All language subtitles for The Case for Christ explained in 16 minutes

I like to summarize the evidence using four wars that begin with the letter E.

And I'll go through it quickly, but if you have any follow-up sur questions, I can elaborate on any of them.

The first E stands for execution.

Was Jesus dead after being crucified?

And the answer is absolutely yes.

As was said in the film, there is no record anywhere of anybody ever surviving a full-room

crucifixion.

Even the Journal of the American Medical Association, which is a secular,

peer-reviewed scientific medical journal carried an investigation into the medical and

historical evidence for the death of Jesus and said clearly there's a quote clearly

the weight of the historical and medical evidence indicates that Jesus was dead even

before the wound to his side was inflicted.

We've got you could you could go to an atheist New Testament scholar like Garrett

Luteman formally abandoned and he'll tell you that Jesus death as a consequence of crucifixion

is indisputable.

And one of the reasons I found that it's so universally agreed by historians that he was

dead after being crucified is that when you study ancient history, we're lucky if we have

one or two sources to confirm a fact.

But for the death of Jesus, we not only have multiple, early, first century accounts in the

documents of the New Testament, we've also got five ancient sources outside the Bible, confirming

a corroborating that he died.

And Josephus, for century Jewish historian,

to work for the Romans,

tacit as another early historian,

Maribar Serapian, Lucien,

even the Jewish Talmud admits he was dead.

So the first he is execution Jesus was,

second is most interesting.

Sands for early.

We have early accounts or early reports

that Jesus rose from the dead.

In other words, reports go right back to the beginning.

Why is it important?

I used to think like a lot of skeptics

that the resurrection was a legend.

And I knew it took time for legend to develop

in the ancient world.

So I figured, you know, 150 years after the death of Jesus,

legends developed mythologies were spawned.

Stories were invented and that's where the idea

of the resurrection came from.

But what I learned and I've continued this investigation

to the present day, I might continue to look into this.

What I've learned, I think,

decimates the claim that the resurrection is a legend.

and here's why. We have preserved for us a creed of the earliest Christians, a creed,

a statement of conviction based on eyewitness accounts that the earliest Christians right there

in the first century would rally around based on facts that they knew to be true. So this creed

contains the essence of Christianity says Jesus died. Why? For our sins, he was buried.

And the third day he rolls from the dead and then it mentions the specific names of

eyewitnesses and groups of eyewitnesses to whom he appeared, including 500 people at once.

And then it says parenthetically, by the way, a lot of those folks are still around.

So if you don't believe me, go ahead and talk to yourself.

You're there around.

You can question them.

Now this creed has been dated back by scholars to within months of the death of Jesus.

How do we know?

Well, the Apostle Paul preserved it for us.

He wrote a letter to the church in Corinth,

about 21 to 25 years after the death of Jesus.

He reports he recounts this creed,

and he indicates, past tense, I already gave you this creed

earlier.

So, let's say within 20 years,

he had given this creed to the church in Corinth.

We could stop there, and that would be very impressive,

when you consider the first two biographies

the veil extended the great by Aryan and Plutarch written 400 years after his life, and

they're generally considered reliable.

So within 20 years is really good, but we can go back earlier because we know the Paul

used to be Saul of Tarsus, a persecutor, a hater of Christians.

One to three years after the death of Jesus, he's under road to Damascus, Pumi has us encounter

with the risen Christ, he becomes the apostle Paul.

Immediately he goes into Damascus and he meets with some apostles.

A many scholars believe this is when he was given the creed that he later writes in the letter.

But others say, "Wait, it may have been three years later."

Three years later, Paul goes to Jerusalem and he meets for 15 days with two eyewitnesses

to the resurrection who were specifically named in the creed, Peter and James.

And the Greek were the Paul uses and Galatians to describe this meeting, suggests that this

was an investigative inquiry that were checking each other out.

What do you know?

What did you see?

And some scholars believe this is when he was given the creed by two people specifically named in the creed.

But either way, this means within one to six years after the death of Jesus, this creed is already in existence.

And therefore the beliefs that make up that creed go back earlier virtually to the cross itself.

In fact, probably the greatest scholar in this area, Dr. James D. G. Dunn says, this is a quote.

He says, "This tradition, by that he means this creed,

"we can be entirely confident,

"was formulated as a creed as tradition

"within months of the death of Jesus, within months."

That is far too quick to write it off as a legend.

In fact, one of the greatest classical historians

who ever lived was a insurwen white of Oxford.

He understood the rate at which legend developed

in the ancient world.

