He never ...

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Jesus was killed on the cross - Alexander Metherell has made that graphically clear, his tomb was empty on Easter Morning - William Lane Craig left no doubt about that, his disciples and others saw him, touched him and ate with him after the Resurrection - Gary Habermas has built that case with abundant evidence, as prominent British theologian Michael Green said, "The appearances of Jesus are as well authenticated as anything in antiquity ... There can be no rational doubt that they occurred, and that the main reason why Christians became sure of the resurrection in the earliest days was just this, they could say with assurance, 'We have seen the Lord.' They knew it was he." and all this doesn't even exhaust the evidence, there will be more on the final category of proof that the Resurrection is a real event in history, one question remains for Habermas, it concerns the importance of the Resurrection, and the expected reply from him would be the standard about it being at the center of Christian doctrine, the axis around which the Christian faith turned - and he does give a stock answer like that, but this isn't all he has to say, this nuts-and-bolts scholar, this burly and straight-shooting debater, this combat-ready defender of the faith, allows us to peer into his soul as he gives an answer that grew out of the deepest valley of despair he had ever walked through

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this time the quick fire cadence and debater's edge are gone, no more quoting of scholars, no more citing of Scripture, no more building a case, when asked about the importance of the Resurrection, Habermas took a risk and harkened back to 1995, when his wife, Debbie, slowly died of stomach cancer, listen to the tenderness of the moment ...

"I sat on our porch, my wife was upstairs dying. Except for a few weeks, she was home through it all. It was an awful time. This was the worst thing that could possibly happen. But do you know what was amazing? My students would call me - not just one but several of them - and say, 'At a time like this, aren't you glad about the Resurrection?' As sober as those circumstances were, I had to smile for two reasons. First, my students were trying to cheer me up with my own teaching. And second, it worked. As I would sit there, I'd picture Job, who went through all that terrible stuff and asked questions of God, but then God turned the tables and asked him a few questions. I knew if God were to come to me, I'd ask only one question: Lord, why is Debbie up there in bed? And I think God would respond by asking gently: Gary, did I raise my Son from the dead? I'd say: Come on, Lord, I've written several books on that topic! Of course he was raised from the dead. But I want to know about Debbie! I think he'd keep coming back to the same question - Did I raise my Son from the dead? Did I raise my son from the dead? - until I got his point: the Resurrection says that if Jesus was raised two thousand years ago, there's an answer to Debbie's death in 1995. And do you know what? It worked for me while I was sitting on the porch, and it still works today. It was a horribly emotional time for me, but I couldn't get around the fact that the Resurrection is the answer for her suffering. I still worried; I still wondered what I'd do raising 4 kids alone. But there wasn't a time when that truth didn't comfort me. Losing my wife was the most painful experience I've ever had to face, but if the Resurrection could get me through that, it can get me through anything. It was good for 30 A.D., it was good for 1995 and it's good beyond that. That's not some sermon, I believe that with all my heart. If there's a resurrection, there's a heaven. If Jesus was raised, Debbie was raised. And I will be someday, too. Then I'll see them both.

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Are There Any Supporting Facts That Point to the Resurrection?

no witnesses watched Timothy McVeigh load two tons of fertilizer-based explosives into a Ryder rental truck, nobody saw him drive the vehicle to the front of the federal building in Oklahoma City and detonate the bomb, killing 168 people, no video camera captured an image of him fleeing the scene, yet a jury was able to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that McVeigh was guilty of the worst act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history, why? because fact by fact, exhibit by exhibit, witness by witness, prosecutors used circumstantial evidence to build an airtight case against him, while none of the 137 people called to the witness stand had seen McVeigh commit the crime, their testimony did provide indirect evidence of his guilt; a businessman said McVeigh rented a Ryder truck, a friend said McVeigh talked about bombing the building out of anger against the government, and a scientist said McVeigh's clothes contained a residue of explosives when he was arrested, prosecutors buttressed this with more than seven hundred exhibits, ranging from motel and taxi receipts to telephone records to a truck key to a bill from a Chinese restaurant, over eighteen days they skillfully wove a convincing web of evidence from which McVeigh was woefully unable to extricate himself, eyewitness testimony is called direct evidence because people describe under oath how the personally saw the defendant commit the crime, while this is often compelling, it can sometimes be subject to faded memories, prejudices, and even outright fabrication, in contrast, circumstantial evidence is made up of indirect facts from which inferences can be rationally drawn, it's cumulative effect can be every bit as strong - and in many instances even more potent - than eyewitness accounts, ask Timothy McVeigh, he may have thought he committed the perfect crime by avoiding eyewitnesses, but he nevertheless landed on death row due to the circumstantial facts that pointed toward him as devastatingly as any firsthand witnesses could have, having already considered the persuasive evidence for the empty tomb and eyewitness accounts of the risen Jesus, it is now time to seek out any circumstantial evidence that might bolster the case for the Resurrection, if an event as extraordinary as the resurrection of Jesus had really occurred, history would be littered with indirect evidence to back it up

