Video Transcript: Resurrection Skeptics

Now, why do I mention Robert funk? He sounds like just another grumpy unbeliever. But Funks career was as an influential Bible scholar. Funk was chairman of the Vanderbilt Religion Department. He was president of the Society of biblical literature, the main guild for the study of the Bible in the world. He was the founder and director of scholars press and prestigious publishing house, and he was founder of the Jesus Seminar, a group that claimed to have the most expertise on what Jesus really said and did. 

So here is one of the foremost experts in the world. On the academic study of the Bible, head of a religion department, founder of a publishing house director and founder of the Jesus Seminar, who did not believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And that's not the only thing Robert Funk didn't believe in. Funk said, basically, there is no personal God, no creation and no fall into sin. 

There is not a personal God out there external to human beings and the material world. He also said, the demise of a geocentric universe took the doctrine of special creation with it. So when you stopped believing in the earth as the center of the universe, you had to stop believing in God as the Creator. In logic, that's called non sequitur. It just doesn't follow. But that's what he says. 

Death is not a punishment for sin, but is entirely natural. He also denies miracles in prayer, the notion that God interferes with the order of nature, from time to time, in order to aid or to punish is no longer credible, in spite of the fact that most people still believe that miracles are an affront to the justice and integrity of God, however, understood, so he doesn't just say miracles don't happen. He says, You have a really bad notion of God and of justice. If you do believe in miracles. 

Prayer is meaningless when understood as requests addressed to an external God for favor or forgiveness, and meaningless if God doesn't interfere with the laws of nature. So if God is somebody outside you that's meaningless. If God doesn't interfere with the laws of nature, there is no such thing prayersal. So he totally denies prayer. Oh, and Jesus needs to be demoted. We should give Jesus a demotion. It is no longer credible to think of Jesus as divine. Jesus thought he was but Robert Funk thinks it's no longer credible to think of Jesus as divine. A Jesus drops down out of heaven performs some magical act that frees human beings from the power of sin rises from the dead and returns to Heaven is simply no longer credible. 

The notion that he will return at the end of time and sit in cosmic judgment is equally incredible. Oh, no virgin birth, no atonement, the virgin birth of Jesus is an insult to modern intelligence and shouldn't be abandoned. In addition, it is a pernicious doctrine that denigrates women, so he not only rejects the virgin birth, he calls it a pernicious doctrine. I don't know how it denigrates women exactly what he seems to think it does. The doctrine of the Atonement the claim that God killed his own son in order to satisfy his thirst for satisfaction is sub rational, and sub ethical. 

This monstrous doctrine is the stepchild of a primitive, sacrificial system. And Jesus didn't rise from the dead except perhaps in some metaphorical sense. The meaning of the resurrection is that a few of his followers probably no more than two or three, finally came to understand what he was all about. When the significance of his words and deeds dawned on them. 

They knew of no other terms in which to express their amazement than to claim that they had seen him alive. Yeah, that's what people do all the time, isn't it? When it dawns on them that somebody had a great idea they claim they're alive? Never happens, except evidently he thinks that's the best theory to explain why people thought Jesus was alive. The expectation that Jesus will return and sit in cosmic judgment is part and parcel of the mythological worldview that is now defunct. 

Furthermore, it undergirds human lust for the punishment of enemies and evildoers and the corresponding hope for rewards for the pious and righteous, all apocalyptic elements should be expunged from the Christian agenda. So again, not only does he not believe these Christian teachings, he thinks they're bad and yet Um, he's a great Bible scholar and was highly revered as a Bible scholar. He says the New Testament is a highly uneven and biased record of Orthodox attempts to invent Christianity. 

The Canon should be a collection of scriptures without a fixed text, and without either inside or outside limits, like the myth of King Arthur, and the Knights of the Round Table or the myth of the American West. So there is no set list of books that ought to be considered to be biblical revelation. Now, I've gone into all this detail about this person, because of his importance. He died a couple of years ago. But his central claim that Jesus did not rise from the dead. And all of these other claims are made by somebody who was one of the foremost academic Bible scholars in the world. And you need to understand this about much of prestigious so called academic scholarship on the Bible today, it is conducted by utter absolute unbelievers and enemies of the Christian faith. 

