 01:00:44.240 --> 01:00:48.480 proclaiming the gospel, even to the point of death, to me confirms that something 01:00:48.480 --> 01:00:50.960 happened on that first Easter morning. 01:00:52.200 --> 01:00:57.880 I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more 01:00:57.880 --> 01:01:02.100 severely, and been exposed to death again and again. 01:01:02.780 --> 01:01:05.560 2 Corinthians 11.23. 01:01:05.560 --> 01:01:12.040 After Jesus' crucifixion, the disciples lived lives of hardship for 20, 01:01:12.320 --> 01:01:18.360 30, 40 years, suffered greatly in their ministries, and eventually suffered 01:01:18.360 --> 01:01:25.000 martyrdom and execution without recanting for their belief that they had seen Jesus 01:01:25.000 --> 01:01:26.100 risen from the dead. 01:01:27.320 --> 01:01:28.600 I mean, what were they gaining? 01:01:29.100 --> 01:01:30.320 Were they becoming rich? 01:01:30.320 --> 01:01:32.360 They're running around the countryside. 01:01:32.800 --> 01:01:36.940 They're, in some cases, abandoning their family for periods of time so they can 01:01:36.940 --> 01:01:37.420 preach. 01:01:37.720 --> 01:01:40.900 What they got for their efforts is death in many cases. 01:01:41.400 --> 01:01:46.180 You also have to remember that the disciples died not just for something they 01:01:46.180 --> 01:01:47.120 believed was true. 01:01:47.680 --> 01:01:52.080 They died for something they actually saw with their own eyes. 01:01:52.080 --> 01:01:57.940 It's much more difficult to explain that away than it is for someone who dies for a 01:01:57.940 --> 01:02:00.100 belief and they're sincerely wrong. 01:02:00.360 --> 01:02:03.400 I came across a bit of evidence I really found fascinating. 01:02:04.060 --> 01:02:08.820 James was a half-brother of Jesus, and he was not a believer in Jesus during 01:02:08.820 --> 01:02:13.460 Jesus' lifetime, but he later died the death of a martyr as a leader of the local 01:02:13.460 --> 01:02:13.900 church. 01:02:13.900 --> 01:02:19.860 In a similar way, Saul of Tarsus was a persecutor of Christians, and yet he later 01:02:19.860 --> 01:02:22.700 becomes the Apostle Paul, this incredible missionary. 01:02:23.040 --> 01:02:29.200 So, I had to ask myself, what led to this radical transformation of these skeptics? 01:02:29.500 --> 01:02:33.220 Sometimes people will come to believe something they wish to be true. 01:02:33.980 --> 01:02:39.720 If you believe hard enough that a person is loving and kind, you can talk yourself 01:02:39.720 --> 01:02:42.820 into believing that even though the person is not loving and kind. 01:02:42.820 --> 01:02:47.280 It's very, very difficult, however, to explain people coming to believe 01:02:47.280 --> 01:02:50.660 something that they're actually standing against. 01:02:51.500 --> 01:02:57.800 Now, in the case of James and Paul, they did not believe in Jesus before his 01:02:57.800 --> 01:02:58.620 crucifixion. 01:02:59.160 --> 01:03:03.900 In fact, they thought he was deranged, and they did not accept what he said and 01:03:03.900 --> 01:03:04.540 what he taught. 01:03:04.880 --> 01:03:09.020 James, the brother of Jesus, is a skeptic who doesn't come to Jesus until he meets 01:03:09.020 --> 01:03:09.920 the risen Lord. 01:03:10.140 --> 01:03:11.260 Critics allow that. 01:03:11.260 --> 01:03:14.000 Paul's a persecutor until he meets the risen Jesus. 