IS THE JESUS OF HISTORY THE JESUS OF FAITH?

IS THE JESUS OF HISTORY THE JESUS OF FAITH?

Dr. Gary Habermas

Prepared by Ankerberg Theological Research Institute

P.O. Box 8977 Chattanooga, TN 37414

Copyright 2000

Is the Jesus of History, the Jesus of Faith? Copyright 2000 - The Ankerberg Theological Research Institute

Introduction

Dr. John Ankerberg: The search for the historical Jesus is a hot topic in both popular and academic circles today and has drawn a lot of attention from national magazines, such as Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report. Further, the media has given an undue amount of attention to the outlandish statements of the Jesus Seminar, a self-selected liberal group representing a very small percentage of New Testament scholarship. Today we will address the questions surrounding the debate over the historical Jesus and show there are a significant number of historical facts about Jesus in secular and non-New Testament sources which prove that the Jesus of history is the same Jesus of the Christian faith. My guest is world-class philosopher Dr. Gary Habermas, author of the book, The Historical Jesus. He received his Ph.D. from Michigan State University, and a second doctorate from Emmanuel College in Oxford, England. Dr. Habermas is chairman of the Department of Philosophy and Theology at Liberty University and has written more than 100 articles on the life of Jesus which have appeared in scholarly journals. Join us for this edition of The John Ankerberg Show and learn why Jesus is one of the most historically verified lives of ancient times.

Program 1

Ankerberg: Welcome. If you read the articles about Jesus in national magazines such as Time, Newsweek, or U.S. News & World Report, you know that the truth claims of Christianity are under attack. A liberal group of scholars called the Jesus Seminar have published their conclusions and stated, God is dead; it is no longer credible to think of Jesus as divine; Jesus did not rise from the dead; and the New Testament is a highly biased attempt to invent Christianity. In other words, if you’re a Christian and believe that Jesus is God, that He said the things recorded in the Gospels, that He died on the cross and rose again from the dead, then your faith is not credible, and you have no historical evidence to back up your beliefs. Such statement are just plain wrong. My guest today is Dr. Gary Habermas, who has two earned doctorates and written over 100 scholarly articles on the life of Jesus. I asked him what mainstream scholarship thinks about the conclusions of the Jesus Seminar. Here is what he said:

Dr. Gary Habermas: Now, with respect to the Jesus Seminar, what’s bothered a lot of people, and not just conservatives–see, we’re talking about a few dozen scholars here, but quite frequently in interviews and in their books they’ll say, “We’re mainstream. We’ve got the idiots over here on the right and we’ve got the people who don’t believe there’s a Jesus at all–He never existed over here–and we’re right here in the middle.” They’re not mainstream and they do not speak for even most moderate scholars. Now, my comment about the facts, I think if we do link ourselves to what history says, we’ve got a situation where we can know a lot about Jesus. Dozens and dozens of facts about His birth, His life, His teachings, His death, the trial, everything–His burial, and especially His resurrection appearances. And we’re not even short of information regarding His Deity. We find that in material both in and outside the New Testament.

Is the Jesus of History the Jesus of Faith?

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Ankerberg: One of the most unfounded statements made by the Jesus Seminar is, There is no real historical evidence for the Jesus of traditional Christian beliefs. But that is simply false. Dr. Habermas lists some of the different sources where facts about Jesus can be found. Listen: Habermas: Well, as far as the facts are concerned, the New Testament has always been and remains the best source for the historicity of Jesus. And maybe we can comment more on this later, but I think the New Testament should be built from the ground up, not from a general trustworthiness approach. But I think beyond the New Testament, we have to look at Christian claims outside the New Testament. We have to look at a dozen and a half non-Christian sources outside the New Testament. Archaeology chimes a few things in here, and when you put it all together, we have quite a lot of information about Jesus and His life in the first century. Ankerberg: Now, the Jesus Seminar claims that the New Testament documents are not historical biographies of Jesus but only theological reflections about Him. But Dr. Habermas explains that other historical writings also contain theological ideas, but aren’t disqualified as reporting historical information. Listen: Habermas: One problem with the thesis that the New Testament writers were theologians and therefore don’t present history is that historians of that time, Greek-Greco historians, tell us we don’t have any accounts of history like that. We don’t know accounts where people are just plain hardcore historians. The fact is, if you study Tacitus, if you look at Suetonius, if you look at Pliny, if you look at others, these Roman historians are famous for mixing omens and even miracle accounts and other stories into their history. Tacitus is known to be biased in favor of the

Roman Aristocracy. Suetonius can’t talk without bringing in omens and the Caesars who saw their demise and so they acted this way or that way. Now, what do historians say about them? They say, Well, ah, that’s different. These guys are historians and they don’t mean to talk theology but the theology is there. I’m saying in principle, just because the New Testament has things to say about theology, that has nothing to say about whether they can report history or not. There’s a great amount of data in the New Testament and I think that’s recognized by the vast majority of scholars today. Ankerberg: Next, the Jesus Seminar claims that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John really didn’t write their Gospels. Further, the Jesus Seminar has concluded that only about 18 percent of the words ascribed to Jesus in the Gospels were actually spoken by Him. What about this? Dr. Habermas explains that l.) the traditional authors can be defended, 2.) The critical scholars have conceded that parts of the Gospels are historically true, and 3.) You can take that evidence and easily defend traditional Christian beliefs about Jesus. Listen: Habermas: Let me make three comments about the authorship of the Gospels. The first is, I think the traditional authors, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, can be defended with a good deal of force. But, in contemporary apologetics, R. T. France says, for example, that even if we don’t take the time to sit down and work through each of the traditional authors, you can still support the authenticity of the Gospels on this ground–that same one we do for Roman history–these are still the earliest stories, extended stories, about Jesus. And as such, they are due the respect of being the earliest historical pieces of data we have. But let me go after it a third way. You’ve got traditional authors. If people don’t like that, you’ve got the earliest books that depict the whole life of Christ. But third, I favor a type of apologetic that builds from the ground up; that doesn’t say all


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these books are historical and therefore anything in them is true. I would take snippets of information. Now, today, as I tell my students over and over again, with critics, Paul is in, the Gospels are out. Well, for the Christian, Paul and the Gospels are Scripture. But if they’re going to give us Paul, why don’t we take Paul and build a case. And I would favor taking a few facts and building up the data around them and show that we can make our case based on these few facts alone. Ankerberg: There is a body of Pauline literature that can be accepted as historical by virtually everyone. Let me give you an example or two. G. A. Wells, the British Professor of German who has written a number of books arguing that Jesus probably never lived. G. A. Wells will still grant eight authentic Pauline letters. But that doesn’t satisfy the Christian who would like thirteen, but let’s, instead of being upset with him for what he doesn’t give us, let’s take what he does give us. Those eight include our most important doctrinal works, namely, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, and Philippians. He gives you all those. And so since Paul is a given, even for somebody like G. A. Wells who argues Jesus probably never existed, let’s use Paul and when we’re talking about the Resurrection of Jesus for an example, or the nature of the Gospel, let’s look at 1 Corinthians 15, let’s look at Galatians Chapter 1, passages that are unanimously given–and that is precisely why the New Testament still gives us our best data. Because even looking at it as an irreducible minimum or the lowest common denominator, we have plenty of data here to talk about Jesus of history. Ankerberg: Some in the Jesus Seminar think that the Apostle Paul invented the divinity of Christ; that Paul’s Jesus is completely different from the historical Jesus. What historical evidence proves that the Apostle Paul did not invent Jesus, rather, both he and the other Apostles viewed Jesus the same way and preached the same message. Listen:

Habermas: One of the most important pieces of data that the critical community will almost unanimously admit is 1 Corinthians Chapter 15. Now, in the first two verses Paul has just said, “I came to you [Corinthians]. I preached to you the Gospel”–that’s when he came there in person and preached orally. We’re talking about 51 A.D. And he said, “I preached the words of the gospel and if you believe those, you’re saved. And if you’re not believing them, you’re not.” And then he reads or states for them what the Gospel is. He says, verse 3: “For what I received, I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; that he was buried; that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter and then to the twelve.” And then he lists some other appearances. And he says, “Last of all, he appeared to me.” So this is one of the clearest if not the very clearest accounts of the nature of the Gospel in the New Testament. Now, why is this taken so seriously? First of all, it’s in a book that is unanimously thought to be written by the Apostle Paul. Why is that? Well, as one scholar said, we don’t even need to discuss Pauline authorship here because the internal and external evidence is so strong. Well, like what? You know, by 100 A.D., just before 100, Clement, 95 A.D., just after 100; Polycarp about 107; Ignatius about 110–those three men, writing nine short epistles, quote or cite 1 Corinthians about 30 times. That is an incredible amount of attestation from sources outside of Paul to the authority of Paul. That’s just one of the many reasons people will admit, even skeptics, that Paul, as an apostle, believed he saw the risen Jesus. And so when he said, “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, was buried, and rose again the third day,” we have to take him seriously for this reason. It’s unanimously admitted, or virtually so, that Paul at least believed that he saw the risen Jesus. And that makes all the difference in the world. So you’re dealing with somebody who


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is there at the beginning, who knows the other Apostles, who’s repeating the Gospel they all taught–15:11–1 Corinthians 15:11, he says, Whether it is I who am preaching, they who are preaching, it makes no difference. We’re preaching the same Gospel. Paul took great care–and we’re told about this in Galatians 1:2–he took great care to ascertain that this is the same Gospel the Disciples were preaching. C. H. Dodd says this. He said, “Paul’s rendition of the Gospel is very, very close to Jesus Christ.” He said, “It’s the stream that is very close to the main river.” He said, “Anybody who wants to argue otherwise has to defend and bear the burden of proof for their thesis.” Paul has given us the account right there at the river’s mouth. Ankerberg: Now remember, the Jesus Seminar claims Christians have NO historical evidence for Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, that Paul invented the Deity of Christ, but they are wrong. These words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, accepted by all critical scholars, takes us right back close to Christ Himself. Look at this time line. In 30 A.D. Jesus died. Shortly thereafter, Peter, James and the other Apostles preached about Jesus’ resurrection and Deity. In 32 Paul meets the risen Christ on the road to Damascus and becomes a Christian. In 35 A.D., Paul goes to Jerusalem to meet the Apostle Peter and James and to check out his Gospel to see if his message contained the same truths about Christ that the other eyewitnesses of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection also preached. They tell him, “Yes.” Then in 51 A.D., Paul preaches the Gospel orally to people in Corinth and many become Christians. In 55 A.D., Paul writes the Book of First Corinthians and records the facts that he received from the other Apostles about Jesus and knew to be true himself. This information shows Paul didn’t invent Christ’s Deity but that he was in agreement with the very same message Peter and James preached. Further, it’s obvious that Peter and James were preaching their message way before Paul arrived on the scene. So Paul couldn’t

have invented Jesus. Dr. Habermas explains why these historical facts lay a sound foundation about Jesus and cannot be denied. Listen: Habermas: Let’s talk about why this is so important in terms of history. 1 Corinthians 15 is nearly a given, even from people like G. A. Wells and Michael Martin who say that Jesus probably never lived. Paul said, “I deliver unto you the gospel which I also received: Christ died for our sins, was buried, rose again the third day.” Now, let’s see what this looks like on a time line. Let’s picture between my hands here 25 years–30ish A.D.–the cross of Jesus; 55 to 57ish A.D.–the writing of 1 Corinthians. And it really doesn’t make a difference if you’re liberal or conservative here. These dates remain within a year or two the same. Now, Paul wrote this in 57. He said, “I delivered it to you orally when I came to you.” When was that? About 51. Now, notice, we’ve closed the gap from 25 years to 20 years–30ish to 51. Then he said, “I deliver unto you that which I also received.” Now, the ten million dollar question here is, “When did Paul receive that material and from whom did he receive it?” There’s five steps here: the book, the oral testimony, the cross down here, and we have two to go. From whom did Paul get it and when, and of course those people had it before he did. Now, scholars–critics, not Evangelicals–who answer this question generally say the following: Paul received this material in Jerusalem from Peter and James, the brother of Jesus, about 35 A.D. How do you get that? Well, if the cross was about 30, Paul believed he saw the risen Jesus just one to two years later. He said in Galatians 1–let’s take it as an authentic Pauline book–he went away for three years, came back to Damascus, then he went up to Jerusalem. Three plus two–five years. If he was saved one year afterwards, it’s one plus three–four years afterwards, but 35 was a nice round figure. So you’ve got the cross about 30, the


