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So in the last several videos, I’ve been explaining these other alternative theories that dismiss the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And now I want us to focus on the evidence for the truthfulness of the resurrection, and I want to do it this way. The lives of many people were changed, and they were changed drastically because of this testimony, and this proclamation that Jesus rose from the dead.

Take for example Peter. Peter who denied Jesus three times because, why, he was pressured by a 14 year old girl and several others. But what happened to Peter? He goes on to become the leader of the apostles. He’s willing to be arrested, willing to suffer. In about 68 A.D. he is crucified upside down for his belief in a crucified but risen Lord Jesus Christ. What explains this?

You have the half brother of Jesus by the name of James. James and his other brothers thought Jesus was not the Messiah. In fact, they said he was out of his mind. But what happens? James goes on to become the leader of the church in Jerusalem. James also suffers and is martyred.

And then you have Paul. Paul the great persecutor of the Christian faith. He not only has people arrested and put in jail, but he also votes to have them put to death. Paul goes on to become the greatest of the apostles in a sense, the greatest missionary, the greatest defender of the Christian faith.

He suffers greatly during his missionary trips, and finally he too is martyred in about the year 66-67 A.D.. So what explains this? What explains this? Does a swoon theory explain this? Does a wrong tomb theory explain this? Does a hallucination explain this? Does stealing the body explain this? No. Whether it be these three men or so many others who suffered for what they saw with their eyes and touched with their hands, and ate with their mouths as they joined him for a meal. The only thing that explains their willingness to suffer and even die is a man who was truly resurrected from the dead.

If he was resurrected from the dead and he was, it means that he is the Son of God.

But what does that mean? Well, it means before he rose, he was dead. And what does that mean? Well, it means that sin is very real.

It means that my sin is very, very serious. Your sin is very, very serious.

And it means, ultimately that my sin and your sin is really forgiven. Why else would the Son of God leave his place in heaven, come to earth, take on human flesh, and suffer and die in the way he did?

For those of us who are baptized and who believe in Christ, we have that forgiveness right now.

But if we are not there, we need to listen to the words of Peter in the book of Acts, where the Jews there, when they heard this message of the crucified and risen Christ, it says, they were cut to the heart. And they said, what should we do? And Peter said to them, repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

My name is David Thompson. I’m the director for The Center for Apologetics and Worldviews. Thank you for watching.

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In this video, we’re going to look at another theory regarding the resurrection of Christ, a theory that explains away the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. And this one we call the hallucination theory. And this one assumes that there was so much trauma for the disciples that they eventually had hallucinations of a risen Jesus. The problem with this theory, however, is that this hallucination occurred not just to one, but to many disciples. Another problem is that this hallucination occurred not just to individuals, but whole groups at the same time. And hallucination occurred not just once, but many times, at least 12 times over a period of 40 days. And finally, the problem with this hallucination theory is that the disciples not only saw Jesus, but they touched Jesus and they ate food with Jesus.

So all of these things combined together make it impossible for there to be such a hallucination. Again, according to the experts who have studied this, they say this is not how hallucinations occur.

So let’s go to another theory right away too. It’s called the stolen body theory. Now, the first three I mentioned the swoon theory, the wrong tomb theory, and the hallucination theory. There’s no historical evidence for them. They’re just ideas or theories made up in the minds of people, despite there being no historical evidence. The last one, the Stolen Body Theory, does have a little bit of historical evidence to it. Matthew chapter 27. And so this theory simply says that the disciples came and stole the body of Jesus at night. Well, even though there is some historical evidence for this one, it’s, you might say, kind of a really oh, I would say dumb theory. And let me tell you why.

So in order for this one to be true, the disciples who were gathered into a house, scared to death, they would have had to come up with the idea. Let’s suppose Peter said, men, this is a bad situation, but let’s make the most of a really bad situation. Let’s go steal the body of Jesus. So that means we have to sneak up there in the middle of the night without waking up the guards. Move the stone without waking up the guards. Go in there and unwrap the linen burial cloths from Jesus. It’s going to take a while and then we’re going to leave without waking up the guards. We have to get rid of the body. But then what we also have to do is we have to come up with a number of appearances of Jesus to us. So, Mary, we’re going to say that it appeared to you first. Then he appeared to me, Peter. Then he appeared to some of you other women. Then he appeared to you two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Then he appeared to all of us. Minus you, Thomas.

