2026.3.29 TFHC – Born to Die

March 29, 2026, Message by Jamie Johnson Transcribed by Beluga AI. Okay. Well, thank you, Kevin, for letting me share some thoughts tonight. I had a couple of thoughts of what I wanted to share, but being Passover, I thought it was also fitting, like Josh did, to talk about the death and resurrection of Jesus. And so, we’re going to talk about it based on some reasoning, logic, and historical evidence. And why this topic is important to me—a few years ago, when my first student went through mock trial—so, not Sean—my first group I led through mock trial, I came across a series on RightNow Media called Cold Case Christianity, which is by J. Warner Wallace. He looks at the historical evidence of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection from the perspective of a forensic detective. I thought that was pretty interesting because I hadn’t heard that too much. And then also, I’m really interested right now in the idea of the intersection between culture and religion, and why they’re not integrated anymore. Often, I think Christians are accused of having blind faith, and I think we often accept that as a truth. And having a blind faith is not the same as having a reasonable faith in something that is probably true. We have reasonable faith in a lot of things that are probably true, so why can’t we apply that to Christianity as well? For example, I believe my grandmother’s maiden name is Maudlin, because that’s the name that’s written on my mom’s birth certificate for her mother. My relatives also believe that her name, maiden name, was Maudlin. And I have never asked my grandmother, she’s now gone, what her maiden name was. So I don’t have a personal eyewitness account of hearing her say that, but I think it’s reasonable for me to believe that that was her maiden name. Perhaps Christians should approach the gospel from a similar perspective and have more confidence in what we believe. So we’ll look at two things tonight. One is reliability of the Gospel authors from a forensic perspective, which is J. Warner Wallace’s idea. And then we’ll look at rational evidence and some forensics from The Case for Easter, which was by Lee Strobel. And I really liked when Ats used some slides that showed, I think, it was a Rembrandt painting. So you’re going to see a bunch of different Western civilization paintings of Jesus’s perspective. A Life on Jesus, okay, so this being the Last Supper. And so that’s where we’re starting from, is the Last Supper. One thing before we get to the forensic idea is this notion of presuppositions. We all have presuppositions, these axioms that we believe are true, that are true because they are true, and they can’t be proven. We forget that we have these inherent beliefs. And one of those beliefs currently that people have is that supernatural things are not possible, that they cannot occur, whereas in the past people had believed that that was something that was true. So with that presupposition in mind for skepticism, we have to ask ourselves, are we willing to believe in the notion that supernatural things can occur. And since you’re all here, and it would appear that you believe that Jesus is God, you don’t have this presupposition dilemma. But that is a problem for people with whom we are conversing about whether Jesus is real or not. So what are the odds that Jesus could have died and come back to life? We’ll answer that in a minute. Okay, so for part one: reliability of the Gospel authors from a forensic perspective. When we look at evidence from J. Warner Wallace, being a detective, he was saying that there are two kinds of evidence that we use in court. One is circumstantial evidence, and the other is eyewitness evidence. These are what we use to determine whether the facts presented in the case are truthful. So the best evidence is eyewitness testimony because that person was there and saw it and can talk about it. The other one, the circumstantial evidence, is also called indirect evidence. And that’s everything else, like DNA sampling, fingerprints, all that sort of thing. That’s all circumstantial evidence. In his situation as a forensic detective working on cold cases, all of his evidence was circumstantial or indirect because there was nobody around that had been an eyewitness to whatever the 30-year-old case had been. So, do we discount circumstantial evidence in court just because we don’t have an eyewitness? And he would say, no, absolutely not. The jury is asked to consider both direct evidence, eyewitness, and indirect evidence, circumstantial, both as valid forms of evidence. Okay, so if that’s fine, then let’s see what we have in the Bible for both eyewitness accounts and then circumstantial evidence. And the first one is, are your eyewitnesses credible? There are four check marks to determine whether the eyewitnesses are credible. And so in your mind, I want you to think about the apostles that were there with Jesus and then wrote the gospel and told us about it. So were they at the scene? Did they actually observe the situation? That’s number one. Is there a way to corroborate the witness’s story? Are there other people who verify that what they’re saying is true, that they say the same thing? Has the witness changed their story over time, or are they consistent in their story? And could the witness somehow be biased or motivated to lie? If those four things check out, then we can trust that the witness’s statement is pretty reliable. Now, keep in mind that different eyewitnesses of the same situation are not going to have the exact same story. There will be differences in details. And actually, J. Warner Wallace says that’s really a good sign because they shouldn’t have the exact same details. If they did, then it’s likely that they’re colluding together, and now you need to mistrust it once more. The variation in their accounts is the gold standard or the hallmark of reliable eyewitness statements. So don’t let the differences that we see in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John disturb you. It’s actually a good thing. And the second thing is: could they have been conspiring to tell us this story, like they had they made up this story and it’s a conspiracy theory? So, for a conspiracy theory, you need five things. We shall remember this the next time we have a Covid. One, we need the smallest number of conspirators . 