Ankerberg Show

Narrator: Did anyone ever tell you that there are 12 historical facts that verify Jesus literally rose from the dead? And did you know that these 12 historical facts are accepted as true by over 90 percent of the most influential New Testament historical scholars in the world today? It’s true. So my question to you is, would you be interested in hearing what these 12 historical facts are?

My guest today is Dr. Gary Habermas, one of the world's most respected and well-known scholars on the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Professor Habermas holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Michigan State University in history and philosophy of religion, and he is the chairman of the Department of Philosophy at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. He is also the author, co-author, or editor of over 40 books. So we invite you to join us for this special edition of the John Ankerberg Show to hear these 12 historical facts that show Jesus literally rose from the dead.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Welcome to our program. I’m John Ankerberg and my honored guest is the prestigious Gary Habermas. He’s a professor of philosophy and one of the world's best-known scholars and researchers on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Gary is talking to people that are skeptics about religion, about Jesus, about the Bible, who say they don't want to have anything to do with that. Would it make a difference to you if we presented to you 12 historical facts about Jesus' resurrection that are accepted by almost 95 percent of the greatest scholars around the world?

Gary’s working on a book that’s already close to 5,000 pages, but what he’s doing is he’s been tracking since 1975 the scholars and what they believe about these facts. He’s showing that these scholars that are in charge of New Testament departments all around the world—from Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Dartmouth, you name it—the fact is these scholars accept these facts as historical facts that you can show through sources. Not necessarily through Bible verses, but through Roman sources, Greek sources, all kinds of sources, as well as sources that they will accept are reliable information that come from certain parts of the New Testament books that we’ll explain as we go along.

Now, I just want to do a quick review of where we’re at to bring you up to date if you missed these first few weeks, and then we’re going to continue with these 12 facts. Fact number one about Jesus' resurrection that is accepted by all the scholars around the world, 95 percent of them: Jesus died by crucifixion. Number two, Jesus was buried in a tomb. Number three, his death caused the disciples to despair and lose hope.

Number four, his tomb was found empty on the third day. Now that's the most contested. We’ve talked about that before. That's about 75 percent of the scholars who believe that one. Reasons, but it's coming up. It used to be only 15 percent, now it's up to 75. Number five, the disciples had experiences which they believed were literal appearances of the risen Jesus to them. And as a result, number six, the disciples were transformed from doubters to bold proclaimers.

Number seven, the resurrection was the central early message that was preached in the very city of Jerusalem where the events happened, where the people saw Jesus murdered on the cross. How in the world could that be unless it actually happened? Number eight, the disciples and Christian leaders preached the message of Jesus' resurrection in that city. Number nine, as a result, the church was born and grew.

Number 10, orthodox Jews who believed in Christ made Sunday their primary day of worship. In other words, they changed from Saturday to Sunday. Why? Because those that had believed in Christ that were Jews became Christians and they worshipped Jesus on the day that he rose from the dead. Number 11, James, who was the brother of Jesus, and all of Jesus' life, James did not believe in Jesus. He was not a follower of Jesus. He was a skeptic.

James was converted to the faith when he saw the resurrected Jesus. In other words, Jesus appeared to his brother and he became the leader of the Jerusalem church. And then number 12, a guy by the name of Paul, who was convinced that the Christians were wrong. After Jesus was crucified and rose and you had Pentecost, he was determined that Jesus was wrong and he was given permission to go out and hunt down and if possible kill these Christians to get rid of them.

And on the road to Damascus, about two years after Jesus was crucified, all of a sudden, this guy who was killing Christians, the risen Jesus appears to him and he is completely converted and transformed and becomes the one that is the great apostle that goes across preaching to the entire Roman Empire. So those are our 12 facts. We’ve got three that we want to cover today and give you historical background on it. Let's start with the fact the church was born and grew, and orthodox Jews who believed in Christ made Sunday their primary day of worship. Give me the background here.

