|
PROVING THE RESURRECTION STORY
#2
SCISSORS OR FAITH
There’s an old anecdote that preachers love to tell,
which goes back to a debate between a Christian and a nonbeliever. And
this skeptic was determined to prove that anything in the Bible that was
of a supernatural nature could actually be explained by natural causes.
If the Wise Men saw a star, well, that was actually just a comet or maybe
the Northern Lights or a 747 ahead of its time or a UFO or whatever. The
flood of Noah was actually just the El Niño of 3000 B.C. No miracle
there, just a really rainy winter. If someone was healed, well, they were
going to get better anyway. If a person was reported raised from the dead,
then actually they had probably just been unconscious or in a coma — and
those dumb Judeans didn’t know how to take a pulse or measure brain waves
with an EKG machine. And so on.
And when this skeptic got down to the story of the parting of the Red
Sea for the Children of Israel, then he was at his most indignant. “That
is just pure and simple NOT a miracle,” he insisted. And he had tide charts
and graphs and statistics to prove that at that particular time of year
and with archeological records to show where the Israelites probably crossed,
why, according to him, the Red Sea was probably only about four inches
deep anyway. “So where’s that a miracle?” he demanded to know. “Four inches
of water? All they had to do was slosh their way through it. It was a
piece of cake.”
And to his amazement, the Christian he was debating lit up with happiness.
“Well, praise God!” his opponent said. “That makes it an even bigger miracle
than I thought! Wonderful!”
“What do you mean?” the agnostic snapped, figuring his debating partner
had just lost his mind. “Why’s it a bigger miracle then?”
“Well, just look,” the Christian retorted, pointing to his Bible and the
old story in Exodus 14. “The way you’re telling it, that means that Pharaoh
and the entire Egyptian army got down out of their chariots and off their
horses and held their noses down under those four inches of water until
they all drowned! And if that’s not a miracle, then I don’t know what
is!”
Well, friend, you can see why we love telling a story with a punch line
like that one. But all this week, as we study the doctrine of the Resurrection,
there is in the world today — the Christian world, even — a philosophy
that basically says: “Miracles cannot happen and do not happen.” That’s
it. They reject completely any part of Scripture or any religious belief
that has anything whatever to do with supernatural occurrences. And this
goes from Creation right through to the story of Jesus — the Virgin Birth,
His miracles, His resurrection — and down to things like the Second Coming
of Christ. If it’s a miracle they just take scissors or computer delete
buttons and they take those things out of their Bibles . . . to the point
where the King James Version is probably a 32-page pamphlet now. Double-spaced.
I mentioned yesterday the Jesus Seminar, this liberal think tank of about
70 Bible scholars that began meeting in 1985 and voting whether or not
things in the Bible were true. One of their critics, a Dr. Craig Blomberg
from Denver Seminary, has written a counterattack book called The Historical
Reliability of the Gospels, and he points out that the Jesus Seminar group
is “(quote) closed to the possibility of the miraculous.” As we discussed
in our Monday topic, this group voted down a story where Jesus raised
up a widow’s son to life . . . and they voted it down 73 to zero. A person
coming back to life? It just couldn’t happen. When you’re dead, you’re
dead. Even God Himself, they didn’t think, had or has the power to bring
life back to someone who is dead.
One of the most controversial members of the Jesus Seminar has got to
be Dutch film director Paul Verhoeven, whose name is attached to such
Hollywood projects as Total Recall, Basic Instinct, and the recent mainstream
NC-17-rated soft-core Las Vegas porn movie, Showgirls. And yes, he is
actually a member of the Jesus Seminar. His latest dream — in fact, his
long-standing dream — is to bring his kind of Jesus to the big screen.
And one reporter comments, in a story about Verhoeven and the Jesus Seminar:
“And his kind [of Jesus] is their kind, a thoroughly
human Jesus, a man who dies and STAYS dead.”
It would be, of course, a Jesus film with absolutely
no miraculous elements in it. None. And the same reporter predicts:
“The film will likely raise a fuss that will make The
Last Temptation of Christ seem about as controversial as The Love Bug.”
