INFINITY NOW

When Was Jesus Born?

2011-12-13T22:17:00.003-05:00

June is identified as the month when sheep would be taken into agricultural fields to graze on stubble following the wheat harvest. Such fields were usually enclosed with a low stone wall that served as an extra-large sheepfold for warm summer nights. Shepherds would be on guard that none escaped and that no predators or thieves got in.

In cold months like late December the sheep were often kept in the fold at home in a cave beneath or adjacent to the owner’s house; there they fed on hay or grain stored by the owner for those lean months, and the sheep stayed warmer in the shelter of the home sheepfold. In the spring and fall they grazed in the wilderness, wherever the shepherd could find something growing wild. Assuming the accuracy of the biblical account, that the Bethlehem shepherds had taken their flocks into the agricultural fields to eat stubble (Luke 2:8), Jesus was more likely born after the wheat harvest on a balmy summer night in June than in cold, barren December.

Origin of Alexandria

There is in the written record before 200 AD no suggestion of possible dates for Jesus’ birth. Origen of Alexandria in the 2^nd century mocked Roman’s celebrations of birthdays as a thoroughly pagan practice suggesting that Christians for 200 years may have shied away from speculation about a birth anniversary for Jesus seeing it as a violation of their religious sensibilities.

Clement of Alexandria

Around 200 AD, however, in the earliest known writings that mention Jesus’ possible birthday, Clement of Alexandria mentions five dates. Adjusting to our modern calendar, Clement says that different Christian groups selected different dates, those being March 21, April 15, April 20, April 21, and May 20. He made no mention of December 25. (Clement, Stromateis 1.21.145.) Note that only May 20 is close to June, the time when shepherds would have been allowed to graze their sheep in the stubble of agricultural fields.

By the 4^th century two dates emerged and they are still celebrated worldwide today. Most Christian churches commemorate the birth of Jesus on December 25. Some groups, typically in the “east,” celebrate on January 6. (A few celebrate on January 7 or 19, depending on the calendars they use and how they calculate the date moving from one calendar to another.)

Sol Invictus

The most popular theory for December 25, touted by lay persons and scholars alike, is that Christians borrowed the timeframe, if not the date, of the popular pagan Saturnalia festival in late December. Paired with this “borrowing” is the Roman festival of the birth of Sol Invictus, The Unconquered Sun, on December 25. The problem with this theory, though it sounds oh-so convincing, is that no Christian writings from the time support it. It wasn’t until the 18^th and 19^th centuries that this theory caught on. But if this theory is wrong, why did the early church choose December 25?

Contrary to popular opinion, December 25 was not chosen because it was already a pagan holiday. It was chosen with a theological purpose in mind. Because Jesus’ date of crucifixion was established on March 25, the early church hypothesized that that same date marked the day of his conception by the Holy Spirit. Conceived on March 25 and crucified on March 25, conceived on the date on which he was destined to die, they added exactly 9 months to mark December 25 as his birthday. Most people don’t know that. This is more than a theory. It is attested to by Tertullian, Augustine, and several others.

Augustine of Hippo

“For he [Jesus] is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also he suffered; so the womb of the Virgin, in which he was conceived, where no one of mortals was begotten, corresponds to the new grave in which he was buried, wherein was never man laid, neither before him nor since. But he was born, according to tradition, upon December the 25th.” (Augustine, Sermon 202. Around 400 AD)

The “eastern” tradition of Jesus’ birth on January 6 was calculated the same way as December 25, but they began with April 6 as the date of both Jesus’ conception and crucifixion. They used the local Greek calendar month of Artemisios instead of the Hebrew calendar month of Nisan, thus the discrepancy between December 25 and January 6 that exists to this day.

I draw two conclusions from all of this:

1. No one knows Jesus’ birthday; and for the first 200 years of the existence of the church no one cared. June, not December, would have been the month that sheep were allowed into the fields, but even this detail from Luke was given not to pinpoint Jesus’ birthday, but to convey the story as it had been “. . . handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses . . .” (Luke 1:2). For most of the Christian world, that December 25 is not likely the actual birthday of Jesus is unimportant. Any day will do since we can’t know the real date.

2. There is profound meaning in the theological connection of Jesus’ conception and his crucifixion on the same date, March 25, exactly nine months before December 25. The day he was conceived in the womb was joined to the day he was laid in a tomb. The date on which Jesus “bowed his head and gave up his spirit” is paired with the date on which the Spirit of the “most high” overshadowed Mary and conceived Jesus within her. By pairing these two events on the same date, March 25, the early church saw the promise of his salvific death on the cross as present in his conception in the womb. They perceived the destiny of the man even as he was conceived. He was conceived to die for the sins of the world.

For a discussion of the year Jesus was born, see my blog “8 B.C.” For a look at the biblical circumstances of his birth—in contrast to Christmas pageants, cantatas, plays, and nativity scenes—see my blog “Are Kids' Christmas Plays Biblical?”

For more detailed reading, see Andrew McGowan’s article “How December 25 Became Christmas”: http://www.bib-arch.org/e-features/christmas.asp. You might also read the article on shepherding from the book “Jesus and His World” by Rousseau and Arav.

666

2011-11-05T22:35:00.018-04:00

Six hundred and sixty-six might be the most famous and misunderstood number ever written. For us to understand its true meaning, we need to explore the practice of gematria.

The letters of the alphabet in the ancient Hebrew and Greek are assigned numerical equivalents. The letters of a person’s name, for example, can be added up to yield a number. On a wall excavated in ancient Pompeii, a city frozen in time by the hot ash of Mt. Vesuvius’ deadly eruption in A.D. 79, a graffiti reads: “I love the girl whose name is phi mu epsilon (a sum of 545 in Greek).”

Jesus’ name has a numerical value in Greek gematria too:

Jesus = IhsouV = 10+8+200+70+400+200 = 888

The Greek letters of Caesar Nero (Neron Kaiser) when transliterated in Hebrew letters adds up to 666.

666 = Nun + Resh + Vav + Nun + Kuf + Samekh + Resh

50 200 6 50 100 60 200

All of the excellent commentaries that I’ve read on Revelation agree. Multiple possibilities for 666 are explored, but they all lean toward the “Nero Caesar” interpretation as the best. But Nero was long dead when John wrote his apocalypse. That’s where Revelation 13:3 comes in.

Revelation 13:3 One of its heads seemed to have received a death-blow, but its mortal woundhad been healed. In amazement the whole earth followed the beast.

Nero (pictured) was a persecutor of Jews and Christians. He committed suicide in A.D. 68. The Emperor Domitian (ruled A.D. 81-96), who was given the nickname “The Beast” by Romans, Greeks, Christians and Jews, enforced the emperor worship initiated by Nero.

The emperor cult in Ephesus was set up by Domitian in A.D. 89, and this may be the crucial event that sparked a Christian reaction. How could Christians (who say that Jesus is Lord) go to the Temple of Domitian and worship him as lord? And note this. Many saw Domitian as a reincarnation of Nero, i.e. the beast “whose mortal wound had been healed.” (Revelation 13:12)

Domitian was called “the bald Nero” because of his, well, baldness, and because of the persistent rumor that he was Nero returned. (Domitian is not bald in paintings and statues because he decreed that any artist who portrayed him as bald would be killed.) This false “resurrection” of the mortally wounded Nero-666-beast in the person of Domitian was a lying mockery of the resurrected Jesus who is envisioned by John as “a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered.” (Revelation 5:6) If under Domitian’s rule John was arrested and imprisoned, you can imagine that the Ephesian church (and the other six churches as well) had no warm feelings for their falsely resurrected, God-pretending, beastly emperor.

What is the mark of the beast on the hand and forehead all about? Here’s the quote:

Revelation 13:16-17 Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, ¹⁷ so that no one can buy or sell who does not have the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name. (see also Revelation 14:9-11, 16:2, 19:20, 20:4)

This quote claims that you can’t buy and sell anything without the “mark of the beast” on your hand or your forehead. We can forget all the wild, futuristic speculations about this and just do a little bit of history.

The formula "our Lord and God,” as we learn from the imperial biographies of Suetonius, was introduced by Domitian into the cult of emperor worship as an expression of homage. He mandated that his procurators should introduce the formula, "our Lord and God commands," into all official documents. As a result, it became the custom to address Domitian as Dominus ac Deus noster (our Lord and God). (MOUNCE, Revelation, 140, writes on Rev 4,11, "our Lord and God" was introduced into the cult of emperor worship by Domitian’. LILJE, Last Book of the Bible, 108-109.)

Here’s the actual Suetonius quote:

“With no less arrogance he began as follows in dictating a circular letter in the name of his procurators, "Our Master (Lord) and our God bids that this be done." And so the custom arose of henceforth addressing him in no other way, even in writing or in conversation.” (Suetonius: De Vita Caesarum—Domitianus, c. 110 A.D., XIII)

The equivalent of Dominus (Master) in Latin is Kyrios (Lord) in Greek.

Most emperors, if not all, were deified beginning with Julius Caesar. But the title “lord and god” is associated only with Domitian. This association is perhaps the main reason that the Book of Revelation is dated to Domitian’s reign. John used that exact phrase to refer not to the Nero/Domitian/Emperor Cult/666 beast, but to God:

Revelation 4:11 "You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created." (italics mine)

Moreover, Revelation 4:11 is the only place in the entire Bible that the phrases “lord and god” or “our lord and god” occurs.

o` ku,rioj kai. o` qeo.j h`mw/n

the lord and the god of us

This is beyond coincidence and firmly dates the Book of Revelation to Domitian’s reign. It also clarifies John’s concerns.

For obvious reasons John is concerned about the emperor, his idolatrous cult, his idolatrous title, and his idolatrous image in temples and on currency.

Domitian’s head and arm (pictured from the Selçuk museum) are all that remain of the actual statue of him that the citizens of Ephesus literally worshiped. This is the very “image of the beast” in Revelation 13:15.

Above these arches (pictured) on this grassy hill is where the temple dedicated to the worship of Domitian once stood in ancient Ephesus, a city where the early Christians were under pressure to worship a statue and call it “lord and god.”

Question. Would you as an Ephesian Christian go as was required by law to Domitian’s Temple on the commercial agora and bow to a statue of the emperor saying, “Our lord and our god”?

Question: How would you feel as an Ephesian Christian about the image of Domitian or other emperors on your money (pictured)? How would you feel about the Roman coinage bearing the titles Divus (Divine) and Theos (God) for its emperor? Would you carry and spend money bearing Caesar’s graven image and blasphemous titles? If a coin has Domitian’s image on it, would you save it, spend it, or exchange it for another currency?

Question: If you were a Christian woman in Ephesus, and if you owned a chain of coins to be worn on your forehead, and if those coins had the image of Domitian or other emperors on it, would you wear it? Jesus told a parable about such a woman who lost a coin:

“Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? ⁹ When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’” (Luke 15:8-9)

But it wasn’t just a single lonely coin. Look at the parable. Jesus specifically says it’s one of ten. Why would she be so concerned and so relentless in her search if the coin were not a part of a set of ten, probably meaning ten coins on a chain. Alone a single coin would have been of little value to her, since she had plenty more. But they are considered by her a set. It’s the nine that are of little value to her unless she finds the one of great value that completes the set. The set was likely a dowry or bride price, thus it’s worn in public as the approximation of a wedding ring in our culture. If Domitian put your pastor in jail, and if Domitian persecuted your church, and if Domitian was determined to make you worship him as lord and god, would you wear “the beast” and his blasphemous names on the center of your forehead?

Question: If you were a Jewish Christian man in Ephesus, and if you, in literal obedience to selected texts from Exodus and Deuteronomy (below), wore as required (for women it’s optional) by oral tradition phylacteries or tefillin (photo below)—boxes with the same select verses enclosed—strapped to your forehead and hand when you prayed, then would you put the beast’s image in your hand (a Roman coin), or in the case you are a woman, on your forehead? Here are those texts, one of them the famous “Shama”:

Exodus 13:9 It shall serve for you as a sign (mark) on your hand and as a reminder (mark) on your forehead, so that the teaching of the LORD may be on your lips . . . (italics mine)

Exodus 13:16 It shall serve as a sign (mark) on your hand and as an emblem (mark)on your forehead . . ." (italics mine)

Deuteronomy 6:4-8 Hear (shama), O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. ⁵ You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. ⁶ Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. ⁷ Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. ⁸ Bind them as a sign (mark) on your hand, fix them as an emblem (mark) on your forehead, (italics mine)

Deuteronomy 11:18 You shall put these words of mine in your heart and soul, and you shall bind them as a sign (mark) on your hand, and fix them as an emblem (mark) on your forehead. (italics mine)

How do we know that phylacteries were worn by Jews in the days of Jesus and Paul? Fragments have been found by archaeologists. (pictured – fragments found at Qumran dated to the 1st Century B.C.) Jesus’ words recorded in Scripture also confirm the use of phylacteries in his day.

Matthew 23:5 “[The scribes and Pharisees] do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long.” (italics mine)

Now, do 1st Century phylacteries and coins shed light for you on John’s symbolic marks on the forehead or the hand? I wonder if John is calling on the Christians of western Asia Minor to avoid using Roman currency so that they don’t participate in any practice that might support the 666-beast and his boss, the dragon. Makes sense to me. Many other currencies were available. Is John using coded language to instruct his churches not to replace the scriptures on their forehead and hand with the image and name of the beast on coins—coins that can be worn on the forehead or must be carried in the hand in order to shop and spend? I think so.

I suppose it’s possible that John, writing to 1st Century Christians in Asia Minor, could be prophesying the use of modern supermarket bar codes or electronic surgical biochip implants in your head or hand, as some modern biblical literalists insist. But which sounds crazier to you, that John would be warning his own church members about participating in Roman idolatry or that John would be warning 21^st Century Americans about shopping at Wal-Mart?

In Revelation 13, the first beast from the sea then is the imperial power of Rome, the Roman Emperors themselves, specifically Nero “reincarnated” as Domitian. The second beast from the earth (called “the false prophet” in Revelation 16:13, 19:20, and 20:10) then is the Commune Asiae (made up of civic representatives from each city) who managed and enforced Domitian’s emperor cult. (Caird, p. 171) The Commune even used tricks like ventriloquism to make the emperors’ images speak (13:15), thus deluding the superstitious pagan citizenry of Ephesus and other Asian cities wherein Christians strove to resist idolatry and endure persecution. I believe John wants us to see his concern for his seven churches. He wants us to see his beloved church members, friends he knows by name, fellow Christians forced to Domitian’s Temple, compelled to face Domitian’s statue, and pressured to call it “Lord and God.” They are face to face with the beast of idolatry.

A POSTSCRIPT ON “THE ANTICHRIST” – There is no justification for equating Revelation’s 666-beast with the antichrist. Why? There are two simple reasons.

First, the term antichrist does not appear in the Book of Revelation at all. That’s a surprise to most people. Antichrist is a term not to be found in Revelation. I presume that if John had meant for the 666 beast to be called antichrist, he would have said so, but he didn’t.

Second, the term antichrist is explained fully as something else in the Letters of John. There, antichrists (plural and not capitalized) are clearly church dividers. They are Christian pretenders who left the church because they didn’t believe Jesus came in the flesh. The beast of Revelation, however, is clearly a veiled or coded reference to Domitian as Nero “reborn” or his emperor cult or both. See 1 John 2:18, 2:22, 4:3; and 2 John 1:7, which are the only mentions of antichrist in the Bible. And note, it’s antichrists, plural, not the proper name of an individual. If it were the proper name of an individual, the “a” would be an “A”.

We might fairly say that Domitian, who calls himself god and is not, who was believed by some to be Nero raised from the dead but was not, is an opposite of Christ who was raised and who was God, a photographic negative of Christ, or, if you will, an anti-Christ. This is the only sense in which it is fair to relate the antichrists of the Johannine Epistles and the 666-beast of Revelation.

A POSTSCRIPT ON “THE LAWLESS ONE” – A majority of interpreters over the years has also equated the 666-beast with “the lawless one” of 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4:

“Let no one deceive you in any way; for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first and the lawless oneis revealed, the one destined for destruction. ⁴ He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God.”

The NAB notes are helpful in putting this “lawless one” in a historical context. (What a novel idea!) 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4 offers “a reflection of the language in Daniel 7:23-25; 8:9-12; 9:27; 11:36-37; 12:11 about the attempt of Antiochus IV Epiphanes to set up a statue of Zeus in the Jerusalem temple and possibly of the Roman emperor Caligula to do a similar thing (Mark 13:14). Here the imagery suggests an attempt to install someone in the place of God, claiming that he is a god (Ezekiel 28:2). Usually, it is the Jerusalem temple that is assumed to be meant; on the alternative view . . . . the temple refers to the Christian community.”

Both the Revelation’s 666-beast and 2 Thessalonians’ “lawless one” refer to pagan idolatry and emperor worship. It’s about those who used their power to play god. True, Domitian did that. So have many others. And so will many others. It was a danger to Christians then, and still is today, when a government dictates culture and religion.

For more reading on the Book of Revelation see my blogs Rapture Interrupted, The Giant Flying Cube, The Millennium, Pearly Gates and Streets of Gold, Names In the Book of Life, and The Lake of Fire Defined.

The Apostle Paul Never Converted to Christianity

2011-05-27T15:47:00.006-04:00

The Apostle Paul never converted to Christianity, and he did not change his name from Saul to Paul upon his supposed Damascus Road conversion.

Before you scream "Blasphemy!" read what the scriptures say.

Saul's name (Sha'uwl in Hebrew) was not changed to Paul (Paulos or Paulus in Greek) upon his Damascus Road experience of the risen Christ in Acts 9. In chapters 9, 10, 11, 12, and part of 13, Saul's name is still Saul, even though he is now a changed man and an Apostle of Jesus. So when and why did he change Saul to Paul?

In Acts 13:9 for the first time he's using the Greek name Paulus rather than the Hebrew name Sha'uwl. Why? Look at the context.

He's on the first stop of his first missionary journey to speak to Greek-speaking gentiles. He's on the island of Cyprus. He preached to the Jews there first and no doubt introduced himself by his Hebrew name Saul. (Acts 13:5). But then he goes to see the proconsul of the island, a Greek-speaking Roman official named---get this now---Sergius Paulus. This man would have been unfamiliar both with Saul's Hebrew language and Hebrew name.

After his meeting with Sergius Paulus, probably noticing close similarity between the names Saul and Paul, Saul begins going by the Greek nickname Paulus when speaking with Greek-speakers throughout the Roman world he has now entered. He may have gotten the idea to change his name to Paulus from his first encounter with a Roman ruler who bore that very name.Pardon me for a bit of speculation: Paulus means "small or little." If Paul were a man small of stature, as is often assumed about him, it might have made his new "nickname" both appropriate and easy to remember.

Paul never converted to Christianity. It's a biblical fact. "I am a Jew," the Apostle Paul insisted in Acts 21:39 and again in Acts 22:3. "I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees," he said in Acts 23:6. Look at these two quotes:

Romans 11:1 I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin.

2 Corinthians 11:22 Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I.

And again Paul writes of himself:

YLT Philippians 3:5 circumcision on the eighth day! of the race of Israel! of the tribe of Benjamin! a Hebrew of Hebrews! according to law a Pharisee!

Paul never renounced his Hebrew heritage, his Jewish faith, or his credentials as a Pharisee. He was a Hebrew Pharisee practicing Judaism to his death. One thing, however, made him an unusual Jew at the time. He was a Hebrew Pharisee practicing Judaism who believed that Jesus, a rabbi from Nazareth, was the fulfillment of Hebrew prophesies and the promised Messiah of God.

Paul was not a Jew who converted to Christianity. He was a Jewish Christian.

