A police officer in a small town stopped a motorist who was speeding down Main Street.
“But officer,” the man began, “I can explain.”
“Just be quiet,” snapped the officer. “I’m going to let you cool your heels in jail until the chief gets back.”
“But, officer, I just wanted to say—,”
“I said to keep quiet! You’re going to jail!”
A few hours later the officer looked in on his prisoner and said, “Lucky for you that the chief’s at his daughter’s wedding. He’ll be in a good mood when he gets back.”
“Don’t count on it,” answered the fellow in the cell. “I’m the groom.”
Never did soldiers have so hopeless an assignment. To keep Jesus in the tomb! It would be funny if it were not so tragic.”Senseless sentinels.”
For, unknown to them, what seemed to be a routine assignment was soon to witness the greatest event in the history of the world. Unknown to them even now two angels from realms of glory were winging their way to proclaim, “He is not here: for He is risen . . . “ (Matthew 28:6).
Three declarations tell the story of the “senseless sentinels.”:
Voice of prohibition - Jesus must not rise!
Voice of prejudice - Jesus did not rise!
Voice of proclamation - Jesus is risen!
Voice of prohibition - Jesus must not rise! (Matt. 27:62-66)
This is the voice of “the chief priests and Pharisees.”
What strange bedfellows! The chief priests (Sadducees) and the Pharisees were as widely separated as the poles on just about any issue that you might imagine.
Perhaps the greatest difference revolved about the resurrection of the dead. The Sadducees, being rationalists and materialists, denied it. The Pharisees, being literalists and spiritual, affirmed it. (cf. Acts. 23:6-10) Yet it was this very doctrine that brought them together.
“the chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate.” (Matt. 27:62) Why? To prevent the resurrection of Jesus.
Now, it is understandable why the Sadducees wanted to prevent it. But one would think that the Pharisees would be all for it. Not so. Why, then, this strange coalition? Because of their mutual prejudice with respect to the deity of Jesus. For it was this very sign of His resurrection on the third day that Jesus had given when they demanded a sign of His deity. (Matt. 12:23, 40)
The Deity of Christ
18 Then answered the Jews and said unto him, What sign showest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things?
19 Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.
20 Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days?
21 But he spake of the temple of his body.
22 When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said. (John 2:18-22)
“Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh;” (Rom 1:3)
“And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead:” (Rom 1:4)
So, they forgot their differences in the face of their common problem. They must prove that Jesus is not the Son of God. Consequently, by hook or crook, he must not rise from the dead. So they asked Pilate for a guard. “Until the third day.”
Pilate granted their request. “You have a watch . . . make it as sure as you can.”
The voice of Prohibition - Jesus must not rise!
2nd, Voice of Prejudice - “ Jesus did not rise” (Matt 28:12-15)
Consider the voice of prejudice. It says “Jesus did not rise.” This is the voice of the Sadducees. Despite the “senseless sentinels” Jesus did rise.
When the soldiers reported to the chief priests the fact of the resurrection of Jesus, they took counsel, bribed the soldiers, and promised them immunity to tell the story that Jesus’ disciples stole His body while they slept.
This conspiracy view lacks credibility for several reasons:
1. It assumes, contrary to their unimaginative minds and good character, that the disciples were clever plotters.
2. Furthermore it is implausible to suppose that universal agreement could be maintained among all the disciples without the story eventually unraveling. (David Hale; Web Hubble)
How do we know that Jesus was resurrected? We have the eyewitness accounts of the eleven apostles who were with Him, and of course, the apostle Paul who saw Him. They were with Him before His crucifixion and for the forty days between His resurrection and His ascension. They lived for as long as forty years afterwards, never once denying that they had seen Jesus raised from the dead.
How does this relate to Watergate? In June 1972, I was home on a weekend with my wife and children. We had a few days off because President Nixon was in Key Biscayne, Florida. My phone that was connected to the White House rang. It was John Ehrlichman. He told me that someone had broken into the Democratic National Headquarters in Washington. I started laughing and thought to myself, “Of all the ridiculous places for anybody to break into in Washington, D.C..”
I went away from that phone call shaking my head and feeling a little despair. I thought, “Now we have a campaign issue, but it will go away after the election.” Well, as you know, it did not!
The log showed that in the months immediately following the 1972 election, I was with President Nixon more than any other aide. Watergate never came up. We first started to discuss it in February 1973, when the Ervin hearings started. On March 21, 1973, John Dean walked into the Oval Office and said, “Mr. President, there is a cancer growing in your presidency.” That is the first time the President really knew there was a conspiracy in the White House.
