Audio restored with Diffio. Diffio processed the original archive recording to reduce noise and produce a cleaner listening version; the original stays available.
Speech quality score (model-estimated, SCOREQ): before 2.02 → restored 4.03
Use the player's Original switch to compare.How Diffio restores old speech recordings
Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen. I wish tonight to put before you some of the evidence for the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. In this series, I began by staking out the claims of Jesus Christ of Nazareth to be God incarnate. And in the second lecture, I argued that those tra- claims were absolutely true, and cited as evidence his character, his miracles, and his death. Tonight, I wish, as I say, to put before you some of the evidence that he rose again from the dead the third day.
And I shall be arguing that his resurrection proves his deity. I want to make the point right away that the evidence should not really be considered in isolated pieces. It is cumulative, and we cannot rightly separate one piece from another piece. But nevertheless, I must admit to you that perhaps of all the evidence that can be offered on this topic, the resurrection is the most crucial piece of evidence.
For the simple reason that if Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead, if he is in fact still but moldering dust in the tomb of Joseph, then there is little or nothing that we can salvage from the wreck of Christianity. He himself said, as presently we shall see, that he would die and rise again the third day. If he did not rise, then we must confess straightway that he was deceived, and deceived in a something that he counted the main plank of his whole system.
And then again, if Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead on the third day, the apostles themselves too are found to be untrue. Paul, you will remember, admits that very thing. Says he, if Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead, then we apostles are found false witnesses, because we have testified that he did so rise the third day. Everywhere the early Christian preachers went, they consistently, and they preached it as the, the main plank in all their gospel, that this Jesus Christ rose again.
And it is evident from their writings that when they said he rose from the dead, they meant that he literally rose. They did not mean that his influence survived, or that his memory remained particularly strong in the minds of his followers and served as a kind of an impulse to them. They maintained that our Lord literally and physically rose from the dead on that third day. If then Christ did not rise, these men, as they themselves confess, would be found guilty of deliberate deceit, deliberate fraud.
It is, I must freely confess, a question of all or nothing. And therefore I want to begin with, to raise one or two objections that people might feel. Particularly the objection that all the evidence we have comes from Christian writers. As I pointed out last week, so perhaps even more strongly this week will people feel this objection. Someone will say, but look, if Jesus Christ really rose again from the third day, how is it we have no evidence from non-Christian quarters?
Is it not a little bit suspicious, more than suspicious, that it's only Christian people that tell the story? Would it not have been far more convincing if we had evidence from some non-Christian people? I must straightway admit to you that I would not know what evidence from non-Christians to quote. As far as I know, there is not any. A passing reference in one or two pagan historians to this Jesus, but no admission on his- their part that he did in fact rise from the dead.
But I am going to submit to you that so far from this being an embarrassment to the Christian position, it is partly what one might expect, in that it does show us that all the people who examined the evidence and were convinced became Christians. You cannot examine the evidence and find the evidence true and refuse to become a Christian. But you'll say that means, doesn't it, that there must have been a lot of people who examined the evidence at the time and they were not convinced, and they did not become Christians.
So may be. But I, in my turn, would like to ask, where are their writings that prove to us that he did not rise from the dead? The argument from silence, of course, is notoriously difficult. But here is a, is an instance that is exceptional. The whole of the vested interest of the Jewish religion was concerned to stop the heresy of Christianity.
It caused not a little reddening of faces and raising of tempers in Jerusalem, when the early apostles persisted in their statement that Jesus Christ, whom the authorities had executed, had risen from the dead and was thereby demonstrated to be the Son of God. It was the fact that the authorities were exceedingly anxious to smother this statement from its very birth. Where then is the evidence from then?
To prove what must have been very easy, if the resurrection was not true. Where is their evidence? There is none. And that silence on the part of men who would have given anything to have proved that the resurrection did not happen, that silence is exceedingly eloquent. But let us examine once more these Christian writers, for if they are the sole witnesses, that does not necessarily mean that they are wrong.
