THE HISTORICITY OF THE RESURRECTION PASTOR CHARLES PRICE

Transcription

1 THE HISTORICITY OF THE RESURRECTION PASTOR CHARLES PRICE In preparation for our pastor s message this morning, would you turn in your Bibles, please, to the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 24, and we ll be reading verses 1 through 12. Luke s Gospel, Chapter 24, reading the first twelve verses. On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; He has risen! Remember how He told you, while He was still with you in Galilee, The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again. Then they remembered His words. When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves; and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened. The Word of the Lord. Back in the 1920 s a British lawyer set out to write a book on Jesus. He was not a Christian, and he was impressed by the remarkable impact that this one man had had on human history. He was convinced that miracles do not take place, and part of his task was, and I quote, To strip the New Testament of its primitive beliefs and superstitions and to see this supremely great person as He really was. In his research, he went to Israel, and he came across the problem of the empty tomb of Jesus. And he asked the question, What actually happened to leave the tomb empty? In the course of his thoughts and his investigations of the various possibilities, a slow realization began to grow on him until he became convinced that Jesus actually rose again from the dead. His name was Frank Morrison, and he wrote a book called, Who Moved the Stone? That book is still available today, eighty years after it was first written. The first chapter of that book is called, The Book That Refused to be Written, and he tells his own story and his own coming to the conclusion that Christ must have risen from the dead. Now I want to ask that question this morning: Did the resurrection of Jesus Christ actually, literally happen? And the reason why I want to ask this question is because Christianity stands or falls on the historicity of the resurrection. It s not the teaching of Jesus that Christianity The Historicity of the Resurrection (0214) 1

2 stands or falls on. It s the resurrection of Jesus because Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15, and verse 14, If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. In other words, if Christ did not rise from the dead, the whole thing is a fraud. The best thing we can do this morning is close this service early, go for lunch, and get to the restaurants before everybody else does, but we re wasting our time staying here if Jesus did not rise from the dead says Paul. But conversely, if Christ did rise from the dead, it is not only one of the most important events in human history, but it s something that every one of us has got to take very seriously if it actually happened. Now I want to talk to you this morning about the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. First, let me just remind you of the sequence of events that preceded this. Jesus had been crucified, traditionally on a Friday. There are those who argue for a Thursday, and those who argue for a Wednesday, but traditionally on Friday. The third day was the day of His resurrection: Friday the first, Saturday the second, Sunday the third. And we know that after His death, Joseph of Arimathea requested the body in order to bury it in a tomb which was a cave carved out of rock, the front of which was then covered by a stone. There were several witnesses at His burial. Then we re told that the Roman authorities placed a guard of soldiers on the tomb. Now the reason why they did that we re told in Matthew s Gospel is that the priests and the Pharisee s went to Pilot, and they said, We remember that when this man was still alive, this deceiver said, After three days I ll rise again, so give orders for the tomb to be made secure until the third day. Otherwise, His disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people He s been raised from the dead, and the last deception will be worse than the first. I m intrigued by that because the disciples didn t actually believe in the resurrection, but the Pharisees, the priest, knew Jesus said this. They said, In case there s some attempt to steal the body, put a guard of soldiers on the grave, not to keep the body in, of course, but to keep body stealers out. And we know that took place immediately after His burial, however, as we read in Luke 24, when the women came to the tomb on that Sunday morning, the stone had been rolled away. Two men stood either side of the stone, and they said to the women, Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; He is risen. Then they ran and told Peter and John. Then Jesus appeared to them. Then He appeared to two men walking on a road to Emmaus; then He appeared to the disciples as a group minus Thomas. Then He appeared to Thomas separately later, and much later Paul summarized His appearances after His resurrection when he wrote in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 4 to 8: He was raised on third day and He appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that He appeared to more than five hundred at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all He appeared to me also The Historicity of the Resurrection (0214) 2