And he said, "The passage of two generations of time

is not even enough for legend to grow up

and wipe out a solid core of a historical truth.

We don't have two generations of time pass in here.

We got a new flash and new flash

that goes right back to the beginning.

So we have early, and we've got other early accounts

right from the first century in Matthew Mark

Luke John the Book of Acts and so forth.

So Jesus was dead execution early accounts,

which I believe discounts of possibility

that's a legend.

30 is for empty-two.

And there's lots of reasons why we believe the two

is empty, but I think the most convincing reason

is that even the opponents of Jesus implicitly admitted

that it was empty.

How do we know?

Well, because when the disciples began proclaiming

that Jesus had risen, what the opponents of Jesus said,

we know this in sources inside and outside the New Testament,

that what the opponent said was, so disciples,

Jesus has risen, opponents.

Oh, well, the disciple stole the body.

Now, think about that.

That's a cover story.

They're implicitly admitting the two Mezzempty

through trying to explain how it got empty.

Right?

It's like if you're a student, I mean a teacher,

and a student comes up to you and says,

"A dog ate my homework."

That students are admitting,

"Look, I don't have my homework,

but I can explain what happened to it, the dog ate it."

It's the same thing.

So everybody said admitting the two Mezzempty.

That's not the issue.

the issue is how did it get empty.

And then the fourth E stands for eyewitnesses.

Not only was Jesus tuned discovered empty,

but over a period of time, he appears alive.

It doesn't different instances to more than 550 people,

to skeptics and doubters, to men,

to women, to groups, to individuals, indoors, outdoors,

daytime, nighttime, the disciples, talk to them.

They ate with them.

They touched him.

But here's what's interesting about the eyewitnesses.

Remember I said earlier, in ancient history,

we're lucky if we have one or two sources

to confirm a fact.

Well, for the conviction of the disciples

that they encountered the resurrected Jesus,

we have no fewer than nine ancient sources.

Inside and outside the New Testament,

confirming and corroborating the conviction of the disciples

that they encountered the resurrected Jesus.

That is an avalanche of historical data.

>> Yeah.

>> And it's convincing because as you mentioned in the book,

he talks about how the disciples later gave their lives

for these claims and the pushback you got,

of course, was, well, people die for lies all the time.

And which is true.

>> Yeah.

>> But people don't die for things they know to be lies.

>> Exactly.

>> And I've repeated that, right?

I've repeated that so many times.

I got it from him.

All right.

And my congregation, SIG, if you're in a bother,

probably, but that is one of the lunchbans of your argument.

Absolutely.

When we talk about the tomb being empty,

well, the disciples stole the body.

What's the problem with that claim

is that they wouldn't have then given their lives for a lie.

If they stole the body, they would have known,

and they would have given up at some point,

and just going on about their lives.

And Rome and the Jews would have been happy

to let them do that.

but they didn't, they pressed on.

And we have seven ancient sources, six of them

outside the Bible that tell us

that the disciples lived lives of deprivation

and suffering as a result of their proclamation

that Jesus had risen.

What actually happened to a few of the disciples

because a little bit blurry in history,

but that's not the point.

The point is they're willing this to die for it.

And that is established beyond any doubt

by the ancient record.

And you're absolutely right.

That was one of the final blocks

that went into the case.

Yeah, I mean, because I thought, well, golly,

they're all kinds of religious fanatics

who will die for what they believe is true.

Comic-Cocasi pilots in World War II

would crash their planes,

'cause they believe spiritually

if they die this way, they go to heaven.

Terrorists will die.

Why are they willing to die in the process

of these crimes that they commit?

Because they believe and they've been taught,

They believe it to the core of their being.

If they die this way, they'll go to heaven.

But they can't know that for a fact.

They just believe it.

They were taught it and they believe it.

The contrast is the disciples were in unique position

and know for a fact.

Whether this is true or whether it's alive,

they talked to the resurrected Jesus,

they touched them, they ate with them.

They knew the truth.

- And they had the empty tomb.

- And they had the empty tomb, which backs it up as well.

So, I think it's a very strong.

Now some people say, and this is one of my counter arguments that I came up with, a couple

things, one was, well wait a minute, they didn't bury crucifixion victims.

They didn't bury execution victims back in the Roman times.

They would throw their bodies in a pit to be eaten by the dogs or they'd leave them

on the cross, be eaten by the birds.

So of course Jesus' tomb was empty, he wasn't in the first place.

I thought, yeah, what about that?