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we already know that circumstantial evidence is plural rather than singular, in other words, it's build brick by brick until there's a sturdy foundation on which conclusions can be confidentially based, are there 5 pieces of circumstantial evidence that can be convincing that Jesus rose from the dead? five examples? five things that are not in dispute by anybody? the first piece of evidence: the changed lives of the disciples and their willingness to die for their conviction that Jesus had risen from the dead, when Jesus was crucified, his followers were discouraged and depressed, they no longer had confidence that Jesus had been sent by God, because they believed anyone crucified was accursed by God, they also had been taught that God would not let his Messiah suffer death, so they dispersed, the Jesus movement was all but stopped in it's tracks, then after a short period of time, we see them abandoning their occupations, regathering and committing themselves to spreading a very specific message - that Jesus Christ was the Messiah of God who died on the cross, returned to life and was seen alive by them, and they were willing to spend the rest of their lives proclaiming this, without any payoff from a human point of view, it's not as though there were a mansion awaiting them on the Mediterranean, they faced a life of hardship, they often went without food, slept exposed to the elements, were ridiculed, beaten, imprisoned, and finally, most of them were executed in torturous ways, for what? for good intentions? no, because they were convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that they had seen Jesus Christ alive from the dead, what you can't explain is how this particular group of men came up with this belief without having had an experience of the resurrected Christ, there's no other adequate explanation, yes, they were willing to die for their beliefs, but so have Muslims and Mormons and followers of Jim Jones and David Koresh, this may show that they were fanatical, but let's face it: it doesn't prove that what they believed in is true, wait a minute, think carefully of the difference, Muslims might be willing to die for their belief that Allah revealed himself to Muhammed, but this revelation was not done in a publicly observable way, so they could be wrong about it, they may sincerely think it's true, but they can't know for a fact, because they didn't witness it for themselves, however, the apostles were willing to die for something they had seen with their own eyes and touched with their own hands, they were in a unique position not just believe Jesus rose from the dead, but to know for sure, and when you've got eleven credible people with no ulterior motives, with nothing to gain and a lot to lose, who all agree they observed something with their own eyes - now you've got some difficulty explaining that away, let us put it this way: People will die for their religious beliefs if they sincerely believe they're true, but people won't die for their religious beliefs if they know their beliefs are false. while people can only have faith that their beliefs are true, the disciples were in a position to know without a doubt whether or not Jesus had risen from the dead, they claimed they saw him, talked with him and ate with him, if they weren't absolutely certain, they wouldn't have allowed themselves to be tortured to death for proclaiming that the Resurrection had happened

