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PROVING THE RESURRECTION STORY
#1
IS JACK GONE FOREVER?
As we get ready to record here in late November, people
around the world are turning into what they call “Titaniacs.” The James
Cameron film, Titanic, is, as Newsweek puts it, “steaming toward a billion
dollars” in ticket sales. In Bangkok, in Moscow, and of course in every
shopping mall throughout North America, people are buying tickets to watch
the Titanic go down over and over and over again, with some people attending
six or seven times. It has become a kind of religion almost, according
to film reporter David Ansen.
They say that the three most commonly told stories in this world are about
the life and death of Jesus, the Civil War, and the sinking of this great
ship on April 14, 1912. And certainly as Hollywood’s latest offering has
proved, there’s one element to the story that has simply captivated the
world. And that’s the possibility that a person who goes down with the
ship into the icy Atlantic Ocean and drowns . . . can some day live again.
People everywhere want to believe that these ill-fated lovers, Jack Dawson
and Rose DeWitt Bukater, will someday, somehow be reunited, and that all
the brave dads who put their wives and little children into lifeboats
and then stayed behind and went down with the ship might someday experience
the Bible’s promise of a Resurrection Morning.
And this week as we count down to Easter Weekend, we all have that same
question in our hearts and minds. Is it all true, what the Bible says
about resurrection? Did a dead person named Jesus really and truly come
out of that tomb on Sunday morning? Or did the disciples just steal the
body out of the cemetery while the Roman soldiers slept, hide the remains
of their Friend-but-failed-Messiah, and then dry their tears and make
up this tall tale to beat all tall tales? Did they simply invent something
that Sunday, a piece of fiction, which paved the way for some more fiction
in that reported last scene in Titanic, where dead people someday live
again and meet once more on the grand staircase of the unsinkable ship?
The Bible does make one thing perfectly clear as we read through a pertinent
passage of Scripture in the book of First Corinthians. And really, it’s
not just the fate of these fictional young people, Jack and Rose, which
rests on this truth. All of us, you and me, are intimately and personally
affected by whether or not we accept what Paul writes in these nine verses:
First Corinthians 15:12-21.
And what we’re told is this: the opportunity to live again after death
— whether you go down with the Titanic or of cancer or simply of old age
at the ripe old age of 101 — again I say, the possibility of ever living
again rests entirely and completely on the doctrine of the Resurrection
of Jesus Christ. Here’s how Paul states it:
“If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not
even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching
is useless and so is your faith. . . . For if the dead are not raised,
then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised,
your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who
have fallen asleep in Christ are lost.” And he adds this final thought:
“If only for THIS LIFE we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more
than all men.”
What we have here are two elements. The general doctrine
of the resurrection, which can affect all of us who believe, and more
specifically the resurrection of Jesus Christ on that Sunday morning.
And what Paul tells us in emphatic language here is that you absolutely
cannot get one without the other. A gives us B and B gives us A. But if
we reject the doctrine of Christ’s resurrection or begin to doubt that
He really did come out of that tomb, then you immediately have to also
embrace — or at least wince and acknowledge — the reality that when you
sink into your own Atlantic Ocean and close your eyes in death, that that’s
it. It’s all over for you . . . forever. If you’re Karla Faye Tucker and
about to have that lethal poison enter your body down in Huntsville, Texas,
your fate is determined by what happens to Jesus. If He came back to life,
you can too someday. If He didn’t, then February 3, 1998 at 6:00 p.m.,
is the end of life forever for this convicted and converted pickax murderer.
You know, we’ve done radio programs before on the doctrine of the Resurrection,
and naturally, it’s one of our favorite topics. But each time we have
to address the fairly obvious question, where people ask us: “Isn’t the
resurrection of Jesus a ‘given’? Doesn’t everybody accept that as being
true?” And here in 2003, more than ever, we have to respond: No, we’re
not talking about a given anymore. Doubt is everywhere. Questions are
springing up everywhere. And to put it very bluntly, the doctrine of the
Resurrection is under very serious attack even as we visit here together
six days before Easter. More and more, Christians — let me say it again,
these are Christians — just plain do not believe in the doctrine of the
Resurrection any longer. What’s more — and this is absolutely incredible
to consider — many or most of these same people don’t consider their non-belief
to be a crisis or a problem with their Christianity. “I can still believe
in the Christian message without accepting this ‘(quote) myth’ of the
Resurrected Christ,” they say. Which is hard to comprehend considering
the statement by Paul that without the Resurrection of Jesus, our faith
is futile and we’re still in our sins. More on that as we go along.