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book written about 57, oral testimony about 51. He said he came to Jerusalem in 35 and he said, “I spent time, 15 days, with Peter and with James, the brother of Jesus.” Now, there’s a Greek word there, in English it says ,“He got acquainted with Peter” or “He saw Peter” or “He questioned Peter.” The Greek word is historeo. The root word is histor when transliterated into English and it’s the root word for our word history. Histor in used in documents outside the New Testament–Greek papyri of the time–is used of explorers and people who were mapping, say, in one case, a river. And when I map this river, what am I going to do? I’m going to show you the twists and the turns. I’m going to show you the rapids; the shallow areas; the place where you can take your boat across; the deep areas; the bends, the rocks, the trees, everything. And that’s called histor. One critical, not Evangelical, essay which is sometimes called the most authoritative one on that word in Galatians 1:18, says that “Paul played the investigative reporter.” Now, if he went up to Jerusalem around 35 A.D., met with Peter and James, the brother of Jesus, played the investigative reporter, there’s one other thing to learn. What did they talk about? And you know the old rule of literary criticism, we interpret a passage in its context. And the passage before and the passage right after says Paul was talking about the nature of the Gospel. And, you might think this, “What else would he more want to talk about than the nature of the Gospel?” He goes all this distance. He comes to Jerusalem. He meet with the head Apostle. He meets with the brother of Jesus. What would your first question be? I think just normally Paul would ask about the Gospel, but that is the context, and Paul is saying, “Tell me about what happened here.” Now, in Chapter 2, when he comes back up 14 years later, he says specifically, “I came up to check my Gospel out”–verse 2. Galatians 2:2. “I came to see if I was running or had run in vain.” In Galatians 2:2 Paul said he went up to Jerusalem

again–14 years after the first visit which is perhaps 34 or 35 A.D. He went up 14 years later to check out the nature of the Gospel (Galatians 2:2) “to see if I was running or had run in vain.” So now Paul is looking for the Apostles to, as the passage says later, “give him the right hand of fellowship.” To say, “Paul, you’re right on the money. Jesus called you on the way to Damascus, He gave you the Gospel to the Gentiles, go for it.” And that’s basically what they did. Now, back to the original point there. 1 Corinthians–57; oral preaching–51; cross–30. That’s already only 20 years–and that’s very early. But Paul got it from somebody else–perhaps Peter and James at 35 A.D. Now, if Peter and James gave it to Paul, they had it before Paul. But nobody picks a date for when this data became formalized to 1 Corinthians 15. Do you know why? We’re already on top of the cross. Paul gets it about five years later. So what this shows is the Resurrection proclamation and the Gospel as a whole, which includes at least the deity, the death and the resurrection of Jesus, its proclamation is immediate. You see, a lot of Evangelicals even stumble when they say, “Yeah, we preached it immediately. We find it in 1 Corinthians and it’s 25 years later.” Why don’t we say Paul received it perhaps five years later and somebody had it before he did. Now, this is one of the paths to the fact that the content for the Gospel–in particular, the deity, death and resurrection of Jesus–are linked to strong historical grounds, and critics will give you those texts in Galatians 1, Galatians 2, 1 Corinthians 15. Again, this is what I was talking about earlier, these are some of the main indications that we are on strong historical grounds here. Ankerberg: Now, if you’re a non-Christian, let me ask you, “How did the Christian religion originate?” How could the early Christians proclaim to the people in Jerusalem, the very city that had watched Jesus die on the cross, that Jesus was now alive? My point to you is this: there is


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strong historical evidence for Jesus’ resurrection. It can’t be ignored. Facts just don’t disappear–and they are a sound foundation for a faith commitment to Jesus if you so decide. Dr. Habermas summarizes: Habermas: Well now maybe you might have a better idea of what I mean here when I said at the top of the program that we do have a good basis. Now, I’m talking about the center of Christianity: the death, the burial, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And we can get into a time frame that Paul is talking about this back about 35 A.D. with two of the central figures: Peter, the head Apostle, James, the brother of Jesus, the pastor of the church of Jerusalem. This is a strong basis and this is the sort of thing that makes me surprised when I hear people saying, “Hey, there’s no evidence here and there.” I just want to assure the person who is listening who said, “Well, do we have to listen to these guys who say there’s no historical basis and we can barely find anything,” let them deal with this sort of data right here of 1 Corinthians 15/Galatians 1 and 2 as a strong basis for the Gospel. And let me remind you here again, we’re not talking with periphery things here. We’re talking with the very center of the faith. Paul says he has met the risen Jesus on the way to Damascus. He’s going up to talk to Peter and James. He comes back 14 years later. He wants to see if he was running or had run in vain. And they said, “No, no, no. You’re not.” So they’re checking him in Galatians 2. They said, “You’re fine.” And in 1 Corinthians 15:11 he says, “Whether it is I or they, so we preach and so you believe.” In other words, he was watching them, too. He’s got his approval on their message and they’re approving him. The point is, the Gospel they preached is the same, and that includes the deity of Christ, His death, His resurrection. We’re on very important grounds here and very solid grounds. Habermas: Well now maybe you might have a better idea of what I mean here when I said at the

top of the program that we do have a good basis. Now, I’m talking about the center of Christianity: the death, the burial, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And we can get into a time frame that Paul is talking about this back about 35 A.D. with two of the central figures: Peter, the head Apostle, James, the brother of Jesus, the pastor of the church of Jerusalem. This is a strong basis and this is the sort of thing that makes me surprised when I hear people saying, “Hey, there’s no evidence here and there.” I just want to assure the person who is listening who said, “Well, do we have to listen to these guys who say there’s no historical basis and we can barely find anything,” let them deal with this sort of data right here of 1 Corinthians 15/Galatians 1 and 2 as a strong basis for the Gospel. And let me remind you here again, we’re not talking with periphery things here. We’re talking with the very center of the faith. Paul says he has met the risen Jesus on the way to Damascus. He’s going up to talk to Peter and James. He comes back 14 years later. He wants to see if he was running or had run in vain. And they said, “No, no, no. You’re not.” So they’re checking him in Galatians 2. They said, “You’re fine.” And in 1 Corinthians 15:11 he says, “Whether it is I or they, so we preach and so you believe.” In other words, he was watching them, too. He’s got his approval on their message and they’re approving him. The point is, the Gospel they preached is the same, and that includes the deity of Christ, His death, His resurrection. We’re on very important grounds here and very solid grounds.

Program 2 Ankerberg: Welcome. Today liberal scholars in the Jesus Seminar are attacking traditional Christian beliefs about Jesus. They say it’s no longer credible to think of Jesus as divine; the resurrection of Jesus never happened. The New Testament books do not present a historical record of Jesus but only a witness to early Christian beliefs. But contrary to what the Jesus Seminar


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says, there is a massive amount of historical information inside and outside of the New Testament that confirms traditional Christian beliefs. My guest is Philosopher Dr. Gary Habermas who himself was a skeptic, but in working on his Ph.D. at Michigan State, he came to realize that there is solid historical evidence about Jesus that he couldn’t ignore. Listen: Habermas: In last week’s program we mentioned the creedal material that Paul presents in 1 Corinthians 15. This is probably the heart, the heart of contemporary discussions concerning the Historical Paul, and of course, they have a great bearing on the Historical Jesus. Now, what we said was something like this. If we can imagine about a 25-year time line beginning with the cross–30ish A.D., ending with the writing of 1 Corinthians–55 to 57 A.D., you’ve got about 25 years there. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15:1,2, “I gave you this gospel when I came”–that’s about 51 A.D. We’ve cut it down to 20 years. And then he outlines it in 1 Corinthians 15:3 and he said, “I delivered unto you that which I also received.” And the typical view is Paul ascertained this material in Jerusalem with Peter, with James, the brother of Jesus, from Galatians Chapter 1, verse 18, about 35. A.D. And of course, if we’re only five years from the cross at Paul’s visit to Jerusalem, then somebody had it before he did. And we can spend a couple moments chatting about this, but one important thing from last week’s question: “How do we know Paul is not the originator of Christianity?,” Paul says at the most important point, 1 Corinthians 15:3 says, “This is of first importance.” He says, “The center of my proclamation.” And then he says, “It didn’t come from me.” “As of first importance, the center of my proclamation, I gave you what I received.” And if he received it in Jerusalem from Peter and James, not only is this not Paul’s material but it came from two of the important proclaimers in the early Church: Peter and James, the brother of Jesus. Now, is what Paul says true? Does it line up

with the facts? Well, when you take a look at 1 Corinthians 15:3, we find out that it does. And if there’s any conclusion that’s virtually unanimous in New Testament scholarship it’s this: that creedal statement that the tradition that Paul is passing on, the confession, if you will, that Paul is passing on, the catechism that Paul said he received from somebody else, it begins in verse 3 and it goes down some think as far as verse 5, some think as far as verse 7. But here’s the point. There are a number of indications that this is not Paul’s proclamation. There are a number of indications of exactly what he says–this is why we take Paul at face value–he got it from somebody else. How do you know? There are non-Pauline words there. Paul never again says, “On the third day.” This is his proclamation in that he is given it, but not his proclamation as far as “he made this up.” He’s passing on tradition. They are non-Pauline words. Peter is called Cephas and Joachim Jeremias, the German New Testament scholar, argued that there’s perhaps an Aramaic original here which means it really predates Paul. Ankerberg: Now, some scholars in the Jesus Seminar claim that the Apostle Paul is the one who invented the Jesus of faith. What they mean by this is that Paul made up the story that Jesus was God. Before that, it had never been said. But Dr. Habermas presents the historical facts that clearly show Paul did not invent Christianity or the Christ of the Christian faith. Listen: Habermas: Now, Paul has said a couple of important things. He said, “I delivered what I received”–and I like these words–“as of first importance.” Paul said this is basically the most important thing I can preach to you. And of course, in the first two verses he said if you accept it, you’re saved; if not, you’re not. So we’re right here at the center. But then he says, “It’s not mine.” So Paul is not


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the inventor. Now, is this what we see. Does the passage give evidence that Paul, while passing it on, really got it from somebody else? In other words, Paul is repeating it but it’s not really his material. Now, moving to these words, we’ll see several indications that this does not come from Paul. For example, “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried.” Paul never again uses those words and he never again, whenever he defines the Gospel, he always includes, as I said last week, the Deity of Christ, the death, and the resurrection.” He never again adds “burial.” So there are non-Pauline words here. Another indication, Peter’s name is Cephas. Now, Paul does refer to Peter as Cephas, but Peter is better known as Peter and Jeremias, the German New Testament scholar, thinks that this is one indication that there may be an Aramaic original. Pinchas Lapide, the conservative Jewish New Testament scholar, has said there are other signs here that this is passing on tradition. For example, what’s called the “triple hoti clause.” English students will recognize that as: and, and, and. Paul doesn’t come up for air until he gets this long sentence out: “...died for our sins according to the scriptures and he was buried and he was raised and he appeared.” And Dr. Lapide tells us that is a means of Hebrew narration. The words “delivered and received” are technical words for passing on tradition. Paul says it again in 1 Corinthians 11 concerning the Lord’s Supper–“delivered and received.” So, these are just three or four indications that this material is not Paul’s. How do you recognize a creed or a tradition? Scholars have pointed out that this reads in two nice columns and it’s not English poetry that rhymes real nicely, but it reads like a first century Jewish audience where it’s regimented and you can see that when He appeared, Jesus appeared to an individual, Peter; then to a group, the Twelve; then to 500 at once. Then He appears to James, another individual. Then He appears to another group.