120 people, 500 people. There are different accounts of how many people actually saw Jesus at various times alive after He died. So that’s not a very small number. Two, you want to hold a conspiracy theory for the shortest amount of time possible so that you don’t have to extend your lie over a long period of time. Unfortunately for the apostles, the theory is now at 2,000 years, and so that’s a really long time to hold to your conspiracy theory. Or in their case, before they died, right? A couple, you know—60, 70, 80. They also need to have really good communication between each other so they can keep their story tight, which they didn’t because they were traveling and being sent all over the world, and their communication was letters. It would be better if they had kept it within the family and not among strangers. The further out the relationships, the harder it is to keep the story tight. And so that’s no good. And the last thing is, in order for the conspiracy theory to remain solid, the people that are conspiring should feel no pressure to change their story. And we know from how the apostles died, there was a lot of pressure for them to change their story, and they didn’t. So it’s perfectly acceptable for us to conclude that a conspiracy theory is not what they were trying to accomplish because they did keep their story consistent over time with a large amount of people with very little communication amongst them. They were not family, and they were under extreme pressure. That leads us back to our evidence idea, so let’s throw away the conspiracy theory idea. I don’t know if you get that too much these days in terms of a refutation for why Jesus isn’t somebody’s preferred God. But for us to convince ourselves, do we think there is enough evidence portrayed in the biblical stories to sustain the truth of it? J. Warner Wallace says there are four levels of standards for criminal trials for evidence, and the highest evidence is for felonies or murders. In that case, you need to be able to believe beyond a reasonable doubt. There’s never 100% certainty of facts, and nobody ever tries to say beyond a shadow of a doubt; it’s a reasonable doubt. Oftentimes, when the lawyers pick jurors, they’re looking for someone whose mind can be changed one way or the other because if somebody’s very dogmatic in their perspective for or against this crime, they usually aren’t picked for the jury. So keep that in mind the next time you have to go to jury duty. Be very dogmatic about what you believe, and you’ll have a good chance of not being picked. So we’re looking for a reasonable doubt. And if that’s good enough for a criminal trial, why can’t that be good enough for if we put Jesus on trial? And furthermore, be prepared, as you are already, for an attack on Christian beliefs. Because just because people have refutation doesn’t mean that their side is true or that your side is wrong. And often the thing that is your strongest piece of evidence is the thing they will attack the most. In our case, the case is being made that the historicity of Jesus is the strongest piece of evidence that we have and therefore the most attacked. So expect possibly somebody to say, “It’s a conspiracy theory. These guys made it up. You don’t have enough evidence to back up your claims,” or they attack your strongest argument. And a little fact about the reliability of the eyewitnesses. Are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John reliable? Were they really there? And how can we date the books? Were these gospels written early enough that they could have been written by people who actually did see Jesus? We know that Luke wasn’t directly involved with Jesus’s ministry. There were a few things that help us with understanding the book of Luke and Acts. But we can place the time frame for when Luke wrote his book, which was likely around 60 A.D., so 30 years or so after Jesus died and came back. And the book of Luke, which we know he wrote before he wrote Acts because he said so at the beginning of Acts, was probably written in the early 50s. Things that help us know that it wasn’t any time after 70 A.D. that he wrote Acts are that he didn’t mention the destruction of the temple or the siege of Jerusalem. If those things haven’t happened when you write your book, then it’s likely that you won’t mention that. He does mention several people’s deaths in Acts, but he doesn’t describe the death of Paul or James or Peter. And we believe that Paul died between 64 to 67 A.D. So again, if it didn’t happen while he was writing it, then it’s likely his book predates 64 A.D. and that’s where they get down to about 60 A.D. An interesting thing that he writes in there is that he writes in chronological order, and people compare that to the book of Mark, which isn’t necessarily written in chronological order, but yet he references Mark. So we believe that Mark was written before Luke. Okay, so in terms of like these overlapping stories, and does it fit into the timeline of facts that we know outside of the Bible, the Gospels pass that timeline test of overlapping stories. Okay, and then are they internally consistent and are they externally consistent? So in crime cases, you will really like to get unintentional eyewitness support in which another witness can fill in gaps for details that this witness didn’t mention. We talked about that variation in eyewitnesses’ stories. Also having more than one witness helps establish the validity of evidence. A classic example of this from the Bible is when Caiaphas asked Jesus, “Who hit you?” when He’s being tortured. We don’t see in one of the Gospels where Jesus actually had been blindfolded. And so it would make more sense to understand that He didn’t know who hit Him because He was blindfolded, versus in one, the other account when it seemed ridiculous that He didn’t know who hit Him because He was being hit by somebody right there. Another