Point of View July 4, 2024 – Hour 2 : Evidence for Jesus

[00:00:00] How to Defend a Biblical Worldview We spend a fair amount of time helping you know how to articulate a biblical worldview, but also how to defend a biblical worldview. And one of those very important questions is, Do you have evidence for Jesus Christ?

[00:00:34] And that's what we're going to be talking about today. This new book just out, written by Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell, called Evidence for Jesus, Timeless Answers for Tough Questions About Christ. 240 pages, 30 very easy to read chapters.

[00:00:49] And we are privileged to spend some time today talking with our friend Dr. Sean McDowell, a gifted communicator, an individual that graduated summa cum laude from Talbot Theological Seminary with a double master's degree in theology and philosophy.

[00:01:03] Earned his PhD in apologetics and worldview studies from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He's the author and co-author of an enormous number of books that he's co-written with some people like John Stonestreet, Jonathan Morrow, Bill Demske, but especially this one co-authored with Josh McDowell.

[00:01:21] Sean McDowell, it is always a delight to have you on the program. Well, we'll see if we can get Sean McDowell up there in just a minute. Oh, Kirby. There you go. My bad. I had it made on my side. Good to be with you, brother.

[00:01:35] Well, good, because we wanted to hear your voice. It works a lot better when we can hear you. But nevertheless, this book is again maybe familiar territory. You talk about the fact that you pull some of the great material from, you know,

[00:01:49] of course evidence that demands a verdict, but you add so much new material. And I've said before, and I think you would agree, that this has been kind of the golden age of apologetics because when Point of View started 50 years ago or even when Probe started 50 years ago,

[00:02:05] I mean, we, of course, had your dad and we had a few other individuals, but now, first of all, we have so many more people doing apologetics, but second of all, we just have so much more evidence than existed just even a few decades ago.

[00:02:17] I think that's right. You know, one of the interesting things in doing this project with my dad is I was able to ask him how he thinks the evidence compares now with almost six decades ago when he was really starting to investigate Jesus and try to disprove it.

[00:02:33] I mean, there was no William Lane Craig, N.T. Wright, Gary Habermas. It was like Francis Schaeffer, C.S. Lewis, and Geisler was just starting. There was nobody doing it. And the word that he used, you know my dad, he doesn't understate anything.

[00:02:50] He said, he goes, son, there's like a tsunami of evidence compared to what there was before. And that has stuck with me, that there was enough to convince him six decades ago, the Bible's reliable, Jesus is God, he rose from the grave,

[00:03:06] but now there's advances in manuscript discoveries, archaeology, and just overall evidence for Jesus. Now the skeptics are pushing back more than ever, but I think we live in an amazing age as you described, the golden age.

[00:03:19] Well, and again, let's just mention that one of the books that you've co-authored is God Just a Human Invention, and just a series of questions that have come from our friends, the so-called new atheists, and very good answers.

[00:03:33] But I wanted to spend some time recognizing that there are 30 chapters, 7 sections, try to pick out a few, but let's start with the easy one, but it's the one that I get and I know you get all the time,

[00:03:44] and that is, okay, you're making the case for Jesus, but you're referring to the Bible, and the Bible was written by biased individuals. So one of the questions you ask is, can we use the Bible for historical evidence of Jesus? How do you respond?

[00:04:00] Well, the Bible was written by people with bias. At the end of the Gospel, John says this was written so that you might believe and by believing have life in his name. But having a bias is true for anybody who's written anything in the history of the world,

[00:04:14] including Roman writers and Greek writers and contemporary writers. The question is not does somebody have a bias? The question is what is their bias, and do they try to work against their bias, and do we have reason to believe that this writer cares about truth

[00:04:33] and is willing to present it even amidst their bias? That's the heart of the question, and there's reasons why I think the Gospel writers care about truth, even including things like embarrassing material when it would disparage their character,

[00:04:47] which tells me, huh, they've got a bias here, but they care about truth. Now, to directly answer your question, if I were to say the Bible is the Word of God and therefore whatever it says is true, then I would be assuming certain things about the Bible