Let us consider a moment the moral issue in their testimony. We must be prepared to sum up their character as far as we can. Some, at least, of our inclination to believe or to disbelieve will depend on our estimate of the character of these early preachers. Suppose Christ did not rise from the dead, then what are we to think of these men who said he did? Were they clever men and deliberate deceivers?
Is that a tenable hypothesis? Are we to think of Peter and John and Paul, men who brought into the decaying conditions of morals in the Roman Empire. This renewing force, for everyone must admit it is a matter of fact that wherever Christianity came in those days, it brought with it a renewing and a cleansing effect. Are we to think that at heart these men were deliberate liars?
Does that square with your estimation of Peter and James and John and Paul? These were men who paid for their own story, many of them with their own lives. And they went to a martyr's death, did they? With a lie gnawing at their heart and knowing it. These were men that had to stand by and see many of their converts put to death for their faith. And they stood by, did they, knowing it was all a lie and that they had inculcated this lie into these martyrs, and they saw the people lose their lives for the sake of a lie that they had originated, and still preached in the cause of truth and holiness?
That, I submit to you, would be a very, very difficult interpretation to hold and to defend. Were they then not clever men, but simple men, holy, we will admit, and well-intentioned. But as sometimes holy men are rather silly, are we to say that these holy men were a little bit silly, victims of their own wishful thinking, sentimentalists? Well, grant you for a moment that they were simple men. How did simple men come to write those documents that we call the four gospels?
Let me select that gospel that we were thinking about last week, the gospel by Luke. Judged by literary criteria, that gospel stands as one of the world's masterpieces. The story of the prodigal son. The story of the Good Samaritan. Marvelous thumbnail sketches that rank amongst the world's highest literature. How did simple men come to write that kind of stuff? And then, supremely above all, how did simple men come to concoct this character that we know as Jesus Christ?
So livingly, so really, that that character for millions of people down the centuries has been a living personality. We all know how difficult it is for writers to construct a character that lives. The great geniuses of literature have, in fact, created a few characters in the course of the centuries that live for people. But if Jesus Christ were not true, then the people that concocted this character were the world's biggest genius by all consent. And if they were only simple men, how did they come to do such a, such a masterpiece as that?
That they were, for the most part, simple men, we must own. That makes the story and the character that we find in our gospels verge on the miraculous. But as we come to study the evidence for the resurrection, we must be prepared to take it from men who were, for the most part, humble men, and we must therefore scrutinize the evidence exceedingly carefully. It will be, in the last analysis, of course, as it must be, on the inherent truthfulness, on the inherent persuasiveness of the evidence itself that the case must rest.
I want to begin, therefore, the, with the evidence that Luke has to put before us. For just as I did last week, so again this week, I wish merely to put before you, as I understand it, the evidence that the early Christian writers, writing in what we call the Bible, submitted to their contemporaries. I have no arguments of my own to adduce. Luke, in his chapter on the resurrection, begins, you may remember, by telling us that when the women went to the sepulcher and found not the body, they were met by angels who said this: Why do you seek the living among the dead?
Your Lord is risen. Remember how he spake to you when he was yet in Galilee with you. In other words, says Luke, it is the Christian claim that our Lord, even in his lifetime, predicted his resurrection. That is an exceedingly important point. It has been argued by some, and notably by Jews, that the resurrection of Christ was a something that the early Christians thought up.
They were expecting Jesus to be Messiah. They were expecting him to rise to control of the nation and to put down the Romans and establish a kingdom. And instead of that, he was crucified and buried. And then when the early Christians got over their initial bewilderment, they suddenly thought of this new idea. They invented a resurrection story, quite foreign to anything that Christ himself had said. And they invented it all as a way out of their awful predicament, that the teachings and the purposes of Christ had come to an unexpected end in his death.