J. P. Moreland PH. D.

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another piece of circumstantial evidence is that there were hardened skeptics who didn't believe in Jesus before his crucifixion - and were to some degree dead-set against Christianity - who turned around and adopted the Christian faith after Jesus' death, there's no good reason for this apart from them having experienced the resurrected Christ, we're obviously talking about James, the brother of Jesus, and Saul of Tarsus, who became the apostle Paul, but is there really any credible evidence that James had been a skeptic of Jesus? yes, there is, the gospels tell us Jesus' family, including James, were embarrassed by what he claiming to be, they didn't believe in him; they confronted him, in ancient Judaism it was highly embarrassing for a rabbi's family not to accept him, therefore the gospel writers would have no motive for fabricating this skepticism if it weren't true, later the historian Josephus tells us that James, the brother of Jesus, who was the leader of the Jerusalem church, was stoned to death because of his belief in his brother, why did James' life change? Paul tells us: the resurrected Jesus appeared to him, there's no other explanation, and Saul? as a Pharisee, he hated anything that disrupted the traditions of the Jewish people, to him, this new countermovement called Christianity would have been the height of disloyalty, in fact, he worked out his frustration by executing Christians when he had a chance, suddenly he doesn't just ease off Christians but joins their movement! how did this happen? well, everyone agrees that Paul wrote Galatians, and he tells us himself in that letter what caused him to take a 180-degree turn and become the chief proponent of the Christian faith, by his own pen he says he saw the risen Christ and heard Christ appoint him to be one of his followers, this is challenged with an objection by Christianity critic Michael Martin, he said that if you count Paul's conversion as being evidence for the truth of the Resurrection, you should also count Muhammed's conversion to Islam as being evidence for the truth that Jesus was not resurrected, since Muslims deny the Resurrection! basically, he says the evidential values of Paul's conversion and Muhammed's conversion cancel each other out, frankly, that seems like a good point, is he right? let's take a look at Muhammed's conversion, no one knows anything about it, Muhammed claims he went into a cave and had a religious experience in which Allah revealed the Koran to him, there's no other eyewitness to verify this, Muhammed offered no publicly miraculous signs to certify anything, and someone easily could have had ulterior motives in following Muhammed, because in the early years Islam was spread largely by warfare, followers of Muhammed gained political influence and power over the villages that were conquered and "converted" to Islam by the sword, contrast that with the claims of the early followers of Jesus, including Paul, they claimed to have seeen public events that other people saw as well, these were things that happened outside their minds, not just in their minds, furthermore, when Paul wrote 2 Corinthians - which nobody disputes he did - he reminded the people in Corinth that he performed miracles when he was with them earlier, he'd certainly be foolish to make this statement if they knew he hadn't, and the point? remember, it's not the simple fact that Paul changed his views, you have to explain how he had this particular change of belief that completely went against his upbringing; how he saw the risen Christ in a public event that was witnessed by others, even though they didn't understand it; and how he performed miracles to back up his claim to being an apostle

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to explain the next category of circumstantial proof, we need to provide some important background information about Jewish culture, at the time of Jesus, the Jews had been persecuted for seven hundred years by the Babylonians, Assyrians, Persians and now by the Greeks and the Romans, many Jews had been scattered and lived as captives in these other nations, however, we still see Jews today, while we don't see Hittites, Perizzites, Ammonites, Assyrians, Persians, Babylonians and other people who had been living in that time, why? because these people got captured by other nations, intermarried and lost their national identity, why didn't that happen to the Jews? because the things that made the Jews, Jews - the social structures that gave them their national identity - were unbelievably important to them, the Jews would pass these structures down to their children celebrate them in synagogue meetings every Sabbath, and reinforce them with their rituals, because they knew if they didn't, there would soon be no Jews left, they would be assimilated into the cultures that captured them, and there's another reason why these social institutions were so important: they believed those institutions were entrusted to them by God, they believed that to abandon these institutions would be to risk their souls being damned to hell after death, now a rabbi named Jesus appears from a lower-class region, he teaches for three years, gathers a following of lower- and middle-class people, gets in trouble with the authorities, and gets crucified along with thirty thousand other Jewish men who are executed during this time period, but five weeks after he's crucified, over ten thousand Jews are following him and claiming that he is the initiator of a new religion, and get this: they're willing to give up or alter all five of the social institutions that they have been taught since childhood have such importance both sociologically and theologically, so the implication is that something big was going on, something very big was going on!