thing that Warner Wallace points out is that there are gospels that were written after these gospels that we take as canon. And in those gospels—I don’t know about them, but this was interesting to me—they mention Jerusalem, but they didn’t know the names of the local area, the towns, or the typical names for Jewish people at the time of Jesus. And so that adds to some skepticism about whether those particular gospels are valid or not, whereas the gospels that we have, they have all the names right, and the Jewish people’s names right. External evidence that would help us would be something like archaeology. Is there any archaeological evidence that points towards Jesus’s situation? And he brings up the Book of Mormon. I didn’t know this either, that there are names in the Book of Mormon, places in America where things happened, and yet we haven’t had any evidence, archeological evidence for that, and it’s been two, almost 150 years at least since the Book of Mormon came down. And so that doesn’t cooperate for them. But we do have in the New Testament the claims that are verified by non-Christian authors, such as Tacitus, who said things about Jesus. So even if there had not been any gospels, there are still enough robust non-Christian authors from that time period who do make comments about Jesus and Christians. So we have internal evidence validation and then external evidence as well. Another thing that is important is the chain of custody of your evidence. Thinking back to that, like did they keep their story up over a long period of time? Multiple reports written over time that link the evidence to the past is essential. And in the case of the Gospel of John, two of John’s students were Ignatius and Polycarp. They became local leaders in the church and wrote letters, and they had their own students. One of Polycarp’s students was Irenaeus. Is that how you even say it? Irenaeus? Irenaeus. Irenaeus. He also was consistent with what Polycarp had told him. Polycarp was consistent with what John had told him, and John was consistent with what Jesus had told him. So that’s just taking us up to about 200 AD, which I think is a pretty good example of seeing that chain of custody handed down through the generations. All right, and then lastly we have to think about the motivation of why people would lie. Why would these guys lie? Why would they conspire? And according to J. Warner Wallace, there are three reasons why you would lie: for money, relational lust—or sex… money, sex or power. Right? Respect, influence or position. Well, they didn’t make a lot of money. They didn’t have a lot of relational lust that we see, or that was mentioned about them. So possibly it could have been for power, where they were wanting respect or influence or some kind of position. And maybe the most premier example would be Paul, who was quite powerful before he became a Christian. He was well educated, he had a position of authority, and that position crumbled after he became a Christian. And so even for that power or authority, it doesn’t make any sense for him to be motivated to lie. So lastly, can we believe the bias of Christians? Christians wrote these stories. Can we believe that their eyewitness accounts are true because they are Christians? If we went with only non-Christian evidence, that would be pretty shaky because they don’t care. They don’t have any motivation for it. Do we take the eyewitness accounts of a person who believes versus the non-eyewitness account of someone who doesn’t believe? And maybe that’s where a bit of our problem today is, right? We don’t believe that. That’s a good question to ask people. Do you believe that John actually was a friend of Jesus and walked with Him? And then if you do, have you read what he had to say about what Jesus was talking about? But if they don’t want to accept that, it would be like saying—in the story that J. Warner Wallace gives, he talks about a woman who was a bank manager. This guy comes into the bank to rob the bank, and he has this bank teller under his control, and she’s handing him the money. And the manager, recognizes this man that came in, and it was a high school buddy of hers. She had known him since high school. She walks up to the teller and she sees a look on the teller’s face, and she realizes that this is not an ordinary transaction. It took her a minute to realize that what she knew of this man in high school—he was a nice guy and the last person she would ever expect to be a bank robber—was now standing in front of her, robbing her bank. So she didn’t believe that he was a bank robber, but she’s now eyewitnessing this situation. So which one would we believe? Someone who wasn’t seeing it and couldn’t think it was possible, or someone who is actually watching it? So I think that helps us secure that it’s okay for Christians to be the eyewitnesses to this story, and they do have a vested interest in telling the story, but they got no gain from it. No financial, relational, or power gain from it. Okay, so he takes you through like a series of eight short films where he discusses all that that I just mentioned in 10 minutes. And his conclusion is that there is robust, cumulative, credible evidence that makes the Bible reliable and true. It was written early enough. The Gospels were written early enough to be written by eyewitness accounts. It was corroborated by other witnesses. It didn’t change over time, and they weren’t biased towards lying, which are all the things that we would use in a court case to determine whether somebody should get the death penalty or not. So why can’t we use the same type of evidence for proving the existence of Jesus? So how improbable is it that Jesus was the Son of God? And I, I have a love-hate relationship with statistics because I think you can prove just about anything you want with a statistic. But there is a mathematician named Peter Stoner. He wrote for the American Scientific Affiliation, and he analyzed eight specific prophecies about Jesus that were made. He came up with the conclusion that it’s 1 times 10 to the 17th power. The most common comparison we have is, you know, looking for