Carter Report, The

The Killing of Jesus -part 1

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

Participants: Pr. John Carter

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Series Code: CR

Program Code: CR001640A


00:13 We're so glad to see you today.
00:15 We give you a very warm welcome
00:17 to our studio in Southern California.
00:20 Listen, when one is continually
00:24 bombarded on television,
00:27 Fox News CNN, CBS,
00:30 when you're continually bombarded
00:33 with the trivia and the sensational,
00:38 the time soon comes
00:40 when the most important thing in the world
00:42 is of no consequence.
00:45 Now today, we're talking about something which is...
00:49 Now, these are superlatives but it's true,
00:51 something which is everlasting,
00:55 all consequential
00:58 of eternal significance
01:02 and on which
01:05 the fate of the world that you and me depend.
01:10 We're talking today about,
01:12 "The Killing of Jesus".
01:18 The killing of Jesus Christ who was,
01:22 most people would say an obscure Jew.
01:27 We're talking about the violent murder of a Jew 2,000 years ago
01:30 that fixes the destiny of every person.
01:33 I want you to take your Bible please
01:35 and come with me to the Book of Acts
01:37 4:26-28,
01:41 Acts 4 in the Holy Bible,
01:44 Acts 4:26-28.
01:49 The Bible says,
01:51 "The kings of the earth took their stand,
01:53 and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord
01:57 and against His Christ.
02:00 For truly against Your holy Servant Jesus,
02:03 whom You anointed,
02:05 both Herod and Pontius Pilate,
02:09 with the Gentiles and the people of Israel,
02:15 were gathered together to do whatever..."
02:18 Now, look at this two.
02:19 "Whatever Your hand
02:22 and Your purpose
02:23 determined before to be done..."
02:27 And this talks about the people
02:29 who were responsible for the killing of Jesus.
02:33 I wants you to notice this.
02:34 The actors in the Drama of the Ages, the Bible says,
02:41 "The Lord Almighty was somehow involved in this."
02:45 This is almost too hard to believe that
02:46 God was also responsible for the killing of Jesus.
02:51 It says whatever His hand
02:54 had determined before hand to do,
02:56 so God was also responsible.
02:59 Of course Jesus, the Messiah
03:01 was a willing participant in His own death.
03:08 That was Herod Antipas, the person,
03:10 the murderer of John the Baptist,
03:12 Pontius Pilate the weak, vacillating Roman Governor,
03:17 the gentiles, the Roman soldiers
03:20 and the Bible says,
03:23 the people of Israel, they were the chosen people,
03:29 they were the people of the covenant the Bible says,
03:33 "The people of the covenant, the children of Israel
03:36 actually were responsible
03:39 for the killing of Jesus as well as some others."
03:45 Now before we discuss the actors, my friends.
03:49 Not everybody believes the Bible story
03:51 that Jesus even died on the cross.
03:55 The Muslims on the whole do not believe
04:00 that Christ even died on the cross.
04:02 Did you know that?
04:04 And I know this telecast is going to Saudi Arabia
04:07 and some other places.
04:09 Most Muslims do not believe that Christ died on the cross.
04:13 The Encyclopedia of Islam says, "The denial...
04:18 is in perfect agreement with the logic of the Quran...
04:21 For Jesus to die on the cross would have meant the triumph
04:25 of the executioners,
04:28 but the Quran asserts this undoubtedly failed..."
04:32 They believe that a price the Messiah
04:35 had died in the cross,
04:36 then the will of God would have been thwarted.
04:39 So they believe that Allah is great
04:41 and Allah would not have allowed this.
04:45 The Muslims and most Christians don't I think understand this,
04:50 the Muslims believe
04:51 that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah
04:57 and a mighty, mighty prophet of God
04:59 They say peace be on to Him.
05:04 Of course, the state of Israel
05:08 does not believe that.
05:12 The Orthodox Jewish religion believes
05:15 that Jesus was a fraud and an impostor.
05:21 But the Muslims do not believe
05:23 He was a fraud or an impostor,
05:27 but they believe that He did not die on the cross.
