272: Matt Colby - The Empty Tomb

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:13

   Welcome to Good Chris Selfie and talks. I’m Levi. And I’m Chris, and I’m Brian. Thank you for joining us this week on this podcast. We select one Talk a week to help us get the Bible in our Daily News feed. We post a new episode at the start of each week. With the short intro beforehand to kind of set the stage for the talk you’re about to listen to.

2. 0:33

   And now, let’s talk more about this week’s talk. Everyone, this is Jason Hensley and I’m going to be joining you now on the good Christadelphian Talks Podcast. So thank you for having me. I’m quite excited to be able to talk to you about this week’s talk. This is my first one, So this is a talk by Brother Matt Colby.

3. 1:08

   It was given in 2019 at the Brant County CYC Ultimate Frisbee Challenge, which sounds like a pretty exciting event. Now this talk’s not about Frisbees or anything along those lines. Instead, this talk is called the Empty Tomb, and it is part of a series all about reasons to believe. First off, that’s just a really exciting topic. I think that as more and more knowledge becomes available, there’s going to be people asking more and more questions. Why do we believe in Scripture?

4. 1:47

   Why do we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ? Why do we believe in a coming Kingdom of God? These are going to be questions that people are going to ask us or that our young people are going to be asking, and we need to have answers for them. This series presents some good answers. I think it’s a very good introduction for us in getting into some of these challenging questions. And I specifically chose the second class because. As you can probably guess from the title, The Empty Tomb, it’s all about the resurrection of Jesus. And what I really love about this is the resurrection of Christ is essentially what everything hinges on for us as Christians.

5. 2:31

   Our faith is really based on whether or not that took place. So what Brother Matt does is he walks through it, he walks through evidences different possibilities of what could have happened. And he ultimately, as you can probably guess, comes to the conclusion that clearly a powerful miracle must have taken place. So I leave you with that. Listen to this class.

6. 3:01

   I hope that you enjoy it. I hope that you’re inspired by it, and that you can recognize by hearing these things the solid foundation upon which our lives and everything we know is built. The Lord Jesus has been raised and we believe that and we know it. Thanks for coming here this morning.

7. 3:26

   I’m really happy to be here with you. All the four of the world’s major religions are based on what we might call philosophical propositions. So they have something to say, you know, about morality and and maybe who we should be and how we should act. But they don’t really make a bolder claim about the state of things, about the state of the world.

8. 3:49

   But there are four of the world’s major religions that do have something a little bit bolder to say about God, about the universe, about what we should believe. And and those four religions are Judaism, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity. And of those four religions that take a stronger stance, well, within Judaism, somebody of the Judaistic faith today would tell you that that their founding father, Abraham, is dead and buried.

9. 4:28

   And Buddhists would tell you that Guatemala Buddha died and was buried, and that was it. And those of the Islamic faith would tell you that their founder, the great Prophet Muhammad, died and was buried. And that’s the last we saw of him. And of those four, perhaps of the most major world religions, only Christianity makes a bolder claim, says something that seems crazy.

10. 5:04

    That seems unbelievable. It puts it right out there for us to test the accuracy of it. Because only Christianity claims that at a point in history a man was raised from the dead. And not only that, but that a lot of people saw it. And it puts it out there so that we can examine it, look at the evidence for or against it. And of course we know that man was was our Lord Jesus the Christ.

11. 5:38

    And the fact that he really lived, that he was a real live human being is is really beyond dispute today in scholarly circles among historians, even among atheist historians. Everybody who knows anything who’s looked at the facts would acknowledge that that as much as any historical figure ever really lived and and was a true person, Jesus was.

12. 6:01

    And here’s a quote from from an atheist historian named Michael Grant about Jesus. He says to sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ myth theory. So as you may guess, the Christ myth theory says that Jesus is just a made-up person. He wasn’t real at all. Now this is an atheist historian who wrote this in his review of the Gospels. He says it has again and again been answered and annihilated by first ranked scholars.

13. 6:33

    In recent years no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus, or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary. And at the end of our class last night we saw that debate, a part of the debate where the well known atheist Richard Dawkins is forced to admit that yes, Jesus really did live.

14. 6:58

    It’s a fact, It’s a historical fact as much as any other piece of history that we know about. But he goes on to say, but if you want to say that the miracles that he performed really happened and that he really was raised from the dead, he said all of that. I can’t believe it.

15. 7:11

    He says it. It defies logic. But come with me to 1st Corinthians chapter 15. This is how important the resurrection of Jesus is to the Christadelphian faith. And when Paul’s writing here to the Corinthians, it would seem that that in their ecclesia they had a problem. The problem was some people were teaching that there’s no resurrection of the dead.

16. 7:36

    And so Paul is is combating that idea here. I’m going to start reading to you in in verse 12 First Corinthians chapter 15. And Paul says, now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.

17. 8:03

    We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise. If it is true that the dead are not raised, For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised, And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins, then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.

18. 8:25

    If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people, most to be pity. But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. And Paul says, look, if there’s no resurrection of the dead, then Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead. And if Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead, then there’s no forgiveness of sins.

19. 8:48

    And if there’s no forgiveness of sins, then what are we doing this for? All of our preaching, all of our good works, all of it is for nothing because we’re just going to be die, and that’s going to be it. And the point is that the entire gospel message, in fact the entirety of the Christian faith in the Bible, hangs in the balance based on whether or not at a point in history a man really was raised from the dead. Because if it’s not true, then we might as well throw the rest of it out too.