a dime or a quarter—something very small—in Texas, filled with golf balls, I don’t know how many, whatever it was, two feet tall or something like that. It’s just ridiculously improbable that Jesus could fulfill all those prophecies, which is pretty interesting, right? We’re just talking about the unexpected, where Jesus doesn’t do what people expect Him to do, and yet He does exactly what He knows He’s going to do. Another statistical probability from someone who’s not pro-Jesus, an atheist, said that the likelihood of Jesus existing is about 33%. He had like six pages worth of pieces of evidence that he was using to prove that in all of his formulas. But I think it’s good to point out with probabilities that probabilities don’t mean something is impossible. It means it might be unlikely or it might be likely, but it doesn’t mean it can’t happen. And even though he says it’s not likely that Jesus would exist, I think that makes the case even stronger because Jesus is a miracle. He did what nobody expected Him to do. He was perfect, and the ability to do that is miraculous. So anyway, it doesn’t really matter because surveys show that 80% of Christians believe in Jesus out of a sense of relational tie, and 20% respond to a commitment to Christ, and very few actually respond to reason. So even though the argument is, you know, that we’re unreasonable and we have a blind faith as Christians, even when you bring reasonable evidence to the argument, they reject it anyway because it’s not—I think, Kevin, as you say, it’s never a head issue, it’s always a heart issue. So I think you can turn it around, though, and say that even though it’s improbable that Jesus lived, that makes it all the more probable. Okay, can we go to the next slide? We’re going to talk about… Oh, I’m sorry. I want to talk about the medical evidence. So that was from J. Warner Wallace and his ideas about evidence and using that to build your own confidence, your own apologetic for why you believe in Christ. Okay, but is there medical evidence that shows that Jesus actually died? Because some people say maybe He didn’t. There’s this idea of the swoon theory where He fainted on the cross, and they took Him down, and then He came back. He revived in the tomb. He never actually died. So did He really die? I put up this picture. Can you go to the next picture, please? There’s a picture of Gethsemane. Oh, you’re just going along, or go back to way back. Keep going, and you’ll end up on a picture of Gethsemane. Maybe that’s the end. My very last slide. Yeah, there you go. The Agony at the Garden by Bellini from 1465. So this idea… Could Jesus actually sweat blood in the garden? That’s an account that is in the Bible. And according to a doctor named… something—we’ll find his name somewhere. Anyway, Lee Strobel had a long conversation with him. And this doctor said that it is possible to sweat blood. It’s a condition called hermatidrosis, and it’s associated with severe psychological stress in which the anxiety can cause the release of a chemical which breaks the capillaries in the sweat glands. And so the sweat will come out, tinged with a little bit of blood. And when—I think it was John that talks about the blood and the water that comes out… Oh, no, I’m sorry. That was a different, that’s different blood. Anyway, it’s possible to bleed through the sweat. I can’t imagine what kind of stress that must have been to sweat, or to be so stressed to the point that the capillaries break in your sweat glands. Okay. Go to the next one, please. This is Jesus before Pontius Pilate. The next one, please. Right. They end up flogging Him brutally, a minimum of 39 lashes for a Roman flogging. The whip had braided leather thongs with metal balls and sharp bones, pieces stuck in it. The point was that the balls would cause bruising. It’s kind of like, you know, when you pound the chicken flat for frying. So they’re pounding Jesus’s body flat, and then the bones are shredding the muscle to the point that His spine was most likely exposed by the deep cuts in His back. They were whipped from the shoulders all the way down the back to the buttocks and the back of the legs. These lacerations would cause ribbons of bleeding flesh. The veins, the sinews, and even the bowels could end up being exposed through a flogging. Many people didn’t survive the flogging who were destined to be crucified. It was a tremendous amount of pain, and it would cause hypervolemic shock, which is the loss of a large amount of blood. You can go to the next one. Hypervolemic shock can cause the heart to race because it’s trying to pump blood that isn’t there. Your blood pressure will drop because you don’t have any blood, and it will cause fainting or collapsing, which is consistent with Him stumbling on the way up to Gethsemane. The kidneys will stop producing urine, and the body will crave fluid to replace that blood loss. We can recall where He says He is thirsty. So He is most likely in hypervolemic shock as He’s staggering up the road to Calvary. And when He collapses, the guards call in Simon to carry His cross. So, according to this doctor, Jesus was already in a serious to critical condition before He was nailed to the cross. And historians are unanimous in this idea that Jesus did survive the beating and did go up on the cross alive. The next slide. Okay. And then being on the cross, the pain caused by this—I’m a word geek, so I just enjoyed learning that there was a new word that was created because of Jesus’s situation, and it’s called excruciating. And it means “out of the cross.” I hadn’t put that together before. So His pain was excruciating. He was hoisted up on a crossbar—or first He was laid down and attached to the crossbar. Then that crossbar is hoisted up onto the vertical stanchion that they leave up permanently. The nails were driven through the feet. The nerves in the feet would be crushed by the nails. They were 5 to 7 inch long stakes that were driven in. This would cause excruciating pain. The weight of His body on His arms… they most likely would stretch the arm to an additional 6 inches and cause the shoulders to be dislocated. And we think