3 That is not a full list actually, but it s an impressive list. It includes there five hundred people at the same time in Galilee to whom Jesus appeared says Paul. These were eye witnesses of His resurrected body. This story of the resurrection of Jesus is presented in Scripture as a literal, historical event where the physically dead Jesus was raised to life again, came out of the tomb and appeared to a number of people. Now it s important to say that this is not some kind of spiritual resurrection. A few years ago in Britain, a well-known bishop in the Anglican church there declared in his sermon on Easter Sunday, We do not believe that God performed the cundering trick with the bones of Jesus. Those were his words; [they] became headlines the next day. He says, What we mean is, that the Spirit of Jesus lives on, the teaching of Jesus lives on. His movement lives on. Well, actually that is not what we mean. That is not what the New Testament means. You know, a little bit like when we say, Elvis lives. You know, the music lives on. We don t mean that about Jesus. We mean that His body, which had died, was pronounced dead, lay dead over a weekend, was miraculously raised to life again. Now, for some of us, we re very familiar with this. It s not difficult for us, but this is actually a huge thing to ask anybody to believe. If we were to hear of such a thing taking place today, most of us, I would suspect, would be extremely sceptical about such an event. I understand why people find this difficult to believe, but I want to talk about this this morning because if Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead, we have to ask the question, What then are the alternative explanations for what happened? You see, the fact that the tomb was empty has never been seriously disputed. We have evidence of that from contemporary historians outside of Scripture that this was what was believed. It was recognized the tomb was empty. That has never been disputed. The big question is, Why was the tomb empty? And there have been alternative explanations given. I m going to give you four of them, the four main ones, the four most plausible ones. There are other less plausible ones that have been presented at various times in history. I want to give you these four explanations and then look at them as best we can in the brief time available to us. The first alternative explanation is that the tomb was empty because the disciples had stolen the body of Jesus. Now that explanation was given on the very day that His tomb was found to be empty. It s in the Bible. You can find it in Matthew Chapter 28. Let me read it. It says Matthew Chapter 28, and verse 12 When the chief priests met with the elders, they devised a plan; they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, You are to say, His disciples came during the night and stole Him away while we were sleeping. If this report gets to the governor, we ll satisfy him and keep you out of trouble. So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed And here s an interesting sentence that Matthew writes, probably thirty years later. This story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day. The Historicity of the Resurrection (0214) 3

4 And I m given to understand it is still a popular explanation in Jewish circles for the empty tomb. Now, we re told there that it was a put-up, con job. They were paid to say this, but the story gained some credibility as it circulated. But think about it just for a moment, if this is a serious explanation for the empty tomb. Firstly, the disciples were not expecting the resurrection. Jesus had told them that He was going to rise from the dead, and in fact in the words we had read to us from Luke 24 when they were first told by the women who had gone to the tomb, it says, They did not believe the women because their words seemed to them like nonsense. These are the disciples speaking: That is nonsense! They were not expecting the resurrection. They were not expecting the crucifixion even though Jesus had told them about it, but it had gone into one ear and out the other; it just hadn t registered with them. Their understanding of Jesus agenda was setting up a throne in Israel, throwing off the Roman domination and restoring the independence and the dignity of the nation once again. That was their expectation right to the very end. They were not expecting His resurrection, therefore, to find the good reason why they would steal the body for something they weren t expecting or didn t believe in anyway is difficult to substantiate. But the more important thing is how do we account for the behaviour of the disciples after the resurrection of Jesus because prior to His resurrection, the disciples were characterized by fear and cowardice; they d all run away from the cross when He was crucified. We re told, in John 20 in verse 19, on the day of the resurrection the disciples were together with doors locked for fear of the Jews. So they were still scared behind locked doors when suddenly into this locked room Jesus appeared to them, and the whole atmosphere changed. It changed from fear to confidence, from mourning to joy, and you find these disciples became characterized by courage and boldness, something they had decidedly lacked earlier. Within a few weeks, they d filled Jerusalem with their teaching, and it says in Acts, Chapter 4 in verse 13, that when the authorities saw the courage of Peter and John they were astonished because they knew that prior to this they had not been courageous at all; now they re astonished by this courage that they had. Tradition tells us that all but John of those disciples were eventually martyred for their faith. James was the first to be killed; he was killed in the Book of Acts, Chapter 12, by King Herod. Peter, reliable tradition tells us, was crucified upside down. How do you explain the courage and the steadfastness of these men if all along they knew the body was hidden in somebody s backyard and the whole thing was a hoax? How do you account for their courage? You see, if these disciples had difficulty mustering the courage to stand up for the truth when Jesus was alive before His crucifixion, how in the world do you explain the kind of courage they had if they were standing up for a lie, for a hoax at the end of it? Peter, writing later his epistle, his letter in the New Testament, in 2 Peter 1, verse 16, says this: We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. The Historicity of the Resurrection (0214) 4

