Month: December 2010

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! Tonight, we’re going to be continuing our look at the doctrine of the resurrection based on 1 Corinthians 15. I’m only hitting what I consider to be the most important parts. A more exhaustive look can be found in the works of N.T. Wright and Mike Licona and I encourage the reader to read those anyway.

Time for a thought experiment. What if Jesus did not rise? What if you’ve lived your whole life as a Christian and then receive undeniable proof that Jesus did not rise? How would you respond? Would you choose to be a Christian anyway? If you didn’t, would you say it had been worthwhile anyway as you lived a good life?

Paul will have none of that. Look at what he says in verses 17-19.

17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

For Paul, this is the clincher. If Christ is not risen, there is no hope. If Christianity is a myth, I would tell you to abandon it. (To any atheists reading this, I know about your billboards and if you want to convince me it’s a myth, I need this little thing called evidence.) If Christ has not been raised, don’t be a Christian.

Why? To be a Christian is to identify yourself with Christ. Think of what that means at the start. The first century man was told to consider this man who was on the cross and was put to death by the Romans for claiming to be a king and by the Jews for a charge of blasphemy. By making him your savior, you are in essence saying your identity will be found in that man.

So you want to be identified with someone accused of rebellion against Caesar and of blasphemy in the first century?

The reason you would do so is that you believed God raised him from the dead and his resurrection was a vindication of his claim. It was God putting the stamp of approval on what Jesus said and did. In doing such, he overturned the same of the cross and brought redemption for all.

However, if he has not risen, there is no forgiveness and we are indeed deluded. We are in that case spending our lives identifying ourselves with a dead criminal. The pagans would not even want to do that! If that is the case, then Christians ought to be pitied. People ought to feel sorry for them.

Fortunately, that’s not the case. The reality is that Christ is risen and we do have hope. Paul will not have any of this nonsense of “It doesn’t matter if he rose again. The faith helps you be a good person.” If he did not rise, then by all means find another route to salvation to get yourself righteous before God.

May we all take the resurrection as seriously as Paul did.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! Lately, we’ve been going through the topic of the resurrection. We’ve been covering key historical facts that are mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15 and tonight, we’re going to discuss the conversion of Paul.

This is one where the explanations for what happened to Paul on the Damascus road can be quite funny. For instance, Dan Barker has said that maybe Paul was struck by lightning. (You’d think some of those who were with him would have mentioned that and Paul would have asked why his hair was suddenly standing on end and his clothes smelled all crispy.)

Epilepsy is another common explanation, but Beauregard and O’Leary in “The Spiritual Brain” state that this is among the least likely explanations. The word for a thorn in the flesh refers to an irritation and not a serious problem. In fact, I would also add that this is given to Paul according to his testimony AFTER he had a vision of Heaven.

Another idea is that Paul had excessive guilt. This however is a modern idea. Internal guilt would not make sense to an ancient person. They understood shame to those who were their in-group, the ones they took their identity from. Paul would not have had that with the Sanhedrin. If anything, the texts we have indicate that Paul would have been quite respected among them.

What evidence do we have however that Paul genuinely was a Jew against Jesus and then he was a Jew for Jesus? We have his own testimony and that of Luke. Philippians 3 and Galatians 1 both give examples of the way Paul was before his conversion and throughout the epistles you can read about how he persecuted the church.

The explanation that Paul gives for his change is that he saw the risen Christ. As a result of that, he went off and spent some time alone before hitting the evangelistic road. I believe that it was at this time Paul was probably reading the Old Testament and seeking to understand it in light of what he had seen in Christ. If only more of us would do that! That includes myself! The early Christians had as their Bible the Old Testament only and I am sure most of them knew it better than most of us.

Let’s also be clear on something else. Paul was not an idiot. He was very well educated for his time and he would not have made Christianity his faith unless he was intellectually convinced of it. That he was willing to go against the Sanhedrin and effectively banish his heritage in light of Christ should tell us about the seriousness of his conversion. When we read 2 Corinthians 11, we see all the nice little “perks” he got from his new faith.

Thus, we have strong evidence that Paul was converted as a result of seeing the risen Christ and no evidence against it. In the light of the inadequacy of other theories to explain it that rely on modern ideas pushed onto an ancient culture or on speculation without evidence, why not go for what Paul himself says is the explanation? He really did see Jesus.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! Tonight, we’re going to be continuing our study of the resurrection and looking at the appearances. This is the second item that we are going to list as our historical bedrock.

When I speak of the appearances, I am speaking of the times that the disciples claimed to see the risen Christ. Now whether or not they saw the risen Christ is disputed of course, but there is little doubt that they experienced something that was to them an appearance of the risen Christ.

The creed in 1 Corinthians 15 lists appearances to Peter, James, the twelve, more than 500 at a time, and then Paul includes himself. We will be focusing more on Paul tomorrow. While I believe the same happened to James, that will not be included under historical bedrock.

Our evidence again is that the gospels, aside from Mark, speak of this event, as does the Acts of the Apostles, and this creed in 1 Corinthians 15. Various church fathers refer to the appearances too. This event is what enabled the apostles to go out and start claiming Christ was raised.

Of course, there are those who say that this was not an appearance of the risen Christ. A common theory that is given in response is that the apostles were hallucinating. Many of us have experienced these. When I was eight, I had eye surgery and for a time, I looked at my mother and couldn’t tell which one she was, because when I saw her, I saw two of her.

There are a number of problems with the apostles hallucinating however. While mine was medical, we have no reason to believe the apostles were on any mind-altering drugs or had medical surgery of some sort recently. Thus, if there was one, it would be for psychological reasons.

Psychology is tough enough when the patient is sitting right across from someone. It’s much harder when we start using psychology on ancient figures that we really have little information of. It’s not totally invalid, but theories should not be built upon psychological speculation.

To begin with, the disciples were not in the mindset to experience a hallucination of Jesus as risen. If they were grieving, any hallucination would have been of Jesus in Abraham’s Bosom. It would not be of Jesus being alive and well and appearing among them.

Second, this would not explain the group hallucinations. It would be difficult to find a valid example of such an event. Sometimes, groups of people can see something by being made prone to that. For instance, one person says he sees such and such and another person says the same and before too long, those in the back who can’t see as well think they see the same thing. An appearance to the twelve would not be like that. This is especially the case with one that would happen indoors such as in John 20.

Also, some might point to visions at Fatima. My thoughts on that matter is that I’m not ready to rule out a group appearance. Gary Habermas recommends keeping in mind the distinction between hallucinations and illusions as well. Illusions are misrepresentations of natural phenomena, like what a magician does. Hallucinations are all in the head with nothing outside of the person to figure into the hallucination.

Hallucinations cannot be shared. I could not go to sleep one night and be dreaming of Hawaii and wake up my wife and ask her to join me in the dream. One person would not hallucinate Jesus and then have the others join in. That would be an illusion instead of a hallucination.

Finally, hallucinations would not explain the empty tomb. If anyone had shown the body of Christ, the game would be over. There would be no basis for saying he was risen if the corpse was there. Do note the disciples never went for a spiritual resurrection. (We will look at material in 1 Corinthians 15 later) They went all the way the hard route with a physical resurrection.

Could it be they did that because what they claimed happened? The risen Christ did appear to them?