back to Psalm 22, where His bones were out of joint. Prediction there, or prophecy. The belief is that the nails are actually driven through the wrists and not through the hands because if they had been driven through the hands, most likely His bones would have broken under the weight of His body, and He would have fallen off the cross. So they put it in through the wrist because the two bones there will force almost like a locking position to hold the arms up. Also, there’s a nerve there called the median nerve that runs through the wrist, which would have been crushed by the nail. Think of it like—the description was, the pain of hitting your elbow and then taking a pair of pliers and squeezing and crushing that nerve that you just hit on your elbow. It would be absolutely unbearable. Okay, the next one. So that didn’t kill Him though. That just got Him up there. And Kevin’s described the crucifixion before, but this time when I was looking at the evidence, I had forgotten that when they’re there, the weight of the body is actually holding their lungs open. So, it’s almost like they’re inhaling and can’t exhale. They have to push up on their feet, push their body up to exhale, which of course is going to cause more pressure on those foot spikes. The nails are going to lock against the tarsal bones of the foot. And the back is being scraped along the post, the wooden, full-of-splinters post that He’s tightly nailed to. So they’re trying to lift their body to exhale when they’re being crucified. They continue to gasp for an exhale until complete exhaustion sets in. They can’t lift their body anymore because of that exhaustion. They go into respiratory acidosis, in which the carbon dioxide in the blood increases to the point where carbonic acid increases the blood acidity. Carbonic acid will cause an irregular heartbeat. Jesus knew He was dying because of an erratic heartbeat, possibly. And then He says the words, “Lord, into your hands I commend my Spirit.” And the conclusion is that he died of cardiac arrest. That hypervolemic shock can elevate the heart rate because of trying to get the blood to move around. That will also contribute to the heart failure besides just complete exhaustion. And the result of cardiac arrest in that position resulted in the collection of blood around the heart, where we see the pericardial effusion and also the pleural effusion, which was the water around the lungs. And this is where in John 19:34, they talk about when they spear His side to verify that He really was dead, that water and blood came out because it was consistent with the type of death that He died. So—Dr. Matherell is his name, is the one who said there was no doubt that Jesus was dead according to the description given in the Gospel. So, He was really dead. Another prophecy that is mentioned, right, is that they didn’t break any of Jesus’s bones. In the case of the two criminals that were crucified with Him, they did break their bones because that would speed up their inability to raise their body up to exhale, so they would die more quickly of asphyxiation. Exodus 12, Numbers 9, and Psalm 34 are consistent that we don’t break the bones during the Passover. And it’s because no bones, His bones were not broken in John 19. The spear in the side confirmed in Zechariah 12 and described in John 19:37. There’s a mention of the Roman soldiers who would have wanted to make sure He was dead because it would be very unpleasant for them to have a prisoner escape for which they were responsible for the execution of that prisoner. So they speared Him in the side. He was dead. All right. Another crucifixion painting by Raphael. Okay, just in case you hadn’t heard of the swoon theory, which I had not… In 1835, a German theologian named David Strauss thought that maybe Jesus had faked His death. And the questions that were asked—Lee Strobel asked—that I thought were really good, was even if He hadn’t died, He would have been so maimed, so torn to pieces, who would want to follow Him? He certainly wasn’t the king that they expected. He didn’t, okay, overthrow the Roman government. He didn’t bring peace and joy, and now He’s a bloody mess. Would that be someone you would actually follow? It doesn’t sound consistent with the resurrected body that He claims He’s going to have. Furthermore, Dr. Matherell says it’s medically impossible for Him not to die, so the swoon theory notion has been debunked. Dr. Matherell’s credentials are that he wrote an article in 1986 in the Journal of the American Medical Association regarding this, the account of Jesus’s death. So it even got published in, you know, what we would consider a very reasonable, rational article that people think tells the truth. Okay, next one. Okay, so He dies and they take His body down, put Him in a tomb, and then there’s a missing body. So how can we be sure that He wasn’t still in the tomb, that He ever went into the tomb, and where did the body go? And the empty tomb is that enduring symbol of His resurrection. So, in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says that the resurrection is the key to Christianity. If Christ had not been raised, our faith is futile, and you would still be in your sins. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. (1 Corinthians 15:17, NIV) So not only is it key to our salvation, it’s symbolic and literal, right? His power over sin and death. And it’s the basis of our hope, and it’s the miracle of miracles for someone to bring themselves back to life. You can go to the next one. Apparently, many criminals that were crucified were left on the cross, and they would be eaten by birds, or they might be thrown into a common grave because nobody was claiming them. There is one theory out there that Jesus’ body was dug up from a common grave and it was eaten by wild dogs, and that’s why we don’t have a body anymore. But that’s not consistent with the story in the Gospel, which says that Joseph of Arimathea came and asked for His body. And Joseph is an unlikely character because he was a member of the Sanhedrin. And the Sanhedrin had voted unanimously to condemn Jesus, although I think it was—was it