But then we’re going to say he appeared to all of us. And, Thomas, you’re there at that time, and you make this great confession of faith, my Lord and my God. And then we’re going to come up with a number of other appearances, and we have to make sure they’re fairly consistent with one another. And not only that, but then after we say that he appeared, we’re going to go tell everybody that we can that he rose from the dead. And we’re going to do so even under great duress and difficult, even if it means we’re going to have to suffer. Even if it means that if some of us might have to die, we know it’s a lie, but we have to be willing to suffer and maybe even die for what we know is a lie. There’s nothing in it for us, but let’s do it anyway for some reason.

So you can see how ludicrous this theory really is. It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. So again, this is one of those theories that doesn’t hold any water. Has a little historical evidence to it, but not much. But it is rather ludicrous. And again, Christians believe that the historical evidence is overwhelming. And it’s in those historical documents we call Matthew, Mark, Luke and John that clearly testify that Jesus was dead. But he rose again, and that is for us and our salvation.

My name is David Thompson. I’m the director for The Center for Apologetics and Worldviews. Thank you for joining us.

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We’re continuing now, our talk and discussion about these other theories regarding the resurrection of Jesus Christ. People saying, no, he wasn’t resurrected. Here are better theories to consider. So this time we’re looking at what we can call the wrong tomb theory. And this theory basically says that the women on Sunday morning, they went to the wrong tomb. And of course, if you go to the wrong tomb, there’s not going to be a body there.

So does this sound like a reasonable explanation for what took place? Well, just like the previous one, there’s no historical evidence for this, but let’s look at this in a little more detail. First of all, we know that at least five women followed Joseph of Arimathea to the tomb where the body of Jesus was placed. It’s probably more like six, maybe seven. And they not only saw the tomb, but they were close enough so they could see how the body was laid in the tomb. That was on Good Friday, and then on Sunday they come back again. A minimum of five women. They start out when it’s dark by the time they get there, the sun had risen to some degree. And so they, it’s not like they couldn’t see what was going on or where they were. They knew exactly where they were. And if you have 5 or 6 or more women there and they were at the wrong tomb, you would think one of them would have said, hey, are we at the right tomb? You have the bodies gone, but maybe we’re not at the right tomb. So it’s really hard to explain that the the women got confused because there were so many and because it was light by that time.

Another thing to keep in mind about the tomb it was a well known tomb. It was the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. He was a member of the Sanhedrin. If the women had gone to the wrong tomb, the other members of the Sanhedrin would have questioned Joseph and said he was buried in your tomb, right? And then they would have gone to the tomb themselves, the right tomb, and they would have discovered the body. And so they could have said, you women, you’re a bunch of idiots. You went to the wrong tomb and they could have simply disproved the wrong tomb theory themselves.

If the women went to the wrong tomb, that also means that Peter and John went to the wrong tomb. It also means that the guards who were guarding the wrong tomb as well. So we can see that there’s a lot wrong with this wrong tomb theory. And again, there’s no historical evidence for it. So again, the wrong tomb theory just falls short. It doesn’t hold water. And again, we as Christians we say the historical evidence is there, but that historical evidence is included in those eyewitness testimonies that we find in John, we find in Matthew, and we find also indirectly in the Gospels of Mark and Luke as well.

Next time we’ll look at another theory. My name is David Thompson, the director for The Center for Apologetics and Worldviews. Thank you for joining us.

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In the last video, I mentioned that there are basically four different theories that try to explain away the bodily resurrection of Christ. And so we’re going to look at one of those right now, namely the swoon theory. It’s a very interesting theory. And it used to be more popular, but it’s not nearly as popular today. And the swoon theory basically says that Jesus never really died on the cross. Rather, he swooned or went into a coma and they took his body down thinking he was dead, but he was still alive. And they put him in the tomb. And then somehow he revived and came out of the tomb and presented himself as the risen and glorious Messiah and Savior.