01:03:14.260 --> 01:03:17.620 That's not the kind of testimony of someone who all gets together and say, 01:03:18.160 --> 01:03:20.200 hey, let's just cook this thing up. 01:03:21.400 --> 01:03:27.460 One of the certainties, it seems to me, related to the testimony of the Apostles 01:03:27.460 --> 01:03:31.860 is that they truly believed that Jesus was who he claimed he was. 01:03:31.960 --> 01:03:35.820 And they truly believed that he had risen from the dead because they were willing to 01:03:35.820 --> 01:03:36.480 die for that. 01:03:36.480 --> 01:03:41.280 Very few people are willing to die for something they don't really believe in or 01:03:41.280 --> 01:03:43.480 something even worse that they know to be a lie. 01:03:43.800 --> 01:03:47.180 When Jesus was executed, his disciples were rightly afraid. 01:03:47.480 --> 01:03:48.120 They scattered. 01:03:48.500 --> 01:03:50.220 They were fearful for their own life. 01:03:50.940 --> 01:03:55.180 Their hopes had been dashed because they had believed Jesus was the promised one 01:03:55.180 --> 01:03:58.040 who was going to usher a new day in for Israel. 01:03:58.540 --> 01:04:02.840 Turned out he wasn't because he was murdered by crucifixion under the 01:04:02.840 --> 01:04:04.780 authority of the Roman Empire. 01:04:04.780 --> 01:04:11.780 And yet, shortly thereafter, we find them taking a stand in Jerusalem proclaiming 01:04:11.780 --> 01:04:15.340 that Jesus was the Messiah, the very Son of God. 01:04:16.020 --> 01:04:17.320 How do we explain that? 01:04:17.620 --> 01:04:22.400 How do we explain the fact that they were even willing to propagate this the rest of 01:04:22.400 --> 01:04:26.160 their lives and go to martyr's deaths for their belief? 01:04:26.580 --> 01:04:30.760 The only rational explanation is that something happened to them between the 01:04:30.760 --> 01:04:33.000 death of Jesus and three days later. 01:04:33.000 --> 01:04:37.240 And according to their own words, it was that they saw Jesus risen from the 01:04:37.240 --> 01:04:38.600 dead for themselves. 01:04:38.940 --> 01:04:43.000 People have often said, and I think it's a perfectly fair position, that, 01:04:43.260 --> 01:04:48.440 OK, there aren't actually any good alternative hypotheses for how you explain 01:04:48.440 --> 01:04:49.820 the rise of early Christianity. 01:04:50.140 --> 01:04:54.900 But because we know as an absolute fact, which we're not prepared to let go of, 01:04:55.060 --> 01:05:00.480 that nobody ever rises from the dead, then there must, in fact, be some other 01:05:00.480 --> 01:05:01.760 alternative hypothesis. 01:05:01.760 --> 01:05:09.460 And I want to say, OK, if you want to make the absoluteness of bodily death the 01:05:09.460 --> 01:05:13.340 cornerstone of your entire worldview, I actually can't stop you. 01:05:13.480 --> 01:05:18.060 If you choose to say, no, here I stand, death is the end, and nobody ever comes 01:05:18.060 --> 01:05:21.120 back from it, and that's just the way it is, well, that's where a lot of people 01:05:21.120 --> 01:05:22.120 were in the ancient world. 01:05:22.260 --> 01:05:23.980 It's where a lot of people are in the modern world. 01:05:23.980 --> 01:05:29.580 I think that that worldview is radically challenged by the strong evidence which 01:05:29.580 --> 01:05:31.380 points to the resurrection of Jesus. 01:05:31.580 --> 01:05:34.920 But it's up to somebody what they do with that challenge. 01:06:02.730 --> 01:06:08.370 The evidence accumulated over time until November the 8th of 1981, which is sort of 01:06:08.370 --> 01:06:10.030 when I reached a critical mass. 01:06:10.390 --> 01:06:14.630 I remember going alone in my room, and I took a yellow legal pen and put a 01:06:14.630 --> 01:06:15.390 line down the middle. 01:06:15.550 --> 01:06:19.470 And on one side, I started to list all of the evidence I had encountered for Jesus 01:06:19.470 --> 01:06:20.850 Christ being the Son of God. 01:06:20.950 --> 01:06:23.850 And on the other side, all the negative evidence against that. 01:06:23.850 --> 01:06:27.750 And I wrote, and I wrote page after page, and finally I put my pen down and I said, 01:06:27.950 --> 01:06:28.250 wait a minute. 