Evidence for the Cross and Resurrection
00:00:00.000 | Welcome back. This new week on the podcast starts off by wrapping up a bundle of recent
00:00:08.840 | apologetics questions on the person and work of Christ. We recently looked at six reasons
00:00:13.760 | why Jesus had to leave earth after Easter. Imagine life on earth if Christ was still
00:00:18.720 | here with us. He's not. Why not? That was APJ 1978. Then we looked at why didn't Jesus
00:00:26.040 | have to pay eternally for our sins? Isn't that the cost? Eternal judgment. So why was
00:00:32.000 | his suffering cut so short? That was APJ 1979. And then we looked at even if the Christian
00:00:39.640 | faith is untrue, if the cross and resurrection didn't happen, aren't Christians still happier
00:00:44.320 | than non-Christians in this life? Don't our present life priorities make for a more fulfilling
00:00:50.360 | experience of this life than the non-Christians seeking their joy in this world, even if we're
00:00:56.000 | still here? That was APJ 1977. And related to that one comes today's question. Why don't
00:01:02.880 | we have more artifacts, more archaeology, or even a more diversified record of historical
00:01:09.040 | documents to corroborate the death and resurrection of Christ? Shouldn't we have more? The question
00:01:16.840 | is from a listener named Terry. Pastor John, hello to you. My question for you is why in
00:01:20.760 | this age it remains so easy for non-believers to refute the crucifixion and resurrection
00:01:25.840 | of Jesus? If God controls everything, why is the existence of Jesus and his crucifixion
00:01:32.760 | not made more undeniable? People can so easily say that the events of the Bible are not real.
00:01:39.840 | Why did God not orchestrate it so that there were more witnesses, more archaeological evidence,
00:01:46.160 | more handwritten accounts? Why did he seem to leave so much room for doubt? Pastor John,
00:01:52.200 | how would you respond to Terry? I have two main responses to this question.
00:01:58.320 | The first is that historically speaking, the text of the New Testament, the Greek text
00:02:07.000 | of the New Testament, which is the written accounts of first century witnesses to Christ,
00:02:13.880 | is spectacularly reliable. That's number one. I'll come back to it and explain why in a
00:02:22.840 | minute. Second, the obstacles that hinder warranted belief, justifiable belief in the
00:02:32.360 | truth of those first century testimonies are the same obstacles that people experienced
00:02:40.520 | who were looking Jesus right in the face and did not believe in spite of all his signs.
00:02:48.960 | In other words, the root problem today and then is not and was not absence of evidence.
00:02:59.120 | Now, why do I say that the New Testament accounts of the first century Christian witnesses are
00:03:07.360 | spectacularly reliable? Terry asks, why did God not provide more handwritten accounts?
00:03:17.160 | I wonder if people who ask that have any idea what they are saying. Caesar's Gallic Wars
00:03:28.080 | was written about 50 BC and there are 10 surviving manuscripts. Livy's History of Rome has 20
00:03:39.880 | surviving manuscripts. Tacitus' Histories and Annals, written about 100 AD, has two
00:03:49.600 | manuscripts. Thucydides' History, which was written about 400 BC, has eight manuscripts.
00:03:55.920 | Most scholars of such sources go about their work with confidence that they are in touch
00:04:02.440 | with the original witnesses. Now, according to the Institute of New Testament Textual
00:04:08.520 | Research in Münster, Germany, there are 5,800 manuscripts or fragments of manuscripts of
00:04:17.920 | the New Testament. Not two, not 10, not 20, not eight. It is a spectacular wealth of handwritten
00:04:30.120 | accounts of what was originally written and hundreds of them are older than anything we
00:04:38.240 | have for those secular histories. The science of textual criticism that handles these thousands
00:04:45.280 | of manuscripts is able to compare those manuscripts and determine with astonishing accuracy what
00:04:53.560 | the original manuscripts actually said. Here's F.F. Bruce. He was from the previous generation.
00:04:59.600 | He was alive when I was studying as a seminary student. He wrote this, "If the great number
00:05:05.880 | of manuscripts increases the number of scribal errors," copying errors as you go from one
00:05:14.200 | copy to the next, "it increases proportionately the means of correcting such errors so that
00:05:20.760 | the margin of doubt left in the process of recovering the exact original wording is in
00:05:29.920 | truth remarkably small." Now, that comes from the New Testament documents. Are they reliable?