For more on the Apostle Paul see my blogs Paul Didn't Go To Heaven, Porneia, and The Soul Doesn't Leave the Body at Death.

Ten arguments supporting the resurrection of Jesus

2011-04-23T23:00:00.015-04:00

While honest skepticism about the resurrection of Jesus is understandable, practically everyone accepts the crucifixion of Jesus as a historical fact. The consensus is that Roman soldiers in 1st Century Jerusalem executed a Galilean rabbi named Jesus. The biblical accounts of his death vary somewhat in the details, of course, yet they are similar enough that there is no question that they are describing the same event. Also, we are fortunate to have a solid, non-biblical reference to Jesus’ execution provided by the 1st Century Roman historian, Tacitus (pictured):

“Christus, the founder of the name, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate, and the pernicious superstition was checked for a moment, only to break out once more, not merely in Judea, the home of the disease, but in the capitol itself [i.e., Rome] where all things horrible or shameful in the world collect and find a vogue.” (Tacitus, Annales, XV:44) (italics mine)

Not only is Tacitus a 1st Century, non-biblical witness (though not an eyewitness) to Jesus, his death, and those who believed in “the name,” but he is a hostile witness. He calls Christianity a “disease,” a “pernicious superstition,” “horrible” and “shameful.” Tacitus was hardly a Christian supporter or sympathizer, lending more credibility to his record.

In my view, this quote from Tacitus confirms three things for this book. One, it is a historical fact that Jesus (Christus) was executed in Judea by Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius. Two, Jesus' death only for a short time stopped the Christian movement. And three, Tacitus considered Christianity a "pernicious superstition.”

The third one interests me. Why did Tacitus classify Christianity as a superstition? There is nothing superstitious surrounding Jesus' death, which Tacitus verifies. (Christians and non-Christians acknowledge Jesus’ crucifixion as a historical occurrence today largely owing to this quote from Tacitus.) By “pernicious superstition” I wonder if Tacitus might have been referring to the central Christian belief that Jesus rose from the dead. Admittedly, from Tacitus’ time to today, many consider belief in Jesus’ resurrection to be mere superstition. Even those of us who call ourselves Christians must admit, if we are honest, that accepting without question that Jesus was resurrected is impossible.

Like many Christians, I have toyed with the idea that the resurrection stories might be symbolic. Maybe the resurrection was a literary metaphor for the way in which Jesus' message lived on in the memory and work of his disciples. (World mythology expert, the late Joseph Campbell, pictured, would be proud.) And I have asked myself, Why can't I simply accept that the Bible says that he arose, so therefore he arose? I could have saved myself a lot of work! Yet I cherish the opportunity to move beyond blind acceptance. Besides, skeptics must doubt and question. It’s what we do.

I want it to be clear that what I’m writing here is not an effort at evangelizing, as if a well reasoned analysis of the resurrection might compel someone to become a Christian. My motive in writing about the resurrection is not to change hearts or save souls, but simply to engage the scriptures in a serious way. My belief and my unbelief compel me to examine thoroughly the available evidence.

Of course some may argue that I am trying to prove the resurrection, and that faith requires no proof. I agree that faith, by definition, does not need proof. But I don’t believe in checking my brain at the door either! For me to fail to explore this issue historically would be intellectual suicide. Besides, it is not proof I’m seeking. I don’t require certainty. What I want to do is explore the evidence, keeping in mind two things: One, it is not likely that I will prove anything once-and-for-all to myself or anyone else by this effort. And two, I believe deeply that my investigation of the resurrection of Jesus will have some benefit to somebody, if only me.

The guiding question in this section will be this:

If Jesus did not rise from the dead, then how can _____ be explained?

This section is an exploration of biblical evidence supporting the resurrection of Jesus as an actual event no less historical than his crucifixion. I will explore ten points at which I feel it is difficult to explain away his resurrection from the dead. You will glimpse the state of mind of Jesus’ followers before, during, and after the events of Holy Week. Critical to this section is an analysis of the effect these events had on Jesus' followers, and the sudden resuscitation of their crushed campaign.

1. The disciples in all of the biblical accounts believed that they had actually seen Jesus after his death. Their claim to have had firsthand experiences of the risen Jesus sounds self-explanatory, but it should be stated first nonetheless. Matthew, Luke, and John (and Mark’s longer ending, if you wish to include it) all record appearance stories: the disciples see him, walk with him, touch him, eat with him, and talk with him. Could they have been lying? Yes, but if so, why? Could they have been mistaken? Yes, but if so, how? These questions anticipate upcoming points. The point here is that the gospels claim that the disciples said they saw him. There is no record of them ever recanting.

2. To whom did the risen Lord appear? By and large, he appeared to believers only. Matthew, Luke, John, Acts, and 1 Corinthians give us the recorded experiences the disciples had of the risen Christ. I’ll also include the witness of Mark 16:9-20 below, though this longer ending of Mark is usually footnoted as a later addition. Here are the witnesses:

1-Matthew 28:1-10 --- to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary as they ran from the tomb

2-Matthew 28:16-20 --- to the eleven on a mountain in Galilee

1-Mark 16:9-11 --- to Mary Magdalene

2-Mark 16:12-13 --- to two disciples walking into the country

3-Mark 16:14-20 --- to the eleven while at table

1-Luke 24:1-32 --- to Cleopas and another disciple walking to Emmaus

2-Luke 24:33-35 --- to Simon Peter

3-Luke 24:36-53 --- to the eleven plus companions

1-John 20:11-18 --- to Mary Magdalene outside the tomb

2-John 20:19-23 --- to disciples minus Thomas

3-John 20:24-29 --- to disciples including Thomas a week later

4-John 21 --- to seven disciples on the shore of the Sea of Galilee

1-Acts 1:3-5 --- to disciples, teaching during forty days (Passover-Pentecost)

2-Acts 1:6-11 --- to disciples who witness his ascension

(3-Acts 9:1-9 --- to Saul/Paul on the road to Damascus—not an appearance like others)

First Corinthians 15:3-11 - the tradition handed to Paul says the risen Christ appeared:

1 --- to Cephas (Peter)

2 --- then to the twelve (at first eleven)

3 --- then to more than five hundred believers at one time

4 --- then to James (Jesus' brother and eventual leader of the church in Jerusalem)

5 --- then to all apostles

6 --- then to Saul/Paul last

This is a complete list of Jesus’ resurrection appearances in the Bible. In just thirty minutes you should be able to look up and read these verses. These are the only stories that the early church deemed accurate and authoritative concerning Jesus’ resurrection appearances.

A crucial thing to me about these stories is that with only two exceptions, Jesus only appeared to believers. He appeared to those who previously followed him. You may be wondering why. Wouldn’t it have been better if Jesus had appeared to the High Priest Caiaphas also, and to the whole Jewish Sanhedrin? Shouldn’t he have appeared to Pilate and Herod? Why show himself to believers only when proof of his resurrection could have been secured forever by appearing widely to rulers and record keepers? Why didn’t he appear to the Emperor in Rome?

The way Jesus did it left open two complaints. One, by appearing only to believers, it can be argued that the believers could have made it all up. And two, it only makes logical sense that if Jesus really rose from the grave that he would have wanted to appear to objective non-believers as stronger proof. These two complaints are legitimate.

My first answer to these complaints is based on the character of Jesus displayed throughout the Gospels. He’s never showy. Point in fact, Jesus almost always healed people in private. Here are three examples from Mark:

Mark 5:37-42 He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. 38 When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. 39 When he had entered, he said to them, "Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping." 40 And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside, and took the child's father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was. 41 He took her by the hand and said to her, "Talitha cum," which means, "Little girl, get up!" 42 And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age).

Mark 7:33-36 He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. 34 Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, "Ephphatha," that is, "Be opened." 35 And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.

Mark 8:22-25 They came to Bethsaida. Some people brought a blind man to him and begged him to touch him. 23 He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village; and when he had put saliva on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, "Can you see anything?" 24 And the man1 looked up and said, "I can see people, but they look like trees, walking." 25 Then Jesus1 laid his hands on his eyes again; and he looked intently and his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.

He wasn’t there to prove he could heal. He never spotlighted himself. His last miracle, the raising of Lazarus from the dead, wasn’t done privately, true, but he said he knew that this miracle would result in his arrest and death, which was his intent. Only at the end did he make a public show of a conspicuous sign of power, and it cost him his life. Otherwise, he typically healed people privately or inconspicuously. That was his modus operandi.

My question is: Why would his character change if he were raised from the dead? The risen Jesus appeared privately to people who knew and loved him already, and to them only. He was not interested in coercing faith with proofs in his earthly ministry. Why would he do differently in his resurrection? He didn’t pop in on Pilate because he refused to force anyone’s faith with showy demonstrations. By appearing risen to believers only, he confirmed the faith in him that they already had. The rest of us would just have to believe their witness or not. The believers’ witness to his resurrection, for Jesus, seems to have been enough.

There are two exceptions to this. Jesus’ brother James and a Pharisee named Saul (later nicknamed the Apostle Paul). Neither of these men believed in Jesus during his ministry. But as it turned out later, Brother James became the first leader of the church in Jerusalem, and the Apostle Paul became the primary missionary to the Roman world. Jesus apparently showed himself to James and Paul not to prove anything to the world, but because he needed them—their objectivity and their talents—to spread the gospel of forgiveness of sins to Jews and to Gentiles in Israel and beyond.

My second answer: John’s gospel states clearly that the faith of those who believe only because of miracles is incomplete and not to be trusted:

John 2:23-25 When he was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival, many believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing. 24 But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people 25 and needed no one to testify about anyone; for he himself knew what was in everyone.

This is a very telling verse. Not only did Jesus perform miracles privately and insist on their silence about them, but he also didn’t trust people whose faith was built on miracles. Why? Because he knew human nature. We’re sensation addicts. We don’t want faith based on trusting a person and his message. We want signs and wonders. We’d rather be wowed. Entertainment and sensationalism sell precisely because of this, as televangelist “faith healers” still demonstrate today. Jesus didn’t trust people who hung around hoping to spy something flashy. John records the risen Jesus saying:

John 20:29b “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Because faith is a matter of believing when you haven’t seen, the only witnesses to the resurrection were Jesus’ friends and two unlikely characters: James, Jesus’ unbelieving brother, and Paul, a persecutor of Christians. To me it is just like Jesus to put together women (whose witness is not permissible in a Jewish court of law), average laymen (his disciples were fishermen, tax collectors, and revolutionaries), his own brother (who rejected him and thought him insane), and a fanatical Pharisee (a Jewish scholar who hated and hunted Christians). These were Jesus’ handpicked witnesses to the resurrection! Either you believe these witnesses or none.

And my third answer: Jesus even downplays the resurrection itself as a flashy sign. When Mary Magdalene first sees the risen Lord, she doesn’t recognize him. But when Jesus says her name, she recognizes him and tries to hold him. But he stops her and says:

NLT John 20:17 "Don't cling to me . . . for I haven't yet ascended to the Father. But go find my brothers and tell them that I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God."

Apparently even the resurrection itself is not to be made into a sign that proves your faith. Don’t cling to me, he said. The resurrection is not the point. Who he is as the Father’s Son is the point. His return to his Father’s side is the point. His union with his Father is the point and the message. The resurrection, like all signs and miracles, must be seen as a mere pointer to the central theme of who Jesus says he is.

Faith is not decisional but relational. Faith isn’t the substance of miracles and proofs, but belief in who Jesus is in the absence of miracles and proofs. Don’t cling to his resurrection, miraculous though it may be, says John. Instead let your faith cling to who he is in oneness with his Father. For in his oneness with his Father, the whole human race is made one with his Father. That’s the good news that Jesus wants told. That’s the good news to which the resurrection points.

John says that’s the message. God has forgiven the world that rejected him. The resurrection is intended as confirmation of that truth. The resurrection points beyond itself to the Father’s amazing grace to the whole human race in the crucified Christ. The resurrection vindicates the cross as the way God’s mercy works. Not even our killing of his Son can destroy the love of God for us. On the contrary, that killing saved the world. It’s not flashy. But God’s mysterious humility is the core of his character. It’s not about showboating like they do on the Televangelism Broadcasting Network.

Besides, Jesus apparently didn’t rise from the dead to prove anything in the first place. At the end of one of Jesus’ parables about greed there is this wicked little twist of the knife:

Luke 16:31 'If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'

It might at first seem that Jesus’ “failure” to appear to objective observers and VIPs is an argument against the historicity of his resurrection. Yet I see his appearance to disciples only (with two notorious exceptions) as perfectly in keeping with the character of the pre-crucifixion Jesus. He never did anything ostentatious for proof. He invited faith to be freely chosen without proof. Ironic, isn’t it, that proof, rather than awakening faith, puts faith to sleep.

Is it possible that the disciples could have made it all up? Yes. Isn’t it logical that if Jesus wanted to prove his resurrection, that he would have appeared to someone in power? Yes. Yet I don’t think it’s likely that we’re dealing with a vast conspiracy, and I don’t think proving anything was ever on Jesus’ to-do-list.

3. What was the disciples’ initial response to the resurrection? They didn’t believe the news. They didn’t even believe it when he stood right there in front of them. This argues for the resurrection.

At first it seems strange that the disciples were startled by the reports of Jesus' resurrection. After all, Jesus himself told them repeatedly that he would rise (Mark 8:31, 9:31, 10:33-34). Yet if their understanding of resurrection was similar to that of the Pharisaic Judaism of their day, then they understood resurrection as something to come in the last days, as Daniel prophesied, marking the end of history. (See John 11:23-24) What the disciples could not fathom apparently was that the resurrection Jesus spoke of could occur within history. Thus their surprise. (Int. Dic., Res. in the NT, p. 45)

I think that the Gospels’ honest descriptions of the disciples’ unbelieving responses to Jesus’ resurrection are telling. No Gospel says they handled it well.

The Gospel of Mark is probably the oldest Gospel, and it ends most unusually. While there are three tacked on endings to Mark that are as close as the footnotes after Mark 16:8, the oldest and most reliable copies of Mark in existence today end at Mark 16:8 (marking the longer endings as later scribal attempts to “round off” Mark’s blunt ending). Can you believe that Mark’s Gospel ends like this?

Mark 16:5-8 As [the women] entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. 6 But he said to them, "Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you." 8 So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

Mark’s Gospel ends with the women running away scared and silent. An odd ending for sure, if a Gospel is supposed to prove Jesus rose. But what if that wasn’t Mark’s purpose? What if instead Mark ends this way to avoid proofs so as to arouse faith?

The Gospel of Matthew, though it does seek to prove the resurrection of Jesus, bluntly claims that some of the disciples didn’t believe even though they had seen him.

Matthew 28:17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.

Again, apparently seeing isn’t believing.

The Gospel of Luke doubles up on the doubt. The men don’t believe the women’s claim that they saw him risen from the dead, probably not only because the news of his resurrection is unbelievable in and of itself, but also because women’s testimony was not acceptable in Jewish courts and therefore unacceptable generally, and because if Jesus were to appear to anyone, surely (they must have thought) it would be to the men from Galilee that Jesus handpicked.

Luke 24:10-11 Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. 11 But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.

Then Luke, poetic to a fault, tells us that when Jesus then appeared to the men, they were terrified and misunderstood what they saw. Then even after being comforted and corrected by Jesus, their joy was still mixed with unbelief.

ESV Luke 24:37-43 But they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit. 38 And he said to them, "Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? 39 See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." 40 And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. 41 And while they still disbelieved for joy and were marveling, he said to them, "Have you anything here to eat?" 42 They gave him a piece of broiled fish, 43 and he took it and ate before them. (italics mine)

Luke puts it so well, doesn’t he? They disbelieved for joy.

The Gospel of John emphasizes doubt arguably more than the other Gospels by giving to us the story of Thomas’ absence at Jesus’ first appearance to the eleven. Thomas declares:

John 20:25 "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe."

The next Sunday, Jesus appeared to the eleven, this time with Thomas present. Rather than chastising Thomas for his doubt, Jesus gave him an open invitation and a blessing to all the Doubting Thomases of the world.

John 20:27-29 "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe." 28 Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!" 29 Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."

The four Gospel writers could have cleaned up the mess. Instead they admit—no, they insist—that the disciples responded less than faithfully to Jesus’ resurrection. The early Church as well had every opportunity to remove such doubting from the Gospel records. But they didn’t. Why? Perhaps because it was true. They doubted.

To one way of looking at this, the doubts of the disciples should confirm our own doubts about someone in human history rising immortal from the dead. They didn’t believe it so why should we? Yet from an opposite angle, how could any human being respond any other way but doubtfully when presented with something as shocking and unexpected as Jesus’ resurrection? Does the Gospels’ honesty about the disciples’ doubts strengthen the biblical account’s plausibility?

4. The timing of the disciples’ proclamation of the resurrection argues for the historicity of the event. They were claiming Jesus rose from the dead in the Jerusalem temple mere weeks after the crucifixion. The Book of Acts, written by the same author of the Gospel of Luke, records the events some forty days following Jesus’ death, resurrection, many appearances, and ascension.

Acts 4:1-2 While Peter and John were speaking to the people, the priests, the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees came to them, 2 much annoyed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming that in Jesus there is the resurrection of the dead. (italics mine)

The disciples were quick to get organized and spread the word that Jesus arose from the dead. Does that make you suspicious that they plotted doing that very thing in advance? It wasn’t months or years later that they began proclaiming to the world that Jesus arose. It was almost immediately. It was the most dangerous time to do so. They were arrested for the first time for their bold move in Acts 4, but it would not be the last. Suspicious? Or is their quick proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection the very thing you wouldn’t have expected so soon after his tragic execution right there in Jerusalem? That leads us to the next argument.

5. The disciples were transformed almost overnight from a band of scattered fugitives who denied and abandoned their executed leader, into bold, loyal, public proclaimers that Jesus was the Messiah and that he was raised from the dead. How could that happen?

The disciples' concern for Jesus' safety and their own began earlier in the Gospel accounts when Herod Antipas (pictured on coin) beheaded John the Baptist. Their concern grew when Jesus told them he planned to go to Jerusalem. The Jewish authorities pressed Jesus harder as time passed, and they tried to arrest him with the intent to kill him. The events I’m about to outline show that the disciples had good reason for being afraid. The Gospels show that the twelve performed poorly under the strain of these events.

Herod Antipas' extremely long reign, 4 B.C. - A.D. 39, suggests that he was adept at both preventing and crushing uprisings in his territories of Galilee and Perea. Likely he became concerned about Jesus' ministry in Galilee because of the crowds drawn by his teaching and healing. Crowds can quickly become mobs. Herod would have wanted to prevent that, as those who monitored Jesus' activities for Herod would have known well. (Matthew 22:16; Mark 3:6, 12:13)

When Jesus heard that Herod had beheaded John, he spoke against Herod in or near Bethsaida. He warned his disciples, "Watch out -- beware the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod." To speak against the King of Galilee while in Galilee was dangerous to say the least.

Jesus led his disciples to the region of Caesarea Philippi, thus escaping Herod’s reach for a time while he pondered his plan to reenter Jerusalem to die. There, for the first time, Jesus explained his plan to go to Jerusalem, and that he expected to be killed there. Peter was probably speaking for all the disciples when he protested against Jesus' plan. Peter took Jesus aside and scolded him saying, "God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you." (Matthew 16:22) But Jesus had made up his mind, for Luke wrote he had set his face to go. (9:51) So very determined was he to return to Jerusalem to confront the Jewish authorities in the temple, that Mark says Jesus began striding ahead of the disciples on the road. This truly terrified them.

Mark 10:32 They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them; they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid.

John's Gospel records that Jesus' disciples were very concerned about the Jews (the Judean authorities). There were attempts to arrest Jesus in the temple, but each time he managed to escape. When Jesus told his disciples he planned to go to Jerusalem again, they tried to restrain him.