in Luke where it mentions that Joseph wasn’t at that meeting? So he didn’t vote. Apparently, he abstained from voting, which he’d already become a Christian, so that probably wouldn’t have worked out for him anyway. Like, “Maybe I don’t want to vote today.” So it wasn’t in his best interest to be known as a friend of Jesus. Can you go to the next slide, please? And the next one? Okay, so here He is coming down off the cross. Strobel points out here that 1 Corinthians 15 is considered creedal to the early church and was even considered an early creed that they recited. And I’ll read it for you. It’s 15:3: 3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance : that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. (1 Corinthians 15:3-6, NIV) So the formula is that He was crucified, He was buried, He was resurrected, and then He appeared to a lot of people. And a summary of what the Gospel teaches. I didn’t realize that about 1 Corinthians 15 repeating what had become a mantra, so to speak, for early Christians. And without it, right, it wouldn’t have mattered. It’s in Luke 23 that Joseph of Arimathea said… “and a man named Joseph who was a member of the council, a good and righteous man, and that he had not consented to their plan in action. A man from Arimathea, a city of the Jews, who was waiting for the kingdom of God. This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.” 50 Now there was a man named Joseph, a member of the Council, a good and upright man, 51 who had not consented to their decision and action. He came from the Judean town of Arimathea, and he himself was waiting for the kingdom of God. (Luke 23:50-51, NIV) So most New Testament scholars do agree that the account of Jesus dying and being taken to the tomb is reliable based on the evidence. So why was He not there? There is a Jewish tradition where they would gather the bones. It’s almost like the Catholics, I think. I don’t know if the Catholics still do it, but they will, after a year or so—is it a year that they go back and they collect the bones of the dead people and put them in a box? Now they got them in a box. So they wait for the flesh to decompose, and then they put them in this box. That was a Jewish tradition as well. Some people thought, well, maybe they would collect the bones of Jesus and put it in a box until the resurrection of the dead of Israel, that God promised that He would come back and save them all. The next slide. Part of the tomb… construction was such that there’s a groove in which the large stone was rolled down to cover the door of the entrance to the cave that was the tomb. And then there was a smaller stone that was put next to that large stone in order to secure it and keep it in place. And it would take a couple of men to be strong enough to move—the small stones, no problem, but getting that large stone rolled back up the incline would have been difficult for the people that we’re told first saw Jesus and the empty tomb after He came back to life. And then a note is that the Roman guards are only mentioned in Matthew. So whether the Roman guards were there or not may or may not be as important as the women who saw Him. Although it is important if you think, according to the 18th century critics who suggested that the disciples stole Jesus’s body, then the guards could have stopped them. But it doesn’t explain why the disciples believed that He was resurrected to the point where they never recanted their story. And the Jews had a good reason to hunt that, you know, hunt that down. In Matthew 27, the chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate and they said, “We remember that while He was still alive, that deceiver, He said, ‘After three days, I will rise again.’ So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day. Otherwise His disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people that He had been raised from the dead. This last deception will be worse than the first.” 62 The next day, the one after Preparation Day, the chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate. 63 “Sir,” they said, “we remember that while he was still alive that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise again.’ 64 So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day. Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people that he has been raised from the dead. This last deception will be worse than the first.” (Matthew 27:62-64, NIV) And this is that part in Matthew where Pilate says, “Okay, take a guard and make the tomb secure and put a seal on it. Post a guard.” 66 So they went and made the tomb secure by putting a seal on the stone and posting the guard. (Matthew 27:66, NIV) But that didn’t stop Jesus. You can go to the next one. One more. Okay. All right. Dr. William Craig, who’s a PhD and a doctor of theology, has written many books and is known for his writing about the intersection of science, philosophy, and theology—he has some comments about why it’s likely that Jesus came back to life: The discovery of the empty tombs, even though they’re described differently from various gospels, if we apply the same criteria that we would apply to other ancient literary sources, then the evidence is firm and plausible enough to conclude that the tomb was indeed found empty. The example given is when Hannibal crossed the Alps. There are two very different accounts of how he did that to attack Rome. And yet everyone still agrees that Hannibal did, in fact, cross the Alps and defeat Rome with his elephants. So if we can believe that is true, then why can we not believe that Jesus, the story of Jesus, is true? Okay, five arguments for the empty tomb. Paul mentions it in 1 Corinthians 15 and is considered—his account is considered reliable because that’s that creedal recitation of the early church. Jesus’s tomb site was well known, and it was easily verifiable if it was still occupied. Mark’s account was from very early on, around 37 AD, and was considered too early of an account to be corrupted by later conspiracy theories. And Mark’s Gospel is attributed to Peter’s account. By the way, in Mark, the first person that Mark mentions is