05:30 One Muslim theory is that Jesus was substituted
05:34 and another person died on the cross
05:36 while Jesus went to heaven.
05:38 Did you know this?
05:39 This is one of the big theories among the Muslims.
05:43 Muslims do not believe that Jesus
05:46 died for the sins of the world.
05:49 They do not believe that Jesus
05:51 made an atonement for the sins of the world.
05:56 And of course, the Muslims
05:59 are not alone in that belief.
06:03 Now we will pause and ask really big questions.
06:08 Number one: Who were, and it's plural.
06:14 Who were responsible for killing Jesus?
06:18 Number two: Does God understand human suffering and pain?
06:24 One of the great arguments against belief in God
06:27 is that if God loves us,
06:29 why does He tolerate all of this pain in the world?
06:34 What was crucifixion like?
06:37 Christ was crucified.
06:39 What was it like?
06:41 What motives were involved in the killing of Jesus?
06:45 And do mainstream... listen to this one.
06:48 Do mainstream Christians believe
06:51 in "slaughterhouse" religion?
06:55 I'll explain this as we go along.
06:59 Many Christians particularly in Southern California say,
07:03 "If you believe that Christ died for your sins,
07:07 you believe in a pagan concept."
07:10 These people believe the theory of the moral influence.
07:16 How did the affairs of King David
07:18 and his family 3,000 years ago
07:21 helped me to understand God's problem with sin?
07:27 Now David had an affair...
07:30 What is this got to do with the story of Christ?
07:33 David had an affair with a beautiful woman,
07:38 then later on one of his sons
07:41 raped a beautiful girl by the name of Tamar.
07:47 We're going to talk about this,
07:48 because this will help us to understand
07:51 the problem God had with sin.
07:55 And why is the understanding of the death of Jesus
07:58 the most important thing in the world.
08:01 A million times more important than politics.
08:05 Let me tell you something.
08:08 All of the stuff you hear today on CNN and Fox and CBS
08:13 and all these other things,
08:15 within a few days or a few hours
08:18 will be forgotten.
08:21 All the stuff that we spoke about,
08:23 we got so uptight about
08:26 when the elections were going on
08:30 and people were just about ready to die for it.
08:35 Those things one day will be seen
08:37 to be largely of no consequence.
08:42 But there is one thing of consequence
08:44 and we're going to talk about that today.
08:49 Who were responsible for killing Jesus?
08:52 Well, come over here to Acts 2:22, 23.
08:57 Who were responsible for the death of Jesus Christ?
09:02 Acts 2:22, 23,
09:07 "Men of Israel, hear these words:
09:11 Jesus of Nazareth,
09:12 a Man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs
09:17 which God did through Him in your midst,
09:21 as you yourselves also know
09:23 Him, being delivered by the..."
09:26 Look at these words.
09:28 "By the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God...
09:36 By the determined purpose and the foreknowledge of God,
09:40 you have taken by lawless hands,
09:42 have crucified, and you've put Him to death..."
09:49 One of the most astounding passages.
09:52 So the Bible says...
09:56 God was also responsible for the killing of Jesus,
10:02 not the murder of Jesus,
10:06 but the killing of Jesus.
10:09 This was a part the Bible says,
10:12 a part of His determined purpose.
10:17 So God, Almighty God, the Father was involved.
10:20 Then it says, "The people of Israel."
10:27 And my Jewish doctor who is my close friend said to me,
10:30 when the movie came out years ago,
10:32 on the death of Christ, The Passion of Christ.
10:34 He said explain it to me.
10:37 It says that the Jewish people put Christ on the cross.
10:40 I said, "Doctor, the Jewish leaders put Him on the cross."
10:46 Most of the early Christians were Jews.
10:49 Jesus Christ Himself was a Jew.
10:52 But the Jewish leaders and the mob
10:59 put Him on the cross.
11:01 Herod, Pilate, the Roman soldiers
11:05 put Him on the cross,
11:06 but the Bible teaches this incredible truth.
11:11 Want you to think about this.