John 11:8 "Rabbi, the Jews (Judean authorities) were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?"

Once more the disciples were unsuccessful in curbing their master. Thomas said, either sarcastically or bravely, "Let us also go, that we may die with him." (John 11:16)

When Jesus reached Jerusalem, some Pharisees who believed in him warned him that Herod was looking to kill him. Again he spoke against Herod saying,

Luke 13:32-33 “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. 33 Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem."

The disciples' excitement over Jesus' "triumphal entry to Jerusalem" on a donkey must have been tempered by their concern for Jesus' safety. They were aware that both Roman and Jewish authorities were watching them. The large crowds offered them protection, but the danger in these actions was real. Again he was warned by friendly Pharisees in the crowd, "Teacher, order your disciples to stop." (Luke 19:39) They were concerned about his drawing so much attention, as were the twelve themselves no doubt.

Matthew 21:9-10 The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting, "Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!" 10 When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil,

Jesus was aware of the likelihood of trouble, and he tried to prepare his disciples, probably that very same day:

Luke 22:36 ". . . [N]ow the one who has a purse must take it, and likewise a bag. And the one who has no sword must sell his cloak and buy one."

The disciples' response is surprising.

They said, "Lord, look, here are two swords." (Luke 22:38a)

How did Jesus respond?

He replied, "It is enough." (Luke 22:38b)

Without telling Jesus, the disciples had already armed themselves! This is strong evidence that they were aware of the danger involved in being where they were and doing what they were doing. The swords suggest that they were anxious and prepared for trouble.

The disciples had retired that evening to their customary place on the Mount of Olives. Judas, one of Jesus' trusted twelve, divulged his nighttime whereabouts to the authorities and led them there. Luke 22:45 describes the disciples as having fallen asleep there "because of grief." This statement confirms the depth of their anxiety. They were exhausted.

The disciples were awakened and surprised by an approaching crowd.

John 18:3 So Judas brought a detachment of soldiers together with police from the chief priests and the Pharisees, and they came there with lanterns and torches and weapons.

The disciples asked Jesus for permission to fight.

Luke 22:49 When those who were around him saw what was coming, they asked, “Lord, should we strike with the sword?”

Before he could answer, one of the disciples (John's Gospel says the swordsman was Peter) took a swipe at the high priest's slave, slightly wounding him. Jesus said, "No more of this!" The authorities laid hands on Jesus, and as they did this, his disciples escaped into the darkness.

Mark 14:50 All of them deserted him and fled.

After their escape, only Peter and John followed Jesus at a distance. The crowd came to the high priest's home (probably Annas, not Caiaphas, and it was probably a privy council, not the full Sanhedrin which would have met the next day. See Who Was Jesus?, Boers). (John 18:13 & 24) The crowd went inside while John and Peter watched and overheard from the house’s central courtyard.

Peter joined some people who were warming themselves by a charcoal fire. It was here that one of the high priest's servant-girls recognized Peter. Three times she and other bystanders accused him of being one of Jesus’ Galilean followers. He swore repeatedly that they were wrong. When he realized what he had done, that he had lied to save himself, that he had denied his Lord, he ran away weeping bitterly. Only one disciple, reportedly "the beloved disciple" whom we may assume is John, mustered the courage to attend Jesus’ trials and execution. The rest scattered and hid.

The disciples had every reason to scatter and hide. Who could they trust? One of Jesus' own twelve full-time disciples had led the authorities to him. The others had put up feeble resistance when the authorities came to arrest him. Only two had swords. Only one was used and not very well. They all deserted him and fled. One denied he knew Jesus three times under questioning and fled (again). The one who turned him in committed suicide. Intense shame and fear sent the rest scattering for cover.

The purpose of this section is to show the intense pressure under which the disciples were operating. Their performance, though often criticized as cowardly, is to me quite understandable. Their lives were in danger. Who knows how one might act under such strain until it happens? So, though I am sympathetic to the plight of Jesus' twelve, it would be ridiculously optimistic (and unbiblical) for me to hold that as a group they handled things well. They better than anyone must have been shamefully aware that when it counted they were weak. How they actually felt that day or the next is a matter of conjecture. Nevertheless, Peter running off into the dark alone and in tears is a fair characterization, I believe, of the experience of each of the eleven.

The question at the heart of this section is: How could a defeated, frightened, scattered, guilt-ridden band of disciples have been so instantaneously reunited, reinvigorated, and filled with joyous purpose and public fearlessness?

Some joint experience is necessary. How else can one explain the sudden resuscitation of a failed, crushed movement? And what event could account for a band of frightened, scattered fugitives devastated by their own failure, grief, and despair being so quickly regrouped, working together, and making bold public stances everywhere, including in the Jerusalem temple (see Acts 4 and 5) before the very authorities who cruelly disposed of Jesus?

Supposedly Jesus' followers disbursed upon the death of their leader, and that was the end of their movement. As far as the Romans were concerned, they had crucified another Jew guilty of sedition, and his followers had fled like the followers of all executed insurrectionist leaders. The Jewish authorities believed they had succeeded in saving their offices. An uprising had been prevented, they believed. So the Jews (the Judean authorities) had accomplished what they plotted to do, and they had every reason to believe that the whole matter was closed, and their work complete. The Roman historian Tacitus, remember, sounded frustrated that such a "pernicious superstition," i.e., Christianity, could, against all expectation, flourish again not long after the death of its founder.

In Acts 5, a Pharisee named Gamaliel cautions his fellow Jewish leaders on how to deal with Jesus' surprising followers, whom they arrested a third time for preaching that Jesus rose from the dead:

"Fellow Israelites, consider carefully what you propose to do with these men. Thadeus rose up, claiming to be somebody, and a number of men, about four hundred, joined him; but he was killed, and all who followed him were disbursed and disappeared. . . . Judas the Galilean rose up . . . and got people to follow him; he also perished, and all who followed him were scattered. So in the present case (that of the followers of the crucified Jesus of Nazareth), I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone; because if this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them -- in that case you may even be found fighting against God!" (Acts 5:35-39)

Gamaliel argued against killing Jesus' followers, perhaps because he was struck by their unprecedented continuing faith in their fallen leader. Surely no one would have predicted that these disciples would emerge from hiding to proclaim publicly Jesus' messiahship and his resurrection from the dead. If Gamaliel and company were not surprised by this turn of events, they should have been. Acts only records that they were enraged, and that without Gamaliel's intervention, they would have killed the twelve (Acts 5:33-34), perhaps on the spot.

Something brought these disciples back together. It may be possible that they gathered Saturday or Sunday in grief and fear, as Zeitlin believes, aware that they had failed to act with honor and courage (p. 165). So perhaps they assembled to console one another. Or maybe they resided together for mutual protection, laying low for a while to make sure the authorities were not searching for them, as it is portrayed in Hollywood movies. These are possibilities. But it is more probable, and is strongly implied by both Luke and John, that they were called together Sunday evening by reports that Jesus was appearing to some of them. In spite of the danger, and in utter perplexity (and perhaps hope), they risked calling one another together to discuss the claims that Mary of Magdala, Peter himself, and others, had been visited by their crucified Lord.

What I’m suggesting is that they wouldn’t have met together that Sunday evening and perhaps ever again unless something momentous happened to force them to risk doing so. The risen Jesus appearing to some of them might have been the “something momentous.”

John 20:19 mentions a particular house where the disciples met Sunday. John 20:26 records they met again in the same house a week later. This Gospel is conveying that they were not residing together, but the disciples were calling meetings in a safe-house -- "for fear of the Jews" -- at specified times.

Luke 24:33 describes how two disciples discovered when and where the eleven (plus other companions) were meeting. The way Luke puts it, the two found them gathered together.

Luke 24:33 That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. (italics mine)

To include this detail of them being found together suggests that when Cleopas and his travel companion rushed back to Jerusalem from Emmaus that they were not expecting them to be meeting. These two disciples from Emmaus were a part of the scattering that took place after the crucifixion. By Easter Sunday noon, no gathering had taken place yet, and no meeting had yet been called. One might even hear in this description by Luke an element of surprise. “and (surprise) they found the eleven and their companions gathered together.”

Expecting to have to reach them individually, given that all of them had scattered about, these two returning from Emmaus—the evening of that same Easter Sunday—discovered that all of them were in the same place under cover of darkness behind locked doors. The two from Emmaus were unaware that a meeting had been called or why. They came back to find Peter and the others to tell them that they had actually seen and talked with Jesus. Upon arriving in Jerusalem (guardedly), they likely asked (cautiously) where any of the disciples might be. But they were surprised to find them having a meeting. If the disciples had stayed together continuously Friday night through Sunday, why would it have been necessary for Luke to specifically write that they were found gathered? Similarly, if they had been together continuously Friday night through Sunday, why would John have clarified that when they met there they locked the door?

John 20:19 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week (Easter Sunday), and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews (the Judean authorities) . . .

If the disciples had been together continuously from the Friday of Jesus’ crucifixion onward, why would it have been necessary for John to point out that a week later they met again behind locked doors in the same house?

John 20:26 A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you."

Clearly the disciples were not cohabiting, but started calling secret meetings beginning the Sunday evening after the crucifixion. One such meeting followed a week later.

Why is it important to substantiate that they were not together continuously? Because if they were not together continuously, it must be concluded that they began calling meetings together very soon after Jesus' death. If they began calling meetings, there must have been a crucial reason to do so beyond consoling one another. Frankly, what consolation could anyone have given? Could anyone say to Peter, "Though you ran to save your own neck--twice, and though you denied you knew Jesus--thrice, you're still a swell guy and everything's gonna be okay?" Shamefulness alone, danger notwithstanding, would have prevented them from regrouping. They all failed him. Who would want to show their face after such extreme disgrace?

When other messianic leaders were slain in Israel under Roman rule, followers did not regroup. It was futile, not to mention dangerous, to regroup when the leader was executed by Rome. What would be the point? So why in this case did the disciples of Jesus risk calling a meeting? The only reason the Gospels give is that they gathered to deal with strange reports from women, Peter, and other usually sane and reliable disciples, that Jesus -- their crucified leader, the one they abandoned to be arrested and killed -- was paying them visits.

Could the disciples have gotten back together immediately after Jesus crucifixion to plan a vast conspiracy? To me, the explanation that the disciples stole his body and spread an out-and-out lie about his resurrection openly, daily, continually, even in the Jerusalem temple at risk of their lives is absurd. Why would so many endanger their lives repeatedly to propagate a lie?

Within a few weeks of the first Easter Sunday, the disciples of Jesus testified unashamedly and courageously that Jesus who was crucified rose from the dead and visited them. They told how the resurrected Jesus explained to them the scriptures, that the Messiah must suffer and die, and on the third day be raised. The disciples shared how the risen Lord had comforted them, had promised to be with them always, and had sent them on a mission to tell the world it is forgiven.

I can think of no more convincing explanation for the sudden, almost immediate resuscitation of what was an otherwise completely crushed campaign, than the one the disciples gave. I can think of only one thing that could explain their dramatic transformation from silent, scattered, terrified fugitives to fearless, unified, public proclaimers. I’m not talking about a conspiracy to lie. Obviously I’m talking about the actual resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

Could they have made the whole thing up? Yes. Could they have been spreading their lie for attention, to cause trouble, or for a scam? Yes. Do I think that they were in a state of mind to do this, and do I think they’d take beatings, imprisonment, and even death for a story they supposedly made up? Not in the least.

Parenthetically, note that the disciples left intact this terrible account about themselves for the public record. There appears to have been no cover-up. They couldn’t have come off looking worse if they’d tried. The Gospels include the good, the bad, and the ugly. There’s no spinning the disciples’ behavior in a favorable light. On the contrary, the Gospels give you the disciples as they are—warts and all. Such honesty lends itself to credibility.

Also, parenthetically, the Gospels don’t let you idolize the disciples as sterling champions of faith. They failed miserably, the Gospels insist. No hero worship allowed. Unless . . . unless your idea of a hero is one who allowed his failed life to be redeemed by a power beyond his ability and control.

6. All gospel accounts of the resurrection attest to an empty tomb and a missing body, facts that were never disputed or disproved. This may sound obvious, but it shouldn’t be overlooked. Here it is in all four Gospels:

Matthew 28:5-6 But the angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. 6 He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay.

Mark 16:5-6 As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. 6 But he said to them, "Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him.

Luke 24:2-5 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they went in, they did not find the body. 4 While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. 5 The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.

John 20:1-2 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. 2 So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him."

Even those who believe that the disciples stole Jesus’ body to fake his resurrection do not deny that the tomb was empty and the body was gone. On the contrary, if the body is missing—whatever the reason—, then the tomb is necessarily still empty.

The only way to argue that the tomb was not empty is to produce the body of Jesus. And no one ever did; nor did anyone ever make such a claim. If that had been done, that would be proof positive that he didn’t rise. If you can produce his body, then there is neither an empty tomb nor a risen Jesus. Yet no such claim is a part of the historical record, biblical or otherwise. No one ever disputed the empty tomb or the missing body. This is strong evidence that there was an empty tomb and the body was gone.

The Jewish Talmud arguably makes a few unflattering references to Jesus including the accusation that he was the illegitimate son of a loose woman and a soldier named Panthera (or Pantera, or Pandera). An early Christian writer corroborates this. “According to Origen, Celsus wrote:

“ . . . when she (supposedly Mary) was pregnant she was turned out of doors by the carpenter (supposedly Joseph) to whom she had been betrothed, as having been guilty of adultery, and that she bore a child to a certain soldier named Panthera.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiberius_Iulius_Abdes_Pantera

Some speculate that the burial monument (pictured ) in Bad Kreuznach, Germany remembers Jesus’ “real” father, linking him to the man referred to by the Talmud, Origen, and Celsus. Tiberius Iulius Abdes Pantera (c. 22 B.C. – A.D. 40) was a Roman archer. The inscription (pictured in Latin) translates:

Tiberius Iulius Abdes Pantera

from Sidon, aged 62 years

served 40 years, decorated(?) former soldier

of the first cohort of archers

lies here

This same false charge concerning Jesus’ parentage may also be found in Scripture.

John 8:19 Then they said to him, “Where is your Father?”

John 8:41 "We are not illegitimate children."

The implication of Jesus’ opponents, it seems to me, is that: We know who our father is, but you don’t. We’re legitimate sons, but you aren’t.

All the insults aside, it is a fact that no Talmudic writings ever disputed the empty tomb or the missing body; neither did Roman historians; and neither did even Jesus’ enemies in the biblical record.

Yes, Jesus’ resurrection was denied. Yes, the disciples are accused of stealing the body to fake a resurrection. Yes, Jesus and his followers are maligned in these ancient sources. Yet no one disputed the empty tomb and the missing body. If they could have, they would have. This is not proof positive of the resurrection of Jesus, but it is a piece of evidence that should not be ignored. No one ever produced the body. No one ever denied that the tomb was empty. No one ever denied that the body was gone.

7. That the resurrection was the center of the New Testament’s Christian preaching is a strong argument for the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus. Rather than focusing on Jesus’ message of life abundant in the kingdom of heaven, something dramatic must have happened to make the earliest Christian’s central message shift to Jesus himself, specifically to his death and resurrection. They could have tried to hold his kingdom preaching at the center as one might logically expect. Life in the present and coming kingdom of heaven was the core of Jesus’ message, and so it follows that for the first Christians it would have been the same. But instead they (including and especially the Apostle Paul) began to emphasize “Jesus crucified and risen” as the core message. His crucifixion and resurrection took on central importance over anything Jesus said.

Here is a quote from the Apostle Paul that I think is one of the best passages in the Bible. It’s clear and unequivocal. It’s as bold and forceful and risky as anything written therein. Listen to Paul as he explains the unsurpassed importance of Jesus’ historical resurrection from the dead:

1 Corinthians 15:12-19 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; 14 and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. 15 We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ -- whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. 17 If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. 19 If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

I agree with Zeitlin and most modern scholars that Christianity emerged not so much from the teachings of Jesus as from faith in his resurrection. (p. 164) Seeing with his own eyes Jesus risen from the dead sealed the message for Paul and for those to whom he appeared. Knowing that Jesus promised humanity a resurrection on the last day became credible because those first disciples saw him risen and alive. They experienced his resurrection as proof and promise of their own.

This emphasis on the resurrection of Jesus isn’t, to my way of thinking, obsession with signs and wonders. It wasn’t so much the miracle itself that became central to Christian preaching, but what the resurrection meant. The resurrection pointed to who Jesus was:

John 11:25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life."

His resurrection to life is a revelation of his identity as the resurrection and the life.

So that is why even today the resurrection of Jesus is more central to Christian preaching than Jesus’ kingdom of heaven preaching. Both are essential. But resurrection has taken center stage, and this is evidence for the historical resurrection of Jesus. It took something mighty hefty to outweigh Jesus’ sermons.

8. The very existence of the early church is evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. The first Christians were monotheistic Jews. They risked their reputations as Jews, if not their very lives, to profess their belief in Jesus’ equality with God the Father. What event could possibly cause a devout, monotheistic Jew to consider a two-person God (much less three—Father, Son, and Spirit)?

At stake was the first Christian’s belief in Jesus’ divinity. His equality with God seems to contradict the hallmark of Judaism: There is one God; God is one.

NIV Deuteronomy 6:4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.

To claim that Jesus and the Father are one, to many then and now, is polytheism. (And idolatry too.) The clash with monotheistic Judaism begins with Jesus’ claims about himself recorded in the Gospels. He declared oneness with his Father, and his Jewish opponents responded violently.

John 10:30-33 “The Father and I are one.” 31 The Jews took up stones again to stone him. 32 Jesus replied, "I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these are you going to stone me?" 33 The Jews answered, "It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy, because you, though only a human being, are making yourself God."

John 8:58-59 "Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am." 59 So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.

“I am” is God’s name in the Old Testament.

Exodus 3:14 God said to Moses, . . . "Thus you shall say to the Israelites, 'I AM has sent me to you.'"

Not only was Jesus’ divinity at stake, however. His claim to divinity is linked to his claim to be Messiah (Christ). Jews of the 1st Century (and today) believed that the Messiah cannot die. Upon his death, some if not all of Jesus’ disciples gave up on their hope that he was the Messiah. Listen to what Cleopas and partner said of their fallen leader.

Crushed hope

Luke 24:19-21 “ . . . [Jesus of Nazareth] was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, 20 and . . . our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. 21 But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel."

Their hope that Jesus was the one to redeem Israel means they had believed him to be the Messiah. But Jesus’ death crushed that hope. They gave up. Why? Because the Messiah can’t die; therefore, we were mistaken; and Jesus wasn't the messiah. Hope crushed.

Of course Luke tells us that the risen Jesus explained to them that the Messiah must die and rise to life forever more. So in this sense, death did not cancel Jesus’ Messiahship. His resurrection confirmed it. It is only after Jesus’ resurrection that the disciples truly understand his eternal Messiahship because it was linked to his divinity:

Matthew 28:9 Suddenly Jesus met them and said, "Greetings!" And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. (italics mine)

Matthew 28:17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some (still) doubted. (italics mine)

Luke 24:52 And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy . . . (italics mine)

John 20:27-28 Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe." 28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” (italics mine)

So they began to spread the message that the man Jesus rose from the dead making him both Messiah and Lord. Peter declares in a sermon recorded by Luke in Acts:

Acts 2:36 “Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord (God the Son) and Messiah, this (man) Jesus whom you crucified."