And not only is this true of some of the academicians studying theology and the Bible, it is also true of some who are the heads of churches, I'll just take a local example, Chicago, United Methodist Bishop, Joseph Sprog had this to say, God is not a supreme being out there in the beyond rather, the word God is the sound image we humans employ to point to the very essence of it all. Oh, Be still my beating heart wasn't that nice? God's not personally, just the essence of it all. And as the essence of it all, God infuses everything with the Jesus power, the Christ essence, which drives creations evolution. Okay, whatever. And what does he say? Jesus simply did not preach, teach or describe himself as the Apostle John suggests, Well, isn't that nice? 

The apostle John was Jesus's closest friend who sat next to Jesus and leaned on him at the Last Supper. And somehow the unbelieving Bishop of Chicago knows Jesus better than Jesus best friend. It would be ridiculous and hilarious if it weren't so pathetic and damaging. Jesus did not possess transhuman supernatural powers. Well, one thing I can tell you for sure, a man who does not believe in Jesus, supernatural power has never been touched by Jesus supernatural power. That's what it does prove that this man does not know Jesus, or his life transforming power. It doesn't tell us very much about Jesus himself. 

He says, I believe in the resurrection of Jesus, but I cannot believe that his resurrection involves the resuscitation of his physical body. What? Resurrection without resurrection, this is what people call an oxymoron. Word that makes absolutely no sense a resurrection that doesn't involve a physical body coming back to life. Resurrection is a physical body coming back to life. That's what's meant by the word resurrection. 

The bishop claims that his approach is necessary for educated intelligent people to believe the gospel. But what educated person who knows language and logic will be drawn to such tangled teaching, who can make sense of let alone believe nonsense, such as a resurrection where the body isn't raised, or creations evolution, or a God who isn't a personal God? Part of Bishop Sprague’s problem is that he can't seem to think clearly or speak plainly. The other part of his problem is that he what he does manage to communicate is heresy. 

Some preachers and scholars say that we shouldn't believe in the resurrection as physical fact, but only as a spiritual change and outlook. They say that the resurrection is really about how faith rose in the hearts of Jesus disciples, not about how the body of Jesus rose from the dead. But that's nonsense. Faith did not rise in the disciples until they saw and touched the risen Jesus and shared food with him. It was the physical fact of Jesus's resurrection that produced their spiritual faith. But there are faceless leaders today who won't face physical facts, they won't believe the bodily resurrection of Jesus. They say it's too simple and too shallow to believe that the physical body of Jesus came back to life and is alive right now.

They say that their view of resurrection as a spiritual ideal is much deeper than the belief that Jesus body was physically raised to life. Well, their view is deeper. Of course, it's deeper because a grave is deeper than a throne. But let's not be so deep. Jesus body isn't deep in a grave, he's high on a throne. The church's worst enemies are not atheists or members of other religions, the church's worst enemies come from within. And they use positions of leadership to distort and destroy the truth of Christ, they deny the Bible, they deny the real God, they deny the real Jesus, they deny the bodily resurrection of Jesus, they deny our bodily resurrection. 

But resurrection is as real as eyebrows and toenails. Resurrection is as real as chin and elbows, nose and ears as real as mouth and stomach skin, hair, eyes cheekbones. Resurrection is not just a spiritual state of mind or a deep feeling of faith. Resurrection is a physical event and the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ is the very center of the Christian faith. I wish people like Robert funk and Joseph Sprog were unusual cases. But the truth is that various liberal preachers and professors on church payrolls in various denominations have been saying such things for well over 100 years. They often use Christian sounding words. But these double talkers given the words totally different meaning they don't believe the church's biblical teaching, but they still seek positions of power in the church.

People in the pews go on paying their salaries, often not knowing what their leaders are really saying in their books and in their seminary classes. Some defend false teachers by insisting on tolerance and absolute freedom of thought. But what is the head of a cancer prevention group urged people to smoke cigarettes? Would he be allowed to stay in this position for the sake of freedom of thought and freedom of speech? No, he'd be effective as an advertiser for a tobacco company, but not as the head of a cancer prevention group. 