[00:05:04] that I had not demonstrated. But if I was to say let's look at the Bible the way we would any other historical source and see if it has reliable accounts, if it's backed up by archaeology, by other writings, et cetera,

[00:05:18] then we can use the Bible as a source because as we go into this book, there's reasons to believe that it's an accurate source. Well, again, to finish off that section, and that is not only do you deal with can we use the Bible

[00:05:33] for historical evidence, but is there evidence for Jesus outside the Bible? Yes, there is. Is, of course, the New Testament reliable? Are there Christian sources for Jesus outside the Bible? If you were only dependent on the Bible for information, we still learn the most about Jesus

[00:05:50] by reading the Bible, but we learn that Jesus existed and that we learn different aspects about him through other sources like Roman sources, don't we? Yeah, we do. Now, for me, if we had no sources outside of the Bible, I would still trust the narrative around Jesus

[00:06:10] because I think the biblical documents, in particular the Gospels and the letters of Paul, are historically accurate and reliable. But it turns out we have the record of archaeology that I think indirectly supports this,

[00:06:23] and we have extra-biblical writers, people like Josephus, the Jew writing the end of the first century, Tacitus, a Roman, writing the early second century, Suetonius, on and on. We have outside sources. Now, in some ways, people say, why isn't there more?

[00:06:39] Well, a lot of what was written then has been destroyed and lost anyway. But keep in mind, Jesus is in an obscure part of the kingdom. He has no military power, no political position. He doesn't have any massive family name behind him that would be recognizable.

[00:06:56] In some ways, it's significant that we have any sources about Jesus. But to sum up, we have biblical and extra-biblical sources that tells us we have a reliable narrative here.

[00:07:08] And again, I love the fact that there are some embarrassing aspects of the story that you have in the Gospels, things that if you were to try to make this up, as we talked about just the other day,

[00:07:20] you wouldn't have the women being the first ones to show up at the tomb or the first ones to see Jesus. You wouldn't have one of the most significant apostles, Peter, actually denying Christ three times. And, you know, the list goes on and on and on.

[00:07:35] So there are some really good material just in the first section, but I'm going to keep it moving along the way. But there is something that after the break I do want to get into, and that is just the historical reliability of the New Testament.

[00:07:48] Now, I will say, Sean, you and your dad caused me to have to update my keynote presentations all the time, you and I guess I'd say Daniel Wallace and a few others, but we are finding now more New Testament Greek manuscripts, more translations,

[00:08:04] and more biblical manuscripts than we've ever had before. So every time I turn around I go, well, here are the news numbers. I have to put those in again. So we'll come back and talk about that briefly because it is relevant to that whole question of the reliability.

[00:08:17] But then we want to move to another section, and that is, okay, what did Jesus claim? What kind of evidence do we have? And a number of other issues because this is just chock full of the newest and best information.

[00:08:30] And if you say, you know, I've always had my difficulty kind of reading through evidence that demands a verdict. You're going to find this very readable. It's right up there with More Than a Carpenter and a variety of other particular books like that.

[00:08:43] So Evidence for Faith coming out, and you can get information about it on our website. We'll be right back. This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson.

[00:09:01] Today is the 4th of July, and I thought I would take a moment to talk about the origin of the ideas in the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson said that many of the ideas in the Declaration came from John Locke.

[00:09:13] Jefferson also gives credit to the writer Algernon Sidney who in turn cites most prominently Aristotle, Plato, Roman Republican writers, and the Old Testament. Legal scholar Gary Amos argues that Locke's two treatises of government is simply Samuel Rutherford's Lex Rex in a popularized form.

[00:09:30] Amos says in his book Defending the Declaration that the law of nature is God's general revelation of law in creation, which God also supernaturally writes on the hearts of men. This foundation helps explain the tempered nature of the American Revolution.

[00:09:44] The Declaration of Independence was a bold document but not a radical one. The colonists did not break with England for light and transient causes. They were mindful that Romans 13 says that we should be in subjection to the governing authorities which are established by God.