There’s some order to this and it’s arranged like a catechism. And I made the point last week, perhaps 90 percent of Palestinians or the Jews in that area were not readers, they were not literate; and how do you give the heart of your message “of first importance” to people that don’t read? You say it in a form where they can memorize it and repeat it back. That is the nature of these creedal passages. And what we have here is Paul passing on the heart of his message, he said, “what I preached when I came.” And he said, “Folks, it’s not even mine.” So I think we need to return to several things here: the importance of this early message; some data we have–we’ve got that time line going all the way back to Jesus in 30 A.D. It’s not Paul’s. And so Paul is not the originator of the New Testament message. 1 Corinthians 15:11, once again, we referred to this last week, Paul says, “Whether then it was I or they, this is what we preach and this is what you believed.” The “we” there is the Apostles. He’s saying, “Here it from them; here it from me. We’re preaching the same message” concerning what? The Gospel and the resurrection appearances in general. What Paul says is, “I didn’t make this up. I got it from somebody else. I delivered to you that which I also received.” Now, look at verse 11: “Whether then it was I or they, this is what we preach and this is what you believed.” I think what Paul is saying here is, “Ask the Disciples. They’ll give you the same thing I’m giving you. Ask me, I’ll tell you.” Now, what is this message? Just look at the previous verses. It’s the Gospel, and in particular, he’s been talking about the Appearances here. He’s saying, “I’ve talked to them. They’ve got the same message I have. They’ve talked to me. They commend me.” And go back and look at Galatians 2. This is why we are at a very special point in history where we can almost reach out and see what


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Paul is saying and touch his messages linked to time-space history. It’s words on a page. He’s an accredited messenger. We’ve got ourselves a time line, and folks, it’s not an Evangelical that came up with this time line. This is largely developed in critical, non-Evangelical theology. I think by using some of these methods we see that we’re on very firm grounds here regarding the very heart of our faith–the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Ankerberg: How many times in school have you heard that the material in the New Testament books is nothing more than legend or myth? Well, again, that’s just a lie. Dr. Habermas gives three reasons why scholars believe they are dealing with solid historical evidence about Jesus. Listen: Habermas: Now, I think we need to back up perhaps just a little bit and see what the significance of the 1 Corinthians 15 passage is. If Paul has given us material 35ish A.D. on a trip to Jerusalem–Galatians 1:18 where he visits with Peter and James, the brother of Jesus, we’ve got hands-on material from a very early period that emphasizes two very important facts: Number one, this material is early. And you don’t know how early unto you’ve worked with other Greco-Roman passages. I mean, Livy reports things that are hundreds of years before his time; and Paul is talking about something that he participated in five years after the event. And, other people had it before he did. So, I mean, we’re cutting down the gap here tremendously. Secondly, we have an eyewitness account here. This is one way to go after eyewitnesses. We talked about the Gospels, and that’s one possibility; but going after Paul is really taking what is given to us what the critics will give us. And Paul himself was an eyewitness. Let’s not miss the forest for the trees. Paul said, “I met the risen Jesus.” But you’ve also got Peter. You’ve got James, the brother of Jesus. Both of them, by the way, have appearances in Paul’s list in 1 Corinthians

15–one more little connection between Galatians 1 and 1 Corinthians 15. So we’re dealing with people here who were there. And I think Paul was interested in talking to Peter and seeing what he had to say. Now, back to this question, Does Paul make this up himself? And I said, “No,” because “this is of first importance” yet he got it from somebody else. Another way to go after this whole picture and do the same thing is to look at the early creedal passages in Acts. If you would ask an Evangelical, “What does early preaching look like before we have a New Testament?” they would say, “Simple. Read the Book of Acts.” If you ask some critics, they say, “Hey, read Acts 1 - 5.” Now, the answer sounds the same but it’s for different reasons. Evangelicals say that because they trust the whole text. Critics find a number of these early confessional or traditional or creedal passages in Acts, and one reason they find them–another evidence that something is a creed–is they believe that the shorter, more compact, unevolved the theology it is, the more authentic it is. And so in a certain scene there in Acts where Peter says–you can almost picture him pointing at the Jewish leaders: “You killed him! God raised Him from the dead!” Now, see, there’s a little tiny piece that, you get the Gospel, right? Talking about the Lord Jesus. He is not just a man. “You killed Him. God raised Him”–you’ve got the Gospel and Peter is in and out. And that’s something that’s easy to remember. How about, “We ought to obey God rather than man.” Now, that’s not the Gospel but that’s another one of those pithy little sayings. And we have those in Acts 1 through 5; Acts 10, Peter is preaching to Cornelius. And all of those are petrine: Acts 1 through 5; Acts 10. And in Acts 13, Paul’s sermon, scholars also believe that there’s some creedal passages there. Go back and find any of these and let me tell you what you’re going to find. In every little encapsulation of the Gospel you find the deity of Christ, His death, His


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resurrection. But guess what. Nobody would say Paul is the author. So here you have an encapsulation of early preaching. Paul’s not even on the scene in Acts until chapter 9. You’ve got five chapters there with early material that are saying some of the same things. Paul’s not around. And we could still go to Acts and say, “This is of first importance,” how that Jesus died, He was raised, and more than being Jesus, He is Lord and He is Christ. Those are the two most popular titles. So, going at it from the angle of Acts, you still see creeds, you still see this unevolved, short, concise, succinct theological statement that we call the Gospel and Paul is not even there. So here’s another whole look at what we call the central doctrine, the center of the Christian core, and that is, the Gospel, salvation. Ankerberg: Now, every Christian student should listen carefully to how Dr. Habermas is arguing. As Christians, we all accept the New Testament books as authoritative and true. But your non-Christian professor and friends don’t. Well then, what evidence should you use in talking to them? If your professor and friends are up on modern scholarship, they know that certain portions of Paul’s writings and portions of the four Gospels are accepted, not as inspired, but as historically reliable information. Now, if they accept it, then let’s use that material because it reveals the historical facts that Jesus lived, claimed to be God, died on a cross, was buried in a tomb, and appeared to His disciples later. It’s historical evidence which can’t be ignored. Now, if you ask, What are some of those passages that virtually all critical scholars accept that tell us these things, Dr. Habermas explains. Listen: Habermas: Now, we’ve kind of gone the back door. We’ve started with the data that is the strongest – 1 Corinthians 15; Paul’s undisputed epistles. We’ve moved backwards. We’ve taken a little look at Peter and James through Paul’s eyes, Galatians 1. We’ve taken a little bit of a look at

some petrine Gospel snippets in Acts. Now, having said this, why do you think the critical community says there’s virtually no value in the Gospels? And I say “critical community,” I mean the far left. There’s a moderate community out there with probably the most influential scholars who wouldn’t dispute half as many things as we’re hearing from the far left, the ones who claim to be main steam. Now, when you go back to the Gospels, do you hear the same message or don’t you? But before I get there, let me make a point again. 1 Corinthians predates the Gospels. At least 1 Corinthians 15 is the longest extended treatment of the Resurrection before the four Gospels. So really, the Gospels are coming along later but here we’ve got the horse in the right place before the cart. If you’ve already found it in Paul, and if you have it later in Acts, why are you objecting to the books when we’ve already got it from the earliest sources in Paul? Now, when you go to Jesus, here’s what you’ll find in the Gospels. The same proclamation. I mean, Paul is not dealing with amateurs here and he’s not dealing with people who never knew Jesus. He talked to Peter. He talked to James himself. He comes back to Jerusalem, by the way, in the next chapter and the same two men are there–Peter and James, and John is there, John the Apostle. So, Paul’s got connections. When you get back to Jesus Himself and the Gospels, we read that Paul did not make up the Deity of Christ. You see these titles are mentioned in the early shortened creeds in Acts, but you see them in the Gospels, too. And I think our two best grounds for talking about the Deity of Christ in the Gospels are Jesus’ self-designations: Son of man and Son of God. Now, Son of God is more usually recognized to be a title of Deity. Son of man, what a lot of people don’t realize is, this is not a title to be Mary’s son. Son of man doesn’t mean “human being.” Son of man, to make a lot of scholarship real short here, Jesus shows that He knows of the passage in Daniel 7:13,14 where Daniel looks up and he sees the Ancient of Days, one coming down


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who looks like a Son of man, and in Jesus’ time this idea had evolved in some writings of some Jewish books of that time that had nothing to do with Scripture. But his readers knew that Son of man could be a real human being; it can be a prophet like the Book of Ezekiel; or it can be the Son of man who comes down from the Ancient of Days, this prophetic figure who is a preexistent divine figure who sets up God’s Kingdom. Which one does Jesus refer to Himself as? Son of man is Jesus’ favorite self-designation in the Gospels and at least twice–one of them is in Mark Chapter 14, He virtually quotes Daniel 7:13,14 and says “that’s me.” At that point, when the Jewish priest says, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?” Notice what Jesus does. “Are you the Christ,”–Messiah–“the Son of God”? And Jesus says, “Ego eimi,” “I am.” And then He changes a Son of God question to a Son of man answer. He says, “I am the Christ, the Son of God, and you will see the Son of man coming with the clouds of heaven in judgment.” And the priest makes a formal declaration of blasphemy. He rips his garment. He says, “The rest of you witnesses can go home. We’ve got’cha.” Now, what set him off? In the passage there in Mark 14, Jesus says, Ego eimi, I am the Son of God.” Then He says, “And you will see the Son of man coming with the clouds of heaven.” Number one is it’s a virtual quote from Daniel 7:13,14. He claims to be the preexistence One who comes from the Ancient of Days to set up God’s Kingdom. And secondly, He uses this enigmatic phrase, “coming with the clouds.” That phrase is used dozens of times in Scriptures as a reference to Deity. And Jesus said, “That’s Me.” He’s already said, “Ego eimi” concerning the Son of man, and the priest–it’s almost like he was waiting for this–he said, “Good. We’ve got Him. The rest of you go home.” So, if Jesus is claiming to be the Son of God and Jesus is claiming to be the Son of man, why do we think Paul is inventing the Deity of Christ later? We see it in the Gospels. We see it in these little

shortened Gospel phrases in Acts. And we see it in 1 Corinthians 15. I think this is a solid case for the Deity of Christ. And don’t forget, if Christ is raised from the dead, now you’ve got to ask the question, “Is God saying something?” And traditionally Christianity says, right in the New Testament, in fact, that God’s raising Jesus confirmed His message. And if Jesus claimed to be Deity, nothing can be more blasphemous. So the Resurrection is God’s stamp of approval on Jesus and that’s argued that way in Acts 2, Peter. It’s argued that way in Acts 17, Paul. It’s argued that way in Romans 1, Paul. The Resurrection is the capstone. As Paul said, it ruly is a matter of first importance. Ankerberg: Now, if the Jesus Seminar scholars were listening to what Dr. Habermas was saying, how would they respond? He tells us. Listen: Habermas: In this program we’ve been talking a little bit about that time-line of Paul that goes from 57 A.D. back to 30 and we’ve gotten that back to about five years. And I said that Paul was talking about the Gospel with Peter and with James. And then we talked about some little Gospel portions, some little traditions, in Acts. And I said you find some of the same ideas in the Gospels. And I’ll tell you right now, I can tell you where critics are going to go here. Habermas is slaughtering Gospel studies. He thinks that because the Gospels say Jesus said something that He truly said something. And what could be more mythical than the claim to be Deity? Look at the Greeks. Look at the Romans. You know, the question we really need to leave for our next program is, How do we know Jesus really did say He was the Son of God and the Son of man? Now, we’re getting close to the middle now and if we’ve got this with Jesus, certainly Paul is not the author of the teaching of the Deity of Christ.

Program 3


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Ankerberg: Welcome. Do you think Jesus ever considered Himself to be God? The handful of liberal scholars in the Jesus Seminar claim Jesus never said He was God. Further, they claim that later Christians deliberately excluded other books, other gospels, which pictured Jesus differently than the books which are now part of the New Testament Canon. As you’ll hear in this program, the Jesus Seminar is wrong on both points. Well, let’s begin with “Jesus claimed to be God.” Can Christians use the Jesus Seminar’s own critical methodology to examine the evidence, and still prove that Jesus DID claim to be God? The answer is, “Yes.” Dr. Gary Habermas, a philosopher and historian, has written over 100 articles for scholarly journals on the life of Christ. As a Christian, there are many reasons that have led Him to accept all of the content in the New Testament books as true and authoritative. But he knows non-Christian scholars do not believe the same way. So he starts with the snippets of material in the New Testament that they do accept and do think are historically reliable–and uses that material to prove that Jesus did refer to Himself as God. Now, Dr. Habermas argues that no matter which source, which stratum New Testament critics turn to, in all five of them you’ll find that Jesus designates Himself as Son of man which, as you’ll see, is a reference to Deity in Daniel 7:13,14. So listen as Dr. Habermas uses the critics’ own arguments to show Jesus did claim to be God. Habermas: We ended the last program by mentioning the critical comeback that seems so obvious that, you know, we’ve got to face it right away. And that goes something like this: “Don’t take for granted that the red letter editions of the New Testament are exactly what Jesus said. How do you know Jesus said what Mark said He said, what Luke said He said, what John said He said, what Matthew said He said?” Now, I made a couple of claims last program that Jesus claimed to be Son of man and Son of God. Let’s take a look at a couple of these with

critical methodology, a sort of a lowest common denominator, a text that’s nothing but a book of ancient literature. Okay, the New Testament is a book of ancient literature. Let’s think about this like the critics do and let’s address ourselves to the issue, “Did Jesus ever claim to be the Son of man?” Now, using a sort of Monday morning quarter backing scenario, I mean, it goes something like this. When guys sit around on Monday morning, they remake yesterday’s football game and they make it in their own image. “You know, if you’d only done this or you’d only done that.” And really, that’s what a lot of critics are saying after Bultmann that the Gospel writers are putting words into Jesus’ mouth. They are Monday morning quarter backing Jesus’ teaching. How do we know the Son of man is not just an added teaching? Well, there’s two important criteria that are given by the critics themselves, both of which are fulfilled by the Son of man sayings. These are criterion of authenticity. Now, the first one is multiple attestation. If you have a saying in more than one source, you have a pretty good idea that this is authentic. In fact, the Jesus Seminar themselves used that criteria in the beginning of the book, The Five Gospels. Now, the teaching that Jesus was the Son of man. It’s His favorite self-designation, according to the Gospels, and it is found in all five what are often called the traditional Gospel strata. And the traditional Gospel strata are Mark; “M”–the material that Matthew has that nobody else has; “L”–the material that Luke has and no one else has; John, and this enigmatic “sayings document” that they call “Q.” Five strata. And guess what. Son of man appears in all five. So, it’s pretty uniform that this is what Jesus called Himself. Now, the comeback is, “Well that just means it’s a popular name. How do we know the Church didn’t make it up? And really, what Son of man means is, it was the most popular title for Jesus when the Gospels were written, see?” And they put it back in Jesus’ mouth in 30 A.D. “But really what