20. 9:24

    But if it is true, well, then you’d want to give really serious consideration to everything else that we read in the word of God. So in this class we want to ask that question. Do we think it’s true? And why? Why do we think it’s true? What’s the evidence for it? We want to look at the story of the trial and the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus with a critical eye. And I want you to come with me to start to, to John Chapter 11. This was, if you will, sort of as far as this story goes. It was the beginning of the end in John Chapter 11. And towards the end of John Chapter 11, the leaders of the Jews had a problem.

21. 10:06

    And the problem was that Jesus had performed a miracle that was so impressive that even the skeptics had. Now it seemed like gone and followed after Jesus. Everybody who was on the fence about him was now in Jesus the Jesus camp, because Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead. And so the leaders of the Jews have a problem and I’ll start reading at verse 47 of John Chapter 11.

22. 10:33

    They they come together and they have a meeting to discuss what they’re going to do about this problem. Starting at verse 47 of John Chapter 11, it says So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said, what are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.

23. 10:57

    But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, you know nothing at all, nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people than that the whole nation should perish.

24. 11:15

    Now, the argument that Caiaphas used is a familiar one. You see, what he was saying is this. We’ve seen this before. There have been false messiahs before that have led people away after them, and they’ve risen up and revolt against the Roman Empire. And every single time the Romans came down and crushed that revolt. And now here is this Jesus, and he’s got a larger following than anybody we’ve ever seen.

25. 11:51

    If he decides that he wants to start something, that he wants to rise up and revolt against the Romans, the revolt is going to be so big, and the Romans will be so angry that they’ll come down with such force that they’ll not only will they completely crush that revolt, but they’ll lose their patience with us because the Romans had let the Jews continue to govern themselves, continue to worship as they as they please.

26. 12:17

    But, he said, now that won’t be the case. They’ll take all that away from us. We won’t be able to live the way we’ve always lived. We won’t be able to worship the God we’ve always worshipped. Our nation will be taken away if we let this continue. So he says, for the good of our nation, we’ve got to put a stop to it. And yes, it might be wrong to murder a man, but don’t the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? Or in this case, the needs of the One isn’t the greater good at stake.

27. 12:47

    We’ve got to preserve our nation. So we’ve got to do this thing, as uncomfortable as it might make you feel, We’re going to have to kill this man. And from this point on, the Jewish leaders make it known that they’ll be very pleased if anybody comes to them with any information that leads to the rest of Jesus.

28. 13:05

    Essentially, when we read into it, they put a bounty on the head of Jesus. If anybody can help us out, give us information that leads to the rest of this man, we’ll be very happy with you and we’ll reward you. But they had a problem. They couldn’t just go and arrest him. They had a lot of fears.

29. 13:22

    Come back with me. Just a few pages to John, Chapter 7. They had sent their own Temple Guard who was on their payroll to go arrest Jesus and those guards came back empty handed. And that’s the context for when we start in verse 45 of John Chapter 7. The officers then came to the chief priests and Pharisees who said to them, why did you not bring him?

30. 13:52

    The officers answered. No one ever spoke like this man. The Pharisees answered them. Have you also been deceived? Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd that does not know the law is accursed Nicodemus, who had gone to him before, and who was one of them, said to them, Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?

31. 14:19

    They replied, Are you from Galilee? Two Search and see that no prophet arises from Galilee. Now, in their response to these soldiers, they actually said two things that we know were wrong. First, they they say to him, look, none of the leaders, none of us has believed on him, and we’re the people who know everything.

32. 14:41

    Well, they were wrong, weren’t they? Because the man who just spoke, Nicodemus, we’re in on the secret at this point. Although they don’t know Nicodemus was one of them and he was a secret follower of Jesus. And we’ll find out later there was another man, Joseph of Arimathea, in their midst. They did have people who were perhaps secretly following Jesus.

33. 14:59

    And not only that, they say, look, he comes from the filthy region of Galilee. There’s never been a prophet that’s come from there. But both Jonah and Nahum had come from the region of Galilee. But the point is this. They had a problem. They couldn’t even get their own soldiers to go and arrest this man.

34. 15:19

    So how were they going to be able to do it successfully? They were afraid. They were afraid that wherever they went to try to find him, the people would be there to stop them. And perhaps more than that. It’s not written in the New Testament, but but it’s an assumption maybe we can make. They might have been afraid of Jesus himself because this man had undeniably power of God.

35. 15:43

    He had performed miracles. Many of these leaders had watched it happen. They’d seen it and he never heard anybody before. But who knew if when backed up against a corner, he might lash out and what he could do and what he might be capable of. So they needed somebody to deliver him, not only away from the people when there were crowds around him that could protect him.

36. 16:11

    They needed somebody to deliver him when he was in the right state of mind. Now we don’t have time to turn to to every passage that we might normally end this story, because we’re going to be looking at the events leading up to the arrest of Jesus, and then we’re going to be looking at his trial. We know that Jesus was there in the upper room with Judas, the man who would betray him, And I want you to come with me Now back to Luke, chapter 22.

37. 16:43

    I imagine that the Pharisees and the leaders of the Jews in their wildest dreams never thought that they might actually get an informant who was one of Jesus’s inner circle of disciples. But that’ll be exactly what happens when Judas hears about the bounty that’s on the head of Jesus. I’m going to start reading at verse three of Luke chapter 22.