John Dean’s memoirs record that three days after that meeting in the Oval Office he began to get nervous about his own role. That is when he hired a lawyer. On April 8, Dean went to the prosecutors to bargain for immunity so that he would not be prosecuted. In turn, he would testify against the President. Later, he said, “I did it to save my own skin.” When he went to the prosecutors to bargain for immunity, it was all over.
Then the other aides started to go in. I took a lie detector test, and my lawyers leaked it to the New York Times. Everybody started to scramble for cover. The Watergate coverup was actually over because Mr. Nixon’s presidency was doomed. Now, if you stop and figure it out, you will see that the Watergate coverup actually lasted three weeks or less—from March 21 to April 8, 1973.
Now put yourself in our position. Here we were, the twelve most powerful men in the United States. All the power of government was at our fingertips, but we could not keep a lie together for three weeks. The most powerful men in the world could not hold onto a lie. So weak is man that we could not do it.
Are you going to tell me that those powerless apostles who were outcasts in their own land could be stoned, persecuted, and beaten, some for forty years, never once denying that Jesus was raised from the dead? Impossible, humanly impossible—unless they had seen the risen Christ face to face. Otherwise, the apostle Peter would have been just another John Dean.
Is it likely then, that a deliberate coverup, a plot to perpetuate a lie about the resurrection, could have survived the persecution of the apostles and the purge of the first-century believers who were cast by the thousands to the lions for refusing to renounce Christ? Is it not probable that at least one apostle would have “confessed” rather than being beheaded or stoned? Is it not likely that some “smoking gun” document might have been produced exposing the “Passover plot?” Surely one of the conspirators would have made a deal.
If Jesus was raised from the dead, as I am absolutely, intellectually positive that He was—and the evidence of history is overwhelming—it’s not only a matter of faith but a matter of deepest intellectual conviction.
—Charles Colson, Loving God
3. The radical change in the disciples after the resurrection also shows thy did not steal the body but were transformed by seeing Jesus alive. Previously they had fled for fear of being caught. They fled when Jesus was captured in the garden. Peter denied Him three times. After the crucifixion the fearful disciples hid themselves in an upper room and locked the doors. But something happened that changed them (1 Cor. 15:5-7).
4. This security unit was a fighting machine. If the disciples had tried anything, it would have been a “six-second war.” One soldier could have dealt with the entire group of disciples. He could have single-handedly sent them running for cover.
5. If the body actually had been stolen, the soldiers would have been disciplined for sleeping on duty.
One way a guard was put to death was by being stripped of his clothes, then burned alive in a fire started with the garments. Dr. George Curie, who studied carefully the military discipline of the Romans, wrote that fear of punishment “produced flawless attention to duty, especially in the night watches.”
6. And if the Roman guard had fallen asleep, how could they have known it was “the disciples who had stolen the body”? Never in history has a witness been allowed to testify to what transpired while he was asleep. How would they know if asleep?
The Case of the Missing Cow
A big city lawyer was called in on a case between a farmer and a large railroad company. A farmer noticed that his prize cow was missing from the field through which the railroad passed. He filed suit against the railroad company for the value of the cow. The case was to be tried before the justice of the peace in the back room of the general store. The attorney immediately cornered the farmer and tried to get him to settle out of court. The lawyer did his best selling job, and the farmer finally agreed to take half of what he was claiming to settle the case. After the farmer signed the release and took the check, the young lawyer couldn’t help but gloat a little over his success. He said to the farmer, “You know, I hate to tell you this but I put one over on you in there. I couldn’t have won the case. The engineer was asleep and the fireman was in the caboose when the train went through your farm that morning. I didn’t have one witness to put on the stand.”
The old farmer replied, “Well, I’ll tell you, young feller, I was a little worried about winning that case myself because that silly cow came home this morning!”
7. And, finally, stealing a dead body is one thing; giving it life is another. This hypothesis does not explain the twelve appearances of this same body over the next forty days to over five hundred people.
Their official explanation amounted to an admission that the sepulcher was indeed vacant.
Dr. Paul Maier says,
Where did Christianity first begin? To this answer must be: “Only one spot on earth – the city of Jerusalem.” But this is the very last place it could have started if Jesus’ tomb remained occupied, since anyone producing a dead Jesus would have driven a wooden stake through the heart of an incipient Christianity inflamed by His supposed resurrection.