Such a contention, of course, will not face the evidence. Unless the men who write these stories are utter and deliberate deceivers. The resurrection is not a something that was invented after the event or after the death of Christ. It was a something that Christ himself predicted when he was still alive. Secondly, Luke tells us the story of two people that were going to a mass, bewildered on this very fact that the Jesus whom they had hoped to be the nation's Messiah had been executed by the authorities.
And it is said that a stranger drew near to them. Says Luke, it was in fact our Lord himself. But their eyes were holden, and they did not see, did not recognize him. And the story goes that this stranger took them in their memories through a number of Old Testament prophecies, and he argued with them. Gentlemen, said he, you are really very dull of understanding. Why are you disappointed that the Messiah has died? Have you not read these Old Testament prophecies?
Ought not the Christ, the Messiah, when he comes? Wouldn't it be the very thing you would expect that he would die? What about this prophecy and that prophecy and the other prophecy? Luke tells the story and expects us to deduce the very important fact that the Christian claim is not merely that Christ predicted the resurrection in his own lifetime, but that the Old Testament records, which by common consent date from before the birth of Christ, they too predict a resurrection.
Now, I don't have to ask you to believe that the Old Testament is inspired, though I personally believe it is inspired. But I don't have to ask you to believe it is inspired in order to follow this piece of evidence. I needn't ask you to believe anything about Christ except that he did exist, for you will notice that this story starts and tells us that the stranger was so hidden from them that they didn't recognize him. If they had recognized this stranger as Jesus, they would have believed anything he said. And so he was hidden from them. And they were led through this next piece of evidence without granting anything except that these Old Testament prophecies were there.
And I would like to make that point with you. I do not mind for this point if you are not a Christian or if you don't believe inspiration of scripture. I don't ask you to give me anything. But I would like to provoke you to study this piece of evidence, to take these Old Testament records and to see whether they do or do not prophesy a Messiah that should come, should die, and should rise again. The kind of thing that I mean, I may cite from the, perhaps the best known of all the prophecies, the one we quoted here last week, the prophecy of Isaiah and his fifty third chapter.
That prophecy talks over someone who would be wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities. He would pour out his soul unto death, being numbered with the transgressors. It clearly predicted his death, and yet... it goes on to say he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand, he shall justify many, and it maps out a growing program for him, albeit the earlier verses had said that he was to pour out his soul unto death.
You cannot reconcile those two prophecies juxtaposed there without a resurrection. If I could provoke you to reread that evidence, I should have counted that I had done a worthwhile thing. But somebody will say, that's all very well. You say, do you, that this Jesus, when he was here on earth, predicted he would rise again. In fact, he predicted it for a non-Christian is not necessarily any proof that he did.
You say your Christian position is that the Old Testament records prophesied the coming of a Messiah who should die and rise again, but the fact that they prophesied it is for the non-Christian no proof that he did. You will say to me, could it not well have been that somebody in those days after Jesus Christ was crucified was poring over the Old Testament records and remembering that Christ had made this extraordinary prediction that he would rise, and then coming across these verses in the Old Testament, decided that he would impersonate Christ and sell it to the early credulous disciples that he was the Christ risen from the dead.
Was that man on the Emmaus road that came to those two disciples? Could he have been an imposter like that? How, you ask, did they know it was Jesus himself? They give us many pieces of evidence that this person who came and talked to them was the person that they had known intimately before he died as Jesus of Nazareth.
But here in Luke, Luke chooses first of all this piece of evidence. He was made known to them, this stranger, in the breaking of bread. That's when it suddenly dawned on them, says Luke, that this was in fact Jesus of Nazareth, whom they were entertaining in their home. But you say, how is that a, a very clear piece of evidence? He was made known to them in the breaking of bread. I submit to you that it's an exceedingly subtle piece of evidence. Impersonations are easy to carry off to a certain limit.