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we're going to go through these 5 social structures and explain how the followers of Jesus had changed or abandoned them, first, they had been taught ever since the time of Abraham and Moses that they needed to offer an animal sacrifice on a yearly basis to atone for their sins, God would transfer their sins to that animal and their sins would be forgiven so they could be in right standing with him, but all of a sudden, after the death of this Nazarene carpenter, these Jewish people no longer offer sacrifices, second, Jews emphasized obeying the laws that God had entrusted to them through Moses, in their view, this is what separated them from pagan nations, yet within a short time after Jesus' death, Jews were beginning to say that you don't become an upstanding member of their community merely by keeping Moses' laws, third, Jews scrupulously kept the Sabbath by not doing anything except religious devotion every Saturday, this is how they would earn right standing with God, guarantee the salvation of their family, and be in right standing with the nation, however, after the death of this Nazarene Carpenter, this 1500 year tradition is abruptly changed, these Christians worship on Sunday - why? because that's the day Jesus rose from the dead, fourth, they believed in monotheism, only one God, while Christians teach a form of monotheism, they teach about the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, this is radically different from what the Jews believed, they would have considered it the height of heresy to say there was another besides God, yet Jews began to worship Jesus within the first decade of the Christian religion, and fifth, these Christians pictured the Messiah as someone who suffered and died for the sins of the world, whereas Jews had been trained to believe that the Messiah was going to be a political leader who would destroy the Roman armies, with that context established, how can we possibly explain why in a short period of time not just one Jew but an entire community of at least ten thousand Jews were willing to give up these five key practices that had served them sociologically and theologically for so many centuries? the explanation is simple: they had seen Jesus risen from the dead, there is a problem in people understanding this today, it's very difficult for a 20th century person to appreciate the radical nature of this transformation, these days, people are fluid in their faith, they bounce back and forth between Christianity and New Age beliefs, they dabble in Buddhism, they mix and match and create their own spirituality, for them, making the kind of changes mentioned wouldn't seem like a big deal, Moreland would ask a person like that: What's your most cherished belief? that your parents are good people? that murder is immoral? think about how radical something must be to get you to change or give up that belief you treasure so much, now we're starting to get close ... keep in mind that this is an entire community of people who are abandoning treasured beliefs that have been passed on for centuries and that they believe are from God himself, they were doing it even though they were jeopardizing their own well being, and they also believed they were risking damnation of their souls to hell if they were wrong, what's more, they were not doing this because they had come upon better ideas, they were very content with the old traditions, they gave them up because they had seen miracles that they could not explain and that forced them to see the world another way, we are individualists who like technological and sociological change, traditions don't mean as much to us, but these people did value tradition, they lived in a period in which the older something was, the better, in fact, for them the farther back they could trace an idea, the more likely it was to be true, so to come up with new ideas was opposite of the way we are today, these changes to the Jewish social structures were not just minor adjustments that were casually made - they were absolutely monumental, this was nothing short of a social earthquake! and earthquakes don't happen without a cause

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Moreland points to the emergence of the sacraments of Communion and baptism in the early church as more circumstantial evidence that the Resurrection is true, isn't it only natural that religions would create their own rituals and practices? all religions have them, so how does that prove anything about the Resurrection? let's consider Communion for a moment, what's odd is that these early followers of Jesus didn't get together to celebrate his teachings or how wonderful he was, they came together regularly to have a celebration meal for one reason: to remember that Jesus had been publicly slaughtered in a grotesque and humiliating way, think about this in modern terms, if a group of people loved John F. Kennedy, they might meet regularly to remember his confrontation with Russia, his promotion of civil rights and his charismatic personality, but they're not going to celebrate the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald murdered him! however, that's analogous to what these early Christians did, how do you explain that? Moreland explains it this way: they realized that Jesus' slaying was a necessary step to a much greater victory, his murder wasn't the last word - the last word was tha the had conquered death for all of us by rising from the dead, they celebrated his execution because they were convinced hat they had seen him alive from the tomb ... what about baptism? the early church adopted a form of baptism from their Jewish upbringing, alled proselyte baptism, when the Gentiles wanted to take upon themselves the laws of Moses, the Jews would baptize those Gentiles in the authority of the God of Israel, but in the New Testament, people were baptized in the name of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit - which meant they had elevated Jesus to the full status equal to God, not only that, but baptism was a celebration of the death of Jesus, just as Communion was, by going under the water, you're celebrating his death, and by being brought out of the water, you're celebrating the fact that Jesus was raised to the newness of life, is this assuming that these sacraments weren't merely adopted from the so-called mystery religions? yes and for good reasons, first there's no hard evidence that any mystery religion believed in gods dying and rising, until after the New Testament period, so if there was any borrowing, they borrowed from Christianity, second, the practice of baptism came from Jewish customs, and the Jews were very much against allowing Gentile or Greek ideas to affect their worship, and third, these two sacraments can be dated back to the very earliest Christian community - too early for the influence of any othe religion to creep into their understanding of what Jesus' death meant