38. 17:06

    Then Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot, who was of the number of the 12. He went away and conferred with the chief priests and officers how he might betray him to them, and they were glad and agreed to give him money. So he consented and sought an opportunity to betray him to them. In the absence of the crowd, you see, that was important. It had to be in the absence of the crowd. There couldn’t be people around him when this happened. So Judas goes away from that meeting with them, looking for the right opportunity.

39. 17:37

    And so Judas is sitting there with Jesus in the upper room at that Last Supper with the other disciples. And Jesus is talking about his death.

40. 17:50

    And Judas realizes what’s going to happen next. He knows where they’re going to go. And Jesus turns to Judas, and he says that which you’re about to do, do it quickly. You remember that. And the other disciples don’t understand what Jesus means by that. But Judas knows and he leaves. He walks out into the night, and at that point we lose track of him. What happens between when we see him there and when we next see him?

41. 18:18

    At the arrest of Jesus? Because you would think Jesus said what you’re about to do, do it quickly. You can imagine him running through the streets of the city, but it will be hours and hours until the arrest party arrives with Judas to actually arrest Jesus. If he was supposed to do it quickly, how come it took so long? How can we explain that?

42. 18:39

    And we’re going to look at this story now with more of a critical eye. We’ve got to be able to explain these gaps that the Bible doesn’t go to any lengths to explain for us. We know that it was late at night by the time that Judas and the arrest party came to to arrest Jesus for a number of reasons because the disciples were exhausted. Jesus went to the garden and was praying in the garden of Gethsemane.

43. 19:04

    And there are three separate occasions where he goes back and finds the disciples sleep And he says asleep. And he says can you not wait with me one hour? And they say OK, OK And he goes and they fall asleep again three different times. It was well past their bedtime.

44. 19:20

    And we know that it must have been quite dark by the time they got there, because Jesus can see a little bit far away the torches of the arrest party as they come in the darkness of the night. And John chapter chapters 14/15/16 and 17 all take place in the upper room after Judas has left the room where Jesus goes on to talk at length with his disciples. And then he gives this great, powerful prayer with them. And then they sing hymns before they even leave the upper room to go and walk out.

45. 19:53

    It would have taken them probably 20 to 30 minutes to walk out to the Garden of Gethsemane. Hours and hours go by before Judas actually comes back. How can we explain that? So let’s just imagine for a second what it might have been like for Judas, what he would have had to go through in order to set this up.

46. 20:13

    So let’s say he walks out the door. Jesus said, what you’re about to do, do quickly, and he’s running through the streets of the city to meet someone we don’t know. He must have had a contact. He knocks on somebody’s door. This is at night and the door opens. What must Judas have said to whoever his contact was?

47. 20:36

    He must have said something like now is the time. I can tell you exactly where he’s going to be tonight. It’s going to be in a place away from the city, away from the crowds, and he is thinking and talking about death. You’ll never find him in a better state of mind. He is depressed. This is what they were waiting for. But now they had a problem.

48. 21:01

    You see, they had no idea when the moment was going to come. They had this man now on their payroll, but they didn’t know when the moment was going to be, because it had to be the perfect moment. And all of a sudden he’s knocking on their door. And the very next day the feast is about to start. The festive pilgrims, most of them, have already arrived in the city.

49. 21:21

    The city would be busier at this time of year than almost any other time of the year. So they were afraid of the crowds. But more than that, according to the law, they could not try a man for this kind of a crime during the feast. So they had to either convict him tonight where the moment would be lost, it would be gone.

50. 21:39

    They had to make a choice. They had to make a decision. But if they were going to go through with this, there were a lot of things they were going to have to arrange very, very quickly because they were going to do some things that were illegal. We’re going to find they didn’t care if they had to break the law to make this happen.

51. 21:53

    They just didn’t want to anger the people. They were willing to do whatever it took to get rid of this man. There were a lot of things that were illegal about what they’re about to do. For example, under Jewish law, it was illegal for the Temple Guard to arrest somebody who was accused of a crime. Under Jewish law is the responsibility of the person or persons who witnessed the crime to go and and bring that person to the Sanhedrin Council and to bring them before the judge. It was illegal for them to just send the soldiers out to get him.

52. 22:28

    But when Judas arrives, John chapter 18 and verse three tells us that the Temple guard is there with him. That was against the law, but of course the leaders of the Jews were going to take no chances. This man had power. They wanted to make sure they had the manpower to bring him back and to if his disciples were there to to beat them back as well. It was illegal under Jewish law to try a capital charge By night.

53. 22:54

    A capital charge is 1, which if the person is is convicted, they would be put to death. It’s illegal to do that. It was illegal to do that under Jewish law at night. But they’re about to hold this trial at night and it was illegal for the judges of the trial to cross examine the prisoner after the testimony of the witnesses had broken down.

54. 23:18

    Come with me to mark chapter 14 and have a look at this. This is now we’re in the trial of Jesus, and I’m going to start reading to you from verse 55 of Mark chapter 14.

55. 23:39

    Now the chief priests and the whole council, we’re seeking testimony against Jesus to put him to death, but they found none, for many bore false witness against him, but their testimony did not agree. You see, here’s how it works. During a trial under Jewish law, you’re probably familiar with the biblical law that somebody could not be convicted if there was just one witness. There had to be at least two and preferably 2 or more witnesses. And so if they had more than one witness, those witnesses would be, we call it, sequestered.

56. 24:15

    They’d be kept somewhere in a separate room, away from everybody else. You didn’t want them talking to each other. You wanted to make sure you were getting the truth of the matter. No collaboration between the witnesses. So the judges, which would be the members of the the leadership council, the Sanhedrin Council of the Jews, would call the first witness out and that witness would give his testimony of what he had seen.