And listen to Paul:

Philippians 2:5-11 5 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited (or grasped or clung to), 7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, 8 he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death -- even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God also highly exalted him (by raising him from the dead) and gave him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend (in homage or worship), in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ (Messiah) is Lord (God the Son) to the glory of God the Father. (bold italics mine)

Romans 1:1-4 Paul, a servant (slave) of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, 2 which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, 3 the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh (a son of man or a human being) 4 and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ (Messiah) our Lord (God) . . .” (italics mine)

Romans 14:9 For to this end Christ (Messiah) died and lived again, so that he might be Lord (God) of both the dead and the living. (italics mine)

Do you see what this means? It means that the physical resurrection of Jesus is the cornerstone to his claim to Messiahship. It also confirmed his oneness with the Father. And it confirmed his claim to be the Lord. Because of his death and resurrection, Paul claims that the man Jesus is both the Lord God and the Messiah. This is a radical message by any standard of the day (or any day).

Athenasius, a short Egytian
bishop, was called by his
enemies "The Black Dwarf."

The Church Fathers focused a great deal on the subject of Jesus’ divinity. The Council of Nicea (A.D. 325) devoted the lion’s share of its time, attention, and documentation to the clarification of Jesus’ nature. Their conclusion, championed by Athenasius of Alexandria, was that Jesus was both fully man and fully God. Jesus shares divinity with his Father. They are in union. This view is the mark of orthodox Christianity everywhere. And though debated since then, it remains the Christian understanding of the nature of the man Jesus who is Messiah (Christ) and God the Son.

The first leaders of the Christian movement (all Jews) made an improbable and immense shift theologically, didn’t they? And a painful shift it must have been. For Jews to see a partnership within the personages of God was an unprecedented step. Any monotheist is going to balk at something that at least on the surface challenges God’s oneness. Yet, in spite of the groundbreaking theological revolution it initiated, and in spite of the danger in believing such “blasphemy,” the first Jewish followers of Jesus stood their ground. Though they believed in and worshipped God the Father and God the Son, they did not see this as a violation of God’s oneness. On the contrary, they saw this as a full revelation of God’s true relational nature, in the image of whom human beings are created. And for that revelation many in the early church suffered and died.

At the heart of this revelation is Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. His crucifixion is the cornerstone of his exaltation, and his resurrection is the cornerstone of his divinity—both Messiahship and Lordship. The author of Revelation painted this with dazzling clarity:

Revelation 5:11-13 Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels surrounding the throne and the living creatures and the elders; they numbered myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, 12 singing with full voice, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!" 13 Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, singing, "To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!"

John’s slaughtered lamb is alive and standing next to the one on the throne. (See Chapter 9 for a closer look at this scene.) This is the heavenly oneness of the crucified, risen Son and his Heavenly Father. They share all blessing and honor and glory and might forever because they are one. There are many more scriptures that insist on Jesus’ divinity and his equality and oneness with his Father, but I’ll quote two from the first chapter of John’s Gospel.

John 1:1 & 14 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us . . . (italics mine)

John 1:18 No one has ever seen God. It is God the Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known. (emphasis mine)

There it is: Jesus is God in the flesh; Jesus is God the Son. The miracle is that the early church survived given that this was its message: The crucified one is Messiah; the resurrected one is equal with God. Neither Rome nor Judaism could stamp out this message, though both surely tried. Tacitus expressed genuine exasperation at the continuation of what he wrote off as a pernicious superstition. But the movement would not stop. Internal dissent at the Council of Nicea and beyond did not stamp out this message that the risen Messiah is one with Father God, though Arius and others surely tried. If the resurrection were a lie, I think opponents would have easily succeeded in discrediting the claim. But since they all failed and the Church and its “far-out” message survived (even thrived), the Church’s very existence argues for Jesus’ physical resurrection from the dead.

Are there those who deny Jesus’ Messiahship? Yes. Are opponents of Jesus’ equality with God numerous (both within the church and without)? Yes. Even so, the scriptural evidence is compelling. You can argue that these beliefs are ludicrous. I completely understand. But it’s not so easy to argue that Jesus’ Lordship (divinity) and Messiahship weren’t basic and essential to the first believers.

9. Why did Jesus’ first followers—all Jews—begin worshipping on Sunday rather than the Jewish Sabbath? Scripture attests to this. Almost all Christians to this day worship on Sunday. This argues for his resurrection.

The first Christians were law-abiding, Sabbath-keeping, worship-going Jews. Jews throughout the Roman world—whether Jews by birth or converts—observed the Sabbath on Saturday. Do you think that you personally could convince a practicing Jew to celebrate the Sabbath on a different day? Think about it. What would you have to do to get a Jew to worship on, say, Sunday morning instead of Saturday morning? Ask your local rabbi to propose such a change at his next synagogue council meeting!

I’m not sure if it’s appreciated today how radically “Sabbaterian” some Jews of Jesus’ general period were. From Scripture you are probably aware of things like it being unlawful to carry your mat on the Sabbath, or pluck grain on the Sabbath, or heal (considered the practice of medicine and therefore work) on the Sabbath. But 1 Maccabees (an apocryphal Jewish record of events around 175 B.C.) gives a dramatic account of Jews guarding Sabbath regulations with deadly seriousness.

1 Maccabees 1:41-43 41 Then the king (Antiochus Epiphanes who sacked Jerusalem and profaned the temple) wrote to his whole kingdom that all should be one people, 42 and that all should give up their particular customs. 43 All the Gentiles accepted the command of the king. Many even from Israel gladly adopted his religion; they sacrificed to idols and profaned the sabbath.

1 Maccabees 2:31-38 31 And it was reported to the king's officers, and to the troops in Jerusalem the city of David, that those who had rejected the king's command had gone down to the hiding places in the wilderness. 32 Many pursued them, and overtook them; they encamped opposite them and prepared for battle against them on the sabbath day. 33 They said to them, "Enough of this! Come out and do what the king commands, and you will live." 34 But they said, "We will not come out, nor will we do what the king commands and so profane the sabbath day." 35 Then the enemy quickly attacked them. 36 But they did not answer them or hurl a stone at them or block up their hiding places, 37 for they said, "Let us all die in our innocence; heaven and earth testify for us that you are killing us unjustly." 38 So they attacked them on the sabbath, and they died, with their wives and children and livestock, to the number of a thousand persons.

Devout Jews of that period strictly observed the Sabbath, sometimes even when it meant death. The Lord our God said to rest on the seventh day of the week and keep it holy. (Exodus 20:8) The Sabbath day is set on the seventh day of the week—Saturday. (Genesis 2:2-3) Is there anything you can think of that would cause Jews to suddenly change their day of worship from Saturday to Sunday?

Though the apostles were Jews, the gospel did, thanks mainly to Paul and his assistants, make its way into the gentile world. Yet the first Christian congregations in Asia Minor and Europe who where brought to Christian faith by Paul were still populated by Jews (either by blood or conversion). Whether in Jerusalem or Corinth, the Jews who became Christians were accustomed to worshipping on the Sabbath. “Accustomed” is too weak a word. It wasn’t mere habit. It was law. Obedient worship on Friday night and Saturday were all they’d ever known. (Jews mark the beginning of the Sabbath at sunset on Friday, and the end of the Sabbath on sunset Saturday.)

But something happened. Apparently Jesus’ Jewish followers had an experience that rearranged the furniture of their minds. It was an experience so extraordinary as to convince them to worship not on their own Jewish Sabbath, but on the morning of the first day of the week, Sunday. What could make such an unthinkable thing actually happen? (You know where I’m going.)

This switch from Saturday worship to Sunday worship should not be downplayed. This shift is colossal. Sunday, the day of Jesus’ resurrection, took precedence in the early church over the obligatory Saturday Sabbath services, and has ever since. How early? Very early. Paul may be referring to Sunday worship in this verse:

1 Corinthians 16:2 On the first day of every week, each of you is to put aside and save whatever extra you earn, so that collections need not be taken when I come.

Sure, there may have been more pagan converts than Jews and Jewish converts in the Corinthian congregation. Who knows? From Paul’s letters to them we know that there were both. Nevertheless, the point remains. The Jews of Corinth who believed Paul’s message of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection appear to have made the monumental shift to worshipping on Sunday.

It is the scholarly consensus that Paul wrote 1 Corinthians in the 50s A.D. The author of Luke-Acts, probably writing in the 80s A.D., records a worship service held on Sunday too, but the event he writes about can be dated earlier, also in the 50s A.D.:

Acts 20:7 On the first day of the week, when we met to break bread, Paul was holding a discussion with them; since he intended to leave the next day, he continued speaking until midnight.

“New Testament believers are not under the Old Testament Law (Rom. 6:14; Gal. 3:2425; 2 Cor. 3:7, 11, 13; Heb. 7:12),” writes author Ron Rhodes. “By His resurrection on the first day of the week (Matt. 28:1), His continued appearances on succeeding Sundays (John 20:26), and the descent of the Holy Spirit on Sunday (Acts 2:1), the early church was given the pattern of Sunday worship.” And this pattern wasn’t a later development, but a direct result of Jesus’ Sunday resurrection and the cataclysmic effect it had on the first Jewish believers.

Today, a few Christian denominations continue to worship on Saturday—Seventh Day Adventists for example. But the “eighth day of the week,” Sunday, the day of Christ’s resurrection is the Christian norm for weekly worship around the world, and has probably been the norm from the time of the apostles.

You might argue that 1 Corinthians 16:2 was a meeting, not necessarily worship. Could be. But if you try to argue that Acts 20:7 also is describing a Sunday meeting rather than a worship service, you have a problem. “Breaking bread” is alternative terminology for communion (the Lord’s Supper), a core act of Christian worship. Respected commentators F.F. Bruce and O. Cullmann agree that Acts 20:7 is the first clear reference to the practice of Sunday worship. Compare Acts 20:7 with Acts 2:42:

Acts 2:42 They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

Early Christian worship entailed teaching, fellowship, communion, and prayer.

Is there more scriptural evidence that the first Christians moved their worship service from Saturday to Sunday? I think so. Sunday worship is implicit in these two verses from the Gospel of John:

John 20:19 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you."

John 20:26 A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you."

I think John is telling us that these Sunday resurrection appearances helped establish a pattern of Sunday worship. Jesus’ resurrection took precedence over their Sabbath traditions no matter how heartfelt they were. All over the world today, for almost all Christians, the primary worship service of the week is held on Sunday. What’s your best explanation?

Parenthetically, the church has never considered Sunday to be a replacement Sabbath day. Theologically the church has tended to view Sabbath as an experience, not a specified calendar day. Additionally, the church has tended to view Jesus as the Sabbath. He is Sabbath rest.

Matthew 11:28 “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”

What was Jesus’ take on the Sabbath?

NET Mark 2:27-28 Then he said to them, "The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath. 28 For this reason the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath."

John 5:15-17 The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. 16 Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the sabbath. 17 But Jesus answered them, "My Father is still working, and I also am working.”

10. The extreme transformation noted in James and Paul is perhaps the best argument for the resurrection of Jesus.

Jesus' little brother, James, one of four of Jesus’ brothers who didn’t believe in him (John 7:5), a member of the Nazareth clan who rejected Jesus and who tried to throw him off a cliff (Luke 4:16-30), a family member who believed Jesus to be insane and tried to restrain him (Mark 3:21), was dramatically convinced by some event that occurred shortly after the crucifixion, that James’ doubtful, misguided, insane brother was actually the Messiah, the Son of the living God. (What would it take to convince you that your brother is The Lord?) His mind was completely changed, and suddenly he believed his own brother, Jesus, was worthy of being worshipped. In the New Testament Book of James, almost certainly written by Brother James, he calls his own brother “our glorious Lord Jesus Christ.” (I call him “Brother James” to distinguish him from other men named James in the New Testament) To me that’s astonishing. How can you explain this dramatic reversal, this shocking transformation?

Paul says that the risen Jesus appeared to his brother, James (1 Corinthians 15:7), but he gives no account of that encounter. Perhaps the personal appearance to Brother James suggests that their private meeting was to be kept private. Whatever it was that happened and whatever was said, it worked. James not only became a believer in his big brother, he soon became the leader of the Jerusalem church over the likes of Peter and Paul. And like Peter and Paul, who each had a private visit with the risen Lord (Luke 24:34; 1 Corinthians 15:5 & 8), the details of his conversation with Jesus are not recorded. Strange isn’t it? And I don’t think it’s a coincidence. The most important three men in the early church are Peter, Brother James, and Paul. The risen Lord appeared to all three individually, says Scripture. And the contents of Jesus’ meetings with all three are not divulged.

In support of this argument concerning James’ about face, Jesus’ mother and other brothers—Joses, Judas, and Simon (Mark 6:3)—follow Brother James in becoming believers in Jesus after the resurrection.

Acts 1:12-14 Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day's journey away. 13 When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter, and John, and James (son of Zebedee), and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. 14 All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers. (italics mine)

The Bible doesn’t say that Jesus appeared to his mother. Nor does it say that he appeared to all of his brothers (or sisters). But it does specifically say that he appeared to Brother James. Perhaps James’ report of that appearance was enough to convince the rest of the family that Jesus, the one whose sanity they doubted, was indeed “the resurrection and the life.” (John 11:25) Their change of opinion concerning Jesus supports his historical resurrection.

You might argue that James didn’t really see his risen brother. Couldn’t he have just been a religious opportunist, stepping in with a lie that he’d seen Jesus, aiming to take the helm of the church, make a name for himself, be important, and make a living? Perhaps. But let me show you what Josephus wrote about Jesus’ little brother:

Antiquities of the Jews 20:200 [W]hen, therefore, Ananus was of this disposition, he thought he had now a proper opportunity [to exercise his authority]. Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the Sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others, [or some of his companions]; and, when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned.

Pardon my sarcasm, but I wonder if one of the perks for attaining the title “Senior Pastor of Jerusalem First Church” was stoning by the Sanhedrin.

(For more on Jesus’ family relationships and tensions see Jesus Unplugged, Chapter 3: “He Said No to His Family.”)

Paul, a devout Jew in the party of the Pharisees, went from leading campaigns of persecution against Christians as heretics to becoming a follower of Jesus' and his primary messenger to the world outside of Judaism. His about-face parallels Brother James’.

In the community of learned Jews, Paul certainly lost face and position for his sudden embrace of Jesus, but moreover he risked his life. Read Acts 21-28, the climactic final eight chapters of the Book of Acts, and you will get a taste of how risky his allegiance to Jesus was. Paul’s life was turned upside down. What dramatic experience could account for his reversal on Christianity, his risking of his standing and reputation, his risking of his life, his enduring numerous beatings, imprisonments, shipwrecks, and his surviving an actual stoning (2 Corinthians 6:4-5; 11:21-30)? What fueled his sudden single-minded commitment to the building up of Christian churches? How do you account for his staggering statement that he considers all he ever held dear to be excrement in comparison to knowing Christ (Philippians 3:8)? And based on his Christian-persecuting ways, how can we blame the churches for not trusting him at first? Can you blame them for being suspicious given Paul’s track record? (Acts 9:13 & 26) It took time before they believed he was sincere. But he was sincere. He enslaved himself to Jesus risking everything for that most precious pearl. (Matthew 13:45-46)

Couldn’t Paul have been faking? Couldn’t he have just been a religious opportunist, stepping in, lying about seeing Jesus to take the helm of the church’s missionary team, making a name for himself, being important, and making a living? It’s possible, though highly unlikely. What else can account for Paul’s abrupt and amazing transformation better than what he claimed?

What else can account for James and Paul’s transformation better than an appearance of the risen Jesus, which is what they claimed to the end?

Read the companion blog to this one: Five Reasons to Deny Jesus' Resurrection from the Dead.

Five reasons to deny Jesus’ resurrection from the dead

2011-04-23T20:29:00.008-04:00

Did Jesus rise from the dead? The debate continues. This section contains five reasons most commonly “raised” to argue against Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. I’m going to state each argument against. But I won’t refrain from stating my opinions. Here are the arguments against Jesus’ resurrection with my responses to each:

1. There are people who believe that there was no Jesus. He’s a fictional character around which a superstitious new religion called Christianity was created, they say. They hold that Jesus never existed. I don’t think this is an atheistic position necessarily, though some atheists I know (and whom I’ve read) do take this position.

So check out what physicist Albert Einstein—Jewish by birth, Catholic by upbringing, atheist as a young man, and deist as an adult!—had to say about the historical Jesus. His interviewer is German-American poet and writer George Viereck. The interview was published October 26, 1929 in the Saturday Evening Post:

Viereck: “You accept the historical existence of Jesus?”

Einstein: “Unquestionably. No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life. How different, for instance, is the impression which we receive from an account of legendary heroes of antiquity like Theseus. Theseus and other heroes of his type lack the authentic vitality of Jesus.”

Viereck: “Ludwig Lewisohn, in one of his recent books, claims that many of the sayings of Jesus paraphrase the sayings of other prophets.”

Einstein: “No man,” Einstein replied, “can deny the fact that Jesus existed, nor that his sayings are beautiful. Even if some them have been said before, no one has expressed them so divinely as he.” (http://politicsandreligion.wordpress.com/2007/06/22/einstein-comments-on-jesus/)

I think Einstein makes a good point. As he said, when you read the Gospels you get a feeling that he was a real person. His personality comes through. He comes alive on the page in a way that mythical characters don’t. Therefore Einstein argues that no one can deny—only from reading the Gospels—that Jesus existed. But Einstein’s argument is pretty subjective, isn’t it? It’s based on feel rather than fact. That introduces a good question.

Are there facts that corroborate the Scriptures? For some, that “the Bible says so” is enough. But skeptics need more. So, is there extra-biblical historical evidence that Jesus was a real 1st Century human being? The answer is “Yes.” This “Yes” is the biggest hole in the Jesus-is-fiction argument. There are 1st and 2nd Century non-biblical sources that refer to Jesus, including the writings of Tacitus (an example coming up in the ten arguments for Jesus’ resurrection), Pliny the Younger, Josephus, the Jewish Talmud, and more. Not only does the Bible insist on Jesus’ historicity, but other ancient sources insist on the same.

I am aware that some mistrust the provenance of these ancient non-biblical sources, particularly the famous quote about Jesus from Josephus’ “The Antiquities of the Jews.” This quote is considered by some to be in part an interpolation (words interjected later) by a pro-Christian copyist.

Antiquities of the Jews 18:63-64 Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works--a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. 64 And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, {b} those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, {c} because the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the sect of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.

Yet some continue to hold that there are no trustworthy historical references to Jesus, period. For them, there is zero evidence for the existence of the historical Jesus. I consider this an extreme view. Tacitus’ quote (coming up) in particular is hard to dismiss.

2. The Bible is not a reliable source for historical information, some argue. Even if Jesus is a historical figure, the Gospel writers provide no more than a fictionalized account of his supposed life, teachings, and works. The Bible, they argue, is full of exaggeration and fabrication. Because it is a flawed human document, the Bible cannot be counted on for historical facts. Therefore, some conclude, no historical claim made by the Bible, especially the resurrection of Jesus, is trustworthy.

For historians and archaeologists, how accurate is the Bible in describing its settings—what the scholars call the “Sitz im Leben”? Well, books abound on the subject, so obviously I can’t unpack it all here. But my reading of the scholars is that they are generally impressed with the Bible’s accuracy. They will tell you that the Bible syncs pretty well with contemporaneous inscriptions, documents, and archaeological findings. Let me share a few. In a day when all archaeological findings and historical documents are suspected of forgery, however, I want to be as careful and fair as I can with the following descriptions:

An 8th or 9th Century Aramaic inscription unearthed at Tel Dan (northern Galilee at the foot of Mt. Hermon) in 1993 refers to “the House of David.” [ABOVE] This is the only extra-biblical reference to King David ever found, and it has intensified a debate in the world of archaeology because a few scholars—sometimes called “Biblical Minimalists”—believe that David was ancient Israel’s version of King Arthur. They believe David was a myth. But the Tel Dan Inscription threw a big red monkey wrench into the working parts of their mythological conclusion. It appears that David may well have existed as a monarch of Israel, though a few minimalists are holding out that the inscription might be a fake. The find (pictured) resides today in the Israel Museum, and there are few concerns about its authenticity.

