Participants:
Series Code: ICJ
Program Code: ICJ190003A
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00:01 Our friends the atheists will tell you that
00:03 the resurrection of Jesus was just a legend. 00:05 Our Muslim friends will tell you that Jesus 00:08 just swooned, He didn't die. 00:10 But I'm going to tell you why the apostles were right. 00:13 Jesus is alive. 00:40 The resurrection of Jesus is just central to everything. 00:44 Without the resurrection, there's no Genesis. 00:47 Without the resurrection, there's no second coming. 00:50 But with the resurrection of Jesus, Genesis is true. 00:54 And with the resurrection of Jesus as a reality, 00:57 the coming of Jesus is certain. 01:01 Let's go to the Scriptures and just see why the apostles 01:05 put the resurrection at the center 01:08 of the great story of Jesus. 01:10 Jesus Himself, at the resurrection of Lazarus 01:14 or just before the resurrection of Lazarus, 01:16 declared to Martha these marvelous words. 01:20 And we also find similar declarations of His 01:24 resurrected power in the book of Revelation. 01:26 And we'll talk about that at another time. 01:29 But now in the New Testament we have Jesus saying to Martha 01:32 in John 11:25, Jesus says, "I am the resurrection and the life. 01:40 And he who believes in Me, though he die, 01:43 yet shall he live." 01:45 That's a powerful declaration. 01:47 "I am the resurrection and the life." 01:49 So Jesus made that center to His own mission 01:52 as Messiah of the world. 01:53 On the day of Pentecost the apostle Peter declares 01:56 powerfully in Acts 2:32-33, "This Jesus God has raise up, 02:04 of which we are all witnesses." 02:07 The apostle Peter said, "We saw this. 02:09 We know what happened." 02:12 "And He's exalted Jesus to the right hand of God..." 02:16 And then the apostle Paul gives a very powerful picture 02:21 in 1 Corinthians 15 as he declares 02:25 the centrality of the resurrection. 02:28 "For I delivered to you first of all that which I received: 02:32 that Jesus died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 02:37 and that He was buried, and that He rose again 02:41 the third day according to the Scriptures. 02:43 And after that He was seen by Cephas, and then by the twelve. 02:47 After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, 02:53 of whom the greater part remain to the present, 02:55 but some have fallen asleep. 02:56 After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles. 03:00 And then last of all He was seen by me, 03:02 as one born out of due time." 03:04 That's a quick summary of the powerful witnesses 03:09 to the resurrection of Jesus. 03:11 Romans 4:23-25 says something about how important 03:18 the resurrection is for us. 03:20 For the sake of time I won't read it all, 03:21 but I want to look at the last part of that. 03:24 Paul says there that Jesus was raised from the dead. 03:29 But then he says in the end there, he says, 03:31 talking about Jesus, "...who was delivered up 03:33 for our offenses..." 03:35 In other words, Jesus died for our sins. 03:37 Now I say this, and sometimes people want me 03:41 to make sure I clarify this. 03:42 And you might be quiet for a moment. 03:45 I believe in that old song where it says, 03:47 "Jesus paid it all." 03:51 Jesus paid it all. 03:53 I love that song. 03:54 And He did on Calvary's cross. 03:57 But the death of Jesus alone was not enough to save us. 04:03 You say, "Are you sure?" 04:05 I'm positive because of the text. 04:07 Listen to the text again. 04:09 Jesus, "who was delivered up because of our offenses, 04:13 was raised," or resurrected, "because of our justification." 04:18 So in order to be justified, we have to have both 04:21 the death of Jesus and the resurrection of Jesus. 04:24 We serve a living Christ who is able to transform us. 04:29 Well why is it that people say, "Well, it's just a legend 04:32 or it's just a myth," or something like that? 04:35 People like to do that sort of thing. 04:37 But I'm telling you, and I say it kindly, 04:39 they don't know what they're talking about. 04:41 There's a thing called the study of ancient documents. 04:44 In other words, when you went to school and you studied about 04:46 ancient history of the Roman empire, 04:49 where do you think they got that information? 