57. 24:36

    It had to be, you know, of something that was a criminal act. And at this point, there are three types of testimony under Jewish law. And the first kind of testimony is called a vain testimony. A vain testimony looks like this. A single witness comes out and they give their testimony. And for whatever the reason, the judges throw that testimony out.

58. 24:57

    They say no, that you know, the facts don’t line up, We don’t believe you. We find this to be not a credible witness, a vain testimony, that witness is dismissed and they don’t accept his testimony. The second type of testimony under under Jewish law is called a standing testimony. So that means the first witness comes out, they testify as to what they have seen.

59. 25:18

    And the council says, OK, fair enough, thank you very much. And they dismiss that witness and call out the next one. His testimony stands, but it remains for it to be confirmed by the other witnesses. This is why the witnesses are kept sequestered, so they can’t hear what the other one is saying when they’re testifying. And what they want to ensure is that the testimony of all the witnesses lines up.

60. 25:41

    The judges were expected to be very critical of the testimony of the witnesses and look at all the facts and look for any inconsistencies in the story. And if the testimony of the witnesses doesn’t line up, the Jewish law says, you’ve got to, you’ve got to throw out the case and set the set the prisoner free. But when all of the witnesses come in, their stories are all stand and they all agree together. And the judges say, yes, these are acceptable testimonies, He is guilty.

61. 26:05

    That’s what is referred to as an adequate testimony when the testimony under the Jewish law, they say it’s when the testimony of the witnesses agrees together. So did you notice, Have a look at this in verse 56 that I that we just read. Many bore false witness against him but their testimony did not agree.

62. 26:29

    So they had multiple witnesses, Lots of witnesses that came forward but their stories were contradictory. Now remember at this point there were at least a couple members on the Jewish Sanhedrin Council who were secret followers of Jesus. So while the rest of them might have been in on this, on this scheme to arrest and kill this man, there were a few that were doing their job, truly doing their job and and saying no. Look look the facts don’t add up. These witnesses don’t have their stories straight, and at this point, by law, they were supposed to have thrown out the case, and it was illegal at this point, when the testimony of the witnesses had broken down, for any of the judges to cross examine the prisoner.

63. 27:11

    But that’s exactly what is about to happen. Now let me give you an example of what this might look like in this specific trial in a case where the testimony of the witnesses does not agree together.

64. 27:26

    So one of the things that Jesus will be charged with is that he threatened to destroy the temple. This was sacrilege. It could be under Jewish law, punishable by death. Now these are three different quotes from three different gospels of what Jesus said. Two of them are from the trial of Jesus and the third one in John is is the actual account of what Jesus said.

65. 27:50

    So in Mark chapter 14 and verse 58, one of the witnesses said Jesus said I will destroy this temple that is made with hands and within three days I will build another made without hands. OK, so that’s the kind of testimony that might stand in a trial. He said I’m going to destroy this temple, says the witness.

66. 28:11

    But we look at a parallel account of the same story and another witness says in Matthew’s account that Jesus said I am able to destroy the temple of God and to build it in three days. Now look at those two quotes and are they the same? And they’re not, Because in the first quote Jesus said I’m going to destroy this temple, said the witness. But in the second one, the witness says, he simply said I’m capable of destroying this temple. Now the first one surely could be construed as as as sacrilege, but the second one, he’s just saying, you know, I could do it if I wanted.

67. 28:49

    I’ve got the power to do it now. They might consider that to be a pompous claim, but it’s certainly not breaking the law. This is an example of where two witnesses would have a slight detail that’s different in the telling of their stories that the judges would be expected to to to compare and say no, these testimonies don’t line line up. And what did Jesus actually say?

68. 29:09

    It’s recorded in John chapter 2, verse 19. Jesus said destroy this temple, You destroy this temple. And in three days I will raise it up. And the record adds that that Jesus was speaking metaphorically. He was talking about the temple of his body. Who’s saying, you kill me and I’ll be raised in three days. That’s what he actually said.

69. 29:28

    Did you notice one interesting thing that all three of these accounts got right? Because consider this, If a historian is looking at the gospel accounts, they’re treating this like they treat any other historical record when they’re trying to assess whether or not these are accurate. Each one of these gospels are different ancient manuscripts that were found written at different times by different people. So they compare them to each other to line up the facts. And in every single case, each of the three writers got the same detail, the same they all remembered were recorded, that Jesus said it was going to happen in three days. Everybody remembers, Jesus said before it ever happened. He said it’s going to be, it’s going to be in three days that this will happen, isn’t that interesting that that should all line up?

70. 30:17

    Now come with me to Matthew chapter 26 and have a look towards the end of the chapter. At verse 63 the testimony of the witnesses has broken down and the high priest is beside himself because they put all this effort into convicting this man and they’re going to have to throw out the trial.

71. 30:46

    He doesn’t know what else to do. And in verse 62 the high priest stood up and said, have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you? Now I mentioned it was against the law at this point for the judges to cross examine the prisoner after the testimony of the witnesses had broken down, and Caiaphas is breaking the law. Now when he does that anyway, verse 63. But Jesus remains silent, And the high Priest said to him, I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.

72. 31:24

    Jesus said to him, You have said so. But I tell you from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven.