Dr. Gary Habermas: I’ll give you the contrary view first. A lot of critics think the Christians said on the first day of the week, or the third day, however you want to count it. But they think that in the Old Testament, the third day is sometimes used as a day of redemption. So maybe that was a theological conclusion, not a historical conclusion. Now, one thing to note, that view that this was not a historical conclusion came during the day and the influence of Rudolf Bultmann and those who didn't find very much history.

He was quite skeptical. He's famous for a one-liner where he says basically all we can know about Jesus is that he was a first-century itinerant Jewish preacher who preached the kingdom of God, died for it, and then later he said his disciples thought they saw him later. He said that’s basically all we can use. He was very skeptical. This came during that age. But when you look at the data, the sources over and over, early sources, these same early ones we're talking about out-of-the-gate sources say third day, first day of the week.

It shows up in the earliest proclamations. For example, very early in the New Testament, they're worshipping on Sunday. Now if the third day/first day, same day, if that was a "the third day we will be blessed by God," if it's a blessed kind of conclusion from the Old Testament, why are they actually physically worshipping on Sunday? That definitely favors the view that this was an historical event that said like Jesus, so are we.

One interesting point in the book of John, when Thomas, the famous story that doubting Thomas wasn't there, it says eight days later because in the you go after a week after Easter. Well, on the Jewish calculation, that is a any part of a day counts a whole day, it's the next Sunday. But even when Thomas gets together, that’s still the next Sunday. That's how early it was. So we've got pretty good data that that third day/first day equals that Sunday, and the people who were doing it were orthodox Jewish believers who accepted Jesus as the Messiah.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Ask any Jewish person today if you were to convert, would it be a big deal for all of a sudden you telling your relatives, "I’m going to be going to church on Sunday"? That's a big deal. You have to have a real solid reason for doing it. Well, of course persecution breaks out about the same time, so that also shows the response. Now we get to two of the biggies, and that is the fact that Jesus' own brother, which first of all you got to say all of his life he's doing miracles, he's raising the dead, he's healing the people that are blind from birth, people that can't walk, he’s healing diseases of all kinds, and there’s his brother watching all of this.

And one time he comes over and he says, "Jesus, why don't you go up to Jerusalem and do your stuff up there?" and it's really implying the fact that I think you’re nuts and the fact that if you go up there they'll kill you then we'll get rid of you. So this is his brother. And all of a sudden in that First Corinthians 15 passage where Paul is listing the people that Jesus appears to, and it's an early summary of eyewitnesses, he includes James. Talk about this.

Dr. Gary Habermas: This is super interesting. We have this phrase again, multiple independent attestation. We have at least three sources that report this event. Mark is really kind of strong. In Mark chapter three, there's only a very few dissenting scholars in the world who don't want to accept this, but basically what it says is that the family—it's not just the brothers, it actually says family—and I’ll just throw this out there, Mary, mother is listed and you’re thinking was she having doubts or were they simply listing her as the family members?

But they're there and they're kind of offended that he's coming to town. The Greek in Mark 3 indicates that the family thought Jesus was out of his mind. Out of his mind, you're embarrassing us, why don't you move on? That's pretty strong. John lists it and John’s independent from the first three we call the synoptics. John 7. Then we have a little book, a really neat book called the Gospel to the Hebrews, a Hebrew gospel that is post-canonical.

It's often dated about 125 AD, which is like 25 years after the Gospel of John, and it actually narrates the story of Jesus coming to his brother when you said, "Hey bro, it's me." It actually narrates this quaint little scene. It's very brief, but Jesus breaks bread with James and you break bread, you can see the scars, it's right there, and James becomes a believer. It's pretty neat.

Dr. John Ankerberg: James is completely transformed and becomes the leader of the Jerusalem church, the very city where Jesus was killed, and later is martyred himself, which is recorded by Josephus. Tough stuff. All right, and then we get down to probably the most important fact here and it's this guy that is Saul of Tarsus. Talk about his background, talk about what he was up to, when he got converted, what happened, and then some of the things that happened through his life.

Dr. Gary Habermas: Sure. I list them separately because they're very different people. James is the strange kind of skeptic when you live in a family with the person. I mean, can you imagine these boys when they're teenagers: "Go make your bed." "Why? You don't tell Jesus that. His bed's made." It's just like all these little things. Why is he always he never gets why is he never get time out?