A 1st Century monumental Latin inscription discovered in 1963 at Caesarea Maritima (a Herodian city on the Mediterranean coast of Israel) contains the following:

[DIS AUGUSTI]S TIBERIEUM
[. . . . PO]NTIUS PILATUS
[. . .PRAEF]ECTUS IUDA[EA]E
[. .FECIT D]E[DICAVIT]

It translates:

To the honorable gods (this) Tiberium
Pontius Pilate,
Prefect of Judea,
had dedicated

This inscription corroborates the historical existence of a biblical character and his title. Moreover, the Bible’s description of Pilate jibes pretty well with the 1st Century historian Flavius Josephus’ (and others’) descriptions of him. Also housed in the Israel Museum, the Pilate inscription from Caesarea has never been called a forgery.

Three Jewish burial boxes (for bones only) called ossuaries are significant for assessing the Bible’s historicity.

First, there is the bone box inscribed with the name Jehohanan found in North Jerusalem in 1968. This 1st Century Jewish male in his late twenties or early thirties was buried with a Roman crucifixion nail still piercing his heal [ABOVE]. His are the only crucified remains ever found because crucified people weren’t typically buried in the Roman Empire. Crucified persons remained on the cross to be eaten by scavengers. Their bones were scattered by hyenas, dogs, and vultures. But in Jerusalem allowances were made for Jewish religious sensibilities in the holy city of Jerusalem. Bodies were allowed to be taken down from the cross for Sabbaths and Holy Days. Studies on Jehohanan’s remains by Vassilios Tsafaris and Joe Zias and others have not only verified the Roman practice of crucifixion, but have verified it was in use in Jerusalem during Jesus’ lifetime. I’ve met Tsafaris and I’ve worked with Zias. They have taught the world a lot about Roman crucifixion. Their work, though around since the late 60s, is not widely known. I suspect that is because Jehohanan wasn’t crucified like Jesus is in medieval art and modern movies. In matters of tradition, facts do not necessarily prevail.

Second, the ossuary of a priest named Caiaphas was found in 1990 in Jerusalem’s Peace Forest. Some debate continues, but not about the ossuary’s authenticity. It is a 1st Century Jewish bone box—a very elaborate one. The inscription is authentic too. But there is some debate about whether the Caiaphas in the box is the same one in the Bible. Most scholarly authors I’ve read believe that they’re one and the same. If so, this is another archaeological verification of a biblical character. At the very least it proves that there was a 1st Century Jerusalem priest named Caiaphas.

Third, the debate rages today (as well as criminal charges and law suits) over an ossuary bearing the inscription “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.” [ABOVE] The Bible says that Jesus’ father was named Joseph, and Jesus had a brother named James. After Jesus’ death and reported resurrection, James became the first leader of the Jerusalem church. Is this his ossuary? The names Jesus, James, and Joseph were common in that day. But it was uncommon to mention a brother on an ossuary inscription. A typical box would have read “James son of Joseph” only. The scholars wonder, Why mention a brother unless the brother is important? The Israeli Antiquities Authority to date, however, is calling the ossuary authentic, but part of the inscription (the “brother of Jesus” part) a modern forgery. The Biblical Archaeology Society is calling the whole thing authentic using its own group of experts. It is also calling for a new independent study. If authentic, this is the only 1st Century inscription bearing Jesus’ name ever found, and a confirmation of no less than three Biblical personalities. If a forgery, it’s a nice 1st Century artifact marred by a modern inscription.

There are more city ruins, stele, tablets, inscriptions, bulae, and documents that corroborate biblical texts. I encourage you to explore this fascinating subject on your own (since it’s too much material to cover here).

One more mention, however, just to give you a broader example pairing archaeology and the Bible: the ancient Canaanite cities of Jericho and Hazor. Ruins of 13th Century B.C. Jericho have never been found. There are ruins there from before and after the conquest of the Israelites under Joshua. Remember the spiritual? Joshua fit de battle of Jericho, and the walls came a tumblin' down. Well, no one can find those walls. Have the archaeologists just been looking in the wrong place for 13th Century Jericho, or did in never exist? No one knows. By contrast, the 13th Century destruction level of Canaanite Hazor dates exactly to biblical Joshua.

Joshua 11:13 But Israel burned none of the towns that stood on mounds except Hazor, which Joshua did burn.

Is there evidence that 13th Century Hazor [ABOVE] was burned? You bet. Though there are no findings to corroborate Jericho’s destruction yet, Hazor’s destruction by fire lines up quite nicely with the biblical description and date.

Do biblical minimalists still hold to their view of the Bible as an unreliable source of historical information? Yes. I’ve read several of their papers this year. My sense is that, like those who trust no evidence for the historical Jesus, their view is extreme.

3. Miracles have never occurred, some say. Miracles, by definition, must violate the laws of nature. Some claim that this has never been successfully proven to have ever happened. Therefore, the raising of Jesus never occurred, because by definition, the supernatural resurrection of a man from the dead is a miracle. And there is no such thing as miracles, they contend.

The group of liberal biblical scholars called the “Jesus Seminar” takes this stance. They jettison anything miraculous. Their historical critical methods seek to eliminate those elements from the gospels that they suspect do not go back to the historical Jesus, but are in their opinion the creation of the early church—like miracles. They vote one verse at a time using colored beads (color code pictured) to indicate their level of certainty.

Colors beads used by Jesus Seminar to vote on statements made by Jesus in the Gospels:

red: Jesus undoubtedly said this or something very like it.

pink: Jesus probably said something like this.

gray: Jesus did not say this, but the ideas contained in it are close to his own.

black: Jesus did not say this; it represents the perspective or content of a later

The most famous authors on the Seminar are John Dominick Crossan, Marcus Borg, and Robert Funk. To them the divine Jesus of Scripture is not tenable. Funk, the convener of the Seminar, said this:

“We should give Jesus a demotion. It is no longer credible to think of Jesus as divine. Jesus' divinity goes together with the old theistic way of thinking about God. The plot early Christians invented for a divine redeemer figure is as archaic as the mythology in which it is framed. A Jesus who 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. We must find a new plot for a more credible Jesus.” (http://markdroberts.com/htmfiles/resources/unmaskingthejesus.htm)

This quote gives you a feel for the work of the “Jesus Seminar.” They’re using modern historical critical methods in search of “the real Jesus” behind the church’s theology—or they might say mythology. To them, the Jesus of the Gospels “as is” won’t do. Their job is to find the true historical Jesus who was 100% human, 0% divine. They believe they are getting at the man Jesus by a sort of excavation of the ancient biblical texts. They remove and discard what they see as the church’s deification of the man. They believe they are producing a picture of the historical Jesus beneath the four Gospels’ theological propaganda.

I disagree with them. I think the only Jesus we can see is the one that the gospels give us. The Jesus of Scripture is the only Jesus we can know. Scholars don’t have to buy that picture, but to claim that they are producing a more accurate picture of Jesus than the New Testament Gospels is at best arrogant.

And by the way, the Gospels do not give us an “old theistic way of thinking about God.” They give us a Trinitarian vision of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit—a vision that was offensive to the Jewish “theists” of the day.

As a pretty empirical guy, I understand those who are skeptical of miracles, including the resurrection of Jesus. If you didn’t have questions about it, I’d be suspicious that you weren’t being completely forthcoming. But are there people today who hold that there never has been and there never will be real miracles? Of course there are. For a time, I was one of them.

4. There are natural explanations for all so-called miracles, some claim. The miracle of Jesus’ resurrection is no exception. The following are five (a. – e.) proposed naturalistic explanations of his “rising” from the dead:

a. The women went to the wrong tomb that Sunday morning and jumped to the conclusion that Jesus had risen from the dead. They were mistaken, but their rumor was believed and spread.

Problems with this explanation are that, 1) nothing in the accounts suggests that the women went to the wrong tomb, and 2) surely other followers of Jesus, including the man who owned the tomb (Joseph of Aramathea), would have caught the women’s alleged mistake and checked on the correct tomb.

This “wrong tomb theory” doesn’t explain appearance accounts either. Even if they went to the wrong tomb, believers still claimed that they saw the risen Christ that day.

Furthermore, if Jesus wasn’t raised, and if they went to the wrong tomb, then logically Jesus’ body could have (and would have) been found in the correct tomb once they realized their mistake, right? And if under those circumstances the disciples hadn’t found his body, I assure you the Romans or the Jewish authorities would have “trotted it out real quick like” (pardon my Southernese) to dispel any resurrection rumors. But there is no record of that happening.

Finally, the theory that the women went to the wrong tomb must stand up against this:

Mark 15:47 Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where the body (soma in Greek means body or corpse) was laid. (italics mine)

And this:

Matthew 27:58-61 [Joseph of Aramathea] went to Pilate and asked for the body (or the corpse) of Jesus; then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. 59 So Joseph took the body (or the corpse) and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth 60 and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock. He then rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb and went away. 61 Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the tomb. (italics mine)

And this:

Luke 23:55 The women who had come with him from Galilee followed, and they saw the tomb and how his body (or his corpse) was laid. (italics mine)

The Gospels say that the women sat there and watched them put him in the tomb. Perhaps, you might argue, that in the early morning light (Easter Sunday) they could have made a mistake and gone to the wrong tomb. You might further argue that in their grief they got confused, and perhaps tears in their eyes did not allow them to see which tomb was which.

To me it’s still not a valid argument. In the Gospels, it’s not the women but the men who more often make the mistakes. The women “get it” sometimes even when the twelve don’t. The Scriptures say that they watched Joseph put Jesus in the tomb. And after everyone was gone, they sat and stayed for a while outside the tomb. No matter poor lighting or welling eyes, I don’t think these women could have gone to the wrong place by accident. And I don’t think they would have gone away spreading a false rumor of his resurrection without double-checking that they were at the right tomb. Even if they hadn’t double-checked, John and Peter and others would have, and did:

Luke 24:12 But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.

John 20:2-7 So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him." 3 Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. 4 The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, 7 and the cloth that had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself.

b. The disciples experienced a hallucination, some say. It’s argued that they saw what they wanted to see, and out of wishful thinking, they believed they saw something that they told others was the resurrected Jesus.

The biggest problem here is that mass hallucination just doesn’t happen. Two people having the exact same hallucination would be very strange. Besides, to make a mass hallucination work, you have to have everybody all having the same experience in the same time and place. But that’s not what happened according to Scripture.

The risen Jesus met with individuals, pairs, small groups, and a crowd of 500 in a wide variety of locations—like walking on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus, on a mountain in Galilee, in a locked room in Jerusalem, and elsewhere. These appearances, by all accounts, are very different in both content and location. There is no uniform experience, much less a uniform hallucination.

c. The “swoon theory” claims that Jesus survived the crucifixion; he was nearly dead and those who examined him only believed him to be dead. But he was merely in a swoon, proponents of this theory say, and he resuscitated later and left the tomb under his own power.

The swoon theory surfaced only in modern times. It’s reported to be the idea of Herrmann Reimarus in the early 19th Century. The theory, however, is full of holes (that I won’t elaborate here). A colleague of mine said, “The Romans were not always original, but they were very efficient [in their duties, including crucifixion detail]. I can’t believe anyone ever gave the swoon theory any credence.” Even David Strauss, arch opponent of the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection, argues that the swoon theory is utter nonsense. It contradicts Scripture more than any other attempt to explain away Jesus’ resurrection. Why? The Gospels are emphatic that Jesus was dead:

Mark 15:37 Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. (see also Matthew 27:50 and Luke 23:46) (bold and italics mine)

Mark 15:43 Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for the body (or the corpse) of Jesus. (see also Matthew 27:57-58 and Luke 23:52) (bold and italics mine)

Mark 15:44-46 Then Pilate wondered if he were already dead; and summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he had been dead for some time. 45 When he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the body (or the corpse) to Joseph. 46 Then Joseph bought a linen cloth, and taking down the body (or the corpse), wrapped it in the linen cloth, and laid it in a tomb that had been hewn out of the rock. He then rolled a stone against the door of the tomb. (see also Matthew 27:59-60 and Luke 23:53) (bold and italics mine)

John 19:30 When Jesus had received the wine, he said, "It is finished." Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. (bold and italics mine)

John 19:31-33 Since it was the day of Preparation, the Jews did not want the bodies (or the corpses) left on the cross during the sabbath, especially because that sabbath was a day of great solemnity. So they asked Pilate to have the legs of the crucified men broken and the bodies removed. 32 Then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who had been crucified with him. 33 But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. (bold and italics mine)

John 19:34-35 Instead, one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once blood and water came out. 35 (He who saw this has testified so that you also may believe. His testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth.) (bold and italics mine)

In the biblical accounts Jesus was unquestionably dead. The four Gospels all say so. Given what happened to him, no wonder. He was beaten about the head with a reed and with fists. Then his skin was cut to ribbons by scourging. (The Romans used a flagrum—a “cat-o-nine-tails” with bits of rock, bone, or glass attached to leather strips.) He was too wounded and weakened to carry his own crossbeam. They hung him on the cross by actually nailing him to it. He hung there bleeding for six hours. And after he died, to make sure he was dead, a soldier shoved a spear into his chest cavity. He was just in a swoon? Hardly.

With humor, Strauss asserted that if the swoon theory were true, the disciples would have called for a doctor rather than proclaim him the risen Lord. (The Historical Jesus, Habermas: http://www.garyhabermas.com/books/historicaljesus/historicaljesus.htm)

d. Jesus' resurrection was a fraud, a scheme cooked up by his disciples, some say. After his death and entombment, his followers came by night and stole the body and spread the lie that he'd been resurrected.

Matthew records that the chief priests and Pharisees requested that Pilate post guards at Jesus' tomb to prevent the disciples from stealing his corpse to fake a resurrection (27:62-66). Then Matthew records that once the body was gone, the soldiers were paid hush money. They were instructed to falsify their report saying, "His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep." Matthew concludes this episode by writing that the soldiers took the money, spread the lie about the body being stolen, and their story "is still told . . . to this day." (28:11-15)

It is notable, however, that the Jews (the Judean authorities) went to great lengths to get rid of Jesus. It follows that if they would go to all the trouble to plot against him, arrest and charge him, try him themselves, try him again before Pilate, convict and crucify him, then certainly they would have kept up with his corpse to discredit the claims of resurrection. Imagine it. If the authorities could have produced Jesus' corpse, there would never have been what we call a church. Not one. Jesus' resurrection became the catalyst for Christian preaching and mission. Without it, Christianity would have never been born. The Apostle Paul wrote, ". . . if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain." (1 Cor 15:13-14).

Scholars have long noted that Matthew, more than the other Gospels, makes an effort to defend the resurrection as a historical occurrence. Matthew does this by making sure that the story of a stolen body is acknowledged and addressed, but also by dismissing it as a fabrication. By doing this, however, for some scholars Matthew raises the possibility that the disciples may have, in fact, faked the resurrection by taking his body. Is that possible? Would the disciples have done such a thing? More to the point, in their state of mind, scattered and afraid, could they have quickly reformed and plotted together to steal the corpse, then hide it or dispose of it so that it was never found? Could they have spread a false rumor that he rose from the dead? Would they have risked their lives everyday thereafter in growing numbers to proclaim the lie publicly, even in the Jerusalem Temple itself where they were forbidden to do so? It seems most implausible, since the disciples’ actions can only be seen as extraordinarily courageous and dangerous stand-making or exceedingly stupid and pointless fakery.

e. Jesus did live and then die on a cross, some say, but his resurrection was merely a literary legend created by his early followers to express that his death was not the end. Jesus lived on in the memories of his followers, so they honored his eternal teachings by granting him an honorable resurrection in writing.

Could the resurrection story of Jesus have been a writer’s metaphor for the way in which the memory of Jesus "lived on" in his disciples? Resurrection was an accepted theological concept among the Pharisees and probably most of the Jewish people. (Zeitlin, p. 163-167) Therefore, some have suggested, the gospel writers honored Jesus' memory by granting him a resurrection ‑‑ a worthy, literary device creating a triumphant conclusion to his story. As such, these resurrection stories represent not an actual occurrence, but rather the reawakening of Jesus' life and teachings in the memories of his followers. Is this possible?

Zeitlin undercuts entirely a mythological/metaphorical interpretation by insisting that there appears to be no Jewish expectation in the 1st Century of a resurrection within history. They—the Pharisees in particular—thought of resurrection in the last days, at the end of history. That being the case, it is impossible that all four gospel writers might have honored Jesus' memory by granting him a literary resurrection. To honor him in this way, and thereby providing a triumphant ending to his story, presumes that 1st Century Judaism had some expectation that the messiah would rise from the dead within history. Such is not the case. If anything, a resurrection within history was a shock, unprecedented and completely unexpected, even to Jesus’ disciples in spite of Jesus’ predictions that it would be so, predictions that they did not understand. (Mark 9:9-10 & 31-32; Luke 18:33; Luke 24:44-46; John 20:8-9)

Furthermore, in Acts 5, the disciples take a dangerous stand in the temple before the Jewish authorities. They were thrown in prison. But they escaped and went back up to the temple proclaiming Jesus’ messiahship and death and resurrection again. They were arrested again, this time whipped, then ordered not to speak of Jesus ever again. The authorities wanted to kill the disciples, but a rabbi named Gamaliel talked them into releasing them. Still, the disciples went right back up to the temple and proclaimed Jesus’ again, not only that day, but every day thereafter.

Acts 5:40-42 [W]hen they had called in the apostles, they had them flogged. Then they ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. 41 As they left the council, they rejoiced that they were considered worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name. 42 And every day in the temple and at home they did not cease to teach and proclaim Jesus as the Messiah. (italics mine)

According to early Christian records, of Jesus’ twelve apostles, ten were executed. James, the brother of Jesus? Also executed. The Apostle Paul? Executed. They wouldn’t back down, they wouldn’t recant, they wouldn’t shut up, and they wouldn’t stop. Were these men willing to die for a hoax, myth, legend, or lie?

There’s no doubt in my mind that people will continue to look for naturalistic explanations for the resurrection. Their search for resurrection proofs will parallel searches for the lost Ark of the Covenant, the Dead Sea Scrolls’ treasure, and the Holy Grail.

5. All written testimony in the Bible concerning Jesus' resurrection is hearsay, some argue (lawyers perhaps). The Gospels are probably not firsthand accounts, meaning not written by eyewitnesses. The scholarly argument that they were all written in the last third of the 1st Century A.D., some 35-65 years after the crucifixion of Jesus, is convincing to me. Remember how the author of the Third Gospel put it:

Luke 1:1-4 Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, 2 just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, 3 I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed. (italics mine)

The author of Luke’s Gospel, for one, affirms he was no eyewitness: “. . . events . . . handed on to us by . . . eyewitnesses . . .” There were many gospels written by the time “Luke” wrote his, he claims, and he “investigated everything,” meaning he interviewed eyewitnesses and researched written sources intending to write an accurate and complete account. Yes, some scholarship still maintains that the authors assigned to the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—are accurate. Yet no ancient copies of these Gospels name an author. All are written anonymously. The authors’ names were assigned in the late 2nd Century. I agree with scholars who say that the anonymous author of Luke’s Gospel, for example, wrote in the 80s A.D.—50 years after Jesus’ death. That opens the door for the “hearsay objection.” In a court of law, so to speak, Luke’s account (and all Gospel accounts for that matter) would be inadmissible.

