Fact or Fiction
Fact or Fiction (Easter); nv 4/16/06 am
OS: 1 Easter Sunday. What does Easter mean? “You get bruises eating Easter candy” ? “Candy don’t give you bruises” – “It does if it belongs to your big brother.”
I. Theories are interesting.
A. Creative Scientific Theories Contest
1. GRAND PRIZE WINNER: When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet. And when toast is dropped, it always lands with the buttered side facing down. I propose to strap buttered toast to the back of a cat; the two will hover, spinning inches above the ground. With a giant buttered cat array, a high-speed monorail could easily link New York with Chicago.
2. RUNNERS-UP: Why Yawning Is Contagious: You yawn to equalize the pressure on your eardrums. This pressure change outside your eardrums unbalances other people’s ear pressures, so they must yawn to even it out.
3. HONORABLE MENTIONS:
-The quantity of consonants in the English language is constant. If omitted in one place, they turn up in another. When a Bostonian “pahks” his “cah,” the lost r’s migrate southwest, causing a Texan to “warsh” his car and invest in “erl wells.”
B. Creative, but not true.
II. If you spend some time reading the latest in the news concerning Jesus you find some equally creative theories that are just as untrue as the above.
A. These theories about Jesus are coming out of the wood work lately, but have been happening since Jesus ascended back to the Father.
1. 1965 – Hugh Schonfield published The Passover Plot (Jesus set it all up, timed it so He would be removed from the cross for Sabbath – Joseph (created character) would substitute a drug for the traditional vinegar that would make Him appear dead. In the tomb He would be nursed back to health and claim resurrection. (Swoon Theory)
2. Twin Theory – Unknown twin who happened to see Him carrying the cross, and learned about Him and posed as Jesus resurrected.
3. Muslim’s have a theory – Allah changed the appearance of one of His disciples and they were crucified instead – they believe Jesus will come back just before the end of time, kill the Antichrist, kill all pigs, break the cross, destroy the synagogues and churches, establish the religion of Islam, live for forty years, and then He will be buried in the city of Medina beside the prophet Muhammad.
B. Recently we’ve had various supposed new revelations about Jesus.
1. The Jesus Seminar, founded by Robert Funk in 1985 are bent on convincing the world that Jesus is not worthy of our worship. Their so called discoveries consider Jesus to be nonapocalyptic, socially subversive, a stand-up comic, a mere human, focused on the here and now, one who did not intend to organize a following, and one whose death was merely an insignificant accident of history.
2. Nag Hammadi – Egypt (found Gnostic texts – not new – we already had them through the writings of the church fathers as they refuted their beliefs.) Gospel of Mary & Thomas – all kinds of writing.
3. Gospel of Judas – TV last week
4. The Da Vinci Code – Fiction!
C. One basic idea about scripture:
1. These theories do not consider scripture to be trustworthy.
2. By the end of the 19th century archaeological discoveries had confirmed the accuracy of the New Testament manuscripts. Those findings increased scholarly confidence in the reliability of the Bible.
3. William F. Albright, who in his day was the world's foremost biblical archaeologist, said: "We can already say emphatically that there is no longer any solid basis for dating any book of the New Testament after about A.D. 80,
4. There are over 24,000 copies of early New Testament manuscripts known to be in existence today.
5. Sir William Ramsay, who spent 15 years attempting to undermine Luke credentials as a historian, and to refute the reliability of the New Testament, finally concluded: "Luke is a historian of the first rank . . . This author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians. "
6. “I claim to be an historian. My approach to Classics is historical. And I tell you that the evidence for the life, the death, and the resurrection of Christ is better authenticated than most of the facts of ancient history. .” E. M. Blaiklock Professor of Classics Auckland University
7. The texts relied upon for the above theories are 2nd – 3rd Century. It’s like the difference between WWII and Revolutionary War.
III. This morning – The reality of the Resurrection (Fact or Fiction)
A. Good, reasonable, common sense proof that Jesus came from the tomb.
B. Hank Hanegraaff – Resurrection
1. Acrostic - FEAT
TS] 2-4 Matthew 28:1-10
I. 5 F - Fatal (Jesus did in deed die)
A. 6-7 John 19:32-37 The soldiers therefore came and broke the legs of the first man who had been crucified with Jesus, and then those of the other. But when they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water. The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe. These things happened so that the scripture would be fulfilled: “Not one of his bones will be broken,” and, as another scripture says, “They will look on the one they have pierced.”
B. Swoon theory doesn’t hold up
1. Dr. Alexander Metherell - “after suffering that horrible abuse, with all the catastrophic blood loss and trauma, he would have looked so pitiful that His disciples would never have hailed Him as a victorious conqueror of death; they would have felt sorry for Him and tried to nurse Him back to health.”
2. Blood and Water – the heart is surrounded by a sac of water, called a pericardium. The water came from Christ’s pierced pericardium; the blood came from His pierced heart.
3. If drugged – asphyxiation would prevail.
C. He gave up His Spirit – that can only be done by the author of life.
TS] F = Fatal (Jesus did in fact die on the cross)
II. 8 E = Empty Tomb
A. Liberal and conservative New Testament scholars alike agree that the body of Jesus was buried in the private tomb of Joseph of Arimathea.
1. If invented the writer would not have used a member of the Sanhedrin who voted to condemn Jesus to death.
B. Women found the empty tomb first and reported it.
1. If you were making all this up you wouldn’t use women in their day and time. Women couldn’t even be a witness in court.
2. By the way, if you were trying to convince people to follow Jesus you wouldn’t include how He ministered to women and had women traveling with Him. (the writers wrote what was true – not what they thought would be accepted.)
C. If not true why didn’t the authorities produce His body and drag it through the streets?
TS] F = Fatal; E = Empty tomb;
III. 9 A – Appearances
A. Eye-witnesses still existed during the time of writing the NT.
1. 10 Acts 4:16 “What are we going to do with these men?” they asked. “Everybody living in Jerusalem knows they have done an outstanding miracle, and we cannot deny it.
B. 11 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles,
1. This is a “creed” or “saying” that dates to within 3 to 8 years of the crucifixion itself.
2. This is the ‘earliest tradition of all”
C. Eye Witness Illustrations:
1. My Eagle – “I was alone”
2. Joke – The preacher who claimed he was sick on a beautiful spring Sunday and went to play golf – First hole (par 4) hole in one – Angel, “God, I don’t understand – how could you allow such a thing after what he’s done?” – “…Who can he tell?”
TS] F = Fatal; E = Empty Tomb; A = Appearances;
IV. 12 T – Transformation
A. In the span of a few hundred years, a small band of seemingly insignificant believers succeeded in turning an entire empire upside down.
B. Apostles paid the ultimate price – rarely will someone die for what they know is a lie) What did these disciples gain?
1. Peter – Afraid to be known as a disciple to a lion of the faith and suffered a martyr’s death. (crucified upside down)
2. James – Brother of Jesus who didn’t believe, but after seeing the resurrected Christ would call himself a bondservant of the Lord Jesus Christ. (also martyred)
3. Paul – after seeing the resurrected Christ went from persecutor of the church to proclaimer of the gospel of Jesus.
4. Within weeks of the resurrection, not just one, but an entire community of at least ten thousand Jews were willing to give up the very sociological and theological traditions that had given them their national identity.
C. People don’t give their life for a known lie.
TS] F = Fatal; E = Empty Tomb; A = Appearances; T = Transformation
Question: What does it matter?
13-14 1 Corinthians 15:12-19 But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 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. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 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. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.
15 There is so much more to life than this life – We have a risen Lord