After a while, a person can be kind of bothered by that, that insider, "Oh he’s your favorite, isn't he?" versus the outsider Paul, as we said, basically PhD in Old Testament, a scholar's scholar, energetic, grabs men, women, and children and takes them to the jail at least. He thought he was doing God a favor. He identifies himself as a Pharisee in Philippians chapter three and says that I outstripped my colleagues in terms of zeal and I was just I was gung ho.

So you got a scholar's scholar and you have an insider, "You love him more than me," kind of thing. Two different kinds of people and they both come to Jesus because what happens to these other believers all of a sudden happens to them and it's right there in front of them. And you're right, their testimonies, when you mention the big four in the early church, two of the 12, Peter and John—Paul goes to see Peter and James, the brother of Jesus, in Galatians 1.

In Galatians 2 when he comes back, John’s there. They're the big four. The two others, Paul and James, and the two of the 12, Peter and John. By far the four most influential believers. And by the way, to me the point is these men put themselves in harm's way. We don't have to prove they died for their faith. However, they always go where they got in trouble. Paul keeps doing it over and over and over again.

But anyway, we have first-century sources for the martyrdom of three of them. Paul, Peter, and James. We have first-century sources and so many Christians, it’s almost unanimous among conservative Christians that John is the only one that didn't die as a martyr. Well, that's another subject, but we do have a second-century source that John was martyred. Second century’s not bad in terms of when Bart Ehrman does the history what we can know from Jesus he goes 100 years.

So that’s from roughly 30 AD to 130 AD. So all four of them could very well have been martyred including John. Paul’s with them in Jerusalem. What's the book of Galatians about? This is Galatians 1 and 2. I tell my students Galatians is a short book and here's the theme: Guys, it's all about the gospel. Get it right. Deity, death, resurrection of Jesus. Don't make it bigger; that's anathema. Don't make it smaller; that's heresy.

Get it right. You heard it from me. If anybody preaches a different message, let him be accursed. And then he goes and interviews these guys and in Galatians 2, he specifically says, "Paul, I set before them the gospel I was preaching to see if I was running or had run in vain." And you go, "What? You were checking your gospel out?" And I think Paul would have said, "Hey, I’m just doing the job of a good researcher. I want to make sure we're all on the same page."

Bart Ehrman asks the question, first he says interesting point: "Paul interviewed Peter and James." Pause. "I’d like to interview Peter and James." And then he says, because he rejects the eyewitness authorship of the four gospels unlike Richard Bauckham, but Ehrman says, "Where do we get closer to eyewitness testimony than in Galatians 1 and 2?" That's what Paul brings to the table. Not just that he was a witness to the events, but he talked to the guys who were the most important people in the whole world. He interviewed them.

And by the way, there’s a little Greek word there in Galatians 1, *historesai*, which is often translated the word study, as that he interviewed them. It could even be a little more than that, that he asked them questions, that he was a first-hand reporter. This is early.

Dr. John Ankerberg: In our terms today, what would it mean?

Dr. Gary Habermas: In our terms today, here's how I picture it. Now some might say I’m overdoing it, but here's how I picture it. It's the I lived in Montana for three years. And you're in Montana and there’s a hurricane coming on the East Coast. And you turn on your news and almost every news program's called Eyewitness News. Paul says, "I went there and talked to them." But you picture somebody, and we have our own fellow down on the beaches in Florida, and "How’s the wind?" "It's 70 miles an hour," and he's holding his hair down and you get to see the hurricane.

Well, Paul helps us see these events and who's there. Now that could be overdoing it because the word doesn't mean he was turning over stones and checking archaeological data and carbon dating everything. But it does mean he was asking them questions. What's the theme of the book again? The gospel. And in Galatians 2, he specifically says my topic was the gospel. And how do they respond to him? Just a few verses later, five words in English: "They added nothing to me."

And then in verse 9, Galatians 2:9, they lay hands, they gave Paul and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship and they said, "We’ll keep giving it to the Jews, y'all take it to the Gentiles." And so they were acknowledging Paul and Barnabas’s right to preach the gospel, but more than that, that they were all on the same page. This is an incredible meeting.