We aren’t talking about a legal matter, however. We’re talking about history. Anyone who writes history does so with the aid of sources, especially if that writer is an eyewitness. An honest eyewitness knows he can be wrong. People in law enforcement will tell you that eyewitnesses often are wrong. That’s why history requires all available voices, because if only an eyewitness can write legitimate history, most histories must be discarded, not just the Gospels. Moreover, if hearsay is inadmissible in histories, then that means no one will be allowed to write a biography about someone that they didn’t know personally. And if a biographer knew a subject personally, he would not be allowed to write anything about that person that he did not witness directly. No hearsay means no hearsay. It would be the end of history-writing as we know it. It would be the end of anthropology and archaeology, period. What would be the point?

Do historians make mistakes? Certainly. Do I think that Luke got every historical detail right? Certainly not. A comparison of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John shows variations in the story of Jesus. The question you may fairly ask, however, is, given that our four biblical Gospels are probably written by second generation Christians (not eyewitnesses) and given that they don’t agree in all the details, on the whole do they show us the life and teaching of a 1st Century Jewish rabbi from Nazareth named Jesus? I say they do. The best way to fairly explore this question is to become a student of these Gospels.

To some, I’m sure that the biblical accounts of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead remain objectionable. Hearsay. In the court of my own mind, that objection is overruled.

Read the companion blog to this one: Ten Arguments Supporting the Resurrection of Jesus.

8 B.C.

2010-12-09T20:27:00.042-05:00

Dating the Birth of Jesus

Luke and Matthew in Chronology

8 B.C. – LUKE

Augustus

Historical Context

Luke records that Augustus was emperor of Rome when Jesus was born. Records show that the emperor ordered a census in 6 A.D. while Quirinius was governor of Syria. But this date is too late for Jesus’ birth as the Bible tells it. According to Matthew 2 and Luke 1:5, Herod the Great was still alive when Jesus was born. Herod died in 4 B.C., so Jesus had to have been born before 4 B.C. (The incorrect birth year of 1 A.D. was established in the 6^th Century.)

Qirinius

Though the governorship of Quirinius and the 6 A.D. census date are too late for Jesus’ birth, we now know that Quirinius was governor twice. His first reign began in 12 B.C. as co-legate, and, yes, he was ordered to do a census in 9 B.C. (It takes years to complete one, and it was done from 9-6 B.C.) This fits Luke’s and Matthew’s dating quite well, and puts Jesus’ birth at about 8 B.C., within the reigns of Augustus, Quirinius, and Herod (See the Res Gestae Inscription and the Aemilius Secundus Inscription. They confirm both the early census and the earlier co-reign of Quirinius.)

Joseph and Mary

The Scriptures say that the people of Bethlehem were of King David’s lineage. (David was from Bethlehem.) Joseph and Mary are said to have traveled “home” to Bethlehem for the census. “All went to their own towns to be registered.” (Luke 2:3) This quote suggests that though Joseph and Mary had relocated to Nazareth, or were in the process of doing so, they were originally from Bethlehem and had to go back home to be counted. The Scriptures strongly suggest that they had a house in Bethlehem. Matthew makes a point of saying that when Jesus was about 2 years old, the Magi bearing gifts visited them in “the house.” (Matthew 2:11—see below)

So why would Joseph and Mary relocate to Nazareth? Two reasons present themselves.

Nazareth spelled with a "tz" rather than a "z"

First, the name of the town was also the name of the people there. They were Nazareans. An inscription from Caesarea with the town name on it spells it not with a “z,” but with a “tz.” Netzerea. The name is no doubt a reference to Isaiah 11:1 where the messiah is prophesied as a branch (netzer) to spring forth from the old stump of Jesse, King David’s father. Matthew 2:23 then is referring to Isaiah 11:1: “He will be called a Nazorean.” Nazorean means people of the branch. Apparently the people of the tiny village of Nazareth were also of the lineage of David. Joseph and Mary would have kin there with messianic hopes. They would have felt at home.

Luke specifically says that “while they were there” in Bethlehem, Mary went into labor (Luke 2:6). Luke mentions no emergency labor, nothing of Mary in labor on a donkey, nothing of a desperate search of strange streets for emergency lodging. No donkey and no innkeeper are mentioned. Mary and Joseph were already at home in their hometown when labor began.

Second, Joseph was a builder (tekton), and the nearby city of Sepphoris was being constructed by Herod Antipas beginning in 4 B.C. as the capitol of Galilee. It was the largest construction project in the region. Builders flocked there for work. With Nazareth only 4 miles away, easy walking distance each day for pay, Joseph could have seen this as an opportunity for steady income for his new family, reason enough alone to consider relocation there.

Only One Verse in the Bible Describes Jesus’ Birth

Luke 2:7 and she gave birth to a son, her first-born. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger because there was no place (topos in the original Greek) for them in the living-space (kataluma in the original Greek). {New Jerusalem Bible}

Sepphoris Jewish neighborhood

Kataluma in Luke 2:7 continues to be translated by many Bible publishers as "inn," even though the better translations are "guest chamber" or "living room." It is translated as such elsewhere in Scripture. For example, in Luke 22:11 Jesus instructed the disciples to follow a man carrying water into Jerusalem. They followed him to a house that had a large kataluma where they could all gather together for the Passover meal. Kataluma is translated in 22:11 in almost all English versions as guestroom or guest chamber. Verse 12 says it was a large upper room.

Child in ancient Israel manger

What does Luke place at the manger? Joseph and Mary were there. Jesus was lying in the manger (animal feed trough) wrapped up in strips of cloth as was the practice in that day (They didn’t have Pampers.). They used a manger as a crib, probably in a downstairs cave of their Bethlehem home where animals were kept. Mary went down there to give birth because the living-space upstairs in a crowed home was no place (topos means place or space, not hotel room) for labor and delivery. Privacy and defilement issues sent them to a more private spot.

What Luke does not place at the feeding trough: There is no donkey, they are not in a shed in a field, and no animals are mentioned being there. Matthew’s Magi did not come to the manger at Jesus’ birth, but to the family home two years later (see Matthew’s account below). At the manger in Luke’s Gospel, there is no star, no Magi, and no gifts. There are only shepherds.

The Shepherds

Sheepfold cave near Bethlehem -

Imagine a house built atop the cave

While Mary and Joseph were in town having a baby in their house, some shepherds were out in the fields outside of town. An angel greeted them with good news for all people: the birth of a savior. The shepherds went into Bethlehem to find the house with a newborn. They viewed the baby in an animal feed trough, probably from a safe distance because of defilement regulations.

6 B.C. – MATTHEW

Arab bedouin posing as a Magi

The Magi

Joseph was not present when the Magi arrived two years later (Matthew 2:11). He may have gone back to Nazareth to continue setting up his family’s new home. The Magi found the house where Mary and Jesus were living, and they gave them gifts: gold (for a king), frankincense (for a priest), and myrrh (for burial). Had Joseph been nearby, he would not have missed this.

How do we know these events took place two years later? According to Matthew, the Magi told Herod the Great when a special star first appeared in faraway Arabia announcing the birth of a Judean king. They traveled a long way and it took a while for them to get there. Herod wanted to know how old the child might be presently so he could kill him. The Magi, not perceiving Herod’s malice, informed him when the star had appeared. This gave Herod the approximate age of the newborn king, which is why Herod ordered every child under the age of three (two and under) in the tiny village to be killed (Matthew 2:16). So the child—his birth coinciding with the appearance of the star—would have been about a two-year-old toddler when the Magi arrived. So the year would have been about 6 B.C., just two years before King Herod’s death.

Matthew describes the events before Jesus birth (his conception) and the events involving the Magi two years later, but not the events of Jesus’ actual birth. Only Luke describes that. Matthew says nothing of labor and delivery, the manger, the baby, the strips of cloth, the shepherds, or the angels. Matthew’s story tells of Jesus’ conception and then skips to two years after his birth:

Matthew 1:18 Now the birth of Jesus the Messiahtook place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.

Matthew 2:1 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi {Traditionally Wise Men} from the east came to Jerusalem (emphasis mine)

No camels are mentioned by Matthew in relation to the Magi. Nor does he mention that there were specifically three of them (guesses range from two to twelve). Magi were an ancient class of scholars who were experts in everything from medicine to magic to astrology. They are not specifically called “Wise Men” anywhere in scripture, though all Magi were certainly learned. Interestingly, Magi is the root of our English words magic and magician.

Herod Antipas coin

The Magi were warned in a dream to flee Bethlehem, Joseph was also warned in a dream to flee, and so the family escaped Herod’s murder of the children in Bethlehem by taking their toddler into hiding in Egypt. When Herod died (4 B.C), they wanted to return to Judea, presumably to their home in Bethlehem, but Herod’s son Archelaus was on the Judean throne, and he was worse than his dad. Another son of Herod named Antipas, upon his father’s death, went to Sepphoris to start construction on his capital—more enticement for Joseph to relocate to nearby Nazareth. So they made their home there. By that time, Jesus may have been about six years of age, it was about 2 B.C., and Jesus was old enough for apprenticeship to his father as a tekton.

Ancient Roman period tektons

Tekton

Tekton means "builder" (Matthew 13:55; Mark 6:3). It’s the root word for tectonics, which is the study of the earth’s crust or the science of constructing sky scrapers. Obviously the earth’s crust and sky scrapers are not made of wood. Interestingly, in the Bible Jesus never spoke of carpentry once, but spoke often of building and stone, giving the picture of a "mason" instead of a "wood worker.” From archaeology we know that wood was scarce and expensive. A carpenter would find little work. But a tekton living near Sepphoris would have steady, well-paying employment.

For a look at what day Jesus was born see my blog "When Was Jesus Born?" For a deeper look at the biblical birth stories in comparison with Christmas plays, pageants, cantatas, and manger scenes see my blog "Are Kids' Christmas Plays Biblical?"

HELL HOUSE:

2010-10-02T12:28:00.016-04:00

Halloween's Ultimate in Evangelical Perversity

Every Halloween there is out there in Churchianity a little something I like to call the ultimate in evangelical perversity: Hell Houses. A Hell House (also called Judgment House or Doom House) is a take-off on the old haunted house or house of horrors, but Hell House is sponsored by a church and often held at the sponsoring church facility. The idea is to scare the hell out of you, literally. They show you how to get to hell and what it will be like in order to pressure you into "getting saved" so you can be counted on the pastor's tally sheet.

In each successive room of Hell House, visitors are “treated” to a series of brief skits. Typical dramas are a bloody high school shooting at point blank range, a bloody suicide, a bloody abortion performed on a screaming teenager, a bloody satanic ritual killing, and other scenes that might involve bloody drunk drivers, dopers, adulterers, or witchcraft aficionados. (Hell House instruction manuals—yes, there are instruction manuals!—specifically advise you to whip up a large fresh batch of fake blood every day.) As if that isn’t objectionable enough, bloody September 11, 2001 ground zero scenes have become popular too.

At the end of your Hell House experience, there are typically two exits. Visitors are asked to accept salvation by repenting of their sins and accepting Jesus. If they want to do that, they should go through the “good” exit (that they say leads to Jesus and heaven). If not, they have to exit through the “bad” door (Satan and hell). No one asks anything of you if you leave through the bad door; you just get ignored. But if you exit through the good door, they have you sign stuff having to do with a tally of “souls won” for upcoming religious activities.

I received a letter once from the pastor of a church that sponsored a Hell House. It listed members of the church I served who “received salvation” by departing the good door at their recent annual House of Holy Horrors. The names on the list were mostly teenagers in our youth group, and they reported to me that the pressure put on them was overwhelming.

Do you think that any Hell House visitors have ever been impacted with the love of God? Or did the visitors claim to have “made a decision for Christ” because it was the least anxiety-producing way to escape the intense psychological pressure being applied?

This I know: People attending Hell Houses never hear the gospel, the real gospel of the Bible. Moreover, I never read in Scripture that Jesus ever used fear, gore, intimidation, and psychological pressure to introduce people to his heavenly Father. I will never condone this sick spiritual terrorism. (When a friend of mine read aloud this last sentence in a Bible study class I led, instead of “sick spiritual terrorism” he read “slick spiritual terrorism!” What a terrific Freudian slip!)

What do you think Jesus’ opinion is about the terrorizing procedures of Hell Houses?

I’m clear that the Jesus of scripture cannot condone such scare tactics. I’m clear that he never used such tactics himself. I’m clear that fear cannot bring anyone to God ever.

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. (1 John 4:18)

Even though it’s clearly not scriptural, churches continue to use fear to motivate and control Christians. So, how do churches sustain these misguided evangelical scare tactics?

They’ve learned that fear works to make you attend and give money.
So they plant seeds of doubt about your salvation frequently, perhaps weekly. They can’t allow you to have assurance, much less certainty. Why? Because if they allow salvation certainty or assurance, then fear won’t work anymore to keep you coming and giving money.
Then they have to shut down your questions. They say that questions are evidence of faithlessness. They explain that faithlessness brings your salvation into question. And if your salvation is uncertain, fear is more likely to keep you attending and giving money.
They discourage independent thinking about Scripture and theology. Your independent attitude will be viewed as an attack on corporate stability and body-count momentum. Only company yes-men need apply. If you won’t knuckle under, you can expect to be barely tolerated, ignored, ostracized, or run off.

Hell Houses are just an extreme of modern evangelicalism's standard operating procedure. You could be enjoying a cool October evening at the State Fair when a young man, a complete stranger to you, approaches acting friendly. Smiling. Interrupting. “You enjoying the fair, sir?” he asks you, but not really interested in your reply. “Man, that pretzel looks good,” he continues without waiting for you to respond. Then he springs his little rat trap. “Sir, are you saved? Do you know Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior? If you died today, are you certain that you will go to heaven?” He pushes a tract into your hands. He doesn’t ask your name. He expresses no interest in where you live, how many kids you’ve got, what you do for a living, or where you may or may not attend church. He doesn’t even apologize for the interruption. He’s at the fair on a single-minded yet misguided mission:

Stop strangers from going to hell.

More than mere rudeness, his actions are coldly impersonal. He’s not there to meet you or get to know you or to have a relationship of any kind with you, much less to walk with you through your struggles in life. He’s engaging you in a non-relational exchange—really more of a bombardment. The true, biblical Gospel is at its core relational. Yet this young man’s approach is decisional.

Earlier, on a garishly painted church bus, he was given instructions by his pastor on what to say and do, so the young man is not entirely to blame. He wasn’t instructed to relate to you. The pastor likened all the “unsaved” (There’s a completely unbiblical word!) at the fair to people in a burning building. He stressed urgency. The idea is to get “bodies” out of the burning building, i.e. to “save them,” meaning save them from hell, or more specifically, save them from God sending them to hell when they die or on judgment day, whenever it is that God supposedly does the judging, condemning, and sending to hell stuff. Amen.

I don’t know how far back the burning building analogy goes, but thanks to the internet I found it in an excerpt from a book by Mississippi evangelist T.T. Martin from 1923:

“Isn't saving a soul from spending eternity in hell ten million times more important than saving a human body from a burning building?”

So there’s our young missionary’s rationale. He has been influenced by his pastor to believe that the end justifies the means. It’s OK to be rude and non-relational to people at the fair because it’s in an effort to save them from God’s sending them to eternal torture. Apparently even dishonest conversational ploys are justifiable given their perceived urgency of the situation. Our young man is doing his job and following his pastor’s instructions, and he likely believes he’s doing what Jesus wants him to do too. So when the pastor asks him at the end of the evening how many he “witnessed” to, he can give him as large a “body count” as possible. He’s punched his ticket with x number of rude interruptions at the fair, x number of "decisions for Christ," x number of bodies saved from burning. His pastor punched his ticket with the recruitment of x number of teens making x number of rude hell-fire-tract-interruptions at the fair resulting in x "decisions."

I can hardly believe that the burning-building crowd can maintain this utter contradiction. Their face on the world is that they have salvation, and you don’t. They have to make you into their image by acting assured of salvation. Yet at the very same time, the key to the message within the walls of many a church is planting seeds of doubt about everyone’s salvation! Only fear will continue to feed the guilt-driven, decisional mechanics of confrontational evangelization. Do you see it? Fear attracts bodies. The church feeds them fear. Fear attracts bodies. The church feeds them fear. Round and round goes the hamster wheel of religion.

Why are the church’s tactics not blackmail and black magic? Isn’t using intimidation and threat to extort money and membership blackmail by definition? Isn’t pressuring people into reciting a formula that’s supposed to presto-chango switch their afterlife destination sorcery by definition? Intimidation and incantation. Threats and spells. Aren’t these blackmail and black magic just in the dictionary sense? Isn’t it obvious? What else could threat and magic words be? But, ironically, the religious folks call it “good news” and “prayer!”

There’s a huge problem here. I am willing to bet that for most people “getting saved from hell when you die” has actually become “the gospel” as they know it. I’m dead serious. Stand at the door of any church following worship. Survey people as they are leaving. When asked what the good news is, won’t most people say this or, with variation, its equivalent: “You can get saved by Jesus so God won’t have to send you to hell when you die!”

There is no treating and a lot of tricking going on at your local Hell House this Halloween.

What if, in the Bible, being “saved” has little to do with reserving a spot in the afterlife and more to do with being set free to live now and forever? What if, rather than fear and threat, the message of Scripture—the good news—is that you can trust and rest and live in the grace of God in Jesus Christ given freely to the world?

For more evangelical bad behavior:
The Prosperity Gospel: God In a Box
Katrina: The Wrath of God?
The Christian Ambush: A True Story
Don't You Hate Christian Tracts?

For a definition of biblical salvation see my blogs:

You’re Saved (part one) and You’re Saved (part two) [You may order a complimentary hard copy of it in booklet form from Plain Truth Ministries on their pdf order form here.]

See also these blogs:

Are We Supposed To Be Afraid of God?

Hell Defined 1 (Sheol and Hades)

Hell Defined 2 (Gehenna and Tartarus)

Lake of Fire Defined

PTM published this blog as an E-Update Feature Article: "Hell House?"

The Prosperity Gospel: God In a Box

2010-09-03T00:49:00.014-04:00

“Delayed obedience becomes disobedience,” said the television prosperity preacher, “and the delivery date on your financial harvest is today. If you hesitate, if you doubt, if you stop to think before you call and sow your uncommon seed right now, the delivery date on your harvest will be moved back. If you delay, heaven will delay. Call now. Don’t think. Don’t hesitate. Just simply obey the man of God, and reap your harvest of uncommon prosperity.”

“Don’t let this hour close with your hands closed. Quickly, go to the phone now. God never opens his hands until you open your hands. Call quickly. Call now.”

“When God wants you to have a harvest, he asks you for a seed that authorizes it. When God has a future for you, he talks to you about a seed. The instruction you follow determines the future you create.”

“When I open my hands, God opens His hands. My seed talks to God. My seed is a picture of my covenant to God. When God sees my seed, it is the way he remembers me.”

“When God wants to bless you, he talks to you about a seed. Quickly go to the telephone. Call the number that‘s on the screen. Do it now.”

“Nothing leaves heaven until something leaves earth. A swift response of faith releases a swift response from God. Your seed has never had so much power. If you have ever decided to obey the Holy Spirit, do it today. If you are ever watching a program ordained by the Holy Spirit, this is the one.”

“There is an anointing on the $1,000 seed right now. God will always give you something illogical to do. God will never give you something logical to do. You can do the logical stuff yourself. God doesn’t talk to your mind; he talks to your heart. God doesn’t talk to your logic; he talks to your faith. Call now.”

These are actual quotes from a televangelist. His moneymaking message is built on a “philosophy” of sorts, one that has been called by many names. It has been called Spiritualism, Occult Metaphysics, New Thought, the Law of Attraction, the Secret, Religious Science, Christian Science, the Power of Positive Thinking, Word of Faith, the Prosperity Gospel, the Law of Faith, and even “God.”