5 This is not cleverly invented stories we ve all agreed to stick with. No, no, he says, This is the truth. You see, if this had been a hoax, at least one of them would have squealed at some stage. You can be sure of that. And we can be sure of this: if no one else believed in the resurrection of Jesus, the disciples certainly did after the event because of their behaviour. So the explanation that the tomb was empty because the disciples had stolen the body, when you examine the subsequent events just does not stand up when you know what we know about the disciples. They certainly believed He d been raised from the dead. The second alternative explanation is that the tomb was empty because the Jewish or Roman authorities had removed the body. That actually was the first thing that was believed by Mary Magdalene we re told in John Chapter 20 when she came to the tomb and found that it was empty. There were two men there, and she said, They whoever the they are They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don t know where they have put Him. She has come to embalm the body of Jesus on the third morning, but to her horror it is empty and so her automatic assumption is somebody has taken the body away; the authorities have removed the body, and she said that to Peter and John. Later she met with some others, and she said the same thing: They have taken away my Lord; I don t know where they have put Him. Well this, of course, would be a logical, perhaps sensible thing for the authorities to have thought of and done. It s rather expensive to put a detachment of soldiers on guarding a dead body in a tomb. It s also a little embarrassing to do so. If they feared any threat of the disciples coming to steal the body, why not pre-empt that by taking the body, putting it in another tomb where nobody else knows, or burying it somewhere where nobody else is aware? Do it during the night when nobody is around, and you d solve the problem of the disciples stealing the body if that was their initial concern. But supposing they had done that. Supposing they had thought of that. Well then how do you explain their response later when the disciples began to preach the resurrection of Jesus in such a way it turned the city of Jerusalem upside down? It says in Acts Chapter 4 in verse 2 that the authorities were greatly disturbed because the apostles were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead. Later is says, With great power, the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, so much so they took them aside, and they forbade them to evermore speak about the resurrection of Jesus. And Peter said, We must obey God rather than man; we cannot help but speak, and they went on preaching. They were thrown into prison. How do you account the authority s response to all of this if they had removed the body and knew a resurrection had not taken place? There d be one simple way for them to knock this whole movement on the head fairly and squarely. That would be to produce the body they had removed they know exactly where it is hold it up and say, Ladies and Gentlemen, do you recognize this? The game is up. Here s the body, as dead as when we took Him from the cross. But they didn t. In fact, it s very interesting that in the literature surrounding this period of time, the authorities resisted the apostle s preaching about the resurrection, but they never tried to refute it. They didn t have an alternative explanation. The Historicity of the Resurrection (0214) 5

6 And so the idea that the authorities had removed the body it s a smart idea if the authorities had done that, but if they had, why in the world didn t they produce the body and the whole movement would have collapsed like a pack of cards. That alternative explanation doesn t square with the realities of what happened afterwards and the role of the authorities in those events. The third alternative explanation is that the tomb was empty because Jesus had not really died. Now this has been a very popular interpretation. The idea is that He had swooned, lost consciousness, was in a coma, and in the cool of the tomb, He d revived and come to life, and this was not a resurrection but a resuscitation that had taken place. This idea has occurred with surprising regularity throughout history. It was very popular in the 18 and 19 centuries. The German Rationalists, who had such influence in western thinking, many of them held this view, that due to the pain and the loss of blood on the cross, Jesus had swooned, lost consciousness and been presumed dead. Medical knowledge was limited, and so they d presumed Him dead. Certainly you may remember that when the soldiers came to break the legs of the victims being crucified three of them in order to speed up the process of death, they were surprised to find Jesus was dead already. And this explanation says, Ah ha. He wasn t dead. And they took Him down from the cross, and He revived. They don t explain how He managed to get out of His grave clothes, which would have been very tightly wrapped bandages around His body. They don t explain how He left them folded at the head of the slab where His body had lain and somehow happened to have a change of clothing with Him to dress. They don t explain how He managed to move away the stone, which had been sealed by the Roman authorities to prevent the disciples from breaking in, how He, in His weakened state, had managed to move the stone away. They don t explain that. I was watching television last night, listening to a Christian Science teacher give this very explanation for the empty tomb of Jesus. Let me quote you Mary Baker Eddy s book. She was the founder of Christian Science, and her book, Science and Health, says that Jesus disciples were not sufficiently advanced at the time to fully understand their Master s triumph. That s why they didn t perform wonderful works until after they saw His crucifixion and learned that He had not died. He presented to them the same body that He had before His crucifixion and so glorified the supremacy of mind over matter. Well let me tell you: this was some mind over some matter when you understand the awful torture His body had endured, both prior to and during crucifixion. But this idea of mind over matter and He wasn t really dead is what Mary Baker Eddy has propounded. There s an Indian Islamic sect, and they believe that Jesus revived in the tomb, left the tomb and then walked to India that s a long way on damaged feet founded His true movement and was later buried in Kashmir, and they will show you His tomb. And they say this was the Jesus who resuscitated in the original tomb in Jerusalem. This idea has come up again very recently in a book written by an Australian professor from Sydney University; Barbara Theoring is her name. In this book, she suggests that the vinegar given to Jesus on the cross was actually poisoned wine that made Him unconscious. He was The Historicity of the Resurrection (0214) 6