Likewise, if a church leader wants to deny the bodily resurrection of Jesus, he's not fit to lead Christians whose entire faith depends on the risen Lord Jesus, such a leader fits better in the company of anti-Christ makes about as much sense for a church to have a leader who openly denies the bodily resurrection of Jesus, as it makes for a church to have a known child molester, taking care of the church's children. 

The Bible speaks of faceless leaders as savage wolves, who distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. Bible scholars and Bishops and pastors who deny the bodily resurrection are wicked wolves who are doing the devil's work, the church stands or falls, with the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Now, these skeptics who are with us today aren't the first resurrection resurrection skeptics that have ever existed. 

Back in Jesus day, there was a group called the Sadducees, who were skeptical about resurrection and about a lot of other things as well. The Sadducees controlled the office of high priest, and they were a majority of the Jewish ruling council, that was called the Sanhedrin. And the Sadducees got rich on Temple commerce, on the buying and selling of animals on the exchange of money at the temple. And they maintain their control in the religious system by cooperating with Roman rulers. 

Now, the Sadducees, according to the Bible, say there is no resurrection, nor Angel nor spirit. So they didn't believe in the spirit world, and they didn't believe in the resurrection of the body. The historian Josephus said, the doctrine of the Sadducees is this soul die with bodies. So the soul is dead, and the body is dead. And that's that, according to the Sadducees, the Sadducees, rejected all of the Old Testament scriptures, except as some of them still did accept the Five Books of Moses. 

So those were the Sadducees skeptics. They didn't believe in most of the Old Testament, and they did not accept a spirit world after death, and they did not accept the resurrection of the body. The Sadducees came to Jesus, and they had a trick question for him. That same day, Sadducees came to Jesus who say there's no resurrection and they asked Jesus a question saying, Teacher, Moses said, If a man dies, having no children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. 

Now, there were seven brothers among us the first married and died and having no children left, his wife was brother. So to the second and third down to the seventh, after the mall. The woman died in the resurrection, therefore, up to seven, whose wife will she be? For they all had her. Oh, gotcha, Jesus. This is just proof that resurrection is a really stupid thing to believe in. Because if somebody had seven husbands one after another on Earth, who she's going to be married to, in some resurrection, poor Jesus, there's no way he's gonna be able to deal with this kind of question. 

But Jesus answered them, you are wrong, because you know, neither the scriptures, nor the power of God, for the resurrection, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was sent to you by God, I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. And when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at his teaching.

So these know it all saddest, the experts who denied the resurrection that off more than they can chew, when they tried to trap Jesus Christ and fool him. Jesus refuted these resurrection skeptics, and let's just look at a little detail how we did that. First of all, he unmasked their assumptions, things they just assumed to be true young masks their presuppositions, and he shows them to be blinded by bias by their own prejudices. They're not interested in the facts. They've got their own biases. And then Jesus crushes their trick question by showing it to be a dumb question, in light of heavenly reality. And thirdly, Jesus shows that the Scriptures, the Old Testament Scriptures reveal resurrection. And not only in the books that were written after Moses, but even in Moses own writings, which the Sadducees claimed to have accepted. Oh, and one more thing Jesus did to refute the resurrection skeptics, he rose from the dead. So let's look at each of those in a little more detail. 

First of all, Jesus unmasks their presuppositions. He says to the Sadducees, who deny the resurrection, He says, You are wrong, because you know, neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. First bad presupposition is rationalism. The notion that human reasoning and human thought is final and that God's entire word is not the final standard of truth. A second bad presupposition, naturalism, God's power is not active as the reigning reality. Jesus says, You don't know the Scriptures, you're a bunch of rationalists and you don't know God's power. You're a bunch of naturalists, you don't take God's power as the ultimate force at work in the world. And Jesus Himself knows God's word as ultimate truth. 

And Jesus knows God's power as ultimate reality. And so he just says right up front, you don't want to know why you're wrong. Because you don't know the Scriptures, and you don't know God's power. You don't know God's word, and you don't know his might to work in the world. Faith has its own presuppositions. First presupposition is not rationalism, but that God's entire word is the final standard of truth. And it all testifies to Jesus. Jesus said, The Scriptures bear witness about me. And then he told them, there is one who accuses you, Moses on whom you set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me. 