73. 31:36

    Then the high priest tore his robes and said he has uttered blasphemy. What further witnesses do we need? You have heard his blasphemy. What is your judgment? And they answered, he deserves death. And at this point they had him. They had him under Jewish law. But even more importantly for them, they had him under Roman law.

74. 31:59

    Because a little bit later on, when Pontius Pilate is standing in front of them, they’ve convicted him of death. But now they need to convict him in a Roman court. And Pilate says, what has this man done? He should go free. Pilate wanted nothing to do with the death of Jesus. And they said, this man has made himself the Son of God. He’s impinging on the power of Caesar. He’s claiming a power greater than that of your sovereign leader.

75. 32:29

    You see, when they had Jesus on claiming to be the Son of God, they had him not just under Jewish law, but Roman law. And at that point, Pilate has nothing he can say. He says, All right, turn him over to you. It’s in your hands. He knew that they had him at this point. And when he said what he said to him, I adjure you by the living God to tell us if you are the Christ. That’s what’s known under Jewish law as the oath of the testimony.

76. 33:04

    Now we talked about the Talmud yesterday. Here’s a quote from the Mishnah about the Oath of the Testimony. This is what the law says. If one shall say, I adjure you by the Almighty, by Sabaya, by the gracious and merciful, by the long-suffering, by the Compassionate, or by any of the Divine titles, behold, they are bound to answer.

77. 33:33

    This is what was known as the Oath of the Testimony. If somebody invokes that any of the sacred titles of God to get you to to answer a question according to Jewish law, you had to answer and that’s exactly what the high priest had done. He was breaking the law and cross examining the prisoner but demanding by the law that Jesus answered the question.

78. 33:52

    And the remarkable thing is, even though his accusers and the leaders of the Jews were breaking law after law and convicting him that night, Jesus follows the law and he answers the question because at that point, all he had to do was keep his mouth closed, and according to the law, he could have been set free. His fate was in his own hands, and he could choose not to be crucified in that moment.

79. 34:21

    But he follows their laws. But more importantly, he follows the will of God, and they had him. So let’s come back to our original question that we asked before examining this part of the story. Why did it take so long for Judas and the arrest party to get to the garden, to arrest Jesus?

80. 34:44

    Why did it take hours and hours? Why didn’t it happen right away? And the answer is, it had to. The leaders of the Jews had to make a split decision. This is the moment. But we’ve got to do it tonight. We’re going to break all of these laws. How are we going to do it and get away with it? We need witnesses.

81. 35:01

    They had to rustle up some witnesses. They got a lot of witnesses. But it would take time to do that. They’d have to rouse people from their sleep that they knew would help them out in the trial. But things were rushed, so by the time the trial actually happens, they hadn’t had time to properly prepare the witnesses.

82. 35:17

    And so their stories are all different and it doesn’t stand up. Nevertheless, they had to make all these arrangements. They had to get the trial set up. They had to wake up all the members of the Sanhedrin council. They had to to get the Temple Guard ready to go with Judas to arrest Jesus before they finally went there.

83. 35:32

    And we find that knowing everything that had to take place and all the considerations that would have been weighing down these Jewish leaders, it only could have taken hours and hours. If you were one of the writers of the gospels and you were making up this store, but you wanted people to believe it, but it was fictional.

84. 35:53

    Don’t you think that you would write it as if Judas left? Jesus said what you’re about to do, do quickly. And then it did happen quickly. Because when you don’t think through all the details and you don’t examine Jewish law and Jewish culture and all the things that had to happen, the casual reader would think, this is strange.

85. 36:11

    Why didn’t it happen right away? But when we look at all the details and Jewish law and Jewish culture and we realize what had to have happened, it only makes sense. A detail like this one, that it took hours and hours for them to get there just lines up perfectly with real life.

86. 36:28

    And the Bible doesn’t go to any lengths to explain why it took so long, because the Bible isn’t even trying to defend itself here. It’s just telling an accurate account of how things happened. Now let’s jump forward to the resurrection, because as we saw last night, ancient historians and modern historians alike are confronted with a problem.

87. 36:52

    If they don’t believe that the resurrection really happened, which many of them don’t, because all accounts in our history points to the fact that it did. And nothing has really come down to us. Despite all the chances that people would have had and all the people that were opposed to the Christian religion to say no, this didn’t really happen. Nothing has come down to us to say that that’s the case, that the tomb wasn’t empty.

88. 37:20

    And so there are a lot of theories that go into explaining how this might have happened. Why was it that the tomb of Jesus was empty? Because it seems to be a historical fact that it was. So I’m going to, I’m going to tell you about some of these theories now. And the first four of them we’re going to go through pretty quickly because I think we can explain them away pretty quickly. They’re not particularly believable. And then we’ll spend some more time on the fifth one. So the first theory is what’s known as the swoon theory. This theory goes something like this. Jesus didn’t actually die on the cross. He did suffer crucifixion, but he just fainted at the end of it.

89. 38:00

    And the soldiers and everybody else thought he was dead, took him down from the cross. They wrapped him up, put him in the tomb, and then he woke up and left. Now the incredible thing about this theory is that if, if it were true, everybody mistook Jesus for dead, He survives crucifixion. He’s wrapped tightly up into the burial linens placed inside the tomb, and in his incredibly weakened condition and his emaciated state, having just survived crucifixion, he wakes up, is able to somehow break free of the burial linens, and then roll away the stone of the tomb, which weighed over a ton and took a team of soldiers and horses with ropes and pulleys to pull it into place.