7 taken down from the cross by His friends, given medicines to expel the poison, and later helped to escape from the tomb by His disciples. Then she reconstructs an idea of where He later went and died; I think 62 A.D. is what she suggests. That s a recent variation on this theme, in the last ten or fifteen years. Now just suppose these speculations were true. Just supposing Jesus hadn t died for whatever reason. Just supposing He had revived in the tomb; He d managed to release His grave clothes and move the stone and come out and appear first to the women then to the disciples then to the others. Just supposing that it happened, let me ask you a question: What do you think the response of the people who saw Him would have been? Well, I ll tell you what their response would have been: Quick! This man needs a doctor. He s in a terrible condition. He is very, very sick. He s lost a lot of blood. He is deep dehydrated. He s in immense pain. He s incredibly weak. Quick. Get Him to a doctor. Wouldn t that be the response? But it wasn t. They said, My Lord and my God at least that s what Thomas said. And the idea that He had just been in a coma would have left Him incredibly weak for long periods afterwards, and there s no suggestion of that anywhere in any document that records anything about those early days, whether in Scripture or outside of Scripture. The fourth alternative explanation was that the tomb was not actually empty, so it doesn t address that problem; but the fourth explanation says that those who saw Him either saw a ghost or a spirit, or they were hallucinating; they were having visions, but it was not reality that they saw. Well, this again actually is what the disciples thought when they first saw Him because we re told that when Jesus appeared to them in Luke 24 verse 37, They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. They weren t expecting the resurrection; I told you. The only explanation they had, It looks like Jesus. It sounds like Jesus; it must be a ghost. They were terrified, and Jesus said, Relax. [He] showed them His hands and His feet. He said, Come and touch me. A ghost doesn t have flesh and bones as you see I have. You can run your hand through a ghost but you can t through a physical body. Touch me and see. He said, Bring me some bread; bring me some fish. And He ate of the bread, ate of the fish. Ghosts don t eat. That was the immediate response of those people, but others have said later, Well, not a ghost maybe. But those who saw Jesus were suffering or claim to have seen Jesus were suffering from hallucinations. Well, a couple of things we can say to that. One is that hallucinations are usually in the form of seeing things you either would like to see or would expect to see. When you are expecting something it s like you re waiting for somebody to come home and every movement you hear outside, every car slowing outside your house you think, Maybe that s them. Well, if there s some expectancy, you might see something or something triggers a familiarity, and you think you saw something you didn t. But I ll remind you as I ve said several times already, that the disciples were not expecting to see Jesus. They were not expecting Him to rise from the dead, and when He was risen, their first response was, This is nonsense. Their second response when He appeared to them was, It s a ghost. The Historicity of the Resurrection (0214) 7