If we would expose an impersonation, it is in the subtler things that we must look. You see, an imposter could have wounded his hands, could he not? And faked wounds in his feet. For everybody would have known that this Jesus was crucified on a cross and would expect to see wounds in the feet and hands. But I wonder if an imposter would have thought of this. Let me illustrate what I mean by what is perhaps no more than a crude illustration. A colleague of mine in my student days, now a lecturer in law in Cambridge, was telling me of some of the famous cases of which he had read.
One was of an impersonation. The heir to a family fortune had gone abroad and had never been heard of again for many years. Came the point when the estate was, or should have been passed to its heir. The heir had not been heard of, I say, for many years. Before it was all wound up, there appeared a man who claimed to be the heir. Let's call him John Smith.
John Smith came, and he had a tremendous amount of evidence to prove that he was, in fact, the genuine John Smith. And the case was going very much in his favor. He seemed to have proved everything, until at last counsel said, now, Mr. Smith, of course you are John Smith, yes. Well, you know, John Smith was educated at such and such a school. You were at that school, yes. Now, John Smith had rooms in the quad. You had rooms in the quad, didn't you?
Yes. What is a quad? Uh, he said, what, um... He didn't know. Never mind, Mr. Smith. At school, at this school, John Smith read Caesar, as of course all boys at school, those kind of schools, read Caesar. Tell me, Mr. Smith, in what language is Caesar written? French, German, or English? French, he said. He had overlooked the little thing that nobody would think of as an imposter.
It's by those subtle things that we recognize people. These people were sure it was Jesus of Nazareth. Why? Because he broke the bread in a way that when they saw it, they knew in their heart of hearts that nobody could possibly have imitated him. For you see the breaking of the bread with our Lord, even when he broke it to give to the crowds on the occasion when he fed the crowds miraculously, was in itself a sacrament. He broke that bread that he might give them an object lesson that he personally was the very bread of God, come for to feed people with eternal life.
That was a something that no one else has ever done, and I submit to you, no one ever could do like Jesus Christ of Nazareth. It was so him. There was no mistaking. And Luke seriously submits that to us in this day. As a very strong piece of evidence that this was no impersonation. The men who were most capable of judging, who knew Christ most intimately, were satisfied by such proof that this was no imposter. Luke makes it clear to us that he does not mean that the resurrection was kind of a survival of Christ's soul or spirit.
He tells us that Christ appeared to the twelve deci- to the eleven disciples and others in the upper room. He showed them his hands and his feet. He asked them to feel that he was flesh and bone, and then to demonstrate that he was a real human. He asked for meat, he asked for food, and ate it. You will notice that the Christians have gone carefully to demonstrate to us that they were not the victims of hallucinations.
Not only is it those twelve and some others in the upper room. The claim Paul could make writing to Corinthians was that our Lord was seen on one occasion by above five people, the majority of whom were still alive in Paul's time when he was writing to these Corinthians, and presumably were available for cross-examination. One person, two or three maybe could have a a a vision, could be neurotic. But it would be difficult to maintain that five hundred people all at once had a vision. Then when you consider what kind of people they were, rough, healthy fishermen, used to living out in the open air, they were not the kind of people that, uh, are subject to hallucinations.
They said it wasn't a dream. We ate and drank with him after his resurrection. Another piece of evidence that he rose. Luke invites us to think of the tremendous evangelical movement that arose about this tri- time in which we call Christianity. Suddenly, from that upper room in Jerusalem, there started a movement that in a few years had spread throughout the Mediterranean world and forced itself on the notice of the Roman authorities till they were obliged to take some positive action about it.
A movement that has gone on in spite of myriads of persecutions, and filled the world at this present moment with its fame. What was behind that movement? What sparked it off? If there is no smoke without fire, we must ask ourselves, what is this something? What is the main spring behind this tremendous movement of Christianity? Oh, but you say it's nothing unique. I could quote you Mohammedanism in return, more adherence than Christianity?
Ah, but then there are things here just a little bit peculiar. Christianity, as everybody knows, arose out of Judaism. For centuries, the Jews had been content with their own religion. True, some of them were interested in proselytizing other people, but you could only... you could only be fully acceptable if you became a Jew. They were never known as having any urge to worldwide evangelism. They have never been known since to have any urge to worldwide evangelism.