01:06:29.170 --> 01:06:33.930 In light of this avalanche of evidence pointing toward the truth of Christianity, 01:06:34.450 --> 01:06:39.490 it would require more faith for me to maintain my atheism than to become a 01:06:39.490 --> 01:06:40.570 follower of Jesus Christ. 01:06:41.830 --> 01:06:48.090 And so that's the moment that I decided, consistent with the evidence, the most 01:06:48.090 --> 01:06:53.230 logical, the most rational step I could take was a step of faith in the same 01:06:53.230 --> 01:06:57.310 direction the evidence was pointing and put my trust in Jesus. 01:06:59.250 --> 01:07:03.510 And after I did that, I thought, you know, maybe Leslie would like to hear 01:07:03.510 --> 01:07:04.090 about this. 01:07:05.010 --> 01:07:06.670 I thought it was too good to be true. 01:07:06.770 --> 01:07:07.730 My heart was pounding. 01:07:08.090 --> 01:07:09.210 I was in tears. 01:07:09.550 --> 01:07:10.630 I was so excited. 01:07:10.770 --> 01:07:15.430 I just threw my arms around him and kissed him and hugged him and told him how I'd 01:07:15.430 --> 01:07:19.070 been praying and how lots of people had been praying that this day would come. 01:07:19.070 --> 01:07:23.730 And she threw her arms around me and she said, you hard-hearted son of a Baptist. 01:07:23.890 --> 01:07:26.350 She said, I've been telling you this for two years. 01:07:26.430 --> 01:07:27.190 I mean, come on. 01:07:28.850 --> 01:07:34.530 And that began a transformational process for me where over time, my philosophy and 01:07:34.530 --> 01:07:40.450 my attitudes, relationships, parenting, worldview, all of that began to change 01:07:40.450 --> 01:07:43.150 over time for good, really for good. 01:07:43.790 --> 01:07:48.770 When Lee became a Christian, his whole life started to change to the extent that 01:07:48.770 --> 01:07:53.650 our five-year-old daughter, who also saw those changes, went to her Sunday school 01:07:53.650 --> 01:07:58.750 teacher and told her that she wanted Jesus to do in her life what he had done in her 01:07:58.750 --> 01:07:59.490 daddy's life. 01:08:03.370 --> 01:08:06.690 Jesus said, you shall know the truth and the truth will set you free. 01:08:07.390 --> 01:08:08.510 And you know, that's my story. 01:08:09.150 --> 01:08:12.590 It was someone who said, I'm going to investigate this stuff with an open mind. 01:08:12.590 --> 01:08:15.370 Let it take me wherever the evidence will take me. 01:08:15.890 --> 01:08:20.630 And what I discovered in the end is Jesus made the claim that he is the truth, 01:08:21.050 --> 01:08:23.270 that everything hinges on his identity. 01:08:23.430 --> 01:08:28.350 In fact, everything hinges on the resurrection because anybody can claim to 01:08:28.350 --> 01:08:29.250 be the son of God. 01:08:29.490 --> 01:08:33.790 If Jesus really did return from the dead, then he is who he claimed to be. 01:08:33.850 --> 01:08:35.950 And that changes everything. 01:08:36.310 --> 01:08:37.770 But what about your own journey? 01:08:38.550 --> 01:08:43.270 I'd really encourage you, if you've never done it, to investigate the evidence for 01:08:43.270 --> 01:08:46.610 yourself, but make three resolutions up front. 01:08:46.830 --> 01:08:49.930 Number one, make it a front burner issue in your life. 01:08:50.390 --> 01:08:55.990 Number two, resolve to have an open mind, to go wherever the evidence takes you, 01:08:56.330 --> 01:09:00.530 even if it takes you to the very uncomfortable conclusion that Jesus is who 01:09:00.530 --> 01:09:01.250 he claimed to be. 01:09:02.230 --> 01:09:07.230 And then finally, resolve that once the evidence is in, you will reach a verdict 01:09:07.230 --> 01:09:09.070 in the case for Christ. 01:09:33.450 --> 01:09:33.650 Thank you.