8 So the idea that they were fully expecting something and they thought they saw it simply doesn t tally with the facts of how the disciples were thinking. They were not expecting to see Jesus. And the second thing I have to say about that is that hallucinations are extremely subjective and are personal. Two people, side by side, don t hallucinate at the same time about the same thing in the same way. They are totally subjective experiences, and yet, says Paul when he gives evidence of the resurrection some years later, he writes, He appeared on one occasion to five hundred people at the same time. And when he wrote that, he said, Most of whom are still living. Some had passed away in the intervening years, but most are still living. In other words says Paul, if you go down the street and you find their address, you knock on their door and you say, Excuse me. Did you see Jesus after His crucifixion? They will tell you, I did. There are five hundred of them says Paul, who saw Him in one go. People don t hallucinate en masse like that. Professor Norman Anderson, who was Professor of Oriental Law at the University of London for many years, wrote a booklet just a very small, sixteen page or twenty-four page booklet called, The Evidence for the Resurrection. In that booklet, he says this: If the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ was presented to a court of law with a jury, the jury would be compelled to return the verdict, Jesus literally, physically rose from the dead, because every alternative explanation doesn t carry substantiation with it in any way. And that s why two thousand years later we are packed here this morning because what happened that day was a miracle of the literal resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Now the big question the last few minutes the big question is this: So what? I mean are we simply impressed by this? Well, no, we re not merely impressed by this. It is the resurrection of Jesus that lies at the very heart of the gospel of Jesus. You see I want to give you three things as we close. First, the resurrection gives proof of Jesus being who He had claimed to be. We re told in Acts 17, verse 31, by Paul preaching in Athens, he said there, For He has set a day when He will judge the world with justice by the man He has appointed. He has given proof of this to all people by raising Him from the dead. Paul says, God has given proof of Jesus by raising Him from the dead, and everything we need to know and believe about Jesus Christ is proven by His resurrection. You need proof of Christ? Look at the resurrection. Look at the empty tomb. The resurrection is God s vindication of Christ. You see, if Christ is not raised, the whole of Christianity is discredited. I ve said this here before that the teaching of Jesus was centred on Himself. He said things no other religious leader has ever said. He said, I am the Way. Others have said, I will show you the way. He said, I am the Way. Others have said, I ll teach you the truth. He said, I am the truth. Others said, I ll show you how to find life. He said, I am the life. Others said, I ll give you shepherds. He said, I am the Good Shepherd. Others have said, I ll feed you the bread of life. He said, I am the Bread of Life. Others have said, I ll switch on the The Historicity of the Resurrection (0214) 8

9 light for you. He said, I am the Light of the World. The teaching of Jesus centred on Himself. In other words, if there is no Jesus, there is no Gospel; there is no way; there is no truth; there is no light. If Jesus Christ is not alive this morning, I m sorry; we have no Gospel. There is no way. It s Him: He who is the way, the truth. We cannot feed you. He is the bread. But if Christ is raised from the dead, may I say this: you had better take this seriously because His resurrections given proof to the Gospel. It s not a take it or leave it issue. The second thing: the resurrection of Christ gives power because Paul writes in Philippians Chapter 3, I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection. You see the real evidence of the resurrection of Jesus is the transformed lives of His disciples, both then, two thousand years ago, and now in our world, in our day. You see, the disciples, as I ve already indicated, were characterized by weakness and cowardice and failure, but after the resurrection, they were different men and different women. Not because they simply believed something they hadn t believed before, but they had received something they hadn t received before. They had received the risen life of Christ, imparted to them by the Holy Spirit because the Gospel is about getting rid of our sin and guilt in order that then the Holy Spirit of God might come and live the risen life of Jesus within us and transform us from within and equip us to live a new kind of life. When Paul says, I want to know Christ; I want to know the power of His resurrection. I want to know that life that was raised from the dead, which has conquered sin, which has conquered every enemy because Paul says, The last enemy to be destroyed is death. When God raised Jesus from the dead He defeated the last enemy. And when that last enemy is defeated, every other enemy has been defeated, and I want to know His power working in my life. And you see, we re not just here this morning to say we re impressed with what happened two thousand years ago. We re here this morning because you can go back to your normal home, your place of work tomorrow, back to your same family, back to your same street with new power in your life if you come to discover the risen life of Christ, available to you today to indwell you. And the third thing is the resurrection of Christ gives purpose. Let me read you something else Paul wrote about the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15. He said, If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep [in Christ] That is died in Christ. are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. The Historicity of the Resurrection (0214) 9