Have you known of any big Jew, Jewish missionary enterprise to convert the world? Ever? Where did this one come from? The very and only one that Judaism has ever produced, and that they disown. Where does it come from? The claim that Luke, Luke makes is that it comes from the risen Christ, who pointed out in the days of his resurrection to those early apostles, again, what the Old Testament had prophesied, that not only should Messiah die and rise again, but that this gospel of repentance and faith and forgiveness should be preached beginning from Jerusalem and to all the nations.
I ask you to consider whether you can account for the phenomenal rise and progress of Christianity coming from a Jewish source. Without a tremendous impulse at its root. And the story with which Christianity began was the story of a resurrection. But then Luke is not the only writer. There is some other evidence. But I ought perhaps to deal with an objection that may arise in the minds of some just here.
Somebody will say, well, the simple answer to all this is that, um, Christ never really died. To be sure, it is an objection that we do not hear so much nowadays, as used to be heard in years gone by. There have been people who have seriously, as far as one can determine, seriously suggested that Jesus Christ did not really die. But that, being placed in the cool of the tomb, he eventually revived, recruited enough strength to creep out, and appeared to his disciples in a half swooning state.
And that this figure who lived on a miserable existence, sort of in the fields, half dead, half alive, and appearing now and again at a cottage door and then departing and eventually dying out altogether, was a Jesus Christ who never really died to start with, only swooned, regained consciousness enough to crawl out of the tomb, but eventually succumbed. It's almost an insult to your intelligence to raise the objection, for I don't fancy that any one of you would wish to adhere to such an absurd theory. Nevertheless, the Christian writers have given us the evidence that gives a lie to all such, uh, suggestions.
Mark tells us that when Joseph of Arimathea asked for the body, Pilate took the common sense precaution that necessity forced upon him to inquire whether he was already dead. The authorities were not unaware that this Jesus had prophesied he would rise again. In fact, the Jews came to Pilate and they said, sir, this imposter, before he died, said he would rise again. Now guard the sepulcher, lest his disciples come and steal him away. The last error shall be worse than the first. Pilate was not unaware of this. He took the simple but necessary precaution before he handed over the body to Joseph of Arimathea, making sure that the body was already dead.
He called the centurion in charge of the execution squad and gained his affirmation. Stories incidentally tell us that a soldier pierced his side and forthwith came there blood and water. And says John, who was standing at some distance from the cross and saw this effusion, God knows I say true. I saw this happen. There's one thing certain. This is certain, that Jesus Christ literally died.
Buried after the manner of the Jews is to bury, wrapped around tightly, and around his corpse was sprinkled a hundred weight of herbs to embalm him. No man, even if he had only swooned, coming through all those sufferings and with that loss of blood and a spear wound in his side, wrapped up and tied up with a hundred weight of myrrhed aloes around his body, could have possibly crawled out anyway. He literally died. Let us then hear the evidence that John has to submit that he rose again.
John concentrates on two pieces of evidence, those of which are for us objective. There is the objective evidence first, says John, of the position of the grave clothes when they were found. Again, it might seem to you to be a little thing, but so very often it is the little things that teem with significance. The story goes that when John and Peter arrived at the grave and looked in, they found the linen clothes lying. They use a word that indicates that the linen clothes were out straight.
In the position in which they had been when they had been round the body. The napkin that had been around his head was not slung into some corner, as though it had been hastily removed and carelessly thrown away. The napkin was still in its place, and it was still round, wound round like a turban, the word means, just as it had been wound round the head. Dead. Unless John is deliberately telling us a lie, we must face the implications of the position of these grave clothes.
What does it mean? Suppose Jesus Christ didn't rise from the dead. Then we are in, in the presence, I say again, of a wicked, vicious, deliberate fraud. For if Jesus Christ didn't come through those clothes miraculously, thus leaving them where they were, then you'll notice what someone has done. Someone has come to that sepulchre, carefully unwind the clothes and the napkin, remove the body, and then just as carefully wind the clothes up again, wind the turban up.