11:13 The Bible teaches the incredible truth
11:15 that even though all of these people,
11:18 every one of them was guilty of the killing of Jesus,
11:24 the Bible teaches the astounding truths
11:29 that it was the sin of every man and woman
11:31 that put Him on the cross.
11:34 Now, if you take your Bible please
11:35 and come back here to Isaiah,
11:37 Isaiah 53:5, 6
11:40 and this is a prophecy that concerns the coming of Christ.
11:43 The Bible says, "But He was wounded
11:46 for our transgressions,
11:48 means he was killed for our transgressions.
11:51 He was bruised for our iniquities,
11:54 the chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
11:57 and by His stripes we are healed.
11:59 All we like sheep have gone astray,
12:01 we have turned, every one, to his own way,
12:04 and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all."
12:12 The awesome truths my friend is this,
12:18 that when Christ,
12:20 God incarnate hung upon the cross.
12:25 By the act of imputation, the sin of every man,
12:30 woman and child was laid upon Him.
12:36 It was this massive weight of sin
12:39 that caused His death in six hours
12:42 whereas a normal man could live on the cross for almost a week.
12:47 And that is why they were amazed
12:48 that He was dead at three in the afternoon.
12:53 Pail said, "It was I that shed the sacred blood,
12:56 I nailed him to the tree, I crucified the Christ of God,
13:02 I joined the mockery.
13:04 Of all that shouting multitude I felt that I am one,
13:09 And in that din of voices rude I recognize my own.
13:15 Around the cross the throng I see,
13:19 Mocking the Sufferer's groan,
13:22 Yet still my voice it seems to be,
13:26 As if I mocked alone."
13:30 So the Bible teaches
13:32 every person was there at the cross
13:34 because of his sins.
13:38 Now we ask this question and answer it, we hope.
13:41 Does God understand human suffering?
13:47 This is the great argument
13:49 that is used against Christianity
13:51 with some validity by atheists and cynics and agnostics.
13:57 If God exists,
14:00 how can He understand my pain,
14:02 and my suffering, my depression,
14:05 my battle with cancer?
14:10 How can He understand the sorrow of all those people
14:13 who died in San Francisco in that fire?
14:17 We are horrified by images of Aleppo.
14:25 How does God feel about Aleppo?
14:29 We understand somewhat from the words of
14:33 I think Studdert Kennedy when he said in his poem,
14:37 "God cried Himself to sleep last night."
14:41 God sees much more than we.
14:43 He saw ten thousand lonely hills,
14:47 each hill a Calvary.
14:49 But that of course is rhetoric and a bit of doggerel.
14:55 You cannot understand human suffering
14:58 unless you understand and believe in the trinity.
15:02 Now come over here
15:04 and we spoke about this last week.
15:05 Come over here to Philippians in the New Testament.
15:08 The words of Paul, Philippians 2:5-8,
15:14 my friends, Philippians 2:5-8, Paul says,
15:20 "Let this mind be a new which was also in Christ Jesus,
15:25 who, being in the form of God."
15:27 The Greek word actually means the full expression of God.
15:34 The image of God everything that God was, image of God,
15:38 "who, being in the form of God,
15:40 did not consider it robbery to be equal with God,
15:43 because he was,
15:45 but made Himself of no reputation,
15:47 taking the form of a bondservant,
15:51 and coming in the likeness of men.
15:53 And being found in appearance as a man,
15:56 He humbled Himself
15:57 and became obedient to the point of death,
15:59 even the death of the cross."
16:04 Now last week I tried in my inadequate way to,
16:10 to amplify the great truth
16:12 that is taught in the Bible
16:14 that Christ is God in human flesh.
16:19 The Bible teaches this.
16:20 The little baby that was born
16:23 of the Blessed Virgin Mary was God in human flesh.
16:27 He was Yahweh Elohim come down to this earth.
16:34 Now, there are some people in the Christian church
16:36 who do not believe in the trinity.
16:38 But if you do not believe in the trinity,
16:40 you cannot answer the question,
16:42 does God understand.