[00:09:58] Yet when they suffered from a long train of abuses and usurpations, they argued that it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute a new government. Jefferson also drew from George Mason's Declaration of Rights published June 6, 1776.

[00:10:14] The first paragraph states that all men are born equally free and independent and have certain inherent natural rights, among which are the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

[00:10:29] The Declaration of Independence is more than 200 years old. It was a monumental document at the time. Even today its words ring with truth and inspire new generations. I'm Kirby Anderson and that's my point of view. Go deeper on topics like you just heard by visiting pointofview.net.

[00:10:53] That's pointofview.net. You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. Back once again to continue our conversation today with Dr. Sean McDowell. He is of course a co-author with his father, Evidence for Faith.

[00:11:10] It is published by Thomas Nelson. Look for it in your local bookstore. Again, some great material. About 240 pages, 30 different chapters, quite readable. Some time to time, obviously this is for you to really be able to answer those questions.

[00:11:23] But it's written in such a way that it reminds me of some of the other books, A Case for Christ by Lee Strobel, Certainly More Than a Carpenter by Josh McDowell, and others that you could hand to a skeptic or a seeker. So those are very relevant issues.

[00:11:38] But before we leave this whole idea of using the Bible to speak about Jesus, one other issue, Sean, that I think is relevant, and that is just the fact that we have tremendous evidence and growing amount of evidence that the New Testament is reliable

[00:11:54] simply on the basis of the fact that we're finding even more Biblical manuscripts, scrolls, and translations. And as I jokingly said, I have to update my slides every once in a while just because we find new material and you and your dad publish it

[00:12:10] in some of the latest updated versions of the book. Well, it really is thrilling to see this because one of the perceptions we might have is the further we move away from the events of Jesus, the less confidence we would have in what he said

[00:12:27] and that this has been passed on to us. But the opposite is actually the case, because the further we move away, the greater our technology is increasing and our ability to find hidden manuscripts.

[00:12:41] I mean, this Dead Sea Scrolls from about a year or two ago that were found recently were discovered with like a drone in this cave. Now people are using artificial intelligence to find manuscripts embedded within other manuscripts. This kind of technology is coming out.

[00:12:58] So a lot of the textual critics I talk with will say things like, well, we know the works of Jesus are out there in the manuscripts that we have. Of course, they've been translated to Greek.

[00:13:10] The question is just can we decipher down and really determine exactly which those are in a few contested cases? So bottom line is archaeology manuscripts, as we move forward in time, further away from the events, actually the better confidence we can have in the biblical story itself.

[00:13:28] Again, one of the things you run into are sometimes people saying, well, I don't even know if Jesus existed. And of course we've just sort of addressed some of that in terms of the evidence in the Bible, the evidence outside the Bible for Jesus, the manuscript evidence.

[00:13:42] But one of the other things that you run into often, Sean, is, well, I don't think Jesus really claimed to be God. You're trying to say that he actually claimed to be God.

[00:13:52] They try to make a distinction between maybe the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. And yet you, again, have a section to really address that very important question, and that is the identity of Jesus. This is really the heart of the question.

[00:14:09] Who did Jesus claim to be? And you're right, a lot of critics will try to say, well, there's this Jesus of faith that we believe because we just read the Bible or the church tells us so.

[00:14:19] But then there's kind of this Jesus of history that we can't really establish and know to be the case. But the reality is all over the scriptures, all four Gospels, the letters of Paul, Hebrew, Revelation,

[00:14:32] the early church fathers consistently have this claim that Jesus is in fact God. And one way to point to this, of course, we have a chapter on John where Jesus makes these very just clear statements to deities,

[00:14:46] such as I and the Father are one in John 10, such as he has in John 8 when he talks about, you know, before Abraham was born, I say to you, I am, which is a reference to Exodus chapter 3. John is really clear and people recognize that.

[00:15:03] But if you even go to Mark, Mark begins by giving this prophecy from Micah and from Isaiah about the coming of the Lord and about this one who will reference the coming of the Lord.