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it was, it was the most popular title for Him when the Gospels were written.” That’s the second. And this is called “the criterion of dissimilarity”: If Jesus did not get something from the Jews, and if Jesus’ teachings are not found in the early Church, probably they are authentic. This is the critical criterion of dissimilarity. And guess what. Son of man cannot be laid at the feet of the Jews. They have a concept of “Son of man,” but they would never apply it to Jesus. But what about the Church? Isn’t this a great example of Monday morning quarter backing? They read their favorite designation back into the mouth of Jesus, so it’s the favorite designation of Jesus when the Gospels are written. Doesn’t work. It doesn’t work because Jesus is never called the Son of man in any of the New Testament epistles. In fact, He’s not called Son of man anywhere outside the Gospels except one place, and there it’s talking about the heavenly exalted Son of man. The earthly Son of man, the earthly Jesus, is never called Son of man anywhere else outside the Gospels and only on the lips of Jesus, except in an instance where a man is simply reading that title, you know, “You say you’re the Son of man...” back to Jesus. So it’s a title distinctly on the lips of Jesus alone. In other words–let me unpack this just a little bit–it couldn’t be a Monday morning later title read into the words of Jesus because then it would be the Church’s favorite title, but it’s not found in the Church. So the best conclusion is, first of all, it’s in all five layers, therefore it goes to Jesus. And secondly, it can’t be dated to the Jews; it can’t be dated to the Church. You know? Jesus must really have called Himself the Son of man, and I’ve got a problem because the Son of man of Daniel 7:13,14 is a very special figure, as we’ve said before. He comes from the Ancient of Days. He’s a preexistent, divine figure setting up God’s Kingdom on Earth. And if Jesus claimed to be that, and you don’t want to believe in the Deity of Christ, now you’re going up against a mountain of evidence.

Ankerberg: Now, did Jesus ever just come out and say that He was the Son of God? What is the evidence? Again, Dr. Habermas takes the critics’ own assumptions, points out evidence about Jesus from five different sources or layers of historical information, and shows that they all reveal Jesus said He was the Son of God. Listen: Habermas: Now, the second title–and as I said, this ones seems to be a more obvious title of Deity–is Son of God. Did Jesus ever call Himself the Son of God? Let me reflect on a few passages here that are very helpful in Jesus referring to Himself as the Son of God and that we can’t Monday morning quarterback it into the lips of the early Christian community. Okay. First of all, in Matthew 11:27–and its parallel in Luke–here we have a passage that comes from what the critics call “Q,” early sayings document. Very, very early. They believe this predates the Gospels by decades. And yet in Matthew 11:27 and its parallel Jesus says...He said, “I’ve come to you to reveal the Father.” And this is the way He says it. It said, “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom He will reveal Him.” Now, in that passage Jesus is claiming unique knowledge of God, and this is found in the very early “Q” strata, according to the way the critics arrange this, and that’s a tough text. Another text is Mark 14:36, and here Jesus calls God “Abba.” A lot has been written about this, including by German New Testament scholar Joachim Jeremias and Jeremias claims that Abba is a very special title. You don’t really find this usage anywhere else in the Jewish community. It’s translated “Father” or maybe even the very personalized “Daddy.” But it’s in Aramaic and this may be a hint of Jesus’ exact language. Don’t forget, the New Testament was written in Greek. Jesus probably spoke in Aramaic. And if “Abba” is


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Aramaic, some people think we have a window here into the exact word of Jesus, but what’s that word mean? It’s an indication of God being His Father. So you have a statement in “Q,” you have “Abba.” And maybe the strongest statement of all–Mark 13:32. Now, if you look this up you’re going to think, “Man! Is he huts?” This isn’t a verse about the Deity of Christ because Jesus is saying “the time of My coming.” He says, “That time, no man knows; the angels don’t know; not even the Son but the Father only.” The reason that’s a strong verse that Jesus is the Son of the Father or the Son of God is that He says He doesn’t know the time of His coming. My point is this. If the Church is making this statement up and putting the words back onto the lips of Jesus, why do they say something, as one theologian says is “theologically embarrassing.” If they want to say Jesus is the Son of man, just let them say; or Son of God, just let them say right out: And Jesus answered and said, Behold, I’m the Son of God. But no! They’ve got to go and say, “I don’t know the time of My coming.” That’s difficult. Because if He’s the Son of God, why doesn’t He know the time of His coming? Now, I think that can be explained traditionally because Jesus had a human nature/Jesus had a divine nature. But be that as it may, that sentence does not seem like it can be made up because it’s too embarrassing. Just say He claimed to be the Son of God. No. They had to say “the Son doesn’t know the time of His coming.” And that’s a rough sentence. So Jesus probably said it. You’ve got a “Q” statement; you’ve got an “Abba” statement; you’ve got an “I don’t know the time of my coming” statement. And I think in all of those cases we have evidence that Jesus did claim to be the Son of God, as the Gospels proclaim. Ankerberg: Now, once again, we want to drive home the point that using the critical scholars’ own assumptions, you can show that Jesus claimed to be God. That doesn’t mean we agree with their

assumptions; it just means that the historical evidence is so strong, non-Christians can come to believe in Christ by examining these facts. Dr. Habermas summarizes this point. Listen: Habermas: Maybe we can backtrack here just a little bit and talk about theological definitions and in particular the method that I’m using here. My point is this. If you take the traditional view of Jesus Christ as laid out in the Gospels, red letter edition; Acts; Epistles of Paul, obviously no one is going to dispute the fact that Jesus in those texts claims to be the Son of God, died on the cross for our sins, was raised from the dead. But I’m taking a different approach, what I might call a minimal facts approach, what I might call “lowest common denominator” here approach, and what I’m saying is, even if the critics are right about their methodology and can note, say, five layers of tradition in the traditional Gospels, including the “Q” which is taken from the German for “source” and what it means is, “a sayings document.” It’s believed by critics that a sayings document was circulated in the early Church with nothing but sayings of Jesus–and they take this very seriously–and that’s a document that includes Matthew 11:27 on Jesus being the Son of God. We’ve talked about creeds. Evangelicals don’t think like that because they think, “Hey, look. This whole book is Scripture. Why do we have to look at pieces?” But the critic who sees the New Testament as a book of ancient literature and maybe nothing more, he sees it’s very important–and I think he’s right–that if we have some early statements that predate the books in which they appear, i.e., Paul’s saying “I gave you that which I was given”; Paul’s saying, “Observe the traditions of the elders”–if we have these little tiny confessions that predate the books in which they are written, the point is, they’re really early. And I’ve argued they’re apostolic. So if these kinds of critical, lowest common denominator ways of thinking–you have creeds, you have Q, you have Sources, and the


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Gospels–my point is, even using their methods, we really come up with some of the strongest arguments for the Deity, death, burial, resurrection of Jesus. Ankerberg: Now, one of the most outrageous claims being made by the Jesus Seminar today is that the 27 books that now make up the Canon of the New Testament were chosen for political reasons, not because these books were known and accepted by all Christians. The Jesus Seminar claims later Christians purposely suppressed other books and Gospels about Jesus that depicted Jesus in a far different way than Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. One of the books they claim was purposely kept out of the Canon was the Gospel of Thomas. But Dr. Habermas shows such claims are not true--that the Gospel of Thomas wasn’t even in existence before 150 A.D. and all the books in the New Testament were written before 90 A.D. So the book of Thomas couldn’t be part of the Canon. Listen: Habermas: You know, John, this is one of questions that really kind of sets me off. Now, we have Gospels; we have those little creedal passages in Acts; we have Paul. Critics are wanting to give us Paul, almost carte blanche for those five, six, eight epistles that are considered genuine epistles. We’ve got to argue our way for those little creeds in Acts and for some of the Gospels. But this is obviously the traditional Canon. And critics want to get you on other grounds. Now, I’m not talking about the moderate critics, but let’s go over with the Jesus Seminar people. They want to tell you that we kept other books out of the Canon by a political move. And the other sources are there, but we wanted a single Jesus so we orchestrated what was going to be in the canon and what wasn’t and why didn’t we include things like–the best case scenario is made for the Gospel of Thomas–which is a sayings document with a little over a hundred sayings of Jesus, something like “Q.” That’s what they’ll say.

Now, why do we keep something out–let’s make Thomas our test case here–why do we keep that out of the canon? A couple of things I want to say here. Number one, no matter what you do with other books, you still have to deal with the evidence from A. Paul; B. Acts creeds; C. Gospels. Whether there are other books or not, you have to deal with this. And after all, Paul is the early Apostle; Peter is the early Apostle; James, the brother of Jesus is the early Apostle; Thomas–this is called a sayings book but nobody believes it was written by the Apostle Thomas. So the traditional Canon is there for a reason: it’s more authoritative. What does “more authoritative” mean? It’s written by the guys who were in the closest proximity to Jesus. Now, how about this thing that “there was a political move and you want to keep the other books out, like Thomas?” Let me tell you something. There was no political move involved because there weren’t books at that time like Thomas that could be kicked out of the Canon. They didn’t decide, “Mark, you’re in; Gospel of Thomas is out,” because the Gospel of Thomas didn’t even exist at that time. The Jesus Seminar is a distinct minority when they want to say Thomas comes back to 50 [A.D.] And you know what? I can show you some of their documents where they first said Thomas is perhaps 90 A.D., and then 50 A.D. You know what it appears there? They need some other documents they can put in the 50s to say they are rivals. Everybody else has Thomas in the second century. The reason nobody made a decision against Thomas in 50, 60, 80, 90 A.D. is because there was no Thomas, according to the vast majority of scholars. So, there’s no orthodox Canon where the people say, “This is it. We’re only going to take this stuff and we’ll throw everything else out.” There’s a main reason for this. Evangelicals would be laughed out of court if we said, “We’ve got a book. It’s about a hundred years late, second century. But we like it. So we’re going to bring it back for the


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Canon.” Do you know what they’d say? “Don’t you think a hundred years is just...150ish A.D., is just a little too late to be an early source for Jesus?” That’s what Thomas is. The reason it’s rejected in the Canon is because it’s late. Not because they didn’t like the politics; they didn’t like the Jesus. We have a bunch of floating Jesuses around. You can’t show that. You can’t show there’s an authoritative Jesus that is not the One that’s represented by His Apostles–like Paul, Peter, James. It’s not there because it’s not physically existing–and I’m speaking about the Gospel of Thomas. Ankerberg: Now, how would you show a non-Christian that the 27 books making up the New Testament are truthful books about Jesus, that they were accepted by eyewitnesses of Jesus’ life, such as the Apostles, and known to be authoritative books by Christians who knew the Apostles? Well, there is solid, historical evidence that forms the foundation for our trust in these books. Listen: Habermas: I’d like to say one other thing about the early Canon. Two blocks of books we’ve been dealing with here: the Gospels and Acts, Acts traditionally seen as volume 2 of Luke. That’s five books. The Epistles of Paul–the critics will give you five, six, eight. Conservatives want thirteen Epistles of Paul. But these two blocks of books were accepted at the end of the first century. Nobody waited until Nicea in 325 [A.D.]. How do I know? Take three early Christian writers: Clement, about 95 A.D.; Ignatius, about 107 A.D.; Polycarp, about 110 A.D. Nine little Epistles. And they cite Paul–cite, quote, refer to Paul in his Epistles just short of a hundred times. They cite 12 of his 13 epistles. The only one they leave out–Philemon. And you can imagine why. Only one chapter; not theological. But Paul is called inspired. He’s called an Apostle. And his writings are quoted right there at about 100 A.D. by three authoritative writers. The Gospels–they cite the

Gospels and Acts well over 100 times. These two bodies of literature, Gospels plus Acts, Paul’s Epistles–12 out of 13 are cited–they are recognized as inspired right there at the close of the New Testament Canon, about 100 A.D. Go back to the Thomas thesis. The reason others don’t come in? There are no competitors, there are no other Gospels floating around to compete with the Gospels and Acts. No other epistles are of the status of Paul in writing epistles like that and we have about 200 citations of them within...right at the close of the first century. Folks, this is very, very early material. Let me add one other thing. Clement, 95 A.D.; Ignatius, 107; Polycarp, about 110 A.D.–they cite the Gospels and they cite Paul over 200 times. But you know what? They didn’t refer to the “Gospel of Thomas.” Why? Because they’re trying to push him out of the Canon? No. There’s no Thomas around. They don’t know it; they don’t cite it. That’s why we have much more evidence for the authoritative New Testament, Gospels, Acts, and Paul’s Epistles.