16:45 Richard Rubenstein,
16:47 a very earnest
16:48 and a good Jewish gentleman said this,
16:51 "It is impossible to believe in God after Auschwitz."
16:57 No wonder, the Jewish people
17:00 who were tormented by the Nazis said,
17:04 so many of them said, "Then where is God?"
17:08 And many of them came to the conclusion
17:10 because of suffering there is no God...
17:16 and therefore millions of those people
17:17 have given up believing in God...
17:23 but what they failed to understand was this,
17:26 that Christ was God in human flesh.
17:31 Now think about this.
17:34 When Christ was on the cross, this was God on the cross.
17:39 Christ was tortured.
17:43 On the cross, He felt the pain of cancer.
17:47 People would say, I can't,
17:49 I don't understand what you mean.
17:51 On the cross
17:53 when the bowls of God's wrath
17:55 were directed against Him,
17:56 He felt the pain and the sorrow of the entire world.
18:02 He felt the despair of the atheist,
18:08 a dying atheist who dies with no hope, He felt that.
18:15 He felt the loathsomeness of a man
18:19 who is the lowest of the low.
18:22 He felt the pain of mental anguish,
18:25 the defilement of evil, loneliness, despair,
18:31 hatred
18:33 and the sufferings of Christ
18:35 were more than we could ever understand or bear
18:38 because they were the sufferings of a God.
18:43 Therefore, when we asked the question,
18:47 does God care?
18:49 And does God understand my pain?
18:53 The answer is yes,
18:55 because of the truth of the cross.
19:04 Can you understand why I say most of this nonsense
19:06 about politics that bombards us every day
19:09 is trivia in the extreme?
19:12 It doesn't matter.
19:16 It would soon be gone.
19:17 People will have another little toy to play with,
19:22 but hanging on the cross was God.
19:26 What was crucifixion like?
19:31 It was the most horrible of deaths.
19:35 When a person was put on the cross,
19:36 he was nailed there,
19:40 and usually he was roped on the cross
19:42 to stop the bones from tearing out.
19:46 He sat on a little pin so the body could be held there
19:51 and there was something for his feet.
19:53 His feet were crossed
19:55 and a nail was driven through the feet.
20:01 The cross was a terrible death
20:03 because the way the person was placed on the cross
20:07 meant that he found it very difficult to breathe.
20:12 So every breath was labored
20:15 with tremendous pain.
20:20 Now when Christ was put on the cross,
20:22 He was already starting to die
20:23 because the rabble the night before had beaten Him up.
20:27 So He was beaten up by the religious leaders,
20:34 so don't put too much trust in religion
20:37 unless God is in it or else you'll be surely deceived,
20:42 because most religion is bad.
20:46 One of the reason so many atheists exist today,
20:48 they say look at what religion has done to the world,
20:53 and I say to them that is true,
20:55 but it was not the religion of God.
20:57 And I respond to them,
20:59 look what atheism has done to the world.
21:01 Look at the 70 million killed by the atheists
21:05 in Russia and Ukraine.
21:07 You said, it's not so. Yes, it is so.
21:09 Been there 46, 47 times,
21:14 I've studied it that millions have died.
21:24 And so the cross
21:26 brought tremendous suffering to the person.
21:30 He had lost a lot of blood.
21:34 He was a strong young man in his mid 30s
21:39 wiry, strong, suntanned.
21:44 After all is said and done, He was a carpenter.
21:49 He was a real man, not an apology for a man.
21:57 So He was dying by the time they got Him on the cross
22:00 but He could still have lived for a few days,
22:02 because He's so strong with great tenacity.
22:06 But in someway sin was laid upon Him,
22:12 and this caused Him to cry out, "My God, my God..."
22:20 Now, this is why the doctrine of the trinity is so important
22:25 because this man is God incarnate.
22:28 One of my favorite authors is Dr. John Stott,
22:32 who wrote the masterpiece, "The Cross of Christ,?
22:38 page 335, 336, Dr. Stott says,
22:41 who came from London.
22:44 "I could never myself believe in God,
22:47 were it not for the cross.