04:51 Well they got it from ancient documents 04:53 that have been somehow preserved. 04:55 And that goes true for many other 04:58 ancient stories and history. 05:01 Most all of it's based on a few documents from ancient history. 05:05 And scholars study this, they make a study of 05:07 studying these ancient documents 05:09 in order to make sure that they've got them 05:12 correct and they've understood them. 05:13 They criticize the text and look at it carefully, 05:16 and all of those kinds of things. 05:19 Well let's take a look at some of those documents 05:21 and how many we have. 05:22 Because only by understanding those documents 05:26 are we going to be able to understand how much information 05:31 and documentation we have for Jesus and for the resurrection. 05:36 So let me start with those, I'm going to share some of those. 05:39 Back in, oh, I think the 1970's, late 1970's, 05:44 a person by the name of Lee Strobel, 05:46 he was a legal journalist for the Chicago Tribune. 05:51 He was an atheist. He didn't believe in Jesus. 05:54 But one day through the course of time his wife 05:57 became a Christian. 05:59 And when she became a Christian, he was kind of 06:01 perturbed about that because he was an atheist. 06:04 He thought, "Well, I've got to do something about this. 06:06 This is too close to home." 06:08 And so he decided that he would prove that Jesus' 06:14 resurrection never took place, 06:17 and the whole thing was just a myth. 06:20 He thought he could do it in one weekend. 06:23 So he put all of his legal skills and journalistic skills 06:26 together, and a year and a half later 06:30 he laid down his legal pad, laid down his pen, 06:34 and gave his heart to the Lord Jesus. 06:37 Because what he had discovered by being fair 06:39 with the ancient documents, that you can't deny 06:43 the resurrection of Jesus. 06:45 Now a lot of these people are not Christians. 06:47 And they'll tell you, "I'm not a Christian, but 06:50 we cannot deny the resurrection. 06:53 We can't deny that it took place. 06:54 We can't tell you how it took place, 06:56 but we can't deny it." 06:58 And the reason they can't deny it is because 07:00 of the authenticity of these ancient documents. 07:03 Let's take a look at a few other ancient documents 07:06 just to show you the great difference between them 07:10 and the New Testament gospels. 07:12 But let me give you a little summary statement 07:14 first of all from Dr. Michael Gleghorn. 07:17 He said, "The New Testament gospels, along with the other 07:20 New Testament writings, were not written within hundreds of years 07:24 of the ministry of Jesus, as some atheists allege. 07:28 Anyone who thinks this is relying on shoddy scholarship. 07:32 All the New Testament documents, including the four gospels, 07:37 are products of the first century church." 07:39 In other words, they were written right after 07:43 the story of Jesus and the life of Jesus. 07:46 And they were written by the apostles. 07:47 But let's look again at some of these ancient documents 07:51 that you learned about in school from ancient history, 07:56 just to show you the difference. 07:57 Here we've got Josephus. 07:58 He was a Jewish historian. 08:01 And he has a work called, The Jewish Wars. 08:05 We have only nine complete manuscripts 08:08 dating from the fifth century. 08:10 That's four centuries after they were written. 08:12 That's the earliest we have of that. 08:15 Here's another one. 08:16 Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome. 08:18 Much of the history we know about Imperial Rome 08:22 comes from this source. 08:24 And copies were made, the earliest copy we have 08:28 is like 700 to 900 years after his death. 08:33 And we only have a very few. 08:34 Only, I think, two manuscripts all together. 08:37 That's where all your history, much of the history about 08:39 the Roman empire comes from. 08:41 And then there's Julius Caesar. 08:43 Everybody knows that Julius Caesar lived. 08:45 And he did his own work on the Gallic Wars. 08:47 We have about twelve manuscripts. 08:50 The oldest, however, is 900 years after Julius Caesar lived. 08:57 And then, of course, you've heard of Socrates and Plato. 09:01 Their philosophies are still around today. 09:03 Plato wrote the story of the life of Socrates. 