Well, friend, as we count down the days to 2004, all
of us who are believers have to keep this question in front of us: what
is it WE believe in? Maybe you’ve always thought that belief in the Resurrection
of Jesus Christ was a “default” thing for you, that as far as that doctrine
is concerned, you could just be on autopilot. But isn’t this a good week,
especially as we hear of these attack bombs coming in, to reexamine and
reassert what we actually do believe?
Let me ask you today: do you believe that we serve a God who CAN do miracles?
A God who can create, a God who can heal, a God who can answer prayers,
a God who can defeat death and the grave and Satan? Because a God who
didn’t even have the power to raise up His own Son — believe me, He wouldn’t
be able to do any of those other things either.
And here’s another question. Do you believe the Word of God? The Jesus
Seminar people, as they voted with their colored beads — true or false,
yes or no — seemed to vote with the black bead, the NO bead, more than
any other. Were things in the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John true?
Eighty-two percent of the time, these folks didn’t think so. Not only
did they think the entire Book of John should be dumped, they’ve proposed
that a number of the 27 books in the New Testament be jettisoned, and
others added in their place. The miracles of Jesus, and many of the things
He said are now, in their view, the work of first-century “spin doctors”
and ghostwriters.
So this is a good week for us to ask ourselves where we stand. Do we believe
in the Bible? Many theologians today suggest that on Easter Sunday, the
only thing to be resurrected was a new kind of hope, a fresh understanding
of the wonderful things this Jewish itinerant preacher, this Judean hippie,
was saying. His Sermon on the Mount, the Golden Rule. That’s the only
thing, they say, that sprang to life on Sunday — a new love for these
Jesus-isms. Well, you can believe that, or you can believe the plain words
of Jesus Christ Himself, as recorded in Luke chapter 24. After that terrible
weekend, was this just a ghost the disciples were seeing, some kind of
cosmic New Age “understanding,” or was it Jesus Himself? Here’s what He
says:
“Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your
minds? Look at My hands and My feet. It is I Myself! Touch Me and see;
a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as You see I have.”
And it’s quite interesting that this “cosmic understanding”
sat down at the dinner table and proceeded to eat a fish!
Well, we can choose to reject all of Luke 24, where Jesus walked on the
road to Emmaus with two men, and here in the Upper Room where He met with
all eleven disciples. Or John 21 where Jesus met His disciples on the
beach after His resurrection and made breakfast for them and then told
Peter three times to take care of this little flock. We can take away
the story where Mary saw Him in the garden. We can decide that the book
of Acts is a pack of lies where the disciples saw the risen Lord ascend
into heaven. We can dismiss the experience of Paul, who encountered the
risen Jesus on the road to Damascus. Which, of course, means that we should
delete all of Paul’s writings about the Christian faith because a person
who would lie about one thing would lie about all of it, especially in
First Corinthians 15 where he writes about how 500 people all saw Jesus
after the Resurrection. The entire heritage of the Christian Church —
the book of Romans with its clear teachings about faith and grace and
the gospel message — should be burned and banned if it’s written by a
self-confessed liar or delusional madman.
Like I say, we can throw out all of these Bible passages if we don’t want
to believe that Jesus Christ came out of that tomb. And we can embrace
instead the teachings and spiritual convictions of Mr. Paul Verhoeven,
the movie director of Showgirls. That’s quite a choice, isn’t it? Friend,
what are you and I going to believe?
I’d like to invite you right here to join me in holding on to the risen
Christ. I’m not giving up that belief and I’m not giving up on Jesus!
I’m going to keep my Bible with its 66 books — all of them. The Jesus
Seminar may want to throw out the book of Revelation, but you know, I
kind of like chapter one, verse 18, which reads like this:
“I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive
for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.” Another version
reads: “I was dead but I’m alive and I will never die again. All authority
is given to me in heaven and on earth. I have full power over death and
the grave.”
Yes, friend, that’s my kind of Jesus!
|