22:51 The only God I believe in is the One Nietzsche ridiculed
22:54 as 'God on the cross'.
22:59 In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God
23:02 who was immune to it?
23:05 I have entered many Buddhist temples
23:07 in different Asian countries
23:08 and stood respectfully before the statue of Buddha,
23:13 his legs crossed, arms folded,
23:16 eyes closed, the ghost of a smile
23:18 playing around his mouth, a remotely look on his face,
23:23 detached from the agonies of the world.
23:27 But each time after of while I have had to aside.
23:32 And in imagination I have turned instead to that
23:37 lonely, twisted, tortured, figure on the cross,
23:42 nails through hands and feet, back lacerated,
23:46 limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks,
23:51 mouth dry and intolerably thirsty,
23:56 plunged in God-forsaken darkness.
24:00 That is, Dr. Stott, is the God for me!
24:07 He laid aside his immunity to pain.
24:11 He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death.
24:16 He suffered for us."
24:22 So if you understand the doctrine of the trinity
24:25 that the Bible clearly teaches,
24:27 you can never seriously doubt
24:29 whether God understands pain or not,
24:32 because He has felt more pain than anyone here
24:36 could ever possibly understand or experience.
24:41 He suffered the pain of every person
24:44 who'd ever lived and much more,
24:48 because the sufferings of Christ
24:50 were infinite sufferings
24:52 because they were the sufferings
24:53 not merely of a man,
24:55 they were the sufferings of a God,
24:59 so does He understand.
25:01 When perhaps I may feel depressed
25:03 and the burden of life is too much.
25:06 When perhaps I may feel discouraged
25:09 or when perhaps I may be feeling sick.
25:14 I can know on that occasion that God knows
25:18 because Christ was God.
25:23 Now, here is an important question.
25:29 What motives were involved in the killing of Jesus?
25:36 When people decided that they
25:38 were going to get rid of this man,
25:41 the leaders of the church and the common people,
25:46 what were their motives?
25:47 We'll answer that in our next section
25:54 as we talk about
25:57 "The Killing of Jesus".
26:12 We should never say something is impossible
26:15 because Jesus said,
26:17 "With God, all things are possible."
26:20 It seems impossible to think that a group of Americans,
26:25 Australians could come here to Castro's communist Cuba
26:30 and preach the gospel.
26:32 We're here with the permission of the Cuban government.
26:35 We've got special visas so we can preach here.
26:40 I've had the privilege of preaching
26:41 in the most difficult places,
26:43 Moscow, all across Russia,
26:45 all around Ukraine, dangerous places in Africa,
26:50 but this is one of the biggest miracles of all.
26:53 Here we are, a Carter Report team,
26:55 just a little team.
26:59 But we're here by the grace of God,
27:01 because with God all things are possible.
27:05 But God works through people,
27:07 He's working glory be to God
27:10 we believe through us,
27:12 but He's also working my friend through you,
27:16 because of your prayers and your support,
27:19 your gifts, these people,
27:21 many of them are hearing the true gospel of Christ
27:25 for the first time.
27:26 So my heart is full of thanks to God
27:29 and to you today.
27:31 Would you please drop me a line?
27:34 John Carter, PO Box 1900,
27:36 Thousand Oaks, California, 91358.
27:40 And of course, you can write to me at Terrigal in Australia.
27:45 Let's get a fire going in this country.
27:50 We have established a beachhead on the shores of Castro's Cuba.
27:56 A gospel beachhead, not a military one.
28:00 We are the ambassadors of peace
28:02 and we've come here to preach the gospel of peace.
28:06 Stand with us and thank you for your support.
28:14 For a copy of today's program,
28:17 please contact us at PO Box 1900,
28:20 Thousand Oaks, California, 91358.
28:24 Or in Australia contact us at PO Box 861,
28:29 Terrigal, New South Wales, 2260.
28:34 This program is made possible
28:36 through the generous support of viewers like you.
28:38 We thank you for your continued support.
28:41 May God richly bless you.


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Revised 2017-02-24