90. 38:44

    He’s able to push that away by himself, just this regular guy, and I think we can dismiss the swoon theory out of hand now. Another theory is is the theft theory. The theft theory says either the Jews like the Jewish leaders or the Romans stole the body of Jesus, perhaps to keep it away from his disciples. Maybe that could explain why the tomb was empty. They themselves took the body.

91. 39:12

    Now if that were true, you’d have to ask yourself this question immediately. The leaders of the Jews had a problem on their hands. The tomb was empty. This was a big problem for them. They didn’t like it. If they had stolen the body of Jesus, it would be as simple as saying just several weeks after the resurrection, when the apostles are saying he has been raised, the Lord has risen, The Jewish leaders could have said no, here’s his body, we’ve got it. And Christianity would have died right there. Don’t you think they would have done it now? The same is true with the Romans. It would take a few years for the Romans to really start to hate Christianity, but they would. We’re going to talk about that a lot in the last class tomorrow morning.

92. 39:55

    The rapid spread of Christianity after just a few years went by. The Romans would really, really like to be able to just kill Christianity. Don’t you think If they had stolen the body of Jesus, they would have just brought it out and Christianity would have died right there and they never did. I don’t think the Jews or the Romans stole the body of Jesus.

93. 40:17

    Now there’s also the hallucination theory, which says that the disciples of Jesus and everybody else who saw the risen Lord Paul tells us that over 500 people saw him at one time. Everybody was hallucinating. They all saw the same thing. Now, if you know anything about hallucination, then you can probably understand why. This is kind of an incredible theory. Those who those people who are prone to hallucinations tend to have certain characteristics.

94. 40:43

    They tend to be high strung, nervous, and have a predisposition towards what they want to see. Now you can certainly say that maybe about the disciples right after the death of Jesus, they would really like to have seen the risen Lord, but what about all the 500 people at once? You see, hallucinations tend to happen in claustrophobic tight spaces inside, in the dark, not in broad daylight outside.

95. 41:08

    How can you explain all 12 disciples seeing the exact same hallucination at the same time? Or even more than that? 500 people at one time all seeing the same thing at the same time, the same hallucination? That’s not real. And even if you’re willing to accept that, how do you explain that all these people who continue to hallucinate and see Jesus in various situations, all their hallucinations stopped at exactly the same time?

96. 41:35

    If you don’t believe in God and miracles and Jesus being anything other than a regular human being, how do you explain that and you can’t? I don’t think we can give any credence to the hallucination theory. There’s the wrong tomb theory which says that when the women first found the empty tomb, you know, they didn’t have GPS and they just were in the wrong place.

97. 41:55

    They went to the wrong tomb, which happened to be empty and it was just a geographical error and and they never went to the real place. But we know for sure that that there are a couple people who knew exactly where the body of Jesus was. One was Joseph of Arimathea. It was his tomb. So don’t you think as soon as he heard the news that Jesus was risen, he’d he’d say, oh run back to his tomb and and the stone would be rolled away.

98. 42:21

    If it wasn’t, if it was still there, the stone was still there. Don’t you think he would have said no, You guys are just at the wrong tomb. And more than that, the record tells us that the women who who found the tomb empty before anybody else, when Jesus was taken down from the cross and he was wrapped up and taken to his burial place, to the tomb they marked the place where he was laid, That’s how they knew to come back to the right spot.

99. 42:49

    I don’t think we can give much credence to the wrong tomb theory either. Which brings us to the most credible theory of all to explain away why the tomb could have been empty, which is the fraud theory, and this one actually starts in the Bible. Fraud theory says the disciples stole the body. Come with me to Matthew chapter 28 and the Roman soldiers who were guarding the tomb.

100. 43:22

     I’m sure many of you are aware of this. They had a problem because they woke up and the tomb was empty and the penalty for failing guard duty in the Roman army was death. If it became known to their leaders, to their centurions that that their prisoner who was dead had escaped, they would be put to death.

101. 43:48

     They know that. So they don’t go to their leaders, They go to the Jewish leaders who had paid them to be there in the 1st place and they say help us out, help us out. We don’t know what to do here. Can you please help us?

102. 44:01

     And this is what the leaders of the Jews say to them. In verse 13 of Matthew chapter 28, the Jewish leader said to these soldiers tell people his disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep. And if this comes to the governor’s ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble. So they say, look, this is a problem for us too. So here’s what we’ll do.

103. 44:30

     You tell everybody that you fell asleep on the job. Now, we know normally you’d be put to death for that, but we bribed our leaders, so we’ll make sure, because they’re on our payroll, that they won’t do anything to you. And you just tell this story for us and everything will be fine.

104. 44:45

     And that’s the story that they tell. And we’ll see in a minute. That’s the story that the Jews would still be telling people several 100 years later that the disciples stole the body. You know, the 1st and immediate question that I would ask in this situation is if if somebody’s telling me that the disciples stole the body of Jesus and perpetrated a lie on the entire world to tell everybody he has risen and started a new religion based on this lie that Jesus was resurrected from the dead.

105. 45:13

     I’d say if the soldiers never actually fell asleep, they were awake, then why didn’t they stop the disciples? And if they had fallen asleep at the at their post, then how did they know it was the disciples? You see, there’s a conundrum here. Either way, their story doesn’t add up logically, but I’m going to give you some more evidence I think of of why we we can’t really trust in the fraud theory either, why it doesn’t hold up some some additional evidence.