What for? There'd only be one motive in that. This would be a case of deliberate fraud and deceit. Somebody having removed the body deliberately out to deceive us and trying to think, trying to make us think that Jesus Christ had miraculously come through those clothes without disturbing them. I say again, is that your estimate of the early Christian preachers? Deliberate, cunning, very cunning, very subtle, so subtle that they would be impossibly wicked, deliberate deceivers.
Who would have done such a thing anyway? And who could do- have done such a thing? Certainly the Jewish authorities wouldn't have done it. Who would have had access to that tomb then to do it? Some have suggested it was Joseph. He eventually regretted giving Christ this particular tomb and removed him. Because the early Christians came and couldn't find the body, they got into their heads that Christ had risen again. But then Joseph was responsible for that body to Pilate. And Joseph was no unheard of man. Joseph was a member of the Jewish Parliament, known in the highest political circles. Pilate, I submit to you, would never have given the body to anybody, to any person less.
And when this furor arose in Jerusalem about the disappearance of this body, Joseph would have been a mark. Joseph must have been held to account for what happened to that body. We are told that the story that the Jews put around was this, that it was the disciples, that the disciples, they said, came and stole him away. But there again, it's a silly story. One finds it very difficult almost to believe that the Jews would have set across such a silly story. The guard that was supposed to be garrisoning this tomb, we read, were told to tell anybody that asked that the disciples came and stole away the body while they slept.
Patently silly story, for if they were asleep, how did they know what happened? But the only way of getting out of that predicament, if there is deliberate deceit here, is that Christ rose again and came through those clothes and left them as they were. I admit to you that that is a miracle. And I do not attempt any explanation of miracles.
I know the scientists would tell us of neutrons and neutrinos and things that can go through rocks. And the mathematicians will talk to us about the fourth dimension and what they think is that he possibly went up into the fourth dimension, whatever the fourth dimension is, and then came back on the other side of the stone. I personally confess I don't understand those things. Nor do I regard that any explanation of the miraculous is necessary. I don't know how God does miracles. I say again, I do not regard it as necessary to know. The fact that we can't explain how miracles take place is not a valid reason for refusing to accept the plain and overwhelming evidence in front of us that we face here a miracle, and that the biggest miracle that Earth has ever known.
There's another piece of evidence. Alongside of that objective evidence of the grave clothes, a matter of objective material evidence, there is a very powerful piece of psychological evidence. Again, as far as we are concerned, objective. That is the story of the behavior of Mary and of all her fellow Christian women in those early days. We read that John and Peter, having seen the grave clothes, went home. Very manlike. They fell to arguing and thinking and deducing and so forth and so on, in the manner that men are wont to.
They went home, but Mary stood at the grave weeping. I don't know how much they told her, if anything, and how much and how far she had been able to follow their subtle arguments. It's not always the strong point of the fairer sex to trouble themselves with complex arguments. Why did she stay? I su- submit to you that we here touch what is a very well-known, very evident piece of feminine psychology. Logical arguments or no logical arguments, there's something about a woman's heart that refuses to let go someone she loves.
Or if they have lost, irretrievably lost the someone they have loved, that nevertheless will cling to some token, some relic, something that stands as a kind of a symbol. I don't know whether they still do it. I remember having, uh, being taken up to the bedroom and shown out of the dressing table a little locket, and inside was a curl of Sonny's hair, you know. This was my Sonny's hair, and Sunny is not not anything like that now. Perhaps he hasn't got any hair at all. He's nowhere near so beautiful now as he was, but you see that piece of feminine affection, we shall not call it sentiment, we shall call it an excessive affection, um, that refuses to let go.