Program 4

Ankerberg: Welcome. Today we’re going to examine three things. First, how has modern scholarship changed its ideas about Jesus as it has examined His life? Is there still a strong historical basis for believing Jesus claimed to be God and rose from the dead? Second, we’re going to talk about the main question that is in the background of all historical study about Jesus, namely, what about the miracles found in the New Testament? Can a twentieth century historian conclude that they really happened? Then third, we’re going to look at 12 historical facts that are accepted by virtually all critical scholars today that present a solid foundational basis for believing Jesus lived, claimed to be God, died on a cross and rose again. But first, how has modern scholarship changed its ideas about Jesus as they have examined His life? Dr. Gary Habermas explains:


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Habermas: Primarily New Testament scholars speak today of three periods in which the investigation of the Historical Jesus flourished. [1.] The classical period. Now, there are some prototypes. You can go back to English deism; you can go to German rationalism like Reimarus. But the prototypical, the heyday of “Lives of Jesus,” were during the liberal period, what’s called “Old Liberalism,” “German Liberalism.” Really, oftentimes it’s the philosophical side of German idealism coming out into theology. And what happens for over a hundred years is that everybody has a “life of Jesus.” In fact, a lot of these books are just called Life of Jesus. And the liberal presupposition, the most–just to give a general overview here–is, we can basically use the Gospels as historical, minus two big “no-no’s.” One is, dogmatic theology–don’t say Jesus was the Son of God, rose from the dead. We don’t like miracles. We don’t like dogmatic theology and this confirmation kind of argument. And they didn’t like to talk about the supernatural. So they want the Gospels, what they would just call, “Give me just the history. Take the theology out, dogmatic theology. Take the miracles out. What’s left? That’s Historical Jesus. Now, for a little over a hundred years that was what was called “The Quest for Historical Jesus.” Albert Schweitzer’s famous book just after the turn of the century lined all those early liberals up, say, like David Strauss. Now, David Strauss was a forerunner to Rudolf Bultmann. [2.] After “The First Quest,” you have what some people call a “no-Quest period.” Rudolf Bultmann, Karl Barth. And they did not think we should be going after the Historical Jesus because faith is sufficient. Faith is not based on history. Apologetics is anathema. So, you’ve got a classical liberal period–German Liberalism, “Life of Jesus”; followed by a “no-Quest period”–that’s the reigns of Barth and Bultmann. Barth comes on the scene 1916, 1918 with his famous Epistles to the Romans there right at the close of World War I. Bultmann

becomes a big commodity, a hot commodity about 1940 and just a little after that with his essay, New Testament and Mythology. And up until about 1960 it’s not terribly popular to do any more Historical Jesus studies. But in the 1950s, Ernst Kasemann, Gunther Bornkamm, James Robinson–students of Bultmann–said, “Now, wait a minute. We’re going a little too far here.” And in a couple of 1950s very important publications, like Gunther Bornkamm’s Jesus of Nazareth, they said, “Our mentor, Rudolf Bultmann, is going a little too far. Faith is not based on history,” they argued. “That’s true. But we do need a Historical Jesus or at least in part or we are doomed to let Him slip into the pages of legend. So we can say some things about the Historical Jesus.” But like their mentor, Bultmann, they didn’t think faith was based on history. That’s “The Second Quest for the Historical Jesus,” or what was called at the time, “The New Quest.” That was a short-lived movement. [3.] What is being called now “The Third Quest for the Historical Jesus,” there are some forerunners in the 1970s, but in the 80s and 90s we’re seeing an outpouring of books from every theological persuasion–far left, moderate, middle, right–and these books tell you what we can know about Jesus. Now, this is the most fragmented of the three periods. It takes us right up until the present. But this is what all the books from The Third Quest basically have in common. There’s a general agreement that Jesus is a very Jewish fellow and we want to look at Jesus against His Jewish background. Jewish anthropology is very important. Jewish sociology is very important. And they want to put Jesus as a man of His time back into the Jewish calendar–not the gnostic calender of Rudolf Bultmann. But those are basically the three Quests: the nineteenth century 100 years of “Lives of Jesus”; “The New Quest,” just a couple of decades; and now we’re into a couple of decades of “The Third Quest” and it’s going strong. This is arguably–the Historical Jesus–is arguably the hottest topic in


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theology today. Ankerberg: Now, what about the miracles found in the New Testament? Is it possible for a twentieth century historian to come to the conclusion that Jesus really did perform miracles and really did rise from the dead? On this topic Dr. Habermas is an acknowledged expert who has debated the well-known philosopher Anthony Flew on this topic, and written scores of scholarly articles. Listen: Habermas: Now, this brings us to the question of miracles. The First Quest, put on the shelf. The Second Quest, really wasn’t interested. “The Third Quest,” the question of the miracles of Jesus at the present time are really a hot issue. And miracles are divided into three categories: exorcisms, healing miracles, and nature miracles. And critics are fairly open to the fact that some things are really going on here. I mean, Jesus at least thought He healed people, and people at least thought He healed them. He really thought He cast out demons and those who thought they had demons really believed the demons left. I mean, they really work with the historical scenario here. But what about the supernaturalness of the miracle? This is still on the outs with a lot of scholars. They don’t think this is a time when we can talk about God acting in history. But one of the things you want to say right off the bat here is that the assumption that says at the outset, “Come on! We’re modern. We can’t believe in miracles,” that’s not a way to approach something. This is an inductive world. This is a scientific world. We look at things according to the preponderance of facts. And if we look at data and it looks like something has occurred that may be miraculous, you’ve got to put the miraculous question on the back burner and at first just ask the historical question: What happened with the miracles? What happened with the Resurrection? We don’t have to decide right now if God raised Jesus, but I think the way to start is to say, “What happened in time and

space? Was there a man named Jesus? Did He die on a cross? And did His Disciples see Him again?” Let’s not ask right now, “Is this an event caused by God? What can historians say?” They don’t have the tools, they will tell you, to talk about miracles. But they do have the tools to say this man walked and talked in first century Palestine. Secondly, they have the tools to say He died on the cross, a victim of Roman crucifixion. They have the tools to say people believed they saw Him afterwards. On the one hand I want to say miracles cannot be ruled out a priori. But on the other hand, I want to say, “Let’s first talk about what is good history and then we’ll ask the question, “Could any of these be miraculous.” I think what I’m getting here is that historians do not have a choice but to take a line of facts in the direction that the data point us. If history says Jesus is thus and so, we have to be open to looking at that. Now, what I meant there about the Resurrection goes something like this: I want to know if a man named Jesus of Nazareth walked and talked on the earth about 25, 27, 28 A.D. Okay, historians come in and say, “Oh, yes. Virtually nobody thinks that He didn’t live.” Rudolf Bultmann, by the way, said, “We are now at the mercy of those who doubt or deny that Jesus lived, walked, talked in history.” So, the historian steps in and says, “Yep, I’ve got data for that. How about, He died?” “Well, that’s not problem. Most people die.” And historians say, “Let’s follow that path. Yep, it takes us to the cross. The Romans hung Jesus, they put Him on the cross, He died, and we can take that in history.” Now, when you get to the Resurrection, people start getting a little nervous here. But here’s the point I’m saying, let’s not ask the question, “Did God intervene and pull Him out of the tomb?” Let’s ask a much easier question, “Did Jesus of Nazareth, who walked and talked in Palestine, who was believed to have been crucified on the cross,


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did anybody claim to have seen Him alive after the cross? Did people walk and talk and touch Him?” You know, C. S. Lewis says the miraculous part of an event is “the initial aspect where it enters history. But after that, everything else is very normal. For example, if Jesus multiplied loaves and fish for 5,000-plus people, once He did the miracle, the multiplication–everybody ate, everybody was full, everybody got tired. That’s what happens after you eat. Then you get, you know, there’s some biological things going on here. That’s what happens; that’s what food does–the miracle is the multiplication, not the eating and all this. With the Resurrection accounts, we want to ask a simple question. Was there a man named Jesus, did He die on the cross, and did people claim to see Him afterwards? If so, why? Those are certainly claims that historians can get their fingers on. We have data there. Ankerberg: Now, during these programs you have heard Dr. Habermas constantly refer to historical facts about Jesus that are accepted by virtually all critical scholars. What are they? I asked him to tell you what these 12 facts are and then why all scholars accept them as true. Listen: Habermas: Now, the question here, obviously, is, What kind of data do we have? What are these “facts” that I keep referring to? Because some people are going to be screaming, now, saying, “There are no facts!” Okay. What is our audience? Evangelicals are going to look at the New Testament text and say, “Facts are all over the place. Every time I read and find one, that’s a fact because I believe Scriptures are inspired.” Others will say, “No. It’s only a book of ancient literature.” Now you have to ask the question, “Which are believable facts and which are not.” Most scholars will give you a list of facts surrounding the events that Christians call the Gospel: the trial, the death,

the burial, the resurrection of Jesus. I think there are at least 12 facts, at least 12. I mean, the vast majority of scholars will give you more than these, but there are at least 12 facts that critical scholars admit. Virtually every scholar will admit virtually every one of these. 1. Jesus died by crucifixion. 2. He was buried. Nothing strange about these things. Most people die. Most people are buried. 3. His death caused the Disciples to despair and lose hope, believing His life had ended. What would you say if your best friend died and very suddenly? 4. Now, I admit this one is not as widely held, but many scholars believe that the tomb in which Jesus was buried was discovered to be empty just a few days later. 5. The Disciples had experiences. And I’ll say this the way that even the critics will be able to accept it, I think. The Disciples had experiences which they believed were literal appearances of the risen Jesus. They thought Jesus appeared to them. 6. Because of these experiences, they [the Disciples] were transformed from doubters. They were afraid of their own shadow, so to speak, and certainly afraid to identify themselves with Jesus, into bold proclaimers of His death and resurrection. 7. This message was the center of preaching in the early Church. Remember what Paul said–“Of first importance”: death, burial, resurrection of Jesus. 8. This message was especially proclaimed in the environs of Jerusalem where Jesus had died and was buried just shortly before. 9. As a result of this preaching, the Church was born and it grew. 10. Sunday became the primary day of worship. And that’s significant for Jewish believers. 11. James, who had been a skeptic, was


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converted to the faith when he also “believed” that he saw the resurrected Jesus. 12. A few years later, Paul was converted by an experience which he likewise “believed” to be the appearance of the risen Jesus. What I’m saying is that with the exception of the empty tomb, virtually all critical scholars accept this list as historical, and most of them will even grant the empty tomb. And if you want to check some of the writings I’ve done on this, the Historical Jesus and some of the books by others, you can find lists of critical scholars who accept all of these things. Now, you might say, “Now, wait a minute. Twelve? That’s not bad, but can we cut this list down? Can we get some more skeptics involved by being even more picky in what we take? All right. I’ll arbitrarily reduce this list to say four, five, six–somewhere in there. And if I were to reduce this list, I would say something like the following: Jesus died due to crucifixion. The Disciples had experiences that they believed were the appearance of the risen Jesus. Their lives were transformed because of that, and later, a man named Saul of Tarsus believed that he was converted to Jesus by an appearance, a personal appearance of the risen Jesus to him. These are four tough facts that virtually anybody is going to give you. And I think that we can build a case for that central proclamation of the death and resurrection of Jesus based on just these four facts alone. Ankerberg: Now, these are just 12 facts that are accepted by all critical scholars. Some skeptics will concede 20 or more. But Dr. Habermas believes you only need four to six of these facts to establish a strong historical basis for saying Jesus lived, died on a cross, and rose again from the dead. Listen as he explains: Habermas: Now, we just got done listing four facts which I think are going to be admitted by the vast majority of critical scholars, folks in the

middle and on the lefthand side of the scale. We might add a couple of others in here: the Resurrection is the center of early Christian preaching. What do you do with a fellow like James, the brother of Jesus–a skeptic who comes to Christ? The fact that the Resurrection of Christ was proclaimed very early, as we said a few weeks ago in an earlier broadcast. What do you do with these four facts? Now, here’s my point. Some critics are going to give you a longer list. Some of them...some skeptics might give you 20. And I said, “I don’t need 20. I only need 12.” And for those who think, “Can you do it with any less than 12?” I’m saying, “I’ve got four, five, six, seven–somewhere right in there.” And it’s an arbitrary number. Why? Because nobody, virtually nobody gives you only those facts. But I’m saying I’m arbitrarily reducing the list to 12, and then to four, five, six. And here’s my contention. With these data and the data that modify these facts that are admitted by all, we have enough of a basis to say that Jesus died and that He was raised again from the dead. You can sort of take home the whole pie with just these facts. Ankerberg: Now, here’s the bottom line for all the information we’ve given you today. If you just take four to six of these accepted historical facts about Jesus’ life, they will knock out and refute all of the naturalistic theories that have been proposed to explain away the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. The facts show Jesus is God. Instead of running from Jesus, you should run to Him for forgiveness and eternal life. Dr. Habermas explains: Habermas: With just these four, five, six, seven facts, just a small portion of what more critics will grant, most critics will grant, this is what I’m saying occurs. With just those facts, I have the major refutations there of the naturalistic theories–the stories that say, “Well, what if Jesus wasn’t raised? What if what really happened was ____ (fill in the blank).” I’m saying that with just