Dr. John Ankerberg: This is part of the reason that you say the Paul is the darling of the skeptics of all that you've just said because he starts as an outsider as a guy that's actually killing the Christians after Jesus rose from the dead. He's out there hunting them down and it's two years where he's doing that. And a lot of the scholars say he's hearing some of the things that the Christians believe. He probably heard the very things he's reporting in First Corinthians 15, and then he meets the risen Jesus.

That's the transforming moment in his life. That's what turned him around. And he wasn't too happy when he heard those reports either. "What do you guys think he is, a god? Come on, this is heresy. Have you read, 'Hear o Israel, the Lord your God is one'?" which by the way in First Corinthians 8:6, Paul’s citing one of these creeds which seems, it's a debate that Bauckham’s involved in, this creed seems to have moved Jesus into the Shema because "Hear o Israel the Lord your God" and the person who puts that creed together makes God the Father and Lord is the Son.

And now First Corinthians 8:6 is like a New Testament Shema. I mean, that early they're talking about Jesus like he's moved into the being of God. Well, and in Philippians 2, another one of these creedal passages says he was in the *morphe* of God. He was in the form of God. Now form in English doesn't mean much, but form in Greek, the primary definition is nature. Next verse says he's the same nature of a servant. Nature of God, nature of a servant. That's where we get the God-man. But *morphe* is essence.

And this is early coming out of the gate. What he’s saying is Jesus who being in very essence God. That's it. I mean how high can you say it? And these are that was supposed to be a hymn that they were singing in the church in the first 24 months or earlier. Now we’ve only got about a minute and a half left. The fact is again, I don't want this to be an academic discussion for people that say, "Hey that's really interesting." I want them to get to the bottom line here.

We’re giving you these 12 historical facts because they're historical facts that actually happened. And we have inside and outside sources for all of this and we've got scholars all around the world in some of the most prestigious places say, "Yeah, it's true." Now you can say it's true and that doesn't mean that you're a Christian. What do they have to do, Gary, between the fact of saying, "Yeah, those are great historical facts and yeah Jesus did all that and it was true about him but the fact is I believe that but the fact is I’m still not a Christian"?

Dr. Gary Habermas: Famous verse there in James chapter 2: the demons believe and tremble, but the demons aren't Christians. So what gets you from belief, which we said earlier, belief is not "I believe strawberry ice cream is the best and I believe Jesus is the Son of God." Believe means to take the step of "I do." Both in the epistles by John and Peter, it's called walking in steps. It's a commitment. Jesus said, "If you love me you'll keep my commandments." It's a commitment.

When you say "I do" to somebody in marriage, you don't say, "Oh yeah I took the step of good works." It's not a good works thing; it's a commitment thing. But a commitment involves things where we men make fun of them and call them honey-dos. We know right away that "I do" involves a lifetime and that's what's involved when you choose to follow Christ. And I think the reason it's so serious is you can be convinced somebody would make a good person to whom you could be married in principle. You always have your eyes open if you're single, you know? But saying "I do" is a very serious matter. I don't just say, "Oh that's nice." I say, "Do I want to settle down and do something?" And that's what's involved when you choose to follow Christ.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Have you said "I do" to Jesus, meaning "I’m yours. I not only believe in you, but because I believe in you I will live the way you want me to live"? And here's the good news, is that it's not us doing it in our own power. As you read the New Testament, you'll find out that Jesus gives you the Holy Spirit into your life when you say that and you mean it, and the fact is the Holy Spirit comes into your life and he gives you the strength, the power to start doing the things that Jesus wants you to do.

It's miraculous. It's fantastic. It's wonderful. And I invite you to do that. Now next week we're going to continue and we're going to do this a little bit differently. If Gary was talking to all skeptics and he only had a little bit of time, we're just going to take half of these facts and we're going to do it just a little bit differently. We’re going to call it 6 plus 1. Six facts plus one and we’re going to show you how he does this on a campus or a university campus. And so I hope that you'll join us next week.