So is this a legitimate, reasonable theory? Well, let me point out, first of all, that there is no historical evidence for this swoon theory, but here are some other things to consider about this theory. First of all, if he’s taken down from the cross alive in a coma and then put in the tomb and he then he revives somehow. Well, first of all, he has to take off of himself all these strips of burial linen that have been put around his body, plus a shroud. Now, you may think, well, that’s not so difficult, is it? Well, it is because of this one extra reason. And the church Father Chrysostom tells us this. He says the myrrh that was combined with the strips of linen. And there’s a 75 pounds of myrrh and aloes connected with the strips of linen that were placed on him. That myrrh acts like a glue.

So it had been very, very difficult for a man, especially a man who had just been crucified and was in a coma next to impossible for him to remove these strips of linen by himself. But let’s suppose he does that. Okay, so he removes the strips of linen. And then what? Well, he has to get up and move the stone. Okay, well, how big is that stone? Well, at a minimum, it’s 440 pounds, but more likely it’s a ton or even two tons. Some people even say maybe it was three tons. So imagine a man who had just been in a coma had just been crucified, moving this stone and trying to do so from inside the tomb, where he doesn’t have the leverage that he could have from the outside.

But let’s suppose he does it. So he takes off the the burial strips of linen, he moves the stone, and then he comes out of the tomb. And then what does he have to do? We probably have to scare away the Roman soldiers that are guarding the tomb. Okay. Well, let’s suppose he does that too. Well, then, what happens next? Well, then we read that, you know, keep in mind that he had been crucified with the nails through his wrist, the nails through his feet. He appears several miles away on a road walking on this road. He shouldn’t be able to walk at this point because the nail through his feet. But he’s walking along this road with these two disciples on the road to Emmaus. He’s walking for several miles, and they don’t figure out there’s something terribly wrong with this man? I mean, he shouldn’t even be able to walk in those conditions, but even if he was able to walk, obviously he would appear very, very distraught and injured. And he should not be recognized as the Messiah.

But then 2 or 3 hours later, what happens? He appears to all of his disciples, minus Thomas. And again, keep in mind he had just been in a coma. He had been crucified. He had the nails through his hands and his feet. His side was pierced. He’s going to try to convince them that he is the glorified and crucified Savior and Messiah. I don’t think so.

Let me mention several other things about the crucifixion that are important to keep in mind here too. In many cases, as in the case of Jesus, the crucified victim was first of all whipped or flogged, and the flogging was very painful, but it also resulted in a great loss of blood. You know, the Jews were limited to 40 lashes, not the Romans. And this was a Roman flogging. So it was probably, well, more than 40 lashes. And so there was a great loss of blood. In all likelihood, he was state of a critical state at this point. But then there’s the crucifixion itself. And those medical authorities who have studied the crucifixion, realize this is not only extremely painful, but it always results in death, always results in death. The Romans perfected crucifixion. It was practiced by other cultures in the area too, before this time. But the Romans perfected the crucifixion. They knew how to kill somebody by crucifixion.

Plus, we know that when it was reported to Pilate that he was dead, he was a little concerned. This was awfully quick, he thought. But it was confirmed by the centurion. Yep, yep. He was dead. The centurion wouldn’t have told Pilate he was dead unless he knew he was dead for sure. Otherwise, the centurion would have been taking a big risk, risking his own life for not being accurate in what he reported. We also have one of the soldiers piercing Jesus side. It wasn’t just a random pierce, but it was probably very, probably very strategic. He knew exactly where he was piercing Jesus. And out comes what? A flood of blood and water. What does that indicate? Well, again, the medical authorities who have research said this indicates heart failure. The man is dead.

So crucifixion results in death. There is one exception to that. Josephus reports that there were three men who were crucified. But Josephus knew these three men. And so he asked the Caesar at that time, who was Titus, to have them taken down, because they were apparently his friends. So these three men who were crucified are taken down, two of the three still die. And the third one, he lives. But he lives not because the crucifixion was fulfilled, but because it was stopped. So everything else we know about crucifixion, it always leads to death.

