THE RESURRECTION FACTOR
March 6th, 2010
By Josh McDowell
Part 1 of 5
[This talk gives] the background for what we’re going to look at in the next few sessions, which will be on the resurrection of Jesus Christ – Fact or Fallacy?
The background for what I am going to share is my own personal testimony where I truly believed that Christianity was a farce. I did not believe it was true. And as a student in the university, I set out to make a joke of Christianity; to explain away the historical reliability of the Bible and to make a joke of the resurrection. Because I concluded that no intelligent person could ever believe that somebody was killed, buried, and literally raised again the third day because it went against what I believed to be true.
But in my investigation, there were several intellectual conclusions I came to first and then after that, placed my trust in Christ as Savior and Lord. One was this, I came to the conclusion that I could hold the Bible, the Old and New Testament, in my hand and say, “It is historically accurate and it is historically reliable”. We did four sessions on the scriptures and their historical accuracy, but that was the first conclusion I came to as a non-Christian that this book is accurate and true. The second conclusion I came to was that the resurrection of Jesus Christ, as much as I did not want to believe it, was an historical fact. In other words, it did take place in history. I tried my best to refute that, but I couldn’t. The third conclusion I came to is that Jesus Christ truly was God incarnate, God taken on human flesh, that He lived as a man, He was crucified, buried, raised again and ascended to heaven and sent the Holy Spirit. Those were three of many conclusions that I had when I set out to make a joke of Christianity. In these sessions now, we’re going to look at just some of the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And I like to call this Fact or Fiction – Farce or Fact.
Now the basis of the resurrection and the importance of it is given by the apostle Paul. In 1 Corinthians 15, verses 13 to 17, Paul wrote, ‘But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised and if Christ has not been raised then our preaching is vain. Your faith also is vain. Moreover, we are even found to be false witnesses of God because we witnessed against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact, the dead are not raised, for if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless’. What the apostle Paul does here is base everything that Christ taught, lived and died for upon the resurrection. That’s why it is so crucial to study it and come to understand it.
The skeptic, Dr. David Frederick Strauss, made this point about how critical the resurrection is as a skeptic, not a believer. He said, ‘The resurrection is a touchstone, not of only the life of Jesus, but of Christianity itself’. He says, ‘It touches Christianity to the quick and is decisive for the whole view of Christianity’.
Everything that Jesus taught, lived, and died for depended upon one thing: His resurrection, His burial, His ascent – His resurrection and then His ascension. My conclusion was, if I can show that Christ did not rise from the dead then my case was one against Christianity, but I was not able to do it and I’m going to share with you some of the reasons why in these sessions that we will have together.
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