10 That is of those who have died. Now says Paul, On the resurrection of Christ stands the guarantee of the resurrection of those who are in Christ, those who know Christ, to be indwelt by His Holy Spirit. You see, the resurrection of Christ gives life purpose because the day is going to come when this body has died and been buried. And if it dies and gets buried, get over it. It s going to come back, a new body. Now, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. We know that, that there s an immediate access into the presence of God; there s going to come a resurrection of the body one day. That is a certain hope for the future. It s as certain as we look future as the resurrection of Christ is certain as we look back, because the resurrection in the future is determined by the resurrection of Christ in the past. In fact, we have all three tenses in these three things. The resurrection gives proof that s historical proof past tense. The resurrection gives power. That s present tense experience that we can enjoy of Him now. And future tense, the resurrection gives purpose to life. Do you know something? Nobody is really equipped to live until they re equipped to die because if you re not equipped to die, there s always that dark cloud hanging over you every single morning: What if today? What if? What if my car goes off the road? What if I wrap around a telegraph pole? What if I get old and sick and die? The most certain thing about life is death because death is hundred per cent, unless you re going to be alive the day Jesus comes back, and then you ll skip the process. But apart from that, death is certain, and until we re equipped to die, we re not really equipped to live with freedom and abandonment and joy, knowing no matter what the darkest tunnel I m in, at the end of that dark tunnel is a future. The old spirituals that we still sometimes sing, they are so much about the future because in those dark days of slavery, there wasn t a lot to be glad about in the here and now. But those songs have brought joy into the hearts of those slaves, ill-treated, trodden down, abused, denied the freedoms every human being deserves, denied the dignity every human being deserves. They began to sing songs like, Soon and Very Soon. That s probably [a] more recent one. But they sang about glory. We re going there one day. Because in the darkest moments of your life, whatever else has been undermined, that remains sure. How do we know? Because God raised Jesus from the dead, and if Christ has been raised from the dead, He s the firstfruits of all those who have fallen asleep says Paul, who have died in Christ. But if Christ has not been raised from the dead, then says Paul, we re to be pitied because we re deluded. So what do I do about this? First, believe it. Christianity is based on historical events; it s a historical Christianity. It s not based on a philosophy; it s based on events that took place in history. You need to believe Jesus Christ was God, became a man, lived the life He lived, died the death He died on the cross, was buried, was raised again to life. The Historicity of the Resurrection (0214) 10

11 Secondly, appropriate it. What does that mean? That means allow the purpose [for] which Christ died and was raised again to take effect into your life. That means you come and say, Lord Jesus, I realize that as a human being I m in need of you within my life. I m not sufficient in myself. Please forgive me of the barrier that keeps you out, the sin in my life. Cleanse me on the basis of your death. And then, by your Holy Spirit, impart to me the gift of life, the risen life of Jesus, that I might become born again and made a new person. And thirdly, believe it, appropriate it, live in the good of it. Know that every day, no matter what you face tomorrow, the risen Christ is not out there somewhere; He s in me. And anything that threatens me has to threaten Him. Although there are things that frighten me, they never frighten Him, so my strength, my security comes from Christ, and I can live with confidence. That s why the disciples were different men after Pentecost. When the resurrection had taken place and the Holy Spirit poured out, they could be bold; they could be confident. Death didn t frighten them anymore because they lived in the good of what they now experienced and what Christ had done for them and now what Christ would do in them by His Spirit. If you don t know this in your own personal life, there isn t a better day on the calendar than this morning in which to give your life to Christ. We have a room set apart through these doors here, across the corridor; the sign, I think it says Prayer Room [or] Prayer Counselling. If you d like to talk to somebody, if you come down here to the front maybe one or other of the pastors will be here at the front just to meet you and direct you through those doors. Just go in there. We d love to talk to you and help you to be sure this Easter morning that what happened so long ago can be the most dynamic thing in your life today as you receive Jesus. And those of you who are already Christians, live this week as though He s alive! I mean, live in the good of it! Face every discouragement and every thing that would threaten you and frighten you, face it with that reassurance. Whatever else is true, Christ is alive, and He s in me, and I m secure forever. Let s pray together. Lord Jesus, we re so grateful we re not meddling with myths. We re not telling fairy stories. We are dealing with an event in history that is the most significant event in the history of the human race because it is the means by which men and women and boys and girls can be reconciled to their Creator. And I pray, Lord Jesus, that as we leave this place this morning, we may do so with a confidence that we know God. If we don t before this morning, bring us into that knowledge of you this morning, we pray, and help us to live with the reality of the risen Christ to the forefront of our understanding. We pray it in Jesus name. Amen. The Historicity of the Resurrection (0214) 11

12 NOTE: On page 3, Pastor Price uses a word which I am unfamiliar with. After spending time trying to determine what it is, I have left is as cundering. Please note that this may be incorrect. There are several names on the tape that I am unsure of the spelling. On page 6, Pastor Price refers to a book by Mary Baker Eddy. I have spelled her name as shown, however, am not certain if this is correct. The same is true on the bottom of page 6 where he refers to a professor at Sydney University, Barbara Theoring. As well, Pastor Price refers to an Indian Islamic sect in the second last paragraph on page 6. I have taken out the name of the sect as I don t have the correct spelling. The Historicity of the Resurrection (0214) 12