But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words, they didn't see that God's word is the final standard of truth, and they didn't see that it was pointing to Jesus, Faith presupposes that the Bible is true, and that it points to Jesus, a second presupposition of faith, a second working assumption, God's power is the reigning ultimate reality and it is present through Jesus. Jesus Himself said, if it is by the Spirit of God, that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. God's power, his reign, his kingdom authority, was among them in the person of Jesus. 

And Scripture speaks of God in whom Abraham believed who gives life to the dead, and calls into existence the things that do not exist. When you're a naturalist. You think that everything depends on what came before it and what you can observe. When you live by faith, you realize that God can give life to the dead, and that something that doesn't exist at all God can create ex-niello from nothing, and you will almost always find that those who deny God's power to create from nothing, who deny God's power in the original creation of the world are also the very same people who are constantly raising doubts or flatly denying the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ because they don't share that faith, people's presupposition that God's power is ultimate, and that God can use it in whatever way he pleases. 

The resurrection power of God was displayed in Jesus. Jesus went to Jairus, his daughter, he took her by the hand, and the girl arose, he gave her life again, he was doing this, and it was done with the knowledge and, and the Word was told to the Sadducees and others who didn't believe in resurrection. Jesus said to a young man, young man, I say to you arise, and the dead man sat up and began to speak. And Jesus gave him to his mother, the widow of man. And Jesus, when He raised Lazarus, just before that, he said, I am the resurrection and the life. 

And then he called out in a loud voice, Lazarus come out, and the man who had died came out now, Jesus would display in his ability to bring dead people back to life again. But the enemies of the resurrection wouldn't accept that, after the resurrection of Lazarus, the chief priests who were Sadducees, and the Pharisees gathered the council, the Sanhedrin, and said, What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him. And the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation. 

And from that day on, they made plans to put him to death. They were enemies of resurrection, they recognize he was doing Astounding Science, and they didn't want them to mess up their cozy little arrangement. And so they wanted to kill Jesus. And the chief priests made plans to put Lazarus to death as well. Because on account of him, many of the Jews were going away and believing in Jesus. Well, yeah, you can, you can imagine why they would want to believe in Jesus, when they had seen him raised Lazarus from the dead, but the enemies of Christ wanted to kill Jesus, and they wanted to kill Lazarus, I want you to notice this. 

It's not just that they didn't believe in resurrection, or that they couldn't believe in resurrection. They hated resurrection, they want to destroy the one who did the raising, as well as the one who was raised by him Lazarus, they wanted to kill both Jesus and Lazarus, they were enemies of resurrection. And when you're an enemy, you're blinded. The Sadducees had these wrong presuppositions. 

They didn't know the Scriptures, they didn't know the power of God, worldly bias, their desire to hang on to their income and their money and their position and not to offend the Romans. It all blinded them to God's ruling resurrecting power in Jesus, they were too busy covering their own tails, and lining their own pockets, and worldly by us, blinded them to Jesus words into Jesus actions as signs that he was the Savior, and that he was God, as foretold in the Old Testament scriptures, but they have this bias, where they ignored most of the Old Testament Scriptures, and they had this strong bias against Jesus Himself. 

And they couldn't see the reality of God, when he was standing right in front of their notes. They had a blind bias rooted in their worldliness and their greed and their prejudice that made them prefer murder, to resurrection. And even after Jesus rose from the dead, and the guards came and told about the earthquake, and how they had been flattened, and how they found the stone gone, and the tomb empty. After that they paid people to lie about what happened because they were just going to go on to the bitter end, opposing Jesus. the Jesus Seminar, headed by Robert Funk and others has its own set of presuppositions.

 And it too is blinded by bias. One of their presuppositions is that skeptical professionals know best. You can't take seriously people who believe something on faith. If we start with unbelief, and just disbelieve everything the Christian Faith says about Jesus, and then go rummaging around in the Bible, we're going to be the experts on what the best way to understand the Bible is. Oh, by the way, no prophecy is possible. It just can't be. Nobody could know the future and tell what's coming in the future. 