Does this philosophy have Christian origins? No, but it has infiltrated Christianity. There are four principle beliefs in the “Christian” version of New Thought. I will demonstrate what they are and why they are not biblical, and, therefore, why they are not Christian at all. The “God” of the Prosperity Gospel is radically different from the God of the biblical Gospel.

Law One: The Principle of Revelation Knowledge

Lie One: God is a knowable, non-material, nonphysical

power that you can tap into to change

the material/physical world.

As Christians, we believe that God is revealed fully in Jesus Christ. “Revelation Knowledge,” as defined by Prosperity Gospel proponents, however, has nothing to do with Jesus. It is completely metaphysical, a branch of philosophy having to do with the ultimate nature of reality.

“Revelation Knowledge” asserts that knowledge of God cannot come from your five senses because all things material are not of God, meaning God cannot communicate to you through the physical. All human understanding and science and knowledge come through the senses, so this principle is both absolutely anti-physical and anti-intellectual. “Revelation Knowledge” asserts that we cannot know God through physical or mental means, and he cannot communicate to us through them.

Origins in the Occult

The roots of New Thought and the Prosperity Gospel are in the occult. The term occult comes from the Latin occultus. It means hidden or secret. “Revelation Knowledge” asserts that the divine is hidden from our senses. “Revelation Knowledge” believes that humans may experience the divine realm through their own thought process, and in so doing actually change the material realm. It is a metaphysical philosophy of magical thinking.

Earnest Holmes

An alternate term for Occultism is Spiritualism. Spiritualism’s “science” claims that thoughts manifest events. This new “Science of the Mind,” as it is sometimes called, flowered in the late nineteenth century. It was called “Divine Science," “Mental Science,” and the “Science of Right Thinking.” But the title that stuck, thanks to the title of a 1919 cornerstone book in metaphysics by Earnest Holmes, was New Thought.

In New Thought, God became a power within one’s own mind. To believe is to become. We become what we believe.

Becoming a god?

New Thought essentially teaches that one becomes a god as one discerns and infiltrates the divine realm, utilizing its power for use in the material world. For many New Thought advocates, the acid test of their success—of how good a “god” they are—is reflected in how healthy and wealthy they are.

Tony Robbins

This occult, spiritualist philosophy—popularized today by notables as diverse as best selling author Eckhart Tolle and motivational guru Tony Robbins—reflects an extreme individualism and self-determination, asserting that the divine operates non-relationally and impersonally. New Thought is a non-personal, universal force that we are said to be able to learn to possess and control. By doing so, we become our own god. Thus it is the height of human pride.

Eckhart Tolle

Occultism has a parallel in religions of Indian origin, such as Buddhism and Hinduism. Their notion of “karma” is compatible with the principles of Occultism or Spiritualism. Karma is their term for a cosmic law of reciprocity. Good deeds manifest good fortune. Bad deeds manifest bad fortune. It may be no accident then that Tolle moves fluidly in his books between New Thought (New Age Science of the Mind) and Buddhist philosophy.

Jesus, however, rejects any notion of karma, though we have no record he ever used the word. Someone interrupted Jesus while he was teaching to report an atrocity. Pilate’s men had killed some Galileans while they were worshiping. Jesus asked the crowd, “Do you think these men were worse sinners than all the other Galileans?” (Luke 13:2). Jesus is being asked whether these men deserved what they got. Some reasoned that the catastrophe was God’s punishment. But Jesus answered his own question with an emphatic “No.”

Then Jesus brings up another incident. A tower fell on some workers at Siloam, which is an area around a pool in Jerusalem of Judea. The historian Josephus reports that during Jesus’ lifetime an aqueduct was being built there with funds reportedly stolen from the temple treasury. Perhaps the men working on the aqueduct, being paid from the stolen money, were crushed in a construction accident. Jesus asks, “Do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem?” (Luke 18:4)—meaning did they deserve it, and were they perhaps the recipients of God’s retribution for their sin against the temple? Again Jesus says “No.”

Repent of Wrong-Headed Thinking!

What is really telling, however, in Jesus’ take on the men slaughtered by Pilate and the men crushed by the collapsing tower is his call to repentance. He warned the crowd of the peril of an unrepentant life. The word repent, metanoeo, means change-mind. Change your mind about what? Change your mind that God works like that!

Jesus rejected karmic reciprocity. No, he said. Twice. Do not think like that about my heavenly Father. And do not judge people who experience misfortune. That is what I hear Jesus saying. He warned everyone in the crowd, and he warns you and me: If you keep thinking like that, then it applies to you, too. You will have to consider your misfortune as God’s retribution. You will have to condemn yourself.

The underlying moralism in New Thought is bleak. Misfortune in your life is the result of your thinking misfortune into your life. Your misfortune is your failure to block bad thoughts and think only good thoughts.

Not unlike karma, Occultism (or Spiritualism or New Thought or Word of Faith) makes your fortune or misfortune the direct result of your individual intentional or inadvertent thoughts, words, or deeds. Notice that these philosophies leave no room for accidents and, more alarmingly, leave no room for grace. The last time I checked the Scriptures, Jesus allowed for accidents, and he was big on grace.

This denial of accidents and grace has an underlying legalism. God is reduced to a cosmic principle. God becomes a universal law of reciprocity. You get what you deserve, whether it is payoff or pay back. It is not personal in any way, it does not involve relationship, and it certainly does not involve love. It is merely a cosmic mechanism whereby you determine your own fate. Health or sickness, wealth or poverty, good fortune or bad fortune, they are up to your own ability, your own thought process, your own religious efforts or lack thereof at tapping into “the divine.”

God Cannot Cross the Material-Spiritual Divide?

Another underlying legalism in New Thought is that God is bound by a law that regulates how he can and cannot communicate with us. New Thought would force us to know God by constantly striving to block out the material and intellectual, and constantly striving to “hear” him somehow in our “hearts.”

Isn’t it ironic that New Thought teaches and believes that we cannot reach God through the material world, yet the reason to reach God is to acquire material possessions?

The Bible says that all things were made by the Word of God, Jesus Christ. (John 1:1-4; Colossians 1:16-17; Hebrews 1:2) He made our bodies with the capacity to see, hear, taste, touch and smell. He made the brain that generates our thoughts. God, far from being banned from the material world (as New Thought would have it), made the heavens and the earth and called them “good.”

The Bible, moreover, does not confirm God’s inability to breach the alleged material-spiritual divide. Quite the opposite. The Word of God became flesh. (John 1:14) The Greek word is sarx. Flesh is the ultimate in materiality. God became material. Biblically, there is no alleged material-spiritual divide. Jesus’ incarnation as a human, his death in the flesh, and his resurrection in the body contradict the principle of exclusively non-material and non-intellectual revelation knowledge.

The Bible insists that the one true revelation of God to the world was quite material. “Revelation Knowledge,” this first principle of New Thought, with its material-spiritual dualism, more resembles Plato’s philosophy and early Christian Gnosticism, with their body-spirit dualism, than the Bible.

In Platonism and Gnosticism the body is bad and the spirit is good. The material is bad and the spiritual is good. “Revelation Knowledge,” the Prosperity Gospel’s first principle, is decidedly more pagan and Gnostic than Christian.

What is more, the God of the Bible, far from being an impersonal, non-relational principle, is personal and relational to the core. Jesus’ incarnation as a human says, if nothing else, that God is a person desiring relationship above all. In this sense, the biblical gospel is the exact opposite of New Thought’s Prosperity Gospel.

Law Two: The Principle of Positive Confession

Lie Two: You have within you the

power to force the non-material

God to materialize what you want

by claiming that it is yours.

The second principle of the Prosperity Gospel, which flows out of New Thought, builds on its first principle. The second principle is about the power of your mind and mouth to change physical reality.

“What I confess, I possess,” they say. “Believe it and receive it,” they say. “Name it and claim it,” they say.

New Thought entered the Christian Pentecostal movement of the early twentieth century through a movement called Word of Faith. Word of Faith became part of what is widely known as the Prosperity Gospel, enormously popular within charismatic Christianity. Word of Faith is based on “What I confess, I possess” called “Positive Confession,” or alternatively, “The Law of Faith.”

Creflo Dollar

The term “Law of Faith” is itself an illustration of the logical contradictions within New Thought / Word of Faith / Prosperity Gospel. It is contradictory to all logic and reason to turn faith into a law.

Word of Faith teaches that you have the right to demand that God do what he promised. Because you demand it, God is obligated to give you what you want. We activate God, they say. Well-known Word Faith proponents are the late Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland and Creflo Dollar. Proponents arising outside of Pentecostal circles are the late Norman Vincent Peale, Robert Schuller and Joel Osteen.

Kenneth Copeland

Copeland calls this Law of Faith the “faith-force.” He teaches that “the spirit world” can be commanded to do our bidding. Faith, in Copeland’s theology, is a power principle that we command to control our physical reality. This is the same principle used by occultist New Thought but under a different name.

Joel Osteen

Faith, as defined by the Bible, however, is trust and rest in the good news that our relationship with God is based on his goodness rather than our own. “Come to me and find rest for your souls,” he said. Biblical faith is not a law. Scriptural faith is not an impersonal cosmic principle to be manipulated for prosperity. It is, rather, simple trust in a personal God who dares to love in relationship.

Peale’s emphasis on positive imagery and self-affirmation, outlined in his 1952 classic text, The Power of Positive Thinking, is one of the most well-known, popularized versions of self-help teachings of our generation. His ideas fueled the messages of Schuller, Osteen and a host of others.

Norman Vincent Peale

In a little-known and overlooked interview, Peale regards his mentor as the giant of occult metaphysics, Earnest Holmes, the author of a foundational New Age text, Science of the Mind. The interview was for Holmes’ magazine, New Thought. Peale said that in 1920 he read Holmes’ book, Creative Mind and Success. That little book formed the basis of The Power of Positive Thinking. Tellingly, however, Peale’s biography and memoirs make no mention of Holmes.

God Obeys Humans?

The legalistic lie behind New Thought / Word of Faith / Prosperity Gospel is that God is transformed into a pawn who must obey human commands. This false gospel has created a god who set up a legal, universal principle that says that he has to obey when we think and say the right things.

New Thought / Word of Faith / Prosperity Gospel emphasis is on a positive attitude yielding positive results, and a negative attitude yielding negative results. Thinking positively is said to force God to yield positive results for you. According to this unbiblical teaching, the words you think and say have direct results in the physical world.

The “Christian” proponents of New Thought are syncretists. Syncretism is the attempt to combine opposing philosophies. They scour the Scriptures for verses that support their occult philosophy. And they are good at it. But the shotgun wedding is a bad one. New Thought defines God as a universal principle to be tapped and controlled by human thought. Word of Faith defines faith in exactly the same way.

The Bible, on the other hand, defines God as a Person (more specifically, three Persons who are one), not as a cosmic law-bound pawn. And the Bible defines faith as trust in that Person, not as a cosmic principle for manipulating the material world with words and thoughts.

Law Three: The Principle of Divine Healing

Lie Three: You have within you the

power to force the non-material

God to heal your material body.

Just as the second principle of the Prosperity Gospel, originally known as New Thought, grew out of its first principle, the third principle is founded on the second. If and when your body is sick, New Thought teaches that your physical healing is a done deal. It is called “a faith-fact” by some of its proponents, who include the late Mary Baker Eddy (Christian Science), the late Kathryn Kuhlman, the late Oral Roberts and the well-known, very much alive Benny Hinn, among many others.

Benny Hinn

According to the Prosperity Gospel, the ultimate test of your faith is to claim your healing complete when you are still experiencing symptoms. Any continuing symptoms, they say, are not real, but a trick of the devil to hinder your faith and steal your healing. The legalism should be obvious.

According to the Prosperity Gospel, your physical well-being is entirely dependent on how well you manipulate God with the faith-force. If you really get healed or if you enjoy sustained health, it is due to your prowess at naming and claiming your healing. But if you get sick or stay sick, it is your fault. Your continuing sickness is explained as your lack of faith, unbelief or sin.

The Prosperity Gospel is the worst kind of fear-driven hamster wheel because, it is claimed, “The Principle of Divine Healing” works in reverse, too. If you talk aloud to someone about the possibility of getting cancer, that might cause cancer. If you worry about it in your mind, you can actually call cancer into existence in your body. What a slavish, paranoid existence!

Joyce Meyers

Many so-called “faith-healers” have emphasized this principle and have been extremely successful in securing the funds for their broadcasts by taking up offerings prior to the healing portions of their “worship services.” I attended two Ernest Angley healing crusades, and I have friends who attended a Joyce Meyer event. Two things they have in common are the emphasis on contributions up front, and the fact that this protracted portion of their events is not broadcast on television.

Earnest Angley

Again, in this “gospel,” God is a cosmic principle, a universal law, an invisible faith-force, one that you somehow “hear” non-sensually and non-intellectually, yet one that you control with your thoughts. If you claim yourself healed, (and perhaps also apply the power of the almighty dollar in the evangelist’s offering plate), then God must heal you.

Picture this god like a slot machine. The gambling addict is seated before it, putting in quarter after quarter while chanting, “I won. I won. I won.” No jackpot, but if he only believes what he is saying, it will have to happen in the material world, and the jackpot will have to come pouring out.

If the Prosperity Gospel is correct, all Christians have a right to be healed, and have the power to force God’s hand to heal them. But, in the Bible, Epaphroditus, Trophimus, Timothy and the Apostle Paul were all sick. Paul was chronically sick. Three times he prayed to the Lord to heal him, but the Lord said “No” (2 Corinthians 12:7).

Was that a lack of faith on the part of Paul and these others? Was it their own fault that they were sick? Were they spiritually inadequate?

Law Four: The Principle of Material Prosperity

Lie Four: You have within you the

power to force the non-material

God to give you material wealth

and money.

This fourth law or principle of the Prosperity Gospel, rising out of the earlier teachings of New Thought, like the third, flows out of the second principle. The late Oral Roberts was, perhaps, the most famous proponent of this fourth principle. He coined the phrase “seed-faith giving.” We are back to god, the one-armed bandit.

Oral Roberts

“Seed-faith giving” claims that if you give money or belongings “to God” (meaning to their ministries), then God is obligated to give you more money in return, thus blessing you with financial prosperity. Thus the name, “Prosperity Gospel.” It is a double-your-money-back guarantee—at least double. A ten-fold or even a one-hundred fold return is sometimes promised.

Mike Murdock

Other popular and successful proponents of this principle are Robert Tilton, Creflo Dollar, Paul and Jan Crouch, Rod Parsley, Mike Murdock and again Kenneth Copland (and wife, Gloria). There are many more. The Pentecostal Prosperity Gospel dominates cable broadcasting, so much so that this brand of “Christianity” might be presumed by the uninformed viewer to be representative of all Christian believers.

Robert Tilton

This fourth and final principle is more than a religious, legal trap. It is more than just another self-salvation program. It is a successful money-making scheme.

Prosperity Gospel proponents promise people that they have the key to ending their financial woes. If the victims of Prosperity Gospel preachers will just let go of the money in their pockets, they are assured God will automatically have to let go of the prosperity that is in God’s pocket for them. It is a principle of reciprocity that God is obligated to obey.

On the other hand, however, it is also your fault if you are in a financial crisis—not because you made mistakes, but because you failed to implement the “faith-force.” Or your sins have messed things up.

Let us say that you sent your last $100 to the televangelist, and that you did not get the $1,000 back from God that he guaranteed. Well, that is your fault. You sinned or lacked faith or were in some way spiritually deficient. It would have worked, they say, if there were not something seriously wrong with you. So get back on the hamster wheel, try harder, pray longer, get all the sin out of your life, and send more money next time.

The Prosperity Gospel proclaims that the poor are not blessed. Far from it. It proclaims, “When you are not blessed, your misfortune is your fault and you deserve it.” The poor, according to the Prosperity Gospel, are self-cursed and God-abandoned. What a coldhearted message to the poor, the sick, and the otherwise unfortunate ones whom Jesus loved and embraced and blessed—“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” (Luke 6:20)

In the Bible, we find Jesus warning about wealth and greed, we find Jesus showing concern for and solidarity with the poor and blessing them, and we find Paul hungry for lack of funds.

Prosperity Preachers—or Gurus of Greed?

This Prosperity Gospel, with its four principles, has its parallels in Dianetics / Scientology made popular today by celebrities like Tom Cruise and John Travolta, in books like The Secret / Law of Attraction made popular by author Rhonda Byrne, and in other modern prosperity gimmicks like The Law of Success by Napoleon Hill, now available by infomercial for the low price of only $49.95.

These “secular” gimmicks promote the underlying belief that you have the power in your mind, in your mouth, or in your hand to get individual health, wealth and happiness—a belief in common with the Prosperity Gospel. You can manipulate a universal principle if you learn the trick. And the proponents of this secret will sell you the trick for a low, low, introductory price.

This is oppressive religion. Underlying the Prosperity Gospel and New Thought is the very same selfish, occultist legalism—the same impersonal, individualistic hamster-wheel; the same futile, self-salvation religion.

A Summary Contrast of the Biblical Gospel and the Prosperity Gospel

The four laws of the Prosperity Gospel utterly contradict the biblical gospel.

1. God is not a faceless, impersonal force locked away from the material world. In Jesus Christ we see the face of God, flesh and bone and blood, entering and embracing this material world personally, passionately, intimately, for the sake of a relationship of love with us.

2. Scriptural faith is not a force whereby we can command a non-material God to do our bidding in the material world. It is simple rest and trust in the good news that Jesus Christ has finished salvation for the world.

3. You cannot force a non-material God to heal you by claiming yourself already healed. This is superstitious, magical thinking. It is oppressive, futile religion. Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, a healer by all accounts in the Bible, suffered pain. God in the flesh experienced suffering in the material world. Likewise, his earliest followers suffered, some were sick, and some were even killed. What entitles Christ-followers an exemption today?

4. You can’t force a non-material God to make you rich in the material world by claiming that you possess riches. Again, this is magical thinking. It is radical individualism and materialism. And it is futile religion. Jesus had few possessions and little money, he warned about wealth and greed, and he loved and blessed the poor.

Prosperity Gospel Versus the Cross

While the Prosperity Gospel promises escape from suffering, God in Christ and his cross moves into suffering. There is no escapism in the cross. God does not run from pain. In the cross, God enters raw pain, and he does so naked and vulnerable.

While the Prosperity Gospel promise is concerned exclusively with selfish, individual gain through magical thinking, God in Christ and his cross is concerned exclusively with radically humble self-giving and suffering for the sake of others.

In the same way that the Prosperity Gospel does not deal with sin or suffering, neither does it deal with death. You have to stop sinning, it says, using magical thinking to make you healthy and wealthy. You can end your suffering magically, it says, by thinking it away, too. But how do you think away death?

In contrast to the Prosperity Gospel, in the biblical gospel, specifically in the cross of Jesus Christ, God enters even death. He does not run away from death. He does not use magical thinking to avoid death. God the Son willingly lays down his life.

A Clear Choice?

Could the “God” of the Prosperity Gospel and the God of the biblical gospel be more different? One is an impersonal principle, a faceless force, a cosmic law to be manipulated for individual profit. The other is a divine Person with a face—a dear friend, a willing servant, determined to face horrific suffering though scarred beyond recognition, determined to face death though he himself is life— all for the love of us.

Will you be manipulated by the cold, hands-off, run-from-pain, get-rich-quick “god” of the Prosperity Gospel? Or will you believe in and accept the warm, hands-on, walk-with-you-through-everything-and-run-from-nothing God of the biblical gospel?

To me, the choice is clear. But, tragically, my “Christian” cable television station schedule today tells me otherwise.