09:09 But we only have seven copies, and the earliest one 09:13 is 1200 years after Plato wrote it. 09:17 Yet, nobody questions the truth of Socrates and Plato. 09:23 And then, of course, there is Homer's Iliad. 09:26 Everybody knows about Homer the poet. 09:29 He was written about 850 years BC, Before Christ. 09:33 Great manuscript. 09:34 We have quite a few documents. 09:36 We have about 2000 fragments and manuscripts. 09:40 However, there's a 900 year gap between the earliest, 09:45 the earliest fragment we have. 09:48 And there's hundreds of other years 09:52 between the actual manuscript that we have. 09:55 So most all of these documents that tells of ancient history, 10:01 we only have a handful of them. 10:03 And also there are gaps of 800 to 2000 years 10:08 between when they were written 10:10 and the earliest documents we have. 10:12 So it means you have copies of copies, 10:13 of copies, of copies, of copies. 10:15 And yet, scholars today don't doubt that they don't 10:18 have an accurate story. 10:20 They've studied these documents carefully. 10:22 So people put it in the school books, and you go to school, 10:27 that's what you learn. 10:28 And we accept it as fact 10:29 because it's based on good scholarship. 10:33 But I want to share with you the stunning, the stunning 10:38 manuscripts and documentations we have 10:40 for the resurrection of Jesus. 10:42 The most recent count that we have is that we have 10:46 over 5280 fragments and manuscripts 10:51 dating back on the life of Christ, very early ones. 10:56 Some of these are, of course, complete manuscripts nearly, 10:59 and some of them are fragments. 11:03 We have virtually brand, not brand new, but virtually 11:07 complete New Testament manuscripts 11:11 that go back within 300 years or less after Calvary 11:16 within just about 200 years after the apostles lived. 11:19 That's early. 11:20 That's getting very, very close. 11:22 Let me give you just a little summary of some of those 11:25 right now that would be kind of fun just to know about. 11:27 I want to run through some of them. 11:29 We have the Magdalen Papyrus. 11:33 And they think that it was written about 200 AD. 11:37 That's just 100 years after the last apostle died. 11:41 And some concluded that it was actually written 11:45 in AD 70 while the apostles were still alive. 11:48 That caused an uproar. 11:51 Another amazing one is John Rylan's Papyri. 11:55 It was written, they think, about 117 years after Christ. 12:00 Not after Christ. 12:02 That's after the turn of the century. 12:03 That's after His birth. 12:04 So within a few decades after the death 12:07 of Christ we have this. 12:08 Here's another one, it's very important. 12:10 Part of this is held in the University Of Michigan. 12:14 And it's called the Chester Beatty Papyri. 12:18 Some people have said, "Well..." 12:20 And by the way, it contains just about all the writings 12:22 of the apostle Paul. 12:24 And some have said that it probably dates about 200 years, 12:29 200 AD, or about 100 years after the death of the apostle John. 12:32 160 or 170 years after the death of Christ. 12:36 That's getting pretty close. 12:38 Getting pretty close. 12:39 But then someone came along by the name of Young Kim. 12:43 And he did a very scholarly work, and he said, "No." 12:46 He says this was written probably about AD 60 or 70. 12:50 The apostles are still alive. 12:53 The criticism of him was very reserved. 12:56 He had done very, very good work. 12:59 So we have documentation now that gets very, very close. 13:03 The accuracy of the New Testament has been translated 13:08 into many languages. 13:09 And I'm going to pick up on that in just a little bit. 13:11 But I want to share with you that when you look at the 13:14 evidence, you look at the thousands of documentations 13:18 for these ancient documents that we have 13:21 to tell about the life of Christ, 13:22 that's why the scholars are coming back and saying, 13:25 "You know, something big happened. 13:28 The resurrection happened. 13:30 But we can't tell you how." 13:33 But the fact is that it's a reality. 13:37 It's not a myth. 13:39 And if you compare the documentation we have 13:42 for Jesus, it's overwhelming. 13:46 When we get back we're going to look 13:48 at the evidences of the resurrection. |
Revised 2019-06-17