"Touching Lives with the Love of God"

This is long Solomon about like to welcome you to our program today. You know it's a tremendous honor to God is given to us to be on stations all around the nation bringing the truths of God's word as it is uncompromising and straightforward and I'm so glad you tuned in to listen and be part of that.

Thanks again for your support and your generosity that keeps us on the radio and now let's get to the word you don't log me here on earth. What really telling all that he was going to rise from the dead.

He'd said this to his enemies.

Matthew chapter 12 he said, for as Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights so the Son of Man meeting himself will be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights. Jesus told his disciples and his friends that he was going to rise from the dead.

Matthew 16. From that time on Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and be killed, and be raised to life again on the third day Jesus said this to the crowds that followed in John chapter 2 Jesus said destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up in the crowd said it's taken 46 years to build this temple and you're gonna raise it up in three days, but the Bible says Jesus was speaking of the temple of his body and in its interesting that even if Jesus hung on the cross, suffering his enemies taunted him with this claim.

They said Matthew 27.

You who are going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, come down from the cross and we will believe in you folks every body in Israel knew about Jesus's claim back when the rabbis went to Pilate to get soldiers to seal his tomb.

They said to Pilate, we remember Sir that when he was still alive.

This deceiver said after three days I will rise again. My point is that Jesus's claim that he was going to rise from the dead was front page news all throughout Israel.

But the real question is did he do it well. I believe that he did and I like to present to you for pieces when it for pieces of compelling evidence that goes along with saying why I believe it so here we go compelling piece of evidence number one is the evidence of the Roman soldiers. Matthew 27 member the Jewish leaders went to Pilate and they said Sir, we remember that when he was still alive. This deceiver said after three days I will rise again so they said the pilot please command that he is to be made secure until the third day last his disciples come by night and steal the body and say to the people he's risen from the dead and then this last deception will be worse than the first.

Pilate said to them, take a squad of Roman soldiers and made to tomb as secure as you know how so they went and they made the tomb secure by putting a wax seal on the stone and posting the guard, now a Roman security team like this in the time of Christ would've consisted of 15 enlisted men and one officer and they would've had a deeply vested interest in making sure that no one stole the body of Jesus out of that tomb because a Roman soldier if he lost his prisoner. Even his dead prisoner he lost his life. A great example of this comes out of the book of acts chapter 16 Paul and Silas had been thrown in jail in Philippi, a city in northern Greece and around midnight. The Bible says they were singing.

When all of a sudden, this angel shows up and blows the doors of the prison open and blows all the chains off all the prisoners, not just Paul and Silas, and here's what happened in acts 1627. The jailer who happened to be a Roman soldier awoke and seeing the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself.

Supposing for sure that the prisoners had escaped. Now why was this Roman soldier to kill himself. What we just read it. He was sure the prisoners had run away any new that if that it happened.

His superiors were going to kill them anyway. We figured he save them the trouble and kill himself, and this is why Paul cried out and said don't hurt yourself, for we are all here. The point I want us to see is that this idea that if you lost your prisoner is a Roman soldier you were executed. This was not an antiquated law that nobody ever practiced anymore. This was real.

This happened in the days of Christ. And so, in light of this, do we really think that a group of unarmed women and fishermen could've gotten past these battle hardened Roman soldiers who knew that their life was on the line when it came to guarding the body of Jesus. Do we really think that these women and fishermen could've stolen his body from under the nose of this Roman guard him possible and preposterous no way that could happen. Which leads me to my second piece of compelling evidence, and that is the evidence of Jesus's enemy. You know it when the message that Jesus had risen from the dead began to spread through Jerusalem. The rabbis were determined to stop it at any cost at all started this effort of bears to stop the minute I get the message of the resurrection. It all started the very day Jesus rose from the dead. Matthew 28 says then the rabbis gave the soldiers that is the ones who were guarding the tomb a great sum of money and said, tell people that his disciples came at night and stole his body away while you were sleeping say well I thought if that happened. They'd all get killed look. The rabbis go on to say, and if word gets back to Pilate. We will satisfy him will bribe him or something and we will keep you out of trouble, but it didn't stop there even after Jesus had ascended back into heaven. Acts chapter 4 verse one. The Bible says as Peter and John were speaking to the crowd. The rabbis were greatly disturbed because they Peter and John were preaching Jesus and his resurrection from the dead, so they arrested Peter and John twice and they beat Peter and John twice and they commanded Peter and John twice never to mention the resurrection again course, Peter and John didn't pay any attention to them, but I asked myself the question, why did these rabbis have to spend all this money with the Roman soldiers. Why did they have to go through all this political headache with the followers of Jesus, why didn't they just go to Jesus's tomb roll away the rock pull his decaying dead body out of the tomb, put it on a cart and rolled through the streets of Jerusalem for every body to say if they did that Veneto it's over that there is no resurrection to preach, so why didn't they do it folks the answer is, there was nobody in that tomb for them to go get and put on a cart and rolled through the city and we've already agreed. Why that no human being could of gotten into that to pass those Roman soldiers so if no human stole the body, but there was nobody, then how in the world can we explain that other than the resurrection piece of compelling evidence, number three is the compelling evidence of the eyewitnesses who saw the risen Christ with their own eyes, listen to what Paul says in first Corinthians 15 he says, for I delivered to you the message that I also received that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was very and that he was raised again on the third day according to the Scriptures watch and that he was what's the next word come born.

That was so weak on and that he was seeing thank you by Peter and then by the 12 apostles and after that he was seen by over 500 brethren at once, most of whom are still alive.