That is an assumption of the Jesus Seminar. So all the prophecies of the Old Testament that Jesus fulfilled the Jesus Seminar just as well, anything in the New Testament that fulfills a statement about the Old Testament, just as not true. They assume that prophecy is impossible. And then they rummage through the Bible and cut out everything. That is a fulfilled prophecy. No miracle is possible. And so they don't ask whether a miracle has happened. They know it didn't happen. And they go through the whole New Testament and say, Yeah, this isn't didn't happen. This didn't happen. This didn't happen. 

This didn't happen because it's a miracle and we know that miracles don't happen. Rob Funk row gospels are assumed to be narratives in which the memory of Jesus is embellished by mythic elements. Okay? We just assumed that if it talks about miracles, if it talks about Jesus speaking of himself as God, we assume that that's a mythic element where people were embellishing their memories of Jesus, co-founder of the Jesus Seminar, John Dominic Crossan thinks that Jesus body was buried in a shallow grave and was eaten by wild dogs, at some point between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, he has not one shred of manuscript evidence for that. 

There was nothing even in the record of Jesus enemies where they claim that dogs came and ate the body. And yet he's got this theory, and he says that it's rational, because he thinks so and hey, the guy's got a PhD. He's gotta be right. Well, I got a PhD too. And I can be wrong about a lot of stuff. PhD doesn't make you an all knowing authority. And there are a lot of people with high degrees, who have the wrong presuppositions who simply don't believe the prophecy is possible who don't believe that miracles are possible who think that skepticism ought to reign in the way we approach the Bible. And so they stuffed their ears and blind our eyes to what the Bible is really saying.

CS Lewis wrote an essay about modern theology and biblical criticism. And he said, the undermining of the old orthodoxy has been mainly the work of divines in that is scholars engaged in New Testament criticism. Notice what he's saying. He's saying, it's not the anti-Christian philosophers. It's not necessarily anti-Christian biologists with various theories. It is Bible scholars in New Testament criticism who have done more than anybody else, to online undermine the old orthodoxy of the Christian faith. And Lewis goes on to comment about some of these scholars. He says, these men asked me to believe that they can read between the lines of the old texts, the evidence is there obvious inability to read in any sense worth discussing the lines themselves, they claim to see Fern seed, little teeny tiny stuff, and they can't see an elephant 10 yards away in broad daylight. 

That's what CS Lewis thought of these experts. They claimed to be able to read between the lines, and they couldn't read the lines, they couldn't hear what the Bible was saying. And then he goes on to say, of these scholars living 2000 years after the original witnesses, he says, the idea that any man or writer should be opaque to those who lived in the same culture, because many of the scholars say that, that Peter, and John, and Mark and others misunderstood what Jesus was saying, and who he really was, Jesus was opaque to these people who lived in the same culture spoke the same language shared the same habitual imagery words, you know, figures of speech, and so on, and unconscious assumptions. 

They are part of his of his whole culture, they knew and they listened to him, and they don't know anything of Jesus. And yet, these scholars, it's transparent to those who have none of these advantages. And Lewis says, the notion that these people live in 20 years, or 20, centuries later, in an entirely different culture, with an entirely different mindset, wouldn't be able to reconstruct Jesus in a better sense than those who knew him originally, and spoke his language and doing well. It's just preposterous. And at some point, you know, I don't spend too much time when I'm teaching theology, getting into the theology of the unbelievers. I'm doing it in this one lecture, just so that forewarned is forearmed. It's out there. You need to know that this whole discipline of biblical criticism of New Testament studies is just shot through with liars and unbelievers. 

There is no other way to say it. They are unbelievers, they don't believe any of the cardinal doctrines of the faith, and they are liars. They are speaking falsehood about who Jesus was, and who Jesus is. And we need to be aware of that. When Jesus was dealing with the Sadducees, who are resurrection skeptics, the first thing he did was he unmasked their presuppositions. He showed them to be blinded by bias. And we need to do the same thing. 

When we run into somebody with their PhDs and in all their credentials, and they come to us saying that Jesus didn't rise that God isn't personal, that God doesn't answer the prayer and on and on with their long list. You just say, you are wrong, because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. That's the only thing you need to know. That's the only thing you need to say to them You are wrong, because you do not know the Scriptures and you do not know the power of God. Second thing Jesus did in dealing with those resurrection skeptics was he crushed their trick question, my show it was really a dumb question. In light of heavenly Reality if you knew what happened was like, then you'd know their question was a dumb one. And Jesus says in the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven. 