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these half dozen, approximately, facts, you can refute all those major alternative hypotheses and at the same time have the very best evidences for the Resurrection contained right in this list. And really, this list is shorter than almost any list of critics...list of facts produced by critics. I mean, I’m really asking for less facts here than almost anybody would give me. And these facts, by the way, have two prerequisites. It’s not only that they are admitted by virtually all critical scholars, but second, they are individually attested by other data. So for the person who comes along and says, “I’m not going to give you any of your four. I’m just going to be belligerent with you. I’m not going to give you anything,” then with that person you build from the ground up. You start with zero and you tell him the evidence for one, two, three, four, five, six. You give him the evidence for each one of these. But the conclusion is, these facts alone give the major refutations of the naturalistic theories, and secondly, they provide the major evidences for the Resurrection of Jesus. Let me take a case in point here. Let’s pick not just some strawman and take some weakling theory. Let’s take the hottest naturalistic theory in the nineteenth century. The hypothesis says that Jesus died, all right. But He didn’t really rise from the dead. The Disciples saw hallucinations. We know hallucinations are out there. That’s it right here. They saw hallucinations. Looking only at this list, notice, number one, the Disciples had experiences that they believed to be appearances of the risen Jesus. Paul said these experiences occurred in groups. Hallucinations are not contagious. They don’t occur in groups. Second, hallucinations are fairly rare. When you’re talking about groups of people, you’ve got hardheaded Peter, softhearted Mary, softhearted John. My point is, you’ve got different people, different times, different places. Paul says individual here, individual there; 500 out there. He appears at different places and it’s not likely–and I’m being very conservative there–that all these people would be just in the right frame of mind to

see hallucinations. Further, they were transformed. Hallucinations don’t transform. In fact, I know of a man who has done some research personally with hallucinations and what the people said was, “I changed my mind when my friend said, ‘a.) These things don’t happen; and b.) We didn’t see them.’” Guess what? That would apply to the Resurrection above all. Deadmen don’t rise. And we didn’t see Him unless they did. So the transformations show that they really believed what they taught. And what about the Apostle Paul? He wouldn’t be in the fight frame of mind to see a hallucination. I mean, the man was walking to Damascus, he says, to carry out threats against believers. Now, does that man want to see the resurrected Jesus? And then you’ve got James, Jesus’ brother, an insider. What would you think if your son...if you brother were getting this kind of attention around the world? And James says, “I don’t believe.” He’s a skeptic. And critics usually admit that. But is James in the right frame of mind to see hallucinations? I don’t think so. These are some of the problems, what? maybe a half dozen right there, that come from just that list, a short list of facts that we already gave. Let’s try an illustration of what I’m talking about here. Let’s say we’re surrounded by a group of people and over on this side are the conservatives. They give me all the facts in the New Testament. Obviously Jesus was raised. You get to the next group. They give you most of them. Jesus was raised. You go over further and further over until you get to the left, and over here are people who say, “I’ll give you 10 or 12.” I’m saying I’ll work with those 12. Or I’ll work with only four. But for the person who says, “I’m going to give you zero facts,” you work up to each one of them. You give the data for each one. And the conclusion is, these facts alone refute the naturalistic theories on the on hand and provide the best evidences for


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the Resurrection.

Program 5

Ankerberg: A popular falsehood being promoted by the tiny percentage of liberal scholars in the Jesus Seminar, is that there is very little historical evidence available to provide a strong basis for traditional Christian beliefs about Jesus. But last week Dr. Gary Habermas listed 12 historical facts about Jesus’ life that are accepted by virtually all critical scholars and showed that the Jesus Seminar is wrong. Today we will examine the significance of those facts. My guest, Dr. Gary Habermas, was confronted by these very facts when he was a student at Michigan State working on his Ph.D., and they pulled him across the line from being a skeptic to becoming a Christian. He talks about the persuasiveness of these facts. Listen: Habermas: Last program we ended with about a half dozen facts that I said, based on this material alone, we can argue that Jesus died and that He appeared after His death. Just a personal note. The reason I think these facts are so important–at least in my life–is because I spent 10 years as a skeptic. I argued with Christians–actually argued with anybody who claimed to be religious at all. It might be a Jehovah’s Witness; might be a Mormon, but many times it was a Christian. And I kept rejecting their factual bases. I kept saying, “You don’t have data for that. That’s in the Gospels. You don’t have data for this, you don’t have data for that.” I had studied religion at state university and I thought that way. And what these four facts say to me is, we can reduce our list, if you want, and Christians have a right to believe the Gospels and so on. But for those who reject that, we need just a small basis and fact to show that the naturalistic theories have failed and that Christ has been raised from the dead. And I think that’s what these half dozen facts do. Basically, here’s what we’re doing. We’re playing the method here the way the critics do, thinking the

way they think, and saying, even treating the Bible as no more than an ancient book of literature–I mean, how can it be less than that? It’s ancient. It’s got pages in it and there’s words on the pages. I mean, that’s pretty basic–and treating the Bible as an ancient book of literature you still come up with these core or minimal facts, as I call them. And on this basis alone, we can refute the naturalistic theories and argue that Jesus was raised from the dead. Ankerberg: Next, we are going to examine some of the 12 facts further. First, did Jesus actually die on a cross? In the Koran, Islam claims Jesus did not die on the cross; something else happened. Further, naturalistic scholars claim Jesus did not die on the cross, He just fainted or swooned. Now, the problem with these theories is that the historical facts of Jesus’ death will not allow such interpretations. Dr. Gary Habermas explains why. Listen: Habermas: Last program we ended with about a half dozen facts that I said, based on this material alone, we can argue that Jesus died and that He appeared after His death. Just a personal note. The reason I think these facts are so important–at least in my life–is because I spent 10 years as a skeptic. I argued with Christians–actually argued with anybody who claimed to be religious at all. It might be a Jehovah’s Witness; might be a Mormon, but many times it was a Christian. And I kept rejecting their factual bases. I kept saying, “You don’t have data for that. That’s in the Gospels. You don’t have data for this, you don’t have data for that.” I had studied religion at state university and I thought that way. And what these four facts say to me is, we can reduce our list, if you want, and Christians have a right to believe the Gospels and so on. But for those who reject that, we need just a small basis and fact to show that the naturalistic theories have failed and that Christ has been raised from the dead. And I think that’s what these half dozen facts do.


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Basically, here’s what we’re doing. We’re playing the method here the way the critics do, thinking the way they think, and saying, even treating the Bible as no more than an ancient book of literature–I mean, how can it be less than that? It’s ancient. It’s got pages in it and there’s words on the pages. I mean, that’s pretty basic–and treating the Bible as an ancient book of literature you still come up with these core or minimal facts, as I call them. And on this basis alone, we can refute the naturalistic theories and argue that Jesus was raised from the dead. Habermas: Now, the very first fact on this list is that Jesus died. Why do scholars today rarely question the death of Jesus? Why do the founders of the Jesus Seminar, for example, those who’ve written on the subject, why do John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg say that the fact that Jesus died is the surest fact we have in His career? Because the data are so strong. Now, what are some of those? First of all, death by crucifixion is essentially death by asphyxiation. When you hang on a cross and the weight of your body pulls down on the intercostal pectoral and deltoid muscles around your lungs, you reach a state where, when the weight is dragging down on them, you can inhale, but you are increasingly unable to exhale until you reach a place of almost paralysis and you can’t exhale at all. Actually in the 1950s an experiment was done in West Germany where male volunteers were asked to be tied to a 2" x 4". These males lost consciousness at a maximum of 12 minutes. Now, on the cross you can push up, if only on the nails or whatever, you can push up. And when you push up you relieve those muscles in your lungs. But when you pull down on them again because you can’t stay up there for long, you pull down and when you’re in a low position on a cross, you asphyxiate. The Roman historian did not have to have a degree in medicine. If the person is hanging low on the cross for any amount of time–let’s say, 30 minutes–he’s dead.

Second, we’re told that they stabbed Jesus in the chest and blood and water came out. Someone says, “Well, that’s in the Gospel of John and we’re not going to give that to you.” Let me tell you something. In the ancient crucifixion accounts, there are a number of accounts of a coup de grace, a crushing blow, that’s done at the end of crucifixion to end the account. We have an account of a man whose skull was crushed to finish the process; a man who was threatened with a bow and arrow. We have two other cases outside of Jesus in the Gospel of John where he was stabbed to make sure he was dead. And of course, we have what’s known as crucifreigrium in Latin, the breaking of the ankles so the person cannot push back up again. In all these cases, here’s what the executioner is saying: You’re not gettin’ down alive. So reason number one: If you’re low on the cross, you’re dead. You’ve asphyxiated. Number two: Deathblow. In the case of Jesus we’re told that it was spear that went into the chest. In the Journal of the American Medical Association just about 15 years ago, we were told that Jesus’ death came from asphyxiation. The researchers said, including a pathologist from Mayo Clinic, they said that the spear entered His heart and the water–how do you know? The water came from the sack surrounding the heart called the pericardium. So Jesus was dead. But if He wasn’t, the deathblow would have done it. Third reason. Now, this gets a little bit gory and maybe you’re thinking, well, what have you done so far? But the third thing is called “sucking chest.” It’s a very well-known medical phenomenon. If you’re stabbed through the upper thoracic area and it goes through the lung, a living person, if you’re alive, there will be a sucking sound that comes through that hole. And guess what. You don’t have to be a medical doctor to know that if you’re making that sound, you’re alive. I had a student tell me just today that he shot a deer and when he walked up to him–he had shot it through the chest–it was making that noise and he


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put his gun up to shoot it again and the noise stopped–the animal died. So if He was stabbed in the chest and it didn’t go through the heart, we would know because of the sucking chest syndrome. So these are some of the reasons to believe that crucifixion is lethal. Asphyxiation, heart wound, and if it only went through the chest you would have the sucking chest. Now, having said these things, none of these are the historical reason, the chief reason, for believing that Jesus did not fake death. In 1935, a German liberal named David Strauss, he wrote a Life of Jesus. And he was so liberal that he was pensioned off from his very liberal university and told to just quit teaching. He was pensioned off for life because of his highly critical view of Jesus. But here’s what he says in that famous writing criticizing those who believe that Jesus didn’t die. By the way, that was the most popular theory up until 1835–that Jesus didn’t die. He said: Here’s the problem with the swoon theory. It’s basically self-contradictory. Jesus should have died on the cross. Don’t worry about it. He didn’t. Should have died in the tomb. Don’t worry about. He didn’t. Wouldn’t have been able to roll the stone away. Took several men. He’d be rolling the stone uphill out of the little gully in front of the tomb. He was in a weak condition. Don’t worry about it. He rolled the stone away. Walked, how long? I don’t know. Quarter mile, blocks, to where the Disciples are on feet that were pierced by nails. And Strauss said, “And you think all of these are problems? It’s not the chief problem. Here’s the chief problem with saying Jesus didn’t die. He comes to the door where the Disciples are [and knocks]. And when they come to the door, what’s He going to look like? What’s He looking like? He’s pale. He’s sweating. The side wound has opened up again. He’s hunched over. He’s not even washed His hair. Sweat, blood have caked