[00:15:16] Well, in the story Mark is telling, this is John the Baptist proclaiming the coming of Jesus. In the Old Testament, if it's the coming of the Lord who is God and John the Baptist applies this to Jesus,

[00:15:30] how is Mark likely the earliest gospel viewing Jesus as the God of the Old Testament? And of course, healing in his own authority, controlling the Sabbath, walking on water. These are all portrayals of the identity of Jesus that culminates in the end of Mark

[00:15:51] where even the centurion says, truly this is the Son of God. And then on trial, Jesus references Daniel chapter 7 about this coming divine figure and basically says, yes, this son of man is me. I think the case for the deity of Jesus goes across genres.

[00:16:09] The oldest book in the Bible, possibly the latest one, book Revelation, I think is really clear that Jesus claims to be God in human flesh. Unbelievable. Just before we leave that section, of course one of the things that people have heard before

[00:16:24] is the old Lord liar lunatic and a lot of that comes from a very famous section in the book Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. But once again you've taken this issue which I think is certainly used,

[00:16:39] those of us that have been involved in campus ministry over the years sometimes set up that what's called the trilemma. But what you have done even here, what you and your father have done, really taken on the issue of really was Jesus really lying when he said that

[00:16:56] or was he really kind of a lunatic? Was he really kind of crazy? Were there some aspects of his behavior that would even allow you to come to that conclusion? And that's why in a sense C.S. Lewis uses that in Mere Christianity

[00:17:10] because he says either you can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord.

[00:17:17] But let's not come with any of this patronizing nonsense about him being a great human teacher. He's not left that open to us. He did not intend to. And in some respects you've added to that argument that quite frankly,

[00:17:31] since I'm the old guy around the table, we've been using for decades. I mean we were using that back in the 1970s. But you've added some new material that I think would be very helpful to our listeners. Well I think so as well.

[00:17:44] It's just such an intuitive way of saying if we have the words of Jesus recorded accurately and he does claim to be God, which you and I believe the evidence points towards, then we only have so many options in front of us about who Jesus can be.

[00:18:00] One, he could be lying, but my goodness, we're going to conclude that Jesus has given us arguably at least some of the greatest moral teachings of all time is lying about his identity and people's faiths.

[00:18:12] That would make him foolish because he was crucified and it'd make him evil. Is he a lunatic? Now there's other people that have claimed to have divine power or be angelic in some fashion, but Jesus claims to be the God of the Old Testament,

[00:18:27] the eternal uncreated self-existent being, not just a kind of divine being in some sense, the divine being. Well my goodness, the other option is he's not lying. He's crazy because we all know that's not possible of a mere human being.

[00:18:47] Now someone will push back and add another L to this. Instead of Lord, they'll say liar, lunatic or legend. As you mentioned earlier, the idea of rejecting that Jesus even existed. I mean even Bart Ehrman wrote a whole book on the existence of Jesus

[00:19:02] and says the idea that Jesus is a myth and kind of this legendary invented figure is a myth itself of the 18th century. So when you've got Bart Ehrman agreeing with evangelicals on this, I think we're on pretty solid ground. I think so too.

[00:19:16] We need to take a break. Let me suggest a couple of things. First of all, you perhaps will be able to find this book in your bookstore soon, but I also have a link so that you can get it in paperback or Kindle.

[00:19:27] This is maybe one time when I say get it paperback and Kindle. Now why do I say that? First of all, I think you're going to want to get a couple of copies of the paperback and hand them to friends, neighbors, coworkers and others.

[00:19:38] So that gives you a printed version, but then the Kindle version allows you to do a search on some key issues. And so if you carry that around, for example, in your cell phone, your smartphone or something of that nature, and you find yourself in a conversation,

[00:19:52] you can do a quick search engine and find it. So I'm really suggesting, of course this would certainly be helpful for Josh and Sean to have multiple copies being purchased, but I think it's that kind of resource that would be helpful to you.

[00:20:05] And as we go to a break, not only will I point you to that website, let me point you to Sean McDowell's website. And there you can find out about his videos and his podcast and other books

[00:20:16] and even how you could contact him if you'd want him to come and speak. And one of the things I would like to highlight is his podcast, which is called Think Biblically, Conversations on Faith and Culture.