What happened in Jerusalem seven weeks after the first Easter could have taken place only if Jesus’ body were somehow missing from Joseph’s tomb, for otherwise the Temple establishment. . . would simply have aborted the movement by making a brief trip over to the sepulcher of Joseph of Arimathea and unveiling exhibit A. They did not do this, because they knew the tomb was empty. Their official explanation for it – that the disciples had stolen the body – was an admission that the sepulcher was indeed vacant. . . .
There are both Jewish and Roman sources and traditions that acknowledge an empty tomb. These sources range from the Jewish historian Josephus to a compilation of fifth-century Jewish writings called the Toledoth Jeshu. Maier calls this “positive evidence from a hostile source, which is the strongest kind of historical evidence. In essence, this means that if a source admits a fact decidedly not in its favor, then that fact is genuine.”
In the face of the facts of the resurrection of Jesus, how can one explain the attitude of the Sadducees? You may reply that the Sadducees were rationalists and materialists. And that is true, for they claimed so to be. But will this stand up under examination?
A materialist is one who ignores the spiritual, saying, “I believe what I see.”
A rationalist is one who lives by reason. He begins with one fact and reasons from that to another.
Had the Sadducees lived by these definitions they would have been brought to an acceptance of the bodily resurrection of Jesus. They had the fact of:
▸ Jesus’ prophecy of His resurrection on the 3rd day
▸ the fact of His death
▸ the occupied and sealed tomb
▸ the fact of the report of the soldiers.
But there is no record that they ever examined the evidence. As materialists they could have seen the empty tomb. They could have handled the grave clothes lying in orderly fashion. But they did none of these things.
When Paul said that after His resurrection Christ “was seen,” (I Cor. 15:15), he used a word meaning to see with the natural eye, not some spiritual vision. We are not mystical.
We have physical evidence for the resurrection. “Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie, and the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself. Then went in also that other disciple, which came first to the sepulchre, and he saw, and believed.” (John 20:6-8)
Peter “theoreo” G. Campbell Morgan “suggests far more than mere seeing. It means that he looked critically and carefully.
John “eido” = “This word, while describing the use of the eyes always conveys the idea of comprehension and understanding of the thing seen.” Intelligent comprehension produced absolute conviction.
A.T. Robertson “This deliberate folding of his head cloth indicates a physical act of a physical body convincing John of Resurrection.”
We’re not sure how or where they were laying- resulted in Johns belief.
Laying or Lying:
Two men got into an animated argument over which is right, grammatically, to say, “The hen is setting,” or “The hen is sitting.” Each contended that he was right, and both showed a ready disposition to prove he was right with fistic blows. Finally reason obtained. They agreed to go to Farmer Brown, and put the question to him. Hearing the matter, Farmer Brown guffawed heartily. Then, he said rather contemptuously, “Men, when I see a hen in such a position on a nest, I don’t ask whether she is sitting, or setting. I only ask, ‘Is she Laying, or is she Lying?”
I don’t know how the clothes were laying but they weren’t lying about the resurrection.
Thomas was the true materialist. “I wont believe till I see and touch.” What was his response when he examined the evidence? “My Lord and My God!”
The Sadducees claimed to be a materialist who is one who ignores the spiritual, saying, “I believe what I see.” and a rationalist, who is one who lives by reason. He begins with one fact and reasons from that to another.
The Sadducees were antisupernaturalists. They say that the dead do not rise again. Therefore Jesus did not rise.
▸ The empty tomb? The dead do not rise.
▸ The report of the soldiers? The dead do not rise.
▸ The transformed disciples. The dead do not rise.
▸ The church? The dead do not rise.
▸ Two thousand years of Christian history? The dead do not rise.
▸ Transformed men? The dead do not rise.
And so their resolute antagonism to the truth persuaded them that their antagonism was the truth, and the truth itself, a lie.
We can trace modern antisupernaturalism through Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677) who was dogmatic about the impossibility of miracles.
Perhaps the most enduring argument against miracles came a century after Spinoza from the skeptic David Hume. Josh McDowell:
There is an attitude that surfaces repeatedly when exploring history. It is what I call the “Hume hangover.” He said, Anything that is unique so far as normal human experience is concerned — such as a miracle — should be rejected.
David Strauss came along and wrote a desupernaturalized version of the life of Christ. He concluded emphatically: “We may summarily reject all miracles, prophecies, narratives of angels and demons, and the like, as simply impossible and irreconcilable with the known and universal laws which govern the course of events.”
Frenchman Ernest Renan denounced the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He admitted to starting his research of Christ’s life with the assumption, “There is no such thing as a miracle. Therefore the resurrection did not take place.” Renan’s conclusion about Christ’s resurrection was not based upon historical inquiry but rather upon philosophical speculation.