And then I looked into it, and one of my fine,

the Roman digesta, which is a summary of

Lawn procedure from the Roman Empire,

specifically does allow for bodies of execution victims

who be turned over for burial.

Number two, several years ago,

probably back in the early 90s,

they discovered the body of a buried crucifixion victim.

He still had the spike through his heel bone

and a piece of the olive wood attached.

And so he had been buried, so certainly somewhere buried,

and then just recently within the last year,

they uncovered another crucifixion victim

who had been buried.

Again, with the evidence of the crucifixion reflected

in the bones.

So some indeed were buried.

So that kind of shoots at that.

The other argument that I bought for a while

was that these were visions or hallucinations,

that the disciples didn't really encounter Jesus, they hallucinated.

And it's interesting that one of the most famous atheists

New Testament scholars, Gared Ludeman, said

that it is certain.

Historically, it is a virtually a quote.

He said, it is historically certain

that Peter and the other disciples had experiences

after Jesus' death in which Jesus appeared to them

as the risen Christ.

- Wow.

- That's the atheist talking.

Well, why is he still an atheist?

'Cause he believes these were visions,

these were hallucinations.

So, I'm a journalist, I check things out.

So I went to an expert on the human mind.

PhD in psychology, professor of psychology

for 20 years in a major Midwestern university,

written over 20 or 30 books on psychology.

He was a president of a national association of psychologists.

And I laid out all the historical data and I said,

"Now, Dr. Collins, when you admit to me,

These disciples didn't encounter the resurrected Jesus.

They just had hallucinations.

And he looked at me and said, "That's not possible."

I said, "Well, you seem pretty sure yourself."

He said, "I am."

And he said, "You got to understand something about the nature of hallucinations."

"H hallucinations are like dreams."

They happen in individual minds.

They don't spread like the common cold.

It's not like you can wake your wife up in the middle of the night and say, "Honey, honey,

I'm having a dream about a vacation in Maui."

Let's both go back to sleep.

We have the same dream.

We'll save all the airfare.

We'll save all the hotel costs.

I mean, be great if we could do that.

But why can't we do that?

Because dreams happen in individual minds.

And that's the same with the hallucination.

In fact, he looked at me and he said,

Lee, you're earliest account.

You're most reliable historically.

The earliest account says that 500 people

encountered the resurrected Jesus at one time.

He said, Lee, 500 people.

have in the same hallucination at the same time

would be a bigger miracle than the resurrection.

And then he said, and by the way, if these were just

hallucinations, then I assume the body's still in the two.

Whoops.

Oops.

Yeah.

That's gone.

And then I said, well, what if it's something more subtle?

And I think this is what Dr. Aloudum and the atheist would say.

That these were visions.

And this is a known psychological phenomenon

that people want something so much if they're primed for it,

they can actually see things that aren't there.

You know, they mischias us so much.

He was there leader, he loved him.

Oh John, can't you see him?

He's back.

I see him over there in the shadows.

Well, there's a problem with that.

James, the half brother of Jesus,

was a skeptic about Jesus during Jesus' lifetime.

He wasn't psychologically primed, primed,

have a vision.

But his brother returned from the dead.

And yet, for his Corinthians 15 says,

Jesus appeared to Him, what happened to Him?

He became a leader of the church

proclaiming that His brother had risen

and He was murdered for His faith.

And then the apostle Paul hated Christians.

He wasn't psychologically prime for a resurrection,

which by the way was totally against the teachings

of Judaism of the day,

that there would be one resurrection in the end,

not anything in the interim.

And Paul wasn't psychologically prime for vision.

And yet, he had this encounter with Christ.

So it's another little piece that we don't talk about a lot.

Evidence against the legend theory that the resurrection of Jesus was a legend, because

legends must fulfill some preconceived expectation.

And the resurrection of Jesus as it happened was not expected or anticipated by anyone.

Not even the most fundamentalist of or orthodox of Jewish folks at the time expected there to be one man who would be resurrected first

before all the rest of us are later.

And so even the disciples have told us

that they didn't expect it.

They didn't even know what was happening

after.

Right.

He resurrected like he's there in front of them

like a whole new body like hey guys

and they're like doubting him.

Yeah.

As he says they worship Tim and some doubt it.

Yeah.

The same time and Jesus is like what else do I have to do?

Yeah.

Yeah, to prove this to you guys.

And that's another reason why we value doubting here.

It's because it's the tradition

all this Christianity itself, but it has to be doubt-sedirected toward Jesus instead of

an isolation away from him.