[00:20:27] One of the ways I keep up with Sean McDowell is I watch him. Of course, a lot of those particular podcasts show up on things like YouTube and a variety of other social media sites. And so those are some resources that would be very helpful to you.

[00:20:41] So if you find yourself saying, I really would like to learn more about some of these issues, or even as you are saying, I've got a number of young people in my area of influence. They could be your children, they could be your grandchildren,

[00:20:54] they could be nieces and nephews or Sunday school kids or whatever. There are some great resources as well for them. A Rebel's Manifesto was one that comes to mind in terms of really reaching out to the younger generation with some of these ideas.

[00:21:09] Because so many of them are saying, you know, I think I'm just going to leave the Christian faith. Maybe they're deconstructing their faith. And that's happened in a time when we have more evidence than we've ever had.

[00:21:20] So again, go to those websites, all available at our website, pointofview.net. We'll be right back. It almost seems like we live in a different world from many people in positions of authority. They say men can be women and women men.

[00:21:40] People are prosecuted differently or not at all, depending on their politics. Criminals are more valued and rewarded than law-abiding citizens. It's so overwhelming, so demoralizing. You feel like giving up. But we can't. We shouldn't. We must not.

[00:21:58] As Winston Churchill said to Britain in the darkest days of World War II, Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. And that's what we say to you today.

[00:22:15] This is not a time to give in, but to step up and join Point of View in providing clarity in the chaos. We can't do it alone. But together, with God's help, we will overcome the darkness.

[00:22:29] Invest in Biblical clarity today at PointofView.net or call 1-800-347-5151. PointofView.net and 800-347-5151. Point of View will continue after this. You are listening to Point of View.

[00:23:02] The opinions expressed on Point of View do not necessarily reflect the views of the management or staff of this station. And now, here again is Kirby Anderson. Privileged to have with us today Dr. Sean McDowell as we talk about this book that he and his father co-authored,

[00:23:18] Timeless Answers for Tough Questions About Christ. It is called Evidence for Jesus. It is published by Thomas Nelson. Look for it in your local bookstore, but we have information about it on our website as well. Sean, I thought maybe I would put together sections three and four together.

[00:23:33] One so we can kind of cover all the sections, but also one section deals with why Jesus is unique. The other is Jesus, a copycat savior, because those are interesting.

[00:23:45] Now it used to be in the old days when I would be on campus or I'd be speaking in a classroom, sometimes students would say, well, why would I be interested in Jesus over, say, somebody else like Muhammad or Buddha?

[00:23:57] And I'd talk about the uniquenesses of Jesus, and you go into that in some detail. But now we also tend to run into some people that say, oh, well, this whole idea of the resurrection,

[00:24:08] of God dying and coming back from the grave, well, that's just kind of a copycat, and it's very similar to these mystery religions. So in some respects, even though there are eight chapters in those two sections,

[00:24:21] they sort of interplay with one another, and it's the kinds of questions we tend to be running into these days, aren't they? You know what's really interesting about this, Kirby? You know I went through a doubt period in my life in college, just mid-90s,

[00:24:35] and one of the things that precipitated it was I was searching around the Internet and came across this atheist secular web that had begun responding to my dad's book, Evidence That Demands a Verdict, chapter by chapter, doctors, lawyers, historians, philosophers.

[00:24:52] And it was really unsettling to me, and I came across this almost 30 years ago now, this idea that Christianity was just ripped from these pagan mystery religions and there's nothing unique about the Christian story.

[00:25:06] And it was so unsettling to me, and I realized in academia almost nobody takes this seriously, but on the Internet it has a life of its own because there's something just, it's unsettling on the surface.

[00:25:21] But of course now that I look back, I think it's one of the weakest objections, just because of certain things like these mystery religions, Osiris and Mithras, they weren't even historical figures. They represented like the cyclical seasons of winter is death and spring is life.

[00:25:39] They aren't even historical resurrections. The similarities are so weak. I mean, Osiris in the Egyptian account is murdered, thrown into the ocean. I believe it's Isis finds his different parts, puts him back together, and he becomes god of the underworld.