Hey, it's almost a ghost. Paul, as though Paul is saying, look, if you don't believe me the last one of these 500 people that saw him, and they'll tell you the same thing.

Why in the world would Paul issue a challenge like that, if not all 500 people had seen Christ but Paul doesn't stop there.

He keeps going, he says, and after that he the risen Christ was seeing by James then by all the apostles and last of all he was seen by me.

You know this week.

I spent some time going through some books on evidence that are used in law schools around the country today and there were a lot of interesting stuff in there but I was particularly interested in their comments about eyewitness testimony and what I found is that there's a growing trend of to minimize eyewitness testimony today for two reasons. Number one because it's often contradictory, and number two because DNA testing has overruled eyewitness testimony in a number of cases, but I did notice this, that in all of these books, they were talking about 1234 eyewitnesses, whose testimony disagreed with one another to start with. Never in those books did they ever talk about more than 500 eyewitnesses whose testimonies all agreed with one another. I don't know if you ever heard of Bayes theorem. It's a mathematical formula that calculates how likely it is what the probability is that an event really happen. I want to put the formula up on the screen for you.

There is an see in this formula the T stands for the number of eyewitness accounts that agree with one another and as I'm sure you can easily see from the formula. The higher T is the greater the probability that the event really happened. You catch that from the formula know will I don't either, but that's what they say right now Dr. John DePaulo of Western Michigan University. He understands this formula go. He wrote an article entitled, and I gotta take a deep breath. Here's his article a Bayesian analysis of the cumulative effects of independent eyewitness testimony of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and in this article Dr. deposed says and I quote from the New Testament. One can count as many as 500 and 1C eyewitnesses to the resurrection. He goes on to say. Given such a number of independent witnesses testifying that an event incurred the probability that this event did indeed happen goes up exponentially and become say the next three words with me close to certain" you say, are long but look what if all these people were lying on the what if they were all running a scam or what if this was all just a big conspiracy is not possible. While the answer is no, it's not because of compelling piece of evidence number four and that is the compelling evidence of the eyewitnesses martyrdom. I hope you know that not a single eyewitness of Jesus's resurrection ever recanted their testimony for Jesus had risen from the dead. As a matter of fact, most of them died as martyrs rather than recant their testimony.

James was martyred by Herod. Acts chapter 12 Stephen was martyred. Acts chapter 7, Thomas was martyred in India. John Mark was martyred in Egypt. Philip was martyred in Turkey, Matthew was martyred in Ethiopia. The apostle Paul was beheaded by Emperor Nero in Rome in 66 A.D. and Nero also crucified Peter upside down in Rome on the very same year, but it wasn't just the apostle. It was these other eyewitnesses that were just ordinary people like you and me.

Listen to what the Roman historian Tacitus says writing about the history of Rome under Emperor Nero and I quote he said Christians were crucified or set on fire so that when darkness came. They burned like porches in the night" the folks people do not do this for scale. People do not do this for a hoax. Sooner or later. Self-preservation takes over and somebody breaks somebody squeals somebody cracks somebody turns on the nightly policy and law and order right. You know how this works but isn't it interesting that Peter and James and Matthew and Paul and hundreds of other early Christians refused to turn. They refused to crack because they were running a con.

They were not making this up. They had really seen the risen Christ and they were willing to die rather than deny. So let's summarize compelling evidence for the resurrection well piece number one is the evidence of the Roman soldiers, which makes human tampering with Jesus's body impossible, then number two. There's the evidence of Jesus his enemies who could've stopped Christianity dead in its tracks by simply producing Jesus's dead body, but they didn't because they couldn't then add number three there is the evidence of the eyewitnesses hundreds of whom agreed they had seen the risen Christ, and finally, the evidence of their martyrdom and their willingness to die rather than recant their testimony that they had seen the risen Lord. Now cannot prove to you in a test tube that the resurrection of Jesus Christ took place know I can't but cannot give you such a preponderance of evidence that even Judge Judy would be convinced yes I can, and as a matter of fact I just did praise the Lord. Amen are good, now let me take you back to the promise about the afterlife that Jesus made at the very beginning of this message. Remember what he said that awesome promise. He said he who believes in me shall live in the afterlife. Even if he dies here on earth.

If they belong me. There's lots of religions and lots of religious leaders. They make great promises about the afterlife.

I mean Buddhism does Islam gauze Mormonism does.

Scientology does.

Hinduism does have we know who's right friends. He answers real simple, who rose from the dead and who didn't. Mohammed did not rise from the dead. Buddha did not rise from the dead L Ron Hubbard did not rise from the dead. Joseph Smith did not rise from the dead. Jesus rose from the dead and then listen to what the Bible says about this.

At 17 it says God has given proof by raising him Jesus from the dead proof about what will prove to also already believed any that we are not following some kind of cleverly devised conspiracy and proof to those of us who are considering believing in him that Jesus is the right way to God and that he can backup every promise he made about the afterlife because he's alive in the afterlife to make sure those promises come true.

Listen to me. Follow a dead Savior and you'll end up just like him. We don't have a dead Savior, a man we have a living Savior for living Savior who said he who believes in me shall live in the afterlife, even if they die here on earth because I'm alive in the afterlife to make sure it happens. Friends follow a living Savior and you'll end up just like him. Praise God for that. Yeah, and this is what we want to give you the opportunity to do right here today we want to give you the opportunity to switch from following a dead Savior Autocare who that Savior is over religion that Savior started and by the way, may I remind you our own human works. Our own human effort, our own real at religious activity. Those are dead Savior's tutor not going anywhere. We want to give you