His hair. He’s limping. And He says, ‘Fellows, I told you I would rise again from the dead.’” Strauss says, “Watch what happens here. He’s alive, yes. Raised, no. Here’s what they would do. Peter, give Him your chair. Andrew, go get some water. John, go get a doctor. They’d say, ‘Thank the Lord, He was healed’ or ‘He’s getting healed’ or ‘He’s alive.’ But they wouldn’t say, ‘Thank the Lord, He’s going to be raised.’ And so don’t expect to see Phillip over in the corner saying, as the New Testament says, ‘O boy! Someday I’m going to have a resurrection body just like His.’ No thanks. Thanks. I will keep the body I have. Let Jesus keep the body He has.’” Now, that’s Strauss’ point. Here’s what “swoon” says, and we often miss this: alive, yes; raised, no. What’s the problem? If the Disciples don’t at least believe He’s raised, you have no cause for the New Testament Church; no cause for really preaching. They have to at least believe He’s been raised. The swoon theory doesn’t give that to you. Conclusion: Asphyxiation, heart, chest, Strauss’ critique. You’ve got many other problems. What do you do with Paul? What do you do with James? How were they convinced to join the crowd here? The conclusion assuredly is that Jesus died on the cross due to Roman crucifixion. Ankerberg: Now, I also asked Dr. Habermas to say a word about Hugh Schonfeld’s book, “The Passover Plot,” which claims Jesus was given drugs while on the cross and just appeared to die. Here’s Dr. Habermas’ response: Habermas: Now, what happens when we apply this to a book like the 1965 bestseller, The Passover Plot? The author suggested that Jesus did not die on the cross. By the way, a lot of people don’t remember this, but he said, “This is only a suggestion. I’m not saying this really happened.” But he said, “What if Jesus didn’t die on the cross?” Well, he runs up against asphyxiation. He runs


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up against heart. He runs up against chest. He runs up against Strauss’ critique. And so the swoon theory in The Passover Plot was largely ignored by critiques. In fact, it got put on a lot of lists by scholars that, you know, “Don’t take this as our work,” because the point is, you can’t rule out this material in that manner. In fact, let me tell you this. After David Strauss’ critique in 1835, Albert Schweitzer’s famous book on The Quest for the Historical Jesus, he lists no scholars who hold the swoon theory after 1840. Historically speaking, Strauss’ critique alone, if you pardon the pun, Strauss’ critique alone killed the swoon theory. Ankerberg: If you just joined us, Dr. Gary Habermas is laying out 12 historical facts that are accepted by virtually all critical scholars today. The importance of these 12 facts is that they form a solid historical foundation for traditional Christian beliefs about Jesus, they repudiate the Jesus Seminar, and shoot down all naturalistic explanations which have attempted to explain away Jesus’ resurrection. The next fact we’re going to look at is that Jesus was buried. Why is that so important? Listen: Habermas: Now, for the believer for whom the death and resurrection of Jesus are crucially important, as Paul says “of first importance,” where do we go next? Jesus died on the cross, as, by the way, even the Talmud tells us. And then we’re told, “He is buried.” Now, this is not questioned by a lot of people. It’s a pretty normal event: people who die are buried. But what is there to say in favor of the burial accounts as we learn of them in the New Testament. First of all, although today critics are not so inclined to take the Gospels as they are to take Paul, let’s just make the comment that all four Gospels are agreed that the tomb where Jesus was buried was empty. All right?

The critic responds, “I don’t like the Gospels.” But let’s point out, number two, just because the critic doesn’t like the Gospels, that does not explain the Gospels away. What you need, number two, is evidence that He was buried somewhere else. And that’s the key. Evidence that He was buried somewhere else. There are no takers really. Why? There’s no early evidence that He was buried anywhere else. And you can say, “Maybe this, maybe that,” but let’ ask the unbeliever the same question, same type of data the Christian is asked for. Where’s your data to say that He wasn’t buried just like the Gospels said. Number three. A lot of folks have made the point that Joseph and Nicodemus, their names are difficult to explain in those burial stories unless they were the guys that did the burial. Why bring these names out of obscurity if they weren’t really the people? It makes sense of somebody who believes they are telling the right story. Continuing, we have a few early texts. Now, we’ve mentioned these before–creeds. 1 Corinthians 15. Remember, the triple hoti–and, and, and argument. Paul says, “He died for our sins according to the scriptures, and He was buried, and He was raised, and He appeared.” Now, follow that sequence in this very early, non-Pauline, pre-Pauline text. If somebody is dead, buried, raised, and appeared, the strong implication is, the One that went down is the One that came up. You’ve got Paul saying there was a burial, but he’s going to go further than that. We’ll save that for a comment on the empty tomb. But the 1 Corinthians 15 passage says “buried” and there again you’ve that early evidence. Another good argument is Acts 13:29. Why? Because some critical scholars are willing to grant that, as I said earlier, Acts 13 contains another of those little creedal passages–the abbreviated theology. And there in Acts 13:29 in this passage we’re told that He was buried. So there are two textual, two early textual arguments. You’ve got the Gospels. No evidence against Joseph and Nicodemus, you’ve got 1 Corinthians 15, Acts 13,


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and, lastly, Jerusalem was the last place you want to proclaim the burial if He has not been buried there. Because that’s the only place in the world it could be refuted. They can grab the body and say, “No. He’s not here, He’s over here.” Jerusalem is the last place to make that claim. So there’s a half dozen arguments to believe that what the Gospels say about the burial and what Paul says at a very early date about burial is indeed true. Ankerberg: The next fact we want to look at is the empty tomb. This, too, is a fact of history and it leads to the question: What happened to Jesus’ body? Dr. Habermas explains: Habermas: Okay. Let’s move on to the next step. He died. He was buried. What happened in that tomb? Well, the Christian story says He was raised, but in between burial and raising we’re told the tomb was vacated. Jesus’ leaving left it alone. Is there any reason to believe that? Again, one of the first points we want to say is, all four Gospels record the empty tomb. And here come the critics: “I told you, I don’t like the Gospels!” What do we have to back up those early Gospel stories of the empty tomb? Let me give you three big evidences right off the bat: Number one, The earliest witnesses to the empty tomb are women. Why is that important? Because if you’re making up a story–remember our Monday morning quarter backing scenario–if you’re making up a story, putting the words back into the mouths of the earliest Christians sometime later, don’t use women for your first witnesses. Why? In the first century they were not allowed to testify in a court of law. They were not believed to be able to tell the truth. We’re actually told that. They couldn’t testify. So why do you take people who can’t go on the witness stand? It would be like making your chief witnesses little children. Why do you say, “There they are. The tomb’s empty. The women saw Him” unless, in fact, the women found the empty tomb first? Okay?

Second reason: The Jews believed the tomb was empty. Now, there’s a fact in history, there’s a method in history, rather, that says when your critic admits something, most likely it’s correct. If you can’t stand somebody and you say he’s this and that and this and that and this and that, but he is a brave person, chances are, he’s a brave person. And the Disciples said the tomb is empty. Now, they thought the Disciples stole the body and nobody, virtually no reputable scholar, has held that theory for over 200 years because liars don’t make martyrs; you can’t explain the Disciples’ transformation and their honest belief. If they stole the body and lied, you have no explanation for James; you have no explanation for Paul. So that explanation does not make a lot of sense. But what are you left with? If the Disciples stole the body, according to the Jews, but that theory doesn’t really work, what you have is an empty tomb. What it seems like is that the Jewish leaders are making something up to...making an explanation to explain a fact: the body is gone. Third argument. You have that early text I gave you a moment ago–1 Corinthians 15. And Paul’s sequence, again, is: died for our sins, buried, raised, appeared. Now, when the same person dies, buried, raised, and appears, guess what? The body is not there. What’s gone down has come up. And there is a strong implication...in 1 Corinthians 15 you have an overt statement of the burial and you have a strong implication of the next step, the empty tomb. We get those from other things in here, as I said. Again, Jerusalem–just like the burial. Jerusalem is the last place to proclaim the empty tomb because people could say, “Ah, boys, the tomb’s not empty” and they could take you right back there. Acts 13:29, another early creedal passage, says He was buried and the tomb was empty. So here’s another half dozen arguments but especially I like the women, I like the Jewish admittance of the empty tomb, and I like Paul’s creed in 1 Corinthians 15. That’s three real tough arguments that say, “You know, what the Gospels said, they


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have the ring of truth regarding the empty tomb.” Ankerberg: Now, we’ve look at three historical facts about Jesus today–that He did die from crucifixion; He was buried, and His tomb was empty. Next week we will examine the fact that all of Jesus’ disciples BELIEVED Jesus had appeared to them after they had seen Him crucified and buried. What explains this fact? Group hallucinations, visions? Or that Jesus really appeared? We’ll answer those questions next week. But now Dr. Habermas summarizes what we’ve seen today and its importance to you: Habermas: Where are we going with all this? First, I said, the critics will give you probably a couple dozen facts. I’ve said, “That’s okay. I only want twelve.” For those who think twelve is too many–and believe me, that’s very few of the published authors who deal with this–I’ll just give you four. And I said, that basis alone shows us that the One who died was the One who was raised. And in between these two events we have a burial and an empty tomb. I gave about a half dozen reasons to believe both. The thing we haven’t said anything about yet is the appearances, and this is the chief evidence, by far. And the reason is, the critical community is willing to admit that the Disciples really thought they saw the risen Jesus, and this is the best evidence for the Resurrection of all of them.

Program 6

Ankerberg: Welcome. In the last few weeks Dr. Gary Habermas has been presenting and documenting 12 historical facts that virtually all critical scholars today believe about Jesus. He has gone even further and stated that if you accept just four of these acknowledged facts, they will provide you with a solid, historical foundation for believing in the traditional view of Jesus. Today we will examine one of the most controversial facts of

Jesus’ life--His appearing to His disciples. This evidence confronted Dr. Habermas when he was a skeptic working on his Ph.D. at Michigan State University and led him to become a Christian. Listen: Habermas: Last week I made the comment that I spent 10 years as a skeptic and I would argue with Christians and I would try to reduce their list. I would say, “You can’t know this” and “You can’t know this” and You can’t know this.” But certain facts stopped me cold. I ended up doing my Ph.D. dissertation at Michigan State University and it was on the Resurrection of Christ. Michigan State University is not known as “Orthodox U.” They have some professors there that weren’t crazy about what I was saying, but they said, “It’s okay. Just don’t say it happened because the Bible said it happened.” I didn’t want to say that anyway because that wasn’t my opinion. So I came down to facts that evidenced the greatest event of all–the fact that Jesus appeared. Now, how do we get there? To start with the appearances, let me start with a portion of that story that virtually everyone will admit. Reginald Fuller says, “This is the indisputable fact in the New Testament: the Disciples at least believe they saw the risen Jesus.” Why is that true? Because whenever somebody willingly gives their life for something, a cause–it can be an ardent Communist; it can somebody who jumps on a grenade; it can be kamikaze pilots in World War II; it can be Muslim suicide truck drivers; it can be Jim Jones’ followers; David Koresh’s followers, or even the comet people who believe they are being taken away and they take the poison and lie down and die. What’s the key to each of these? We don’t understand a lot of these actions, but here’s what we say: They at least believed what they died for. Nothing else explains it. They believed the UFO was coming. They believed there was a UFO behind the comet. They believed their country was worth dying for. They believed their philosophy, perhaps Communism,


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was worth dying for. And it’s true of the Disciples. The only explanation is that they believed Jesus was raised from the dead. Rudolf Bultmann in his seminal 1940 essay, New Testament and Mythology, he said, a secular historian can only say this: “The earliest followers believed they saw the risen Jesus.” And I’m saying, if you have that fact, you’ve got the key one. Everything else flows from there to the appearances of Jesus. Ankerberg: Next, you’re probably saying, “I agree it’s an indisputable fact that the disciples believed they saw Jesus, but how do you get from “they thought they saw Jesus” to “they actually saw Him”? As a skeptic, Dr. Habermas had to wrestle with this question himself. Here’s what he discovered. Habermas: Now, as I said, I imagine a lot of people are listening are saying, “I’ll grant you that. The Disciples believed they saw Jesus.” How do you get from “thought they saw” to “they saw”? And let me say in a nutshell and let me give you an illustration of where I’m going. The fact that they thought they saw the risen Jesus is important for two reasons. Those half dozen facts I asked for and evidenced before, those facts tell me, number one, naturalistic theories don’t work. They believed they saw the risen Jesus. But some people say they saw hallucinations. We saw, using only those half dozen facts, hallucinations don’t work. So, on the one hand they thought they saw the risen Jesus. People make up “what ifs” scenarios. They don’t work. Naturalistic theories fail. But the reason, the second reason that they believed they saw Jesus turns into they saw Jesus was because those same half dozen facts that everybody admits includes a lot of good evidences that they really saw Him–like: their life was changed. It was a central proclamation. How do you get Paul onboard? How do you get James onboard? Every one of them agreed it was something they saw. Now, let me tell you a little story that might help to drive this home. What does Christianity have

that none of these other religions have? Jim Jones’ followers believed he was the messiah. They were wrong. David Koresh, likewise. Hale-Bopp comet people–they believed the UFO was coming for them. Anybody can be wrong about beliefs. Let me tell you something that was different about the Disciples. They didn’t just say Jesus was the Messiah and He was raised from the dead. Their central claim was, “We saw Him.” Paul said, “If Christ has not been raised from the dead,” after just giving a list of the appearances (1 Corinthians 15), then our faith is vain.” Now, I liken this to a common experience, say, shopping at Kroger. If we went to Kroger and I saw you last night, I might remember a conversation we had and said, “Remember, we were talking about the spinach?” Now, what if a bunch of our buddies happened to be there and we kept running into each other throughout the store and at one time, two of us saw you; one time, just me; another time, there are five of us. And let’s just say for a parallel here, on one occasion eleven or twelve saw you in Kroger’s. Now, that would be pretty hard for you to claim, “Ah, you didn’t see me in Kroger last night”–especially if I have the guys around me who said, “Oh, come on! We saw you in Kroger last night. Saw you singly, in twos and threes, and we saw you in a group.” The Disciples were not only claiming, “I believe His claims that He is the Son of God. I believe God vindicated Him by raising Him. I believe He was raised.” Some of these claims don’t sound a lot different on the surface than what other people have believed. But the Disciples added something else: “I saw you. I touched you. It was a mundane experience. When you appeared, I was shocked. But once you appeared,” the Gospels say, “He ate. He walked. He cooked a shore lunch.” I mean, He’s doing normal things. And that’s the Kroger experience. Now, what would happen if I saw you in Kroger and we saw you singly and in pairs and five and ten, and Paul said, “One time 500.” Well, that’s not going to work at Kroger, but the point is, when you