Let me quote a bit from a rather unlikely source, you may think: the secular
magazine Gentleman’s Quarterly. Back in the June 1994 issue, Russell Shorto
covered the controversial “Jesus Seminar” scholars’ group in his religion
article entitled “Crossfire.” And here’s his quote:
“What happens when some of the world’s leading scholars
of Christianity agree that the man behind the religion was just a man?”
And then he quotes from the think tank’s released book, “The Five Gospels.”
And here’s another paragraph as Mr. Shorto summarizes their “(quote) findings”:
“He [Jesus] wasn’t born in Bethlehem (Nazareth is more likely), His mother
wasn’t a virgin, HE DIDN’T COME BACK FROM THE DEAD, and He never fancied
Himself a divine being. Further, He may not have been a carpenter, may
well have been a husband and father, and He never delivered the words
‘I am the way, the truth and the light’ or any of the rest of the Gospel
of John.’”
Well, friend, there you have it. According to these
professors and scholars, the Virgin Birth is gone. The miracles — gone.
And especially the Resurrection — gone. And in case you think this is
just one or two liberal, weak-spined guys from some obscure college, I
should just read you the bibliography in the back of their book, The Five
Gospels. These are 73 major theologians from prestigious schools and religious
universities, venerable institutions you have heard of. The writer for
GQ calls these men and women the “advance guard of what has become the
hottest and most controversial area of religious studies: historical Jesus
research.”
Maybe you’ve heard about the beads: red, pink, gray, and black, that these
scholars used to vote on whether or not Jesus said or did this particular
thing that’s found in the Gospels. Red means He for sure said those words,
and black means absolutely no way did He say or do that. And according
to the votes, something like 82% of all that Christ said was determined
to be just fabricated. Words put in His mouth by later sources or ghostwriters
. . . or maybe just plain made up.
And one case in point is very interesting as we study this week. These
liberal scholars had to vote on a story we find in Luke chapter seven
where Jesus raised a widow’s son back to life. Have you heard that story
before? Do you believe in it, believe it’s true? Well, they passed around
the basket so people could vote with their beads — and here’s the result.
Seventy-three “no” votes. A hundred percent! All voting no. They simply
did not believe this miracle ever happened. And in their “expert” opinion
the Bible writer Luke simply made up the entire experience to impress
people who might be thinking of becoming Christians. To “wow” them, as
one of them put it. And the bottom line was that these people just could
not believe that a miracle could ever happen. ANY miracle. Jesus Himself,
they thought, could not ever once, a single time, perform a miracle.
Which explains why John Dominic Crossan of DePaul University, one of the
major forces in this whole movement, completely discounts both the Virgin
Birth and the Resurrection. Both of those events are miracles, and so,
to him, are just completely impossible. They couldn’t happen. Here’s what
he says in his own words:
“I don’t believe ANYONE in the history of the world
was born as the result of divine-human conjunction.”
To him, Jesus was nothing more than a “(quote) peasant
Jewish Cynic.” A “Jewish Socrates” is how he puts it. But was there anything
miraculous about His birth or His life or His death? No. Even God in heaven
wouldn’t be capable of that. Anything miraculous about Easter Sunday?
To him, I suppose, there are bunnies and eggs and that’s about it.
Well, friend, do you and I want the chocolate eggs or the plain Word of
God? Do you want Jesus the wandering poet or Christ the Risen Lord? Do
you want your end to be when a ship goes down or the lights go out . .
. or do you look forward to a wonderful and everlasting life in God’s
eternal kingdom made possible by Jesus Christ breaking through the walls
of that garden tomb?
Friend, to me that’s not a very hard choice.
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