The Sadducees had this brain Buster, this question, they were sure would stump anybody who believed in the resurrection, about who have the seven husbands would she be married to in heaven, and Jesus says, in heaven, they don't have marriage anymore. We're in in that sense where like the angels, and by the way, angels are real. You notice Jesus has that little knife in there as well. He says, you don't believe in angels? Well, they're real. And when we get to heaven, there's one sense in which we're like angels. We're not married anymore. And resurrected people are going to be unmarried. 

So your whole question is a stupid one. Jesus said, in another context, no one has ascended into heaven, except He who descended from heaven, the Son of Man, Jesus has been there. Okay, Jesus, came down from heaven to be with us. He knows a little about heaven. If you're going to try to stump Jesus about heaven, you have a little problem. He knows heaven firsthand, and you don't have a clue. 

And so Jesus shows in light of heavenly reality, that their question is just a dumb one. And then the next thing he does is he goes to the Scriptures, And He shows that the Scriptures reveal resurrection. And not just in the books after Moses, although there's tons about resurrection in those books. But even in the writings of Moses himself, let's just look at a few of the Scriptures that Jesus didn't refer to for a moment. Because still today there are some scholars who are a little like the Sadducees. 

And who say that Old Testament Scriptures didn't really reveal resurrection anyway. What does it say? Well, here's a story from the life of Elijah, the prophet, the Lord, listen to the voice of Elijah. And the life of the child came into him again, and he revived. Here's a little kid who died. And Elijah prayed for him. And God brought the child back to life again, Elijah, another prophet. When he came into the house, he saw the child lying down on his bed, and after his prayer, and after breathing with the child, the child sneeze seven times, and the child opened his eyes. 

So you have another dead child coming back to life. A man was thrown into the grave of Elijah, after Elijah had been buried, he was thrown into that grave, because during the funeral procession, there have been some robbers and, and killers who had attacks the funeral possession so they quickly through the body into the nearest grave, and it happened to be that of Elijah. And as soon as the man touched the bones of Elijah, he revived and stood on his feet. So there's here are three clear cases in the Old Testament of people who actually came back to life again. Oh, that's just for starters. 

Now, here's some other statements about a final resurrection. Job said if a man dies, shall he live again, I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth, and after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh, I shall see God. So even if his body and his skin are wiped out, he's going to be in the flesh and seeing God again. 

Psalm 16 says, for you will not abandon my soul to she'll or let your Holy One see corruption. You have made known to me the path of life, in your presence, there is fullness of joy, at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. This was prophetic of Jesus himself, and also those who would belong to Jesus, that they would not just be abandoned to decay, but that God would resurrect them again. 

On the cross, Jesus was echoing Psalm 22, when he said, My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? They've pierced my hands and feet. But he doesn't stop there. Psalm 22 goes on to say, I will tell him your name to my brothers, all the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord. So this one who suffers and his pierced will yet be alive and people will turn to him. 

Shall I ransom them from the power of shield says God and the prophet Hosea, shall I redeem them from death? Oh, death, where are your plagues? Oh, she'll, where is your sting? And that's quoted in the New Testament in 1 Corinthians 15. reference to the resurrection of Christ and our resurrection. Isaiah the prophet said, your dead shall live, their bodies shall arise. You dwell in the dust awake and sing for joy, for your do, is a do of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead. 

The property Ezekiel has a vision of a valley of dry bones coming to life and then God says, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, and you shall know that I am the Lord. When I open your graves and raise you from your graves. Oh my people. The prophet Daniel wrote, and many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above, and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever, I've given you a sample of Old Testament passages about resurrection, I want you to notice, there are scholars say, it was not part of the Hebrew expectation that there would be a resurrection in those times. 

And it only during the intertestamental period, or during the time of Jesus, that people start taking the idea of resurrection seriously, says, Can't you read? All these passages are right there. And if those passages aren't enough to persuade, what will and so all of these passages are there in the Old Testament and, and scholars who claimed the Old Testament didn't speak of resurrection simply need to try learning to read again. At any rate, all of these passages were there, but they were in books of the Bible that the Sadducees didn't recognize or accept as scripture. So in arguing with the Sadducees, Jesus didn't even talk about these Old Testament passages I've just been mentioning, he just went straight to Moses, which they took seriously. And Jesus says, Even Moses show this, but that the data raised even Moses showed in the passage about the bush, the burning bush, where he calls the Lord, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now, he's not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him. 