[00:25:55] I mean, that's not even close to the kind of story that Christianity borrowed from. We know that if you want to understand Judaism, I'm sorry, if you want to understand Christianity, it's not that we go to the pagan culture in these kinds of stories.

[00:26:07] We go to Judaism because Jesus was Jewish. So that's just a few of the responses, but we have to be ready with an answer to this because kids are seeing it in movies, they're seeing it on social media, it's all over the Internet,

[00:26:20] and many get taken aside by it. Well, I'm glad you mentioned that because I've done that before, but it's been probably even a few years in which I even was quoting at the time some of these individuals

[00:26:31] who wouldn't necessarily be even close to being considered Christians, but are historians, and just saying, you know, this is not even passing the straight-face test, and yet you say it's out there on the websites, and so it's important to know that there are answers there.

[00:26:47] But I thought while we're talking about whether Jesus is unique or a copycat savior, you have a whole section there which I so appreciate, Does Archaeology Confirm the Existence of Jesus?

[00:27:00] Now I might mention that we're going to have another trip that we are going to be taking in September, still room for you by the way, which will be to going to Israel.

[00:27:09] And we're going to spend a little more time, especially in Jerusalem and a couple of other places, Sean, because the archaeological finds in the last couple of years, in some cases these are finds they found in the last couple of years,

[00:27:24] in other cases as you related to just a minute ago, we found some before, but the technology now has allowed us to see some of these inscriptions and things of this nature. We have so much better archaeological evidence in the 21st century

[00:27:39] than we had in certainly the 19th or the 20th century, and a lot of that just once again affirms the existence of Jesus. This is my favorite chapter in the book because this is content that's not in More Than a Carpenter,

[00:27:51] it's not in Evidence That Demands a Verdict. And we basically took the archaeology that supports Jesus, so we talk about people, and you have figures like obscure figures like Lysanias in Luke chapter 3, larger figures like Pontius Pilate, we found an inscription for him. Yes.

[00:28:09] Caiaphas, we found an ossuary that supports his existence. We walked through the three different herods and just the coins and inscriptions that have been found for them. Places like Bethlehem and Nazareth and Capernaum and the Pool of Bethesda.

[00:28:25] The culture matches up even with sicknesses and pots and jars. I mean, we haven't found everything, that's for sure. But on and on what we find confirms the story that we have in the Gospels. Now here's the big objection if I may.

[00:28:40] People say, well, think about like it's called the Spider-Man objection. Even Spider-Man took place in New York City and there's real people in real buildings. But first off, they didn't have that kind of fiction that was realistic in the time the Gospels were written like we do today.

[00:28:57] So that's one issue. The second, the Gospel writers tell us, like Luke starts off his Gospel saying many have undertaken to drop an account of the things that have happened before us. But I have carefully investigated everything. Luke starts by saying this is historical account.

[00:29:14] So then when we go out and we find the people and we find the places and we find the events that match up, that's one piece of support that I think helps give us confirmation and confidence that the Gospel writers actually record real history. Just great material.

[00:29:31] Of course, there are a lot of reasons to get the book, but the archaeology section is worth it right there as well. I do want to leave the last segment to talk about the resurrection.

[00:29:39] So I thought very quickly, we've got a couple minutes still to talk about the whole issue of prophecy. Because when we talk about the uniqueness of Jesus, there are lots of issues.

[00:29:49] But one of the more significant ones is that you have prophecies written down in the Old Testament. And people say, well, how do we know they're written down? Well, we have things like the Dead Sea Scrolls so we can actually read those actually as well.

[00:30:03] And so we have these various prophecies written down in the Old Testament, and yet they are literally fulfilled in one person, Jesus Christ. And there's been a time in which there were other false messiahs, but none of them ever appealed to the prophecies that are there.

[00:30:21] And so you actually have some material about the prophecies and then try to answer any of the objections somebody might have about those prophecies. Can you take us through that? Yeah, I would love to.