This mind set resembles that of the man who said, “I have made up my mind — don’t confuse me with the facts.”
The results of antisupernaturalism are best demonstrated in Thomas Jefferson, who literally cut all the miracles out of the Gospels. The truncated version of the life of Christ was published after Jefferson’s death as “The Jefferson Bible.” It ends abruptly after Jesus death with these words: “Now, in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid. There laid they Jesus, and rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed.”
Such is the result of denying miracles. It leaves us with a sealed tomb and an empty hope for a resurrected life to come.
Rationalism? Materialism? Prejudice would be a better word.
In the science of the interpretation of scripture there is the word exegesis. It means to draw out of scripture that which is in it. But there is another word eisegesis, which means to put into a passage of scripture a pre-judged opinion. Alas, how often we eisegete when we claim to exegete!
What would happen if you took a rationalistic and materialistic approach to the evidence of the bodily resurrection of Christ.
A lawyer, Frank Morison, set out to refute the evidence for the resurrection. He thought that the life of Jesus was one of the most beautiful lives ever lived, but when it came to the resurrection he thought someone had come along and tacked a myth onto the story of Jesus. He planned to write an account of the last few days of Jesus. He would of course disregard the resurrection. He figured that an intelligent, rational approach to Jesus would completely discount his resurrection. However, upon approaching the facts with his legal background and training, he had to change his mind. He eventually wrote the best-seller, Who Moved the Stone? The first chapter was titled, “The Book That Refused to Be Written,” and the rest of the chapters deal decisively with the evidence for Christ’s resurrection.
The Sunday School Times related an appropriate illustration: Robert Ingersoll, the renowned atheist of a generation ago, was riding on a train with his friend and associate, Lew Wallace. As they approached the sprawling city of St. Louis, Missouri, they were discussing Ingersoll’s current lecture tour, during which he openly attacked man’s belief in God.
“Wallace, look at all those church steeples in St. Louis. Such a waste of money! You and I both know that Christ did not really exist. Someone should tell the masses how foolish it is to worship a myth.”
“It is a shame,” agreed Wallace.
“Lew, why don’t you write a book and prove to the world once and for all that Jesus Christ was nothing but a mythical figure, much less the Son of God?” Ingersoll suggested.
“All right,” Wallace replied, “I believe I will.”
Lew Wallace spent much time and money investigating every shred of evidence that he could find. He read numerous books. He examined many ancient manuscripts. He visited the Holy Land. He read the Bible.
Something strange happened to Lew Wallace. The more he studied, the more evidence he discovered to support Christ’s existence. He searched more intently and more reverently. The evidence became ir-refutable. He concluded that Jesus Christ was one of the best documented figures of history. Furthermore, Wallace believed He must have been the Son of God.
Lew Wallace accepted Christ as his personal Saviour. He did write a book about Jesus, but its message was altogether different from his preconceived notions. Anyone who has read Ben Hur can appreciate Wallace’s thorough research and deep, reverent spirit in search of the historical Jesus.
Lew Wallace was not the first, nor will he be the last, of those who have attempted to disprove Jesus Christ. He was not the first or last to encounter the living Christ through his honest and exhaustive search.
The novel won for its author both national acclaim and literary immortality. But more importantly, Wallace stated that its writing brought him to a “conviction amounting to absolute belief in God and the divinity of Christ,” winning for him a far greater immortality than his literary fame would ever give him.
By the age of thirteen Lew Wallace had been branded as “wicked and destined for hanging.” David Wallace, a prominent Indiana politician, had diligently labored to provide a superior education for his three sons, and the two older boys, William and Edward, had proved to be exceptional students. But the youngest, Lew, was unlike his brothers. He cared little for formal education. To him the classroom was a tedious confinement, a place of stifling boredom. He later recalled, “My name was idleness except that I read—every moment that I was still, I was reading.” In the world of literature young Wallace found life intriguing. Tales of historical romance and military heroism enthralled him and he eagerly left his schoolwork for the realm of fantasy. His quest for adventure led to habitual truancy as he often slipped away from the schoolhouse to scout out the surrounding countryside. He remembered, “I ran wild in the great woods of my native state [Indiana]. I hunted, fished, went along, slept with my dog, was happy, and came out with a healthy constitution.” Although this knowledge and both popularity and wealth. As the work progressed, he decided to extend the plot, using the story of the magi as an introduction. The major conflict Was to be between a young Jew and a Roman.