For more evangelical bad behavior:
Hell House
Katrina - The Wrath of God?
The Christian Ambush: A True Story
Don't You Hate Christian Tracts?

To see the layout of this article just published in Plain Truth Magazine go here: The Prosperity Gospel: God In a Box by Bert Gary.

Katrina - The Wrath of God?

2010-06-04T21:34:00.013-04:00

A Five-year Eyewitness Retrospective by Bert Gary

The fire chief stopped me in the parking lot of Marvin United Methodist Church in Florence, Mississippi. I was walking from my office to the sanctuary for morning worship. It was Sunday, August 28, 2005, the day before Hurricane Katrina made landfall near the Louisiana / Mississippi State line. The chief walked up to me, shook my hand, and made a simple request. He asked me to prepare my congregation for “a Camille-like event.”

I was not a resident of Mississippi in 1969 for Hurricane Camille, but locals talked of 100-mph winds. Trees down. No power. No water. And fatalities. What could equal Camille? The suggestion was unthinkable.

I gave the chief a hard stare. “Camille-like,” I said.

“Yes, sir,” he said, his voice flat, his eyes already tired. I was looking at a man who knew he was not going to sleep much for a few weeks. I was not sure I believed him, but I agreed to make the announcement.

“What else should I tell them?” I asked him.

I listened to Hurricane Katrina Preparations 101. Anything outside that could become a projectile should be brought inside. Lots of water and non-perishable food items. Lots of batteries for radios and flashlights. Once she hits, stay home. Do not drive. Prepare for weeks without water and electricity.

Projectiles? Weeks?

“Do we need to get the gym ready?” I asked. I knew the church gym had been used as a shelter during previous hurricane evacuations. I knew that the church could organize quickly to make that happen, if needed.

“No,” he said. “Send anyone who stops here up to Richland High School. Don’t let anybody stay here. Your gym roof is not designed to handle 90 mile-per-hour sustained winds.” How he knew that, I do not know. But the prospect of 90 mile-per-hour sustained winds peeling the roof off of the gym left me dumbfounded. That it might happen tomorrow, within twenty-four hours, was inconceivable.

The sun was already radiating off the asphalt as I thanked the chief and shook his hand again. He drove away, and I entered the sanctuary to make the announcement. When I shared with them that the fire chief had just come by the church to ask me to tell them to expect “a Camille-like event,” they gasped and fell silent. My blood ran cold. I did not experience Camille firsthand, but these people did. They knew what those words meant. That is when I realized that something terrifying was out there, and that she might be coming for us, for real.

After worship, while my son and I secured our lawn chairs and such in the garage, my wife and my daughters moved everything in the refrigerator to the deep freezer. Then we filled gallon milk jugs with water and packed the deep freezer to the top. We had already stocked up on batteries and candles. The propane tanks were ready for cooking. We did everything we knew to do. All that was left was to hurry up and wait.

Katrina Arrives

We awoke to wind and rain. It could have been any summer rainstorm, I told myself. I went on the front porch and thought about the coast and New Orleans. Katrina had just made landfall, the TV said. People are fighting for their lives, I thought. God, please help them.

The winds picked up throughout the morning. Looking back, things went in slow motion, but happened so fast. The sky opened and the yard became a lake. A vicious gust scooted a long black snake like a surfer across our flooded front lawn. Limbs cracked and thudded with such frequency that it reminded me of fireworks. More than anything, I was awed by the sustained hiss of the leaves in the trees combined with the sustained howl of the wind. Hours. That is what stunned me. Hours of howl and hiss unrelenting. Add explosions of thunder. And inside the house, add the low drone from the sound of the horizontal deluge driving against the roof. Hour after hour, it made you yearn for just a few seconds of sweet silence.

When the power failed, we huddled in the darkened den, candles were lit in windowless bathrooms, lightning strobed, and we almost yelled at times to hear one another over the roar against the roof and windows.

Then we napped. I am not kidding. I do not understand it even now. We could not keep our eyes open. It must have been Katrina’s low barometric pressure. We all drifted off, like Jesus asleep in the stern of a sinking boat. Then Katrina woke us up.

The large hardwood trees on the far side of the front lawn moved in ways I have never seen trees move. I stepped out onto the front porch with my family at the height of the storm. Because our front porch faced south, and because Katrina’s wrap-around winds were out of the north, the house blocked the storm enough that we could venture out to meet a killer face to face. That moment, for me, is frozen in time. Those treetops resembled blades of grass beneath a weed eater, the way they whipped, trembled and lay down and shattered. Pines snapped at the taproot and fell across the driveway. White siding ripped off the side of the church across the street and flew away. We went back inside.

By the time the sun set, the wind had eased but the rain still poured. We were able to open windows and get some air circulating. We lay awake pondering the fate of people we could not reach by phone, and praying for anyone south and east of us. Hattiesburg. Laurel. Meridian. And God help the people on the coast. The darkness was complete even with my eyes open. We tossed and dozed and wondered.

A New Day Dawns

Sunrise greeted us with new sounds, the combination of which I had never heard before. Chainsaws, sirens, helicopters and planes. I did not know it yet, but those four sounds would be constant for nearly a week. It may not be so in most areas of Los Angeles, but in Florence, Mississippi, guys have chainsaws. And we needed every one of them. There was not a single second during days following Katrina when you could walk outside and not hear chainsaws, sirens, helicopters and planes. It reminded me, though by stark contrast, of the week following the events of September 11, 2001, when the skies were eerily empty and silent.

The gym roof survived, but no street in our town was passable the day after Katrina. Yes, 150 miles from the coast, lucky because we were on the “weak” western side of the storm, and still there was not a passable street in Florence. Trees, utility poles and downed power lines blocked every road. No power. No water. No way out. And thankfully, we found out later, no fatalities in our community.

Our one-acre yard was a jungle of fallen trees and limbs. None hit our house because none were near the house. Many in town were not so lucky. They rode out Katrina with trees in their kitchens. A pastor I know and his family of six rode out the storm sharing their living and sleeping quarters with four huge pines. No one was hurt.

There is no TV without electrical power, of course, so for the first few days, we had to imagine the devastation in places like Waveland and Pass Christian, communities essentially wiped from the map by a thirty-foot storm surge and 130 mile-per-hour winds. We tried to see New Orleans, the Big Easy, under water in our mind’s eyes as the radio DJs described the failing levees, the rising water and the floating bodies. It was as if we were suddenly in a third-world country, cut off, and clinging to civilization via transistors and Duracells.

We were fortunate. Our house, being downtown, got water and power back in four days. It seemed a long time. But friends did not have water and power for over two sweaty, stressful weeks. My best friend was one of those. He and his wife rode out the storm and its long aftermath with a newborn. You did what you had to do.

Though we had power, the cable TV was not back up. Five days after the storm, though people around the world knew what the coast and New Orleans looked like, we did not. We wanted to see for ourselves. So, when my wife and I had to run a truckload of supplies up to the Army airfield in Jackson, we took the opportunity to go to Ruby Tuesday’s restaurant in Ridgeland for lunch. There was a TV behind the bar, and we walked up and stood transfixed with others. We held one another and wept. “No,” we both said again and again. No mental image prepared us for the reality of Katrina’s devastation. Our beautiful coast was eradicated and our beloved New Orleans had drowned.

Why Did It Happen?

A few weeks after Katrina, my first book came out. I went to the Florence, Mississippi, Post Office to mail a copy to a friend. I got a mailer and waited in line. A man came in behind me and took notice of the title of my book, Jesus Unplugged. He commented to me about it and introduced himself as a pastor. He was a 140-pound, elderly African American.

“The Lord sent Katrina to New Orleans as a punishment,” he said, “for the sins going on in that sinful place.”

“I don’t believe that,” I said, aware that people were starting to listen.

“No doubt about it,” he said, not seeming to realize that I had just disagreed with him. “The Lord got those sinners.” I turned to face him.

“You don’t really believe Jesus sent Katrina to punish New Orleans, do you?” I asked.

“Yes, sir, I do! Don’t you?”

Now every ear in the Post Office line was keyed in on two pastors who were getting into an argument about God. Please know that I did not wake up that morning and plan to have a public theological debate in a post office, but this man was speaking so that all could hear, and I guess I was just tired of hearing it. There were TV preachers saying essentially the same thing. I was hearing it on the street. I was mad. But still, I managed to smile as I turned and looked him in the eye.

“If God wanted to kill the sinners in New Orleans, why didn’t Bourbon Street flood? Why did he spare the worst street in the city?”

Because he had no reply, some in the line laughed nervously. I felt bad. I did not want a public theological debate, and I did not mean to embarrass the man or myself, though I may have succeeded in accomplishing both. But it bothers me when people say things like that. That theology (bad things happen to people because of the bad things they did) is not Christian. It is Buddhist (and Hindu and other Indian religions). My fellow pastor in the post office was describing how karma works, not the kingdom of God.

What Did Jesus Say?

I was thinking about the man who interrupted Jesus while he was teaching to report an atrocity: Pilate’s men had killed Galileans in worship (Luke 13). Jesus turned to the crowd and asked, essentially, Do you think the Galileans deserved this because they were worse sinners than other Galileans? (Galileans had a reputation as brigands in the day.) Do you think this was God’s punishment? Then Jesus answered his own question with an unambiguous, “No!”

Immediately Jesus brought up another example—the eighteen Judean workers who were crushed by a falling tower near the Pool of Siloam in Jerusalem. Did they deserve it?, he asked the crowd. Was this God’s punishment? (First century historian Josephus refers to an aqueduct being constructed by money forcibly taken from the temple treasury. Workers there may have been hated for taking pay that was “stolen from God.” Their deaths could have been interpreted by some as God’s retributive justice.) Again, Jesus shouts, “No!”

Jesus concludes both of these “No’s” with a call for everyone in the crowd to repent. The word repent, metanoeo, means “change-mind.” Change your mind about what? Change your mind that God works like that! Jesus rejected karma. “No!” he said. Twice. Do not think like that about my heavenly Father. And do not judge people who experience misfortune. That is what I hear him saying. Then he warned everyone in the crowd. If you keep thinking like that, then it applies to you, too. You will have to consider your misfortune as God’s retribution. You will have to condemn yourself.

Putting aside some unsightly “Christian” interpretations of Katrina as God’s punishment for sin, I want to affirm the compassion and generosity of Christians following the storm. For that matter, the whole world chipped in on the recovery. Our disaster was that huge. It is encouraging to know that in the face of tragedy, people really do come together and try to help. A lot of people worked very hard, not just in the days following the storm, but month after month, year after year, really, to help the coast recover. The recovery goes on even now, five years later.

I hesitate to mention one final thing, because I do not want to sound trite. But I noticed something in Mississippi during the last five years that, to me, is a testimony to Katrina’s enduring power. I noticed something peculiar in Mississippians’ conversations about that epic storm, now five years past. As I listened to Mississippians talk and remember together, sometimes when someone decided to make the inevitable comparisons between Katrina and the horrible, deadly 1969 hurricane, Camille, guess what? As one man attempted to make the comparison, he suddenly found that he could not bring the name “Camille” to mind.

“I never thought I’d see anything worse than… Oh, what was the name of that awful 1969 storm?” he asked.

“Camille,” someone reminded him.

I noticed this happening a lot. Imagine it! Imagine how bad a storm would have to be, in the minds of fifty-plus-year-old Mississippians, for it to have eclipsed the name, if not the memory, of Hurricane Camille.

Though I was an eleven-year-old boy some 500 miles away in Georgia when Camille hit Mississippi in 1969, just five years ago I personally witnessed a measure of Hurricane Katrina’s power. But in these last five years, I also personally witnessed Katrina’s continuing power—the power to do the impossible for anyone who survived the viciousness of “that awful 1969 storm.” Katrina was making Mississippians forget the name “Camille.”

NOTE: August 29, 2010 is the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall on the U.S. Gulf Coast. Nearly 2,000 people lost their lives. Nearly 100 were listed as John or Jane Doe. Katrina was the fifth deadliest Atlantic storm. At her peak, she was the sixth most powerful Atlantic hurricane. And Katrina was the most costly natural disaster in U.S. history.

For more evangelical bad behavior:
Hell House
The Prosperity Gospel: God In a Box
The Christian Ambush: A True Story
Don't You Hate Christian Tracts?

To see the fantastic PTM layout of this article CLICK HERE.

Bless the Baby Smashers?

2010-04-24T00:45:00.015-04:00

By David Foreman and Bert Gary

Do you want to claim all the blessings of the Bible? I’ve heard pastors telling their congregants to claim this very thing. But I have reservations. And I raise my reservations in order to question common assumptions about what the Bible is and how to interpret it.

Now I like this blessing:

Blessed is he who has regard for the weak; the LORD delivers him in times of trouble. (Psalm 41:1)

But look at this one:

Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock! (Psalm 137:9 - ESV)

Do I really want to claim all the blessings in the Bible? I realize the Bible assures us, "For every one of God’s promises are “Yes” in him; therefore also through him the “Amen” is spoken, to the glory we give to God." (2 Cor 1:20 - NET) But obviously I can’t claim the right to be a blessed baby smasher, can I? Houston, we have a problem.

As I have grown to love and trust the Bible, I’ve come to understand that the Scriptures “plainly” say a lot of things. But, where I see us frequently getting off track is when we fail to realize that, if not reverently cautious to read Scriptures in context, we can read the Bible saying a lot of things that the Bible “plainly” doesn't say.

Here are two ten-dollar words that all students of the Bible should learn:

---Exegesis [pronounced ek-si-JEE-sis]

---Eisegesis [pronounced ahy-si-JEE-sis]

Exegesis means “a reading out.” It’s the faithful attempt to interpret the message of Scriptures in context. Eisegesis means “a reading into.” It’s the frequent and unfortunate practice of imposing external assumptions on Scriptures to the neglect of a serious attempt to search for meaning in context.

Eisegesis has an unfortunate result in the church. I've seen too many dear saints look down on themselves because they've "claimed" some biblical promise plucked from its context, only to have God "fail to deliver on his 'word.'" Since the fault can't be with God, they conclude that it must be a lack of faith on their part. So how can we address this, maybe even fix this?

I now look at it like this. Just because God seems to promise a blessing, like the promise of blessings on baby smashers, does not mean we can "claim" that biblical promise for ourselves willy-nilly. Context matters to faithful interpretation. And most Christians would quickly agree, I think, that something is just wrong in randomly claiming promises that may mean something vastly different in context, and promises that may not even apply to them.

Look, brothers and sisters. What if it’s not that God has failed on his promises or that you lacked faith? What if sound exegesis reveals that he never made those promises to you in the first place?

Jesus blessed a variety of people in what is called The Beatitudes recorded in his Sermon on the Mount. Here’s one:

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 5:3)

This blessing is widely interpreted as: I have to be poor in spirit to get the kingdom of heaven. But who wants to be poor in spirit? I don’t! I’ve been there, and I wanted out. No one in their right mind, it seems to me, wants “the dark night of the soul.” We are doing eisegesis, a reading into the Scripture our own false assumption. We are reading into Jesus’ words something that’s not there.

It takes nothing away from me and you that Jesus blesses those who at that moment (or any moment) may be walking through the valley of the shadow of death. This misreading is so human. We turn Jesus’ beautiful blessing on those who are in deep despair into a “how to” formula for earning his blessing! Why can’t we just celebrate that Jesus blesses people in spiritual meltdown, knowing that the time may come, sooner that we might wish, when one of those unfortunates may be one of us?

I believe, as Scripture says, all of God's promises are Yes and Amen. When God really makes you a promise, he will really keep it. But just because you make a quick reading (or misreading) of a verse, doesn't mean you can presume a personal promise from God. Sometimes you can, admittedly. Good exegesis bears it out. Here’s an example, again from the Sermon on the Mount.

"Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.” (Matthew 5:11)

Context and content both promise something straightforward and simple. It doesn’t mean that you should go out trying to make people hate you and lie about you so you can earn the blessing! It means that when your love and loyalty to Jesus results in the deep hurt that comes from people hating you and lying about you, know deep in your heart that you are blessed personally by that same Lord. That’s a biblical promise you can bank on when such a situation arises.

We can avoid misusing the Scriptures by the very way we approach them in the first place. Yes, Scripture is good for training, doctrine, etc. But (and I'm sure some "fundies" will crucify me for this) Scripture is not the “end all” in knowing God. This is not my opinion. Jesus said it.

“You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, ⁴⁰ yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” (John 5:39-40)

He has life, not the paper and ink. The purpose of the Scriptures is to point us to life in him. Scriptures invite us to draw near to him, and let him reveal himself to us personally. Let him reveal truth to us personally. Scriptures are for our aid and guidance in getting to him. To make Scriptures more than that, biblically speaking, is idolatry. The Bible isn’t God. It points us to him and leads us to life abundant in a close personal relationship with him.

I have come to trust that the Bible is divinely inspired by God. But there is a difference between divine inspiration and divine "dictation." It was, after all, God who completely trusted the imperfect human beings who wrote and collected the documents in our Bible. He created these people, endowed them with intelligence and talent and skill, and employed them by the power of his Holy Spirit to write those things which lead us to knowledge of God.

This is why I cannot label the Bible, as it is often labeled, as an “owner’s manual,” a “playbook,” a “rulebook,” or a “how to guide.” These smack to me of marketing gimmicks. I see the Bible as the inspired story of God’s love for his people, and his determination to have a relationship of utter union with them. We are invited by Scripture to abide in him, even as he abides in us.

So what about the baby smashing blessing?

There are a few Scriptures about it (2 Kgs 8:12; Isa 13:16; Hos 13:16; Nah 3:10). Amazingly, thanks to eisegesis, hardcore doctrines have been established on less! We've seen great misuses with New Age fads, for example, like "prosperity teaching." We then judge the faith of others by how nice of a car they drive. And if we drive a clunker, we judge ourselves as faith-deficient. Let’s not let these abuses slide. Yes, the Bible is "good for doctrine," but this doesn't mean that we can skim, pluck something out, and twist it to fit our whims.

“Passing children through the fire” was the Ammonite’s practice of pagan child sacrifice to the calf-headed man-god named Molech (2 Kings 16:3; 2 Chronicles 28:3, 33:6; Jeremiah 7:31; 19:2-6), and this practice was prohibited by the Old Testament as idolatrous (not to mention abhorrent). Paralleling this pagan worship barbarism was the gruesome military practice employed by some of Israel’s enemies of dashing captured children on rocks, even opening up the wombs of captured pregnant women to accomplish this.

These practices were despised by the biblical writers. Yet in Psalm 137, baby smashing is given a painful twist. The psalmist bemoans Israel’s captivity in Babylon. There is weeping and unimaginable hardship. He calls his captors tormentors. He calls Babylon a devastator. With very honest, human frustration, the writer dreams of payback. He can’t help it. He expresses his desire in verse 9 that the tables might one day be turned on his captors. While Israelites usually avoided the barbarism of foreign powers, like baby smashing, he cries out a blessing on someone, anyone, who might one day smash Babylon’s babies on rocks. Let them one day feel our pain.

Context is everything in biblical exegesis, and in the Old Testament there is an intentional contrast between the atrocities of war and idolatrous child sacrifices of her neighbors, and the practices of Israel, the people chosen of God.

Idolatry, of course, is when we worship something other than God. Today, too many Christians treat the Bible as an object of worship, almost as if it’s a fourth member of the Holy Trinity. But his Word (Jesus is the Word of God—John 1:1-4, 14; Rev 19:13) is a person who is alive, active, more powerful that a double-edged sword, and not confined to a book, not even the Holy Bible.

*This article was published in Plain Truth Magazine by the title, "Does the Bible Really Say That?" (That should be a hot link to the article. The layout is cool.)