106. 45:44

     And the first one, the first piece of evidence I’ll submit for you is is the life of the half brother of Jesus, James, known by many at the time as James the Just. He would eventually be the de facto leader of the largest ecclesia in the world, the Jerusalem Ecclesia.

107. 46:06

     But while Jesus was alive and up until he was crucified, James was not a believer. He was a skeptic. You remember that story when Jesus was was preaching to a crowd of people and his mother and his brothers try to get to him. They want to give him a message. And the message we presume they want to give to him is come down from your soapbox and stop talking all this nonsense.

108. 46:31

     But they can’t get to him because the crowd is so tightly packed. So they send a message up through the crowd and the message gets to Jesus and the message is your mother and your brethren are outside and they want to speak to you. Do you remember what Jesus said? The message that he said that went all the way back reached, reached them on the outside of the crowd.

109. 46:48

     He said Mark chapter 3, verse 35. Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother. Now Can you imagine if you were the brother of Jesus and this is the message you got?

110. 47:03

     They’re not my true family. If if they’re not doing the will of God, how must that have made him feel? And in Mark chapter 6 and verse three and four, the people said this about Jesus. Is not this the Carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joseph, and of Judah and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?

111. 47:23

     And they were offended at him. But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honor, but in his own country, and among his own kin and in his own house. And Jesus could only say that because his own family didn’t believe that he was truly the Son of God. And if we doubt that at this point, then the nail in the coffin is John Chapter 7 verse 5 which says simply neither did his brethren believe in him. James did not believe that Jesus was who he said he was. All throughout Jesus ministry James did not believe. And then Jesus dies and people are saying he’s been resurrected from the dead.

112. 48:07

     And Paul records this in First Corinthians chapter 15 and those famous verses verses five to seven. He says that Jesus was seen of of Cephas who was Peter then of the 12 after that he was seen of above 500 brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are falling asleep. And after that he was seen of James and then of all the apostles.

113. 48:33

     Now I would ask you, what can explain the conversion of this man who is a historical figure outside the Bible. James the just, the half brother of Jesus, a skeptic. Jesus has been crucified. What could convince this man to believe if Jesus wasn’t resurrected from the dead? But Paul says that Jesus made a special visit to James.

114. 48:55

     He appeared unto him specifically. I’d say there’s no good explanation other than that that Jesus really was raised from the dead. The historian Josephus, who lived just after the time of the apostles, wrote about James. He talks about the high priest at the time and the fact that he was away at this time, And that’s the context of this quote.

115. 49:19

     Festus was now dead and Albinus was but upon the road. So he that is the acting High priest, the Nanus assembled the Sanhedrin of judges and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some of his companions. And when he had formed an accusation against them as Breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned. Now, of course, the Bible tells us that James James was a faithful man.

116. 49:47

     Of course we have the The Epistle of James within the the New Testament Canon. He was the leader of the Jerusalem Ecclesia, it would seem an all but name, and historians outside the Bible tells us he was put to death. That historian Josephus over and above or Eusebius rather over and above. Josephus tells us that James was killed by the angry Jewish leaders because he refused to refute what he had been saying all along, That Jesus was the Son of God and that he had been raised from the dead and he would lose his life because he refused to renounce that Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth, that he was the son of God.

117. 50:28

     He would die for it. How can we explain James the just and his conversion if Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead now? Also, the writers of the Gospels agree that the first people who discovered that the tomb of Jesus was empty were women. Now, this might not seem like an important detail to you, but you have to understand the culture at the time.

118. 50:58

     Because if this was, again, if this was a fictional story and the writers were making it up, but they wanted us to believe, the very last thing they would do is have this detail in the story. Women being the first people who discovered the body. Because the Jewish mindset was pretty antiquated. It was pretty draconian.

119. 51:18

     They didn’t have a lot of respect for the intelligence of women. This is what it has to say about the right of a woman to testify in a trial in the in the Jerusalem Talmud. It’s talking about in this case, and I apologize. The translation in English isn’t great, but it’s talking about the if a thief, a known thief was to test to try to testify as a witness in a trial, any evidence which a woman gives is not valid to offer.

120. 51:44

     Also, they that is a thief are not valid to offer. This is equivalent to saying that one who is rabbinically accounted a robber is qualified to give the same evidence as a woman, which is to say none at all. Thieves were not allowed to be witnesses in trials, and neither were women. It was against Jewish law.

121. 52:05

     Another place in the Talmud says let the law be burned rather than entrusted to a woman. Women were not to be educated, they were not to be trusted with any kind of knowledge like this in Jewish society at this time, if we want to know why, let’s just turn to Josephus and let him explain why he thinks that should be. He says, let not the testimony of women be admitted on account of the levity and boldness of their sex, nor let servants be admitted to give testimony on account of the Igno ability of their soul, since it is probable that they may not speak truth either out of hope or gain or fear of punishment. See, the general mindset at the time is that women are silly creatures not to be trusted.

122. 52:42

     They’ll believe anything they hear. So the very last thing that somebody writing a fictional account in the Gospels of the discovery of the empty tomb would would say is that the very first witnesses of the empty tomb were women. And yet that’s what happened. So that’s what they wrote. And generations later, that same story that the Jews told the centurions to tell everybody that the disciples had stole the body is what the Jews were still saying. Here’s Justin Martyr, one of the earliest Christian apologist. A Christian apologist is somebody who defends the Christian faith and he says

123. 53:27

     sometime around 108 AD. So after the time of of the apostles, about a generation later, the resurrection of Christ did not convert the Jews, but through the whole world they have sent men to accuse Christ. And though all the men of your nation knew the incidence in the life of Jonah, and though Christ said amongst you that he would give the sign of Jonah, yet you not only have not repented after you learned that he rose from the dead. But, as I said before, you have sent chosen and ordained men through all the world to proclaim that a godless and lawless heresy had sprung from one Jesus, a Galilean deceiver whom we crucified.