By the way, Jesus, just shortly before this conversation, I just been talking with Moses and Elijah, on the mountain of transfiguration. So he knows very well that Moses was alive, that Elijah was alive, that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were alive. He knew that Elijah was alive in his body, which was transformed and went straight to heaven, and that Moses and the others were alive and in their spirit, and that they were awaiting the resurrection of the body, as well. So even Moses show this and Jesus said, He's the God of the living, not of the dead. But Jesus also said something else and another time, he said, if they don't hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced, if someone should rise from the dead, the Sadducees claimed to believe Moses, but they really missed the point of what Moses said. And they wouldn't believe even when Jesus Christ Himself came out of his grave and lived again, they would still not believe in Him, they would not believe in Him when He raised others from the dead. And so Jesus has shown these skeptics how false their ideas are, he unmasked their presuppositions and crushed their trick question. 

He showed them from that little bit of Scripture, they did accept that God is the God of the living. And then finally, he did one more thing, he rose from the dead himself, to finally and decisively refute all resurrection skeptics. The church, Father Jerome, must have dealt with a few people even back in his day who wanted to make the resurrection metaphorical or a figure of speech. And Jerome said, as Jesus showed them, real hands and the real side, so he really ate with His disciples. He talked with men with a real tongue. With real hands, he took bread, blessed and broke it and was offering it to them. Do not put the power of the Lord on a level with the tricks and magicians so that he may appear to have been what he was not, and maybe sought to have eaten without teeth, walked without feet, broken bread without hands, spoken without a tongue and showed a side which had no ribs.

So Jerome knew Balderdash, you know, centuries and centuries ago, and still today, there are those who would say, Oh, it's just so unspiritual to speak of a risen Jesus who had ribs and spoke with a real tongue. Well get used to it. We need to face facts. And the fact is, when we've heard all the nonsense that's offered by resurrection skeptics, here are the facts. 

First of all, Jesus tomb was empty. His enemies were unable to produce the body, and they certainly would have if they could have those Sadducees, those chief priests, they wanted to deny Jesus so badly, and they would have loved to produce his body. They had guards around that tomb to guard that body. And they failed miserably to keep Jesus dead. And even after it was all over, they had to come up with a story and then bribe the guards to make up a big tale about the disciples coming in stealing the body. 

Yeah, right. How do they know that anybody came and stole the body? They claim they were sleeping. How do you know somebody was stealing something while you were sleeping? Did you see through your eyelids? The fact of the matter is they were guarding that tomb and earthquake came and Angel flattened them and they faint dead away. And they really didn't believe that anybody would accept their story and so they were willing to take Money to say anything. Eyewitnesses said they saw Jesus alive more than 500. In all, we read in the Gospel accounts of several of Jesus, closest followers among the women coming to the tomb and finding the tomb empty and then meeting Jesus is alive. 

And if Peter, and John and the other apostles, and Thomas the last of the 12 apostles have been the most skeptical to meeting Jesus alive, and then Jesus appearing to others in First Corinthians 15 mentions that I want occasion, Jesus appeared to more than 500 of them gathered on one occasion. And Paul adds this little detail, most of whom are still alive. There were more than 500 people who saw Jesus claimed to have seen him and who were still living, and would say that they had seen Jesus, and you could check it out with them. By the way, these same eyewitnesses were suffering persecution and death, they were dying, rather than change their story, you could torture these people. And they would go to their graves saying they had seen Jesus alive. Paul had his head cut off, Peter was crucified upside down. 

The other apostles were murdered, and only John escaped being murdered for his fate. And he was put into exile for his faith for many long years. And they would not change their story because they knew what they had seen. They knew whom they had seen. And they knew that Jesus Christ had come back to life, that he had appeared to them, that they had eaten with them, that they had touched him, and that they had ascended bodily into heaven. And ever since then, millions of people have experienced the same power that raised Jesus from the dead. We know God's Word. We know God's power, the Sadducees didn't Jesus told them you're wrong, because you don't know God's Word or God's power. And when you meet a resurrection skeptic, that's basically the only thing you can do is say, well, that person doesn't know God's word. 