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see somebody there, you’re sure when you see in groups. But what if I was at your funeral last week? What if I was at your funeral last week and tonight I saw you in Kroger, and all my buddies saw you in Kroger, too? How much evidence would it take to convince somebody that we saw you? The more the merrier. Two heads are better than one. We have all kinds of sayings for this. But the point is, I could be convinced of two things: I saw a body in the casket. I even reached over and touched you and you were dead. I saw you at Kroger, and I don’t know how to explain this, but it’s a pretty mundane event: I saw you picking up food. I saw you walking, I saw you talking. My point is, the Disciples didn’t just say, “I believe Jesus,” they said, “We saw Jesus.” And somehow, we have to do justice to that “We saw you” point. And like Lewis says, it’s the Resurrection that is miraculous. The walking and talking and shore lunch and so on, those are normal events once you’ve been raised. And Kroger is a normal event. I saw you last week; I see you in Kroger today. You know what? I’ll remember that for the rest of my life. And every time I doubt, I’ll go to my buddies and they say, “Hey, we’re there with you. We saw you there.” And I think that is what we’re dealing with. Yes, the Disciples believed. They believed Jesus was raised. They believed He is the Messiah. But besides that, they’ve got a punch here that nobody else has: “I saw you at Kroger” and “We saw you in a group.” If my faith is based on seeing you at Kroger, I think it’s pretty firm. And that’s on reason the Disciples were so excited and so convinced that, “Seeing is believing.” Ankerberg: Now, 250 years ago in his famous essay on miracles, David Hume said people don’t accept miracles because “the preponderance of evidence outweighs such events.” That is, we’ve all had a lot of experience that has led us to the conclusion that people who die don’t come back to life again. But what new evidence could make us change our minds? Was this new exceptional

evidence given to Jesus’ disciples? Dr. Gary Habermas says, “Yes.” Listen: Habermas: A moment ago I used this Kroger illustration to say, you know, I could be really convinced of something mundane like I saw you at Kroger. You know, a friend of mine uses this example, turns it around a little bit, and it’s something like this. What if last week I was at a man’s funeral, and this week his son says to me, “I saw Dad last night.” Here’s my first comment, “Yeah, right!” All right, now he might convince me, “Hey, listen, I’m serious.” And so now it dawns on me–notice the move here–he really believes this. Just like the Disciples. He really believes this. And I’m thinking, this could be more complicated. He could have seen a hallucination. But I can tick off reasons why this isn’t a hallucination. And finally, let’s say, right while we’re talking, there’s his dad. And let’s say, there are checks and balances that I can argue, too, that something is going on. Now, here’s my point. David Hume argued about 250 years ago that in general, laws of nature show us that, for example, deadmen don’t rise. I’m suggesting that in certain circumstances, we might know that miracles have occurred. Or in this case, we might see an argument that his man was raised from the dead. How would I know that? By a preponderance, by a piling of evidences. My friend saw him. Hallucinations don’t work. Saw them together. Now, what if we tell some of our buddies and ten of them see him? I’m saying, David Hume’s general point, deadmen don’t rise, is overridden in a particular circumstance. Why? Because we have irrefutable evidence that this man was dead a week ago, and today I have evidence that I cannot explain away, singly and in groups, that he is alive. Facts add up until sometimes we have to throw out hypotheses that say these things are incredible. And here’s what I would say. Well, they generally are, but this time, I think something is


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going on. I think I saw him. And I think that’s what’s going on with the Disciples and Jesus. Now, going back to those half dozen facts. What do we have here that indicates that Jesus was raised? He’s dead. He’s asphyxiated. As Strauss said, coming back wouldn’t convince anybody of a resurrection anyway. All right? Secondly, we have people who are saying, “I saw the risen Jesus.” Third, their life is transformed because...not because of His teachings or some general euphoric whatever [but] because they saw Him. Paul said of Christ, if He has not been raised, our faith is vain. Fourth, you’ve got a person named Paul. He’s on his way to kill Christians. He’s not in the mood to see resurrected Jesuses around and here, boom! Jesus is in front of him. Strikes him down. He’s blind, according to the Book of Acts. Paul says himself in 1 Corinthians twice, “I saw the risen Jesus.” What do you do with James, the insider, the family skeptic? And he meets the risen Jesus. In each of these points, what I’m saying is, the probabilities begin to go up. And the general rule–“Deadmen don’t rise”–is looking less and less likely in this instance only because it’s being outweighed by the facts. We live based on probabilities all the time anyway. At this point you have to make a decision: Is it really true? Is this evidence? Can I conclusion not just that it probably happened, but can you reach a point where the evidence says, “Wow! He was raised”? I think you can. And what I’m suggesting is, that’s exactly what happened to the Disciples when they had evidence upon evidence, what Luke calls “many infallible proofs” in Acts 1:3. Ankerberg: Next, a very important question for you personally. If you believe the historical facts about Jesus, does that make you a Christian? No. Well, then, what is faith? How does one become a Christian? Dr. Habermas answers these questions. Listen:

Habermas: Now, you know, at just about this time I can picture an objection from the other side. Christians are saying, “Whoa! This evidence is starting to look so good, what about faith? I mean, facts don’t get us into the Kingdom of God.” But faith is not a leap into nothingness. In the New Testament, without exception, faith is based on trustworthy data. Paul says, back to 1 Corinthians 15:I came and I preached to you the message, at least three things. Always present in the New Testament definition of the Gospel: “deity of Christ, death, resurrection.” Paul said, “If you believe these things, you’re saved. You have eternal life.” In Christianity there’s always content. We call that the Gospel data: deity, death, resurrection of Jesus. But how do you get from Gospel data to salvation? There’s something missing. Facts plus faith equals salvation. But that’s not accurate enough. In the New Testament, it’s not facts in which we place our faith. I love history. But New Testament faith is not placed in history, it’s placed in the Jesus of history. Or if you prefer, to get real exact here, Jesus of the Gospel facts–deity, death, resurrection–plus faith = salvation. Faith goes in the person of Jesus. You know, it’s sort of like marriage. I could be convinced that a woman is the best possible person for me. She’s good here, she’s good here, she’s good here. Everything. But you know, what? If I don’t say “I do,” we’re not married. I think that’s the New Testament picture. It’s an analogy but a decent New Testament picture of what faith in Jesus Christ is. We could be convinced that Jesus did this and He did this and He did this, and, oh yeah, He died for my sins, He was buried, He rose again from the dead. He’s even the Son of God. But in the New Testament, if I don’t say “I do,” if I don’t say “I trust Him,” if I don’t commit myself to Him, I’m not a Christian. And that I think is the key here as we’re coming down to what this means. The Jesus of the Gospel facts, plus faith, equals salvation–and I think that’s Paul’s argument in the first few verses


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of 1 Corinthians 15. Ankerberg: Gary Habermas said facts plus faith equals salvation. Let me ask you, have you transferred your trust from yourself to Jesus for your salvation? The historical facts about Jesus are the foundation for anyone’s faith commitment to Him. But the facts alone won’t save you. Only the Jesus of the facts will save you. Each one who has ever become a Christian has realized via the facts that Jesus is real. But then they’ve experientially come to Him in prayer and told Him that they are sinners and transferred all of their trust to Him. The Bible says all men and women are separated from God because we have broken His moral laws; we have sinned against Him. Second, the Bible says when Jesus was on the cross, our sins were placed on Him and He died in our place. He took the punishment we deserve and could never repay and paid it in full. It’s His gift to us. Now if you will come to Jesus and admit you are a sinner, and ask Him to forgive you, He will do just that. You only need to say a prayer to Him and entrust yourself into His hands. He will make you a Christian; He will forgive your sins and give you the gift of eternal life. The Bible says, “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” You say, “Don’t I have to work for it? Don’t I have to go to church first?” No. Eternal life is a gift. Paul says, “The wages of our sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” The Bible says God wants you to have His gift, the gift of eternal life, and there’s nothing you can do to earn it. That’s why it is a gift. And God will give you that gift the moment you place your trust in Jesus. All who have placed their trust in Jesus love Him. It’s out of our love for Jesus after we are saved that we want to serve Him, but we don’t serve Him to get saved. Now let me see if I can illustrate faith. Picture yourself on a two-story building. A fire starts on the first floor and you rush up to the roof. There’s no way to escape. The fire trucks come and the firemen get out and bring a net. They look

up at you and they say, “Jump.” You look down at the firemen and the net, and you say, “I can’t. I’m afraid.” The firemen say, “Don’t you trust us? Don’t you have faith?” You say, “Yeah, but it’s two stories up.” And they say, “Well, what choice do you have?” And you see the smoke and the flames coming up around you. Now, just understanding the facts that those firemen can save you, will you be safe? No. Understanding facts won’t save you. It’s only when you step off of that building and you entrust yourself to those firemen and the net down below that you get saved. Some of you know the facts about Jesus, but you haven’t entrusted yourself to Him. You need to do that now. But also, it’s not the amount of faith that saves you. Let’s say that you jumped off the building because you had faith and now you get about halfway down, and you notice the firemen don’t have a net–they’re just holding hands. What good is your faith then? Will faith save you if you have placed it in the wrong object, namely, a group of firemen that can’t save you? It’s not your faith that saves you. You better make sure that you’ve got real firemen and a real net down there first. In terms of salvation, it’s not your faith that saves you but a real Jesus, who really did rise from the dead, the One who said He was God and can forgive your sins and give you eternal life. He’s the One you must place your faith in. Faith is really sticking your hand out to Jesus and saying, “I have nothing. Please give me your gift of eternal life.” He promises He will. Right now, would you pray and by faith, place yourself into Jesus’ hands and trust Him to give you eternal life? You might say, “God, I know I’m a sinner. I know my sin has earned for me eternal separation from you. I believe Jesus died in my place when He died on the cross. I accept His death as the full payment for my sin. I accept Him as my Savior. Thank you for saving me, in Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.” If you prayed that prayer, the Bible says, “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Others of you may be saying, “I just can’t do that yet.” If you delay trusting Christ for yourself, Dr.


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Habermas has this final word for you. Listen: Habermas: Now, if you’re sitting there wondering, “Look, I don’t know. I’m a Hindu. I’m a Buddhist. I’m an agnostic. I’m an atheist.” Sure, you can walk away and not believe in Jesus, but you know what? I don’t think you can walk away and say there’s no data. I don’t think you can walk away and say there’s no facts. I really wonder if you want to try to shorten that list of six facts because we can argue to each one of them independently. But do you know where all this is going? Paul says that it’s because of the Resurrection that death has no sting. It’s because of the Resurrection that the grave has no victory. Because of the Resurrection of Jesus we have a shot at eternal life. But we need to say, as Paul said, “I do” to Jesus. It’s all in whether we make that commitment. You know, you may believe someone is right to you. If you don’t say “I do,” you’re not married. If you don’t say “I do” to Jesus, what do you have? You still haven’t accepted His teachings. “O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory?” I leave you with the words of Jesus: “Because I live, ye shall live also.”

IS THE JESUS OF HISTORY THE JESUS OF FAITH?

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