Peter. And the last person he mentions in Mark is Peter. He minimizes Peter’s embarrassing moments the most of all four gospels. So the next time you read Mark, see if you notice that about Peter looking a little bit better than he might have by his friends. Mark’s account is considered very simple, and it’s not puffed up by legendary actions or details. The fact that the tomb was found by women is compelling because that’s also an embarrassment. Women were less than in that society, and so they shouldn’t be the ones to have this great honor of seeing Jesus alive. Furthermore, the Jewish scholars from the time were arguing what happened to the body and not about the body that’s still in the tomb. So there’s a presupposition that the body isn’t there anymore and that perhaps they stole it. It never went there in the first place, but they recognized that it was not still there. Some people have suggested that the women went to the wrong tomb. In 1907, someone named Kirsopp Lake suggested that. And if that were true, it would have been easy to find out where the right tomb was and corrected the situation. And the Jewish authorities would like nothing more than to say that Jesus was in fact still dead. In 1835, a man named David Strauss claimed that it was all a legend. And that’s why Mark’s account is pivotal for us, because it’s early on, it’s fairly stripped down, it’s simple, and it seems to be a credible account of the actual events. So why do crazy theories seem more plausible than believing something that we think is impossible, that Jesus could become alive again? Is it reasonable to believe in miracles? And now we transition from historical evidence into a philosophical question. Can we believe in miracles? And are miracles simply things that we don’t understand yet? But that doesn’t mean that they don’t have reasons for being. We believe in a lot of miracles that we don’t call miracles anymore, like electricity. That’s pretty miraculous. Airplanes, pretty miraculous. And so it seems impossible because the probability is very small that someone could do this. But as we said with statistics, just because it’s improbable doesn’t mean that it’s impossible. So I think we can agree that Jesus was very dead. His wounds were too great for Him to continue to live in His body, and that it would take a miracle to bring Him back to life. And that would be consistent with what God would do, something miraculous, and that it wouldn’t actually contradict scientific evidence to have a miracle answer. But it does require believing that God exists. And if God exists, it’s possible that God took an action in history at a point in time and space, and that we don’t understand because we don’t understand how time and space work from our perspective. Sir Norman Anderson, a renowned legal scholar from Britain, said, “The empty tomb is the veritable rock on which all rationalistic theories of the resurrection dash themselves in vain.” Okay, so the resurrection—we’re going to say it happened because it seems like the most reasonable answer to what could have happened. But was He seen after that? Was He seen alive after the tomb? So we go to the next slide. Gary Habermas, who’s a professor at Liberty University, he’s written seven books on resurrection. He has something to say about this. He got his PhD from Michigan State and from Oxford. And he said there’s too many examples, too many eyewitnesses’ accounts of Jesus appearing to people for it to be impossible. Jesus appears to Paul, a very unlikely person to receive such an honor. In 1 Corinthians 9, he appears to Peter; he appears to the 11, and then to 500 more. He appears to Paul. That Corinthians 15 passage was considered creedal. He makes a case for when Paul visited Peter and James in Jerusalem prior to his earliest visit to Corinth, that he was actually conducting what’s called a historeo, which is an investigative inquiry, as noted in Galatians 1, because James and Peter were eyewitness accounts to Jesus’s death. So he was conducting an investigation. It seems reasonable, considering the type of writing that Paul does for us later, right? And Peter’s account, according to a Jewish New Testament scholar, which is a rare thing, his account was strong enough to be on par with an eyewitness statement in 1 Corinthians. So that’s our strongest evidence there that what they said was true. The eyewitnesses that saw Jesus, right? That chain of custody. They said, “We saw Him.” So, who else did He appear to? He appeared to Mary Magdalene, John 20. He appeared to other women, Matthew 28. He appeared to Cleopas and one other on the Emmaus Road, Luke 24. He appears to many disciples in Luke 24, later on in verse 33; the apostles again in John 10; to Thomas, because he wasn’t there the first time in John 20; again with the apostles in John 21; to the disciples in Matthew 28; and then on the Mount of Olives in Luke 24; and in Acts 1. So we have quite a few accounts from various gospels to various people saying they saw Him and touched Him and ate with Him. We’re almost done. Okay, one more. You can go down to the next one. This is Jesus eating with them. So John Drain, who’s a scholar, said the earliest evidence we have for resurrection almost certainly goes back to the time immediately after the resurrection event is alleged to have taken place. This is the evidence contained in the early sermons in the Acts. There can be no doubt that the first few chapters of Acts, that its authors have preserved material from very early sources. And Habermas agrees with him and said the resurrection was undoubtedly the central proclamation of the early church. From the very beginning, the earliest Christians were convinced that they had seen Him alive after His crucifixion. So if it was good enough for them, is it good enough for us? And why do others refute that claim? Going back to J. Warner Wallace for an eyewitness, if each witness that had seen Jesus was called into a court to testify and be cross-examined for 15 minutes, it would take from breakfast on a Monday, every 15 minutes a new witness telling their story, until dinner on Friday to hear them all. So it’s 129 hours