124. 54:07

     But his disciples stole him by night from the tomb where he was laid when unfastened from the cross, and now deceive men by asserting that he has risen from the dead and ascended to heaven. And a generation later, this was still the only and the best story they had. They couldn’t dispute the fact that the tomb was empty, so they had to tell this story that the disciples stole the body. And even a generation or two after him, another Christian, Tertullian, is saying this sarcastically, speaking for sarcastically from the tone of voice of a non believer at the time.

125. 54:45

     This is he whom his disciples secretly stole away, that it might be said he had risen again, or the gardener abstracted that his lettuces might come to no harm from the crowds of visitants. This was the message of the Jewish leaders who were not Christians who despised Christianity. Generations later, after the fact, this was still the best story that they had to explain away the resurrection that the disciples had stole the body, and it’s all they had. And as I’ve submitted to you, I don’t think that theory holds up either.

126. 55:20

     As much as anything is a historical fact, is it? It is a historical fact that the tomb of Jesus was empty and more than that, that he really was raised from the dead. And back in the 1930s, a man named Albert Henry Ross set out to write a book. He was a journalist with some training in in as a as a lawyer and he set out to write a book that he was going to use as a criticism of the New Testament.

127. 55:46

     This was going to be a critical in depth examination of of the four gospel accounts, specifically detailing the the trial and crucifixion story of Jesus. He was a skeptic. He had been a Christian, gone to a Christian Church when he had grown up, but as an adult he’d stopped going, didn’t believe it anymore, but was very interested in the stories. He set out to look at all the details of Jewish law and the culture at the time, and to look in depth at the original languages and the Gospels to see if the details of the story lined up.

128. 56:16

     But his intent was to pick it apart piece by piece, and at the end he wrote a book called Who Moved the Stone? And he changed his mind because his book was the opposite of what he intended it to be. It’s today one of the most famous Christian apologetic works. It goes piece by piece through the trial and crucifixion of Jesus, examining every part in critical detail.

129. 56:43

     And the conclusion is, from everything that I can tell, this really did happen. Here’s a quote from towards the end of the book. This is what he has to say, he wrote under the pen name Frank Morrison. He said if it could be shown that there was a single document, if of admittedly early date, dealing with the crucifixion and burial of Jesus, in which it was even remotely hinted that such was the case, that is to say that the disciples had stole the body of Jesus.

130. 57:19

     I for one, should attach to that hint very considerable weight. Yet in all the varied literature from that far off time, written under different skies by men of varying temperaments possessed of obviously divergent theories of the true course of those memorable events, there has come down to us no hint or suggestion that the facts about the grave were other than those substantially recorded in the Gospel According to Mark.

131. 57:46

     However disconcerting the fact may be, the literary verdict is unanimous and must at least be given its due weight by the impartial mind. Now we showed a quote from an atheist who changed his mind last night and he said all my life I followed the evidence wherever it leads, and now I followed it to believe in a God. And here is a man who is a skeptic who didn’t believe, but he followed the evidence and it led him to believe. When he looked at every detail and compared the gospel accounts to each other, he said this is a historical fact that at a point in history a man really was raised from the dead. And you have to ask the question too. If again this was a made-up story, why would they have it in Jerusalem where Jesus was most strongly opposed? Why several weeks later we’ll read about in Acts chapter 2, Would Jerusalem be the place where the apostles would go out and and filled with the Holy Spirit, preached that the the Lord was risen.

132. 58:51

     Jerusalem was a place where anybody between dinner and bedtime could walk outside the city walls and look for themselves to see if the tomb really was empty. If this was all made-up, why not spread this message starting somewhere else, like Galilee, where Jesus had family where he whereas all his enemies weren’t, because all his enemies were right there in Jerusalem. Yet the Christian religion, now spreading like wildfire, had its heart in Jerusalem, the very place where anybody could have walked outside the gates just a short distance to visit the tomb.

133. 59:28

     And as much as anything is a historical fact. The resurrection of Jesus is historical fact. And if Jesus really was raised from the dead, that’s proof, said Paul, that we can and will be too. And that’s proof too that everything he said was true, that he truly was the Son of God. That the Bible that we have before us is the message of God.

134. 59:49

     If that’s really true, then shouldn’t we be taking this extremely seriously? Isn’t this a matter of life and death? Isn’t this book more important than anything else in this life? Thank you for listening to the good ’cause Adelphian Talks Podcast. We hope this talk helped you in your walk and brightened your day. If you would like to hear more, please subscribe for new episodes.

135. 1:00:25

     We are on all major podcast platforms and also on YouTube. If you enjoyed this particular talk, please share it with someone else who you think might enjoy it too. For show notes on the talk you just listened to, visit [email protected] or check out the Show Notes section of your podcast player. Please share your thoughts on the talk from This week on our Facebook or Instagram pages where we are at good Christadelphian talks, or leave a comment on our YouTube channel where these talks are posted as well. If you enjoy listening to the talks that we post and here one that you think we should share, please tell us about it. You can send a suggestion using the Contact Us tab on our website or message us on any of our social media accounts. Thank you for listening.

136. 1:01:08

     God bless and talk to you next week.