Mary kept at the grave for that, I submit, for that very evident reason. To her, Christ meant everything. He had brought her mental peace, forgiveness, and respectability. Though he was dead, she refused to leave the grave, and though the body was gone, she refused to leave it. And her one cry was, tell me where they have transported this body. It hadn't dawned on her yet that he was alive. She played the gardener, as she thought him to be. She would take the body away. What for? What would she do with the body? What do you think she would have done with the body? Why, those Christian women, being women and oriental women, would have built around it a most magnificent shrine that they would have kept daily fresh with their flowers and their tears and their prayers.
This would have been the center of a cult of Christ, just as ancient pagan women had for many centuries kept alive the cult of Tammuz, who was supposed to have died and risen again, nobody knew how, the vegetation cult. So would these early women have spent their affection on a relic, on a tomb. And I must ask you what John, I think, wants us to ask. Why did Christian women in those early days never once attempt to do anything of the sort? Never once attempt to build a shrine?
Why did they abandon the sepulcher? It was, I know, in the Middle Ages when Christianity began to decline from its pristine fervor and purity, that people began making shrines, but not those early Christians. Why didn't they? What was it that broke that powerful, that powerful impulse in the hearts of the early Christian women? Do you know if Mary had got it into her head that Joseph had stolen away that body, I warrant you, Joseph would have no peace until that body was produced. The answer that John gives us is this, Mary's answer, that in that garden that morning, she met the risen Christ.
She wasn't convinced by a theological text. She wasn't convinced by a very sound logical argument. Those things are good for the head, but they do not satisfy the heart, and they could not possibly satisfy this kind of emotion. There's only one thing that can satisfy that emotion, that is a living person. Mary's story was that she met a living person who brought to her the knowledge of the living God and gave her daily and constantly the intense and profound satisfaction of a personal relation that is beyond the power of death to sever.
You'll say then, why don't those things happen now? Somebody says, you know, I would be disposed to believe Christianity if God would but for one minute give me to see Christ risen from the dead. If he did it then, why doesn't he do it now? That, I must admit to you, is on the face of it a difficult question to answer. Let me repeat it. You say to me, perhaps, and if I may take leave to talk to any who are agnostics, you say, I'm not indisposed to Christianity. I would like to believe, but I cannot believe without seeing enough evidence. If it is true that Jesus Christ is literally alive, if it is true that my salvation and my being right with God depends upon my believing this Jesus Christ, and God really wants me to know it for sure, why doesn't he cause Jesus Christ to appear in front of my eyes here and now, as he caused him to appear before the eyes of those people?
And I would believe straight away. Would you? Would you? Would you trust your eyes to that extent. I wonder, could we honest- answer that question honestly? It is partly at least answered for us by the next story. Thomas was not with them on the occasion when Christ first appeared in the upper room, and said Thomas, I couldn't be- possibly believe this kind of thing, he said, unless I saw it, unless I put my finger in the mail print and my hand into his side. I couldn't possibly believe without seeing. A tremendous piece of evidence to hang upon visual perception.
I'm going to submit to you straight away that our visual perception is not the most reliable thing. How would a blind person get on if believing in Jesus Christ all depended on visual perception. Is it with your eyes that you know your mother loves you? I think that's the most satisfactory proof you've had, the things that you've seen. How would you expect to recognize God if you saw him? I warrant that if an a- uh, the archangel here descended this very moment, all of us, perhaps without exception, would be inclined to bow at his feet at such a supernatural being.
That wouldn't prove the supernatural being was God. Is it an excess of glory, a kind of a glorified halo that would convince you that some person you were looking at was God? I'm going to submit to you seriously, the visual perception is not the most trustworthy or the most necessary. Albeit, I must admit that Christ appeared before Thomas, and Thomas was in part convinced because of what he saw. Our Lord said, blessed art thou, thou hast believed because you have seen. Blessed are they that believe without seeing. But it is evident from the story it was not merely because he saw that he believed.