[00:30:34] This is one of the most common evidences that you see the biblical writers appealing to. And a lot of that was because some of their audience was Jewish that they're speaking at. So they do this in a couple ways.

[00:30:46] Some we have in these Old Testament kind of these what are called types and foreshadows that Jesus fulfills in his character. So like that Christ is the Passover lamb.

[00:30:56] You see in Exodus 12, as we know from recently celebrating Passover and Easter, then in 1 Corinthians 5-7, it distinctly refers to Christ as this Passover lamb. And of course, when John sees Jesus come and he talks about the lamb that will take away the sins of the world,

[00:31:13] the idea of Christ as the high priest, his reference to being the Son of Man, there are these certain kind of types and foreshadows in the Old Testament that Jesus fulfills. But then there's some more specific ones about the Messiah being born in a small place like Bethlehem.

[00:31:32] And when you look at the size of Bethlehem at the time of Jesus, it's an insignificant, small town. And we have, like we talked about earlier with the archaeology, good reason to believe dating back earlier, we actually have the birthplace of Jesus in Bethlehem.

[00:31:51] A very good case can be made for this. So we talk about either kind of these types and these foreshadows, things again like Isaac carrying his wood up to being sacrificed by his father,

[00:32:05] Jesus carrying his cross up to his sacrifice, being fulfilled in Jesus, these types in the Old Testament. But then these very specific ones, such as where the Messiah would be born, that Jesus was fulfilled, that's one piece of a larger case for the historical Jesus.

[00:32:24] Very good arguments in there. A number of chapters that deal with these Old Testament prophecies, the foreshadowing part 1 and 2, and the objections. But I did want to leave some time in the last segment to talk about the resurrection.

[00:32:37] Of course, any time you've ever heard Josh McDowell speak, you know he talks about the resurrection. Certainly you have heard Sean address that as well.

[00:32:44] As a matter of fact, his doctoral work was on what happened to the various disciples after they saw the risen Christ and some really great material there. So the last two chapters are on the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus and why the resurrection of Jesus matters.

[00:33:02] And those are seven sections dealing with the historical evidence for Jesus, his identity, why he's unique, the fact that he's not a copycat savior, the fact that Jesus fulfills the Old Testament prophecy.

[00:33:14] And when we come back from the break, the whole issue of the resurrection, how important that is, why we have good evidence for it historically, and why that's important to our Christian faith.

[00:33:26] It's all part of the book called Evidence for Faith, Timeless Answers for Tough Questions about Christ, written by Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell. It is published by our good friends at Thomas Nelson, the Fortney local bookstore. But we have information about it on our website at pointofview.net.

[00:33:40] We'll be right back. We're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. Back for a few more minutes talking about the resurrection now. This is part of the book Evidence for Faith, two different sections. And of course, Josh McDowell, when he first began to investigate Christianity,

[00:34:11] was very surprised that there were so many facts about the resurrection, which is one of the chapters in the book. But, Sean, I thought it also focused on the fact that you have a chapter here, Were the Apostles Martyred for the Belief in the Resurrection?

[00:34:24] And I know that you spent at least three years of your life looking at the traditions associated with the apostles. That began to be your Ph.D. dissertation. You published an academic book, which I have on my shelf, The Fate of the Apostles.

[00:34:40] I remember recently speaking about that and even holding the book up, and somebody wanted to borrow it. And I let them borrow it. And the next Sunday they came back and said, Okay, you can read that. That's a little more academic for me.

[00:34:51] But you, last time we were on, pointed out that a lot of the ideas that are in that well-written academic book end up in the latest version of Evidence that Demands a Verdict. But also, Chapter 25 goes through this in some detail as well.

[00:35:07] So, if you don't want to nerd out like I sometimes do and read some of these academic books, the good news is Chapter 25 deals with that issue as well, doesn't it? Yeah, that's exactly right.

[00:35:17] That academic book is not only 300 pages, but it's an extensive academic book as well, which was out of my control. But this book, just the simple one, Evidence for Jesus, has the stuff we talked about, prophecy, the test for reliability, resurrection.