00:05:37.800 | Which you can still get at Amazon. I recommend it. I also recommend Paul Wegner, a student's
00:05:42.840 | guide to textual criticism of the Bible, and Craig Blumberg, the historical reliability
00:05:49.320 | of the Gospels. The remarkable fact is that most historical scholars today, liberal or
00:05:58.520 | conservative, believe that the Greek texts that we have in the New Testament are really
00:06:06.360 | what the authors wrote near the time when the events actually happened, which also means,
00:06:15.200 | for example, that when your Muslim friends tell you that the New Testament we have is
00:06:23.160 | not the New Testament that was originally written, but a much later creation of the
00:06:29.280 | church, you need to know there is zero, I'm talking zero, historical evidence for that
00:06:38.280 | claim, that there's an existing New Testament that we don't have that was before our New
00:06:44.960 | Testament. They are not making a historically justifiable statement. It is demanded by their
00:06:51.680 | faith, not by historical evidence, because they don't want anyone to think Jesus was
00:06:58.200 | actually crucified. But in fact, the crucifixion of Jesus is one of the most historically certain
00:07:05.560 | events of the first century. The view that it didn't happen is highly eccentric from
00:07:14.000 | a historical standpoint. So let me turn now to my second response, which I think is probably
00:07:20.800 | existentially the most significant part of Terry's question. The obstacles that hinder
00:07:29.200 | justified belief in the truth of these testimonies today is the same set of obstacles that people
00:07:37.440 | experienced who were looking at Jesus in his own day, right in the face, flesh to flesh,
00:07:44.920 | eye to eye, and did not believe. In other words, the root problem is not the absence
00:07:52.120 | of evidence. You remember the story of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16. The rich
00:07:58.600 | man and the poor man, Lazarus, died. Lazarus went to heaven, Abraham's bosom, and the rich
00:08:07.120 | man went to torment. And in the torment, he says across this chasm to Abraham, "I beg
00:08:16.240 | you, send Lazarus to my father's house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn
00:08:22.640 | them lest they also come into this place of torment." And Abraham said, "They have Moses
00:08:30.000 | and the prophets. Let them hear them." And he said, "No, Father Abraham, but if someone
00:08:36.580 | goes to them from the dead," in other words, if there's enough evidence, if there's a sign,
00:08:42.360 | they will repent. And Abraham said to him, "If they do not hear Moses and the prophets,
00:08:50.840 | neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead." Now, that's amazing.
00:08:56.600 | What it means is that the same inner condition of heart that keeps a person from believing
00:09:05.640 | the Old Testament prophets also keeps them from submitting to the evidence of actually
00:09:13.060 | seeing someone rise from the dead. That was true then, and it's true today. You remember
00:09:20.640 | the other Lazarus, remember? There are two Lazaruses in the New Testament. Jesus raised
00:09:25.840 | this Lazarus from the dead. He was dead four days, and Jesus raised him from the dead to
00:09:31.020 | give a sign that people would believe and glorify God. And when that miracle happened,
00:09:38.540 | some believed. In fact, it says many believed in John 11. But others went and told the Pharisees,
00:09:46.320 | and their response was they plotted to kill Jesus, and they plotted to kill Lazarus to
00:09:53.040 | get rid of the evidence. More than once, people demanded a sign from Jesus, even after he
00:10:01.960 | had done so many compelling signs already. And here's what Jesus said to them in John
00:10:09.840 | 10, 24. The Jews gathered around him and said, "How long will you keep us in suspense? If
00:10:16.380 | you are the Christ, tell us plainly." And Jesus said to them, "I told you, and you don't
00:10:23.520 | believe. The works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me, but you do not
00:10:31.200 | believe because you are not among my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and
00:10:38.600 | they follow me." Here's what Jesus said to explain that, how a person could come to see
00:10:49.000 | Jesus as true. He said in John 7, 17, "If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will
00:10:58.980 | know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority." The problem
00:11:08.900 | of unbelief is not mainly a lack of evidence, but a deep heart resistance to God and his
00:11:19.120 | will. Changing that heart condition is a great work of God. We are utterly dependent on it
00:11:30.460 | in our evangelism. So let's not be deterred in our evangelism by anyone who says, "There's
00:11:39.320 | not enough evidence to justify belief in Jesus." There is enough evidence. No one spoke like
00:11:46.380 | this man. The self-authenticating glory of God shines in the gospel of Christ. So let's
00:11:53.980 | tell the good news. Tell it everywhere. Tell it all the time. Tell it as compellingly as
00:11:59.440 | we possibly can, and then let's pray. Let's pray earnestly, all the more earnestly, that
00:12:07.260 | God would open the eyes of the blind. Yes, amen. 5,800 manuscripts or fragments of manuscripts
00:12:18.020 | of the New Testament. That's simply staggering. Thank you, Pastor John. And thanks for joining
00:12:22.340 | us today. If you're wrestling with a hard question that you need settled, ask Pastor
00:12:27.180 | John. Email your question to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:12:32.820 | Next time we field a question, I can certainly relate to myself. We read our Bible in the
00:12:37.380 | morning. We come across a promise or a text in the Old Testament. We write that text out
00:12:42.980 | in a notebook, a journal, digital note file, something. And we take that text or promise
00:12:48.380 | into our day. And later in the day, we return to the text to find ourselves wondering if
00:12:52.940 | we lifted the verse out of context. We ask, "Maybe it didn't really relate to me like
00:12:57.740 | I thought this morning." The text feels more remote as the day goes on. Has that ever happened
00:13:04.620 | to you? Well, it's happened to me, and it's happened to Maureen as well. We need to figure
00:13:09.340 | out what Old Testament promises are for us today, and we will next time. I'm your host,
00:13:14.540 | Tony Reinke. We'll see you Thursday.
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