of straight testimony that we would be hearing. Sir Edward Clark of the British High Court said, “To me, the evidence is conclusive. And over and over again in the High Court I have secured the verdict on evidence not so nearly compelling. As a lawyer, I accept the Gospel evidence unreservedly as the testimony of truthful men to facts they were able to substantiate.” Okay, the next one. So in conclusion, we could say eyewitness account is valid in court, and the eyewitness accounts that we have in the Gospels are reasonably accurate. That Jesus did die on the cross, that His tomb was empty, and that His disciples and others saw Him after the resurrection. They ate with Him and touched Him. And the theologian Michael Green says, “The appearances of Jesus are as well documented as anything in antiquity. There can be no rational doubt that they occurred.” And that “The main reason why Christians became sure of the resurrection in the earliest days was just this: they could say with assurance, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ They knew it was Him.” Okay, the next one. And J.P. Moreland said similarly that “The disciples were in a unique position to know for a fact whether Jesus had returned from the dead. They saw Him, they touched Him, they ate with Him. They knew He wasn’t a hallucination or a legend. And knowing the truth, they were willing to die for Him.” And then the last picture. Oops, one more. There you go. So hopefully that will give you some more tools in your tool bag of refutation against the “Jesus was a legend or a myth or just a nice story, and that He was a good man, but He wasn’t really the Son of God.” Knowing that that’s their strongest argument against Jesus, but also knowing that even though your defense of His historicity isn’t going to change their minds, hopefully it will convince you of what you already believe. And I like this little recipe of, like, it all boils down to three things: That we believe and we receive and then we become. So let’s go and share that with people. All right, thank you. I think I’m supposed to do something else. No, Kevin’s going to do something else. Great stuff, great stuff. It is fun. She talked about Mark being the earliest gospel and Mark being the Gospel of Peter, and I agree with that. Mark was also there. He was an eyewitness. I’m not sure if he ever is recorded as an eyewitness to the resurrection, but he was certainly an eyewitness to the Garden of Gethsemane. In Mark 14, as Jesus is being arrested, He said to them, “Have you come out with swords, clubs, as if I were a criminal to capture me? Every day I was among you teaching in the temple, and you didn’t arrest me, but the Scripture must be fulfilled. Then they all deserted Him and ran away.” Reminds me of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Run away. 48 “Am I leading a rebellion,” said Jesus, “that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me? 49 Every day I was with you, teaching in the temple courts, and you did not arrest me. But the Scriptures must be fulfilled.” 50 Then everyone deserted him and fled. (Mark 14:48-50, NIV) All right, well. “Now, a certain young man wearing nothing but a linen cloth was following him. They caught hold of him, but he left the linen cloth behind and ran away naked.” What is the relevance of that to our Christian theology? I don’t know. But it is Mark putting his signature on this gospel, right? Because who would remember running home naked, scared to death that Romans were chasing him but the young boy who had to endure that, right? And so Mark’s saying, “Hey, I was a young man. I was just, you know, I was hanging out in the bushes watching all this, and they saw me. I ran away, and I grabbed my linen cloth. I ran home buck naked.” He remembered that night. So anyway, I just thought that was interesting. The other thing that you spurred in my memory was the picture of the dinner at Emmaus, the road to Emmaus. And the two disciples did not recognize Jesus until what? When did they recognize Jesus? He opened their eyes. Yep. Yeah. He broke the bread. He broke the bread. And so you want to know Jesus? Come to the meal. He’s still breaking the bread. And here’s the thing about the resurrected Christ. This is not pie in the sky, “oh, I can hardly wait till I die and get to meet Jesus.” Yes, you get to meet Jesus. But here’s the One you get to meet: you get to meet the One you’ve always known. The kingdom is now and not yet. It will be consummated, and it will be awesome, but it is not some distant reality. My kids mock me now. I’m 67, and my kids mock me. They find amusement in that, and that’s fine, because I’m still able enough to mock them back, so it’s mutual. But they, you know, I preached all these years, and they listen to all my sermons. And you’ve seen it all these years, too, right? And I say, you know, here’s the thing. I always say, “What if you walk away from God and then you repent? You’ve walked two miles away, and you repent and you turn around. You think you have to walk two miles back, but the minute you turn around, where’s Jesus?” There you go. Stevin’s seen it many times. My kids go, “Hey, dad, where’s Jesus? We know where Jesus is. Right there.” I’m glad you know that. Thank goodness you got a father who taught you that. That’s right. He’s right there. Where’s your dad right now? He’s right there. So at communion, I don’t want you to laugh when you receive communion, but when you receive communion, guess where Jesus is? Right there. Right there. He’s right there. It’s at His invitation. He wants to reveal Himself, and He does so in His body being broken, His blood being poured out. And now He is alive. He’s alive forevermore. Next week’s our week, people. It’s our holiday. It’s our holiday. Whoever brings the most friends next week, what should we give them? What’s that? We’ll give you an “atta boy” or an “atta girl.” All right, whoever brings the most people to church next Sunday. We’ll fish for twicers. Bring a twicer. We’ll go fishing for twicers. Come to this meal. Come and eat. The post 2026.3.29 TFHC – Born to Die appeared first on The Firehouse Church in Bremerton, WA.