That person doesn't know God's power, I'll pray that God will touch them with his life and power. But I don't need to be intimidated by them. They talk about this and that and the other thing, but they do not know what they are talking about, because they have never heard God's word speak into their life, they have never felt God's hand of power upon them. They have never sensed God's Holy Spirit stirring in them. They have never met the risen Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. And so they are unable to face the facts. They're just bias against the facts. But if you're willing to consider the facts, then consider these facts. The tomb was empty. There were hundreds of eyewitnesses. And these eyewitnesses prefer to be killed, rather than deny that they had seen Jesus alive. And ever since then. 

The Risen Lord Jesus Christ has come to many, many people by the power of his Spirit, and people have known that it was God's voice speaking to them. And in light of all that we've been saying about resurrection, skepticism and about facing the facts. What are some things that will help us to stay more in tune with these realities in this life, one is just Bible reading. Read the Bible, and keep reading it. Because the Bible is God's word. Immerse yourself in the Bible's way of thinking. 

Robert Funk, in one sense, was a Bible scholar who read the Bible for his whole scholarly career, but he did not immerse himself in the thought patterns of the Bible, the patterns of atonement and payment for sins, the patterns of God's creation, and God's revelation, he studied it, he knew it better than most people would in its original languages in one sense, but he denied everything in it. And so he never benefited from it, but many other people miss out and don't have biblical presuppositions because they don't read the Bible in the first place.

If you do know the Lord, the best way to fortify yourself against the claims of the unbeliever is to just have your mind saturated by the truth and reality of God. And then be a person of prayer. You depend on God's power. Remember the Sadducees they were an error because they didn't know the Scriptures are the power of God. So if you want to be the opposite of that, know the Scriptures and know the power of God. And the way you know God's power is by depending on it, constantly in prayer. So a life of Bible reading and prayer is going to make you more and more a believer in resurrection, and less and less a skeptic of resurrection. And then faith believes the resurrection facts now it's not just a dive into the dark based on no evidence whatsoever. I've already explained the empty tomb, the eyewitnesses, the eyewitnesses who had held to their story, even to the point of death, and the tremendous unexplainable transformation of millions of people by faith in Jesus Christ. 

So believe these facts and trust the living Lord as the guarantee to have your own resurrection, don't just believe in Jesus based on some of the facts I've presented, but seek and really relate to the living Lord, and then know that you're going to be resurrected to when you put your faith in Him. And finally, keep your focus. Remember what happened to the Pharisees and the Sadducees. In particular, the Sadducees wanted to guard their wallet. They wanted that temple business to keep producing more money for them. They saw Jesus as a problem, and they wanted to get rid of him. A good many of our churches today might have a real problem if the real Jesus showed up. 

We need to keep our focus on the real Jesus and focusing on the resurrection, He promises us and not just on our worldly status, to fix our hearts on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Because the thing that makes a person resurrection skeptic, above all is bias. And that bias is unfocused. And I don't want to be too rude or second guessed too harshly, but let's be honest about this. Many of the unbelieving pastors continue to be pastors, because there's a paycheck in it for them. Some of these scholars have spent too many years in school acquiring their degrees and accumulating debt, and they can't afford to go get a real job. 

They have to keep teaching in a seminary or graduate school. And so they teach their lies, but they still want to keep that paycheck coming. And they are totally biased against the truth of the Christian faith and the reality of Jesus, because their focus is on how am I going to pay the bills next month, not on Jesus lives, and I'm going to live to and I'm going to be in Heaven with Him forever. So again, part of it is intellectual part of it is spiritual part of it is just living the resurrection, immerse yourself in the Bible, relate to God and prayer puts your faith in Jesus resurrection, and in your resurrection. And then keep your focus on Jesus Christ and on His resurrection life and not just on what will get you ahead and make you more comfortable. 

For the next little bit of time you spend in the world may God preserve his church and protect us from the lies of the resurrection skeptics. May we always be people who say I believe in the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. I believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, ascended to heaven and is coming again. May that faith always fill us with His joy and his truth.