Well, one more thing to mention here that’s very important when it comes to a crucifixion and this swoon theory. We not only have the testimony of the gospels that said he was dead by crucifixion, we also have non-Christian historians. Both Josephus and Tacitus say that he died by crucifixion. So there’s ample proof. Even from non-Christian sources, that he was dead by crucifixion.

So that’s an understanding of the swoon theory. But of course, Christians say the swoon theory is not true. It’s not correct. It can’t be correct. It’s just too crazy to believe in. Christians say the scriptures which were written, especially the Gospels of John and Matthew, were written by eyewitnesses. Mark and Luke were written by those who had contact with the eyewitnesses. They all clearly say that Jesus really rose from the dead. And if that’s the case, then we have one who truly is the Son of God and one who, prior to his resurrection, died. Why? For the forgiveness of our sins.

In the coming video, we’re going to look at another theory to see how that holds up. Again, my name is David Thompson. I’m the director for The Center for Apologetics Worldviews. See you next time.

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I want to talk to you about the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but also whether or not there might be other possibilities as to what really happened, rather than a bodily resurrection.

But first, I want to talk about the concept of Messiah.

Throughout the centuries, there have been many messiahs. In fact, the last one, who was said to be a messiah, died in the year 1994. So just a little over 30 years ago, Josephus, the historian, the Jewish Roman historian, pointed out that between the years 45 B.C. and about 100 A.D., there were over 12 messiahs. So, for example, there was a man by the name of Theudas who died in 44-45 A.D. He gathered a large number of Jews out at the Jordan River, said he was going to part the river. It didn’t happen. And so he and the rest of his followers, they were all slaughtered, and his head was taken and dragged through the city of Jerusalem.

There was another man by the name of Bar Kokhba. In the year 132 to 135, he led a rebellion against the Roman Empire. The last rebellion by the Jews. He lost. They were slaughtered. Many of them were sold into slavery. Some of them were simply dismissed from their Jewish area. But that was the last one that took place of any significance, at least in that area. We know that these people who had been given the title Messiah, that that title didn’t last for them. It didn’t stick.

Why? Well, because they all died and they stayed dead. On the other hand, this man by the name of Jesus of Nazareth was called the Messiah. But the title Messiah has stuck with him. Why? Well, he died. But according to the historic Christian faith, according to the reliable documents, he didn’t stay dead. He arose from the dead. He was resurrected. Now we know that there were prophecies of the Messiah being raised from the dead in the Old Testament. Jesus himself talked about himself being raised from the dead many times. Even Jesus enemies realized that he had predicted his own resurrection. And so we have the apostles and others saying that he rose from the dead. So the resurrection of Christ is stated as if it is a reality within the Christian church.

How important is the resurrection of Christ to Christianity? Well, it’s very important. So, for example, when the authority of Jesus was challenged, he said, destroy this body and I will raise it again in three days. His authority was proven by his resurrection from the dead. Saint Paul tells us that his person, as the Son of God, is proven by his resurrection from the dead. In Romans chapter four, Paul points out that our justification is intimately connected with the resurrection of Christ. Peter tells us in his first epistle that our hope of everlasting life, and the fact that our baptism saves us, is intimately connected to the resurrection of Christ. But perhaps the best description of the importance of the resurrection is found in First Corinthians chapter 15, where Paul says, If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile. You are still in your sins, and we are found to be false witnesses about God. Because we testified about Jesus that God raised him from the dead. In other words, the resurrection of Christ is essential to the truthfulness of Christianity. Without the resurrection, Christianity is simply one big lie. But we also know that there are many people who say that the resurrection of Christ never took place.

Why do they say that? Well, they’ve come up with a number of theories as to what they think really happened. And that’s what I want to talk to you about in some more details. And there’s basically four different theories that people have promoted over the years. There’s what we can call the swoon theory, the wrong tomb theory, the hallucination theory, and the stolen body theory. In our next video, we’re going to take a look at these theories in some detail, and I hope you join me for that. My name is David Thompson. I’m the director for the center for Apologetics and Worldviews. Thank you for watching.