Initially, the plot development was painstaking. But in 1876, en route to Indianapolis to attend a military conference, Wallace encountered Colonel Robert Ingersoll, a noted lecturer who had acquired the exaggerated label of “The Great Agnostic.” One evening as Wallace walked through the corridor of the train, Ingersoll opened the door to his quarters and addressed this passerby, “Come in. I feel like talking.”
“Well,” said Wallace, “If you let me dictate the subject I will come in.”
“Certainly. That is exactly what I meant.”
Wallace entered, sat down, and began: “Is there a God?”
“I don’t know,” replied Ingersoll; “do you?”
“Is there a devil?”
“I don’t know; do you?”
“Is there a heaven?”
“I don’t know; do you?”
“Is there a hell?”
“1 don’t know; do you?”
Wallace then stated, “There, Colonel, you have the text; now begin.”
They conversed for the remainder of the trip, bantering about well-known “myths” resurrected from childhood memories. Wallace later recalled: “He [Ingersoll] was in a prime mood; his manner of putting things was marvelous; I sat spellbound listening to a medley of wit, satire, audacity, irreverence, and pungent excoriation of believers In God, Christ, heaven, the like of which 1 have never heard.”
The two men parted upon arriving at Indianapolis But the conversation had erased all else from Wallace’s mind and he remained pensive. The interview brought a new perspective to his work. As he walked toward his place of lodging, he thought of the reams of material that had already been written about Christ and His mission. How much of this material was factual? At what point did these literary “facts” evolve into fiction? How could he differentiate between the two In his novel; indeed, how would he find out what the truth was? By the time he had reached his destination, he had come to a decision. He would search the Scriptures and find answers to his questions. When he had satisfied his own mind, he would rework his present novel into a reply to Ingersoll’s clever repartee.
This decision not only changed Wallace’s story, but his life as well. Several years later he published his reply—the American classic Ben-Hur. He stated that the purpose of his novel was that those reading it “might evolve one of the most powerful arguments for the divinity of Christ.” For in the study of the Scripture he had deduced that “mankind was so debased as to be past salvation except by direct interposition of the Almighty.”
The novel won for its author both national acclaim and literary immortality. But more importantly, Wallace stated that its writing brought him to a “conviction amounting to absolute belief in God and the divinity of Christ,” winning for him a far greater immortality than his literary fame would ever give him.
—The Man Who Wrote Ben-Hur by Ashley Brooks. This article appeared in the February, 1979, issue of FAITH for the Family magazine.
The Voice of Prohibition—Jesus must not rise!
The Voice of Prejudice—Jesus did not rise!
THE VOICE OF PROCLAMATION—Jesus is Risen! (Matt. 28:6)
We have here the changing of the guard!
The voice of truth says, “Jesus is risen.” This is the voice of the angels. It is the voice of the messengers of God. The “senseless sentinels” did their best. They sealed the tomb. They set a watch. But God overruled. Even while they stood guard before the sealed tomb, Jesus already had risen from the dead.
“He is risen, as he said. Come see the place where the Lord lay.” (Matt. 28:6). See where he lay, not where he lies.
But modern sentinels, knowing the fact and significance of the empty tomb, still march back and forth to deny the fact. But as they march they march not with, but across, the course of history. Prohibition could not keep Jesus in the tomb. Prejudice may deny that the tomb is empty. But neither prohibition nor prejudice can put our living Lord back into the tomb. For the message of God eternally is “He is not here: for he is risen . . .”
In 1957, Lieutenant David Steeves walked out of the California Sierras 54 days after his Air Force trainer jet had disappeared. He related an unbelievable tale of how he had lived in a snowy wilderness after parachuting from his disabled plane. By the time he showed up alive, he had already been declared officially dead. When further search failed to turn up the wreckage, a hoax was suspected and Steeves was forced to resign under a cloud of doubt. His story was confirmed, however, more than 20 years later when a troop of Boy Scouts discovered the wreckage of his plane.
Another “survival story” from centuries ago is still controversial. A man by the name of Jesus Christ walked out of the wilderness making claims a lot of people found difficult to believe. he was later executed and pronounced dead. But 3 days later, He showed up alive. And there have been skeptics ever since.
But consider the facts of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. His integrity is well-founded.
▸ Prophets foretold His coming.
▸ Miracles supported His deity.
▸ Eyewitnesses verified His resurrection.
▸ And today the Holy Spirit confirms that Jesus is alive to anyone who is seeking to know the truth.
Yes, you can believe it! Do you? —MRDII
THE RESURRECTION IS A FACT OF HISTORY
THAT DEMANDS A RESPONSE OF FAITH