There was something else to this. Thomas had said, with apparently nobody listening except his fellow disciples, I will not believe until I put my finger into the hand of prince and my hand into his side. The moment the risen Christ stood in the room, so the story goes, said he, Thomas, put your finger in my hand and your hand in my side. It was that overwhelming sense that the very secrets of his heart were known. The words spoken when he knew no one was present except fellow disciples were heard by this Christ.
That sense of being known, transparently known, was such a great piece of evidence that led to Thomas's faith. And as I end this lecture, I'm going to suggest seriously to us all that it is along this line that we shall eventually be convinced, if ever we are convinced. I have repeated for- before you the evidence that the early apostles put forward in the New Testament, and I frankly submit to you that the evidence, the objective logical evidence, is overwhelming.
And yet I suppose we all of us can see that to be intellectually and logically convinced that Jesus Christ rose from the dead is by itself so far short of what must be that it is altogether unsatisfactory. For if Jesus Christ rose from the dead, then he was the Son of God. And I must perforce argue like this, as we all must. If Jesus Christ really rose from the dead and he is the Son of God, then his death was in fact as he said it was, for my sins. His whole coming to this earth was what for my salvation, if you will allow me that biblical term, was to put me in touch with God.
If Jesus Christ then is alive, he must be aware of me as I am here and you as you sit there. In fact, if Jesus Christ is alive and he came here for our salvation, he is at this very moment trying to get through to us if he has not got through before. And seeing this matter of our salvation is a personal thing and is a question of having personal dealings with a personality that we call God and that we call Christ. If he's alive, then that personal link is to be forged. He must be willing this very moment to make himself known to me in some real sense that I shall know that I'm dealing with a person, and that person is God, my Savior.
So that one might almost say that there is a shortcut to this thing. There is one way of knowing he is alive by following kind the logical evidence such as I have submitted. But there is a far more satisfactory way of knowing that Jesus Christ is alive. By taking that next step and opening our personalities and hearts to receive him. And the Bible lays it down, and Christian experience will bear it out. That when a person deliberately, being convinced that Jesus is the Son of God, come for his salvation, opens the door of his personality and bids Christ enter.
Christ is so very really alive that he does enter, and personal relationships are formed that outweigh, as the sun outweighs the light of the moon, all other evidence. Christians know him, not by the weak sense of visual perception, but by the deepest instinct of the human heart, they know him alive and living within. That is, in fact, what eternal life is. To that end, our gospels are written that we might first of all come to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, but thank God not to leave it there.
But being convinced that he is the Son of God, that we take that next step and come literally and personally into a living relationship with the risen Lord Jesus Christ. I do not, ladies and gentlemen, speak sentiment. Those of you who are Christians will not need me to press this point, and I do not wish to anticipate what I shall be saying next week. But if I speak to any who are not committed Christians, agnostics maybe, or people of other faiths, I would lay down to you a challenge. There is a way in which you may prove conclusively that Jesus Christ is alive. So be it we are honest.
If we are really prepared for the consequences, then we may make the experiment. We may open our hearts to receive him. And to those who do so, he gives the power to become what they never were before. They become for the first time sons of God, because they do receive this life that Christ imparts, this resurrection life, this new life. It is, in fact, eternal life here and now begun. There is no need for us to go through life in some vague hope that at the end we may receive eternal life.
For eternal life is being put into personal contact with Jesus Christ to know him and God who sent him. If any... make that experiment and ask Christ to manifest himself and come into their lives and show himself to give them eternal life, and it doesn't work, my arguments to such will be of little use. I would still maintain that Christ is alive. The objective evidence is overwhelming still, but it will be of little help to people if they should make this experiment honestly, and Jesus Christ does not respond.
But happily enough, if we make that experiment, and Christ honors his word and imparts his life to us, this satisfying, this eternal life, here and now, and so we get to know him. And all my arguments, those though helpful, though confirmatory to our faith, will in some sense scarce be necessary. We will found him. We will know him personally, and in the present enjoyment of eternal life, we shall have an evidence that no power on earth or elsewhere could ever undo.