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Moreland prefaces this final point by saying, "When a major cultural shift takes place, historians always look for events that can explain it." then let's think about the start of the Christian church, there's no question it began shortly after the death of Jesus and spread so rapidly that within a period of maybe twenty years it had even reached Caesar's palace in Rome, not only that, but this movement triumphed over a number of competing ideologies and eventually overwhelmed the entire Roman empire, now, if you were a Martian looking down on the first century, would you think Christianity or the Roman Empire would survive? you probably wouldn't put money on a ragtag group of people whose primary message was that a crucified carpenter from an obscure village had triumphed over the grave, yet it was so successful that today we name our children Peter and Paul and our dogs Caesar and Nero! Moreland likes the way C. F. D. Moule, the Cambridge New Testament scholar, puts it: If the coming into existence of the Nazarenes, a phenomenon undeniably attested by the New Testament, rips a great hole in history, a hole the size and shape of Resurrection, what does the secular historian propose to stop it up with? while this isn't the strongest point, since other religious movements have popped up and spread too, circumstantial evidence doesn't rely soley on the strength of one fact, rather it's the cumulative weight of several facts that together tip the scales toward a conclusion, and to Moreland, the conclusion is clear, look, he says, if someone wants to consider this circumstantial evidence and reach the verdict that Jesus did not rise from the dead - fair enough, but they've got to offer an alternative explanation that is plausible for all five of these facts, remember, there is no doubt these facts are true; what's in question is how to explain them, and there's never been a better explanation than the Resurrection, let's play back the list of circumstantial evidence: the willingness of the disciples to die for what they experienced; the revolutionized lives of skeptics like James and Saul; the radical changes in social structures cherished by Jews for centuries; the sudden appearance of Communion and baptism; and the amazing emergence and growth of the church, gvien all five uncontested facts, it's difficult not to agree with Moreland, that the Resurrection and only the Resurrection, makes sense of them all, no other explanation comes close, and that's just the indirect evidence, when we add the potent proof for the empty tomb of Jesus and the convincing testimony about his post-Resurrection appearances, the case seems conclusive, that is also the assessment of Sir Lionel Luckhoo, the brilliant and savvy attorney whose astounding 245 consecutive murder acquittals earned him a place in The Guiness Book of World Records as the world's most successful lawyer, knighted twice by Queen Elizabeth, this former justice and diplomat subjected the historical facts about the Resurrection to his own rigorous analysis for several years before declaring, "I say unequivocally that the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is so overwhelming that it compels acceptance by proof which leaves absolutely no room for doubt." But wait, there's more ...

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there's one category of evidence that we've not asked about, it's the ongoing encounter with the resurrected Christ that happens all over the world, in every culture, to people from all kinds of backgrounds and personalities - well educated and not, rich and poor, thinkers and feelers, men and women - they all will testify that more than any single thing in their lives, Jesus Christ has changed them, to me, this provides the final evidence - not the only evidence but the final confirming proof - that the message of Jesus can open the door to a direct encounter with the risen Christ, in 1968, Moreland was a cynical chemistry major at the Univeristy of Missouri, when he was confronted with the fact that if he examined the claims of Jesus Christ critically but with an open mind, there was more than enough evidence for him to believe it, so he took a step of faith in the same direction the evidence was pointing, by receiving Jesus as his forgiver and leader, and he began to relate to him - to the resurrected Christ - in a very real and ongoing way, in three decades he has had hundreds of specific answers to prayers, he's had things happen that simply cannot be explained by natural explanations, and he has experienced a changed life beyond anything he could have imagined, but people experience life change in other religions whose tenets contradict Christianity, isn't it dangerous to base a decision on subjective experiences? Moreland makes two things clear, first, he's not saying, "Just trust your experience." he's saying, "Use your mind calmly and weigh the evidence, and then let experience be a confirming piece of evidence." second, if what this evidence points to is true - that is, if all these lines of evidence really do point to the resurrection of Jesus - the evidence itself begs for an experiential test, the experiential test is, "He's still alive, and I can find out by relating to him." if you were on a jury and heard enough evidence to convince you of someone's guilt, it wouldn't make sense to stop short of the final step of convicting him, and for people to accept the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus and not take the final step of testing it experientially would be to miss where the evidence is ultimately pointing, so if the evidence points strongly in this direction, it's only rational and logical to follow it into the experiential realm, it's the final confirmation of the evidence, in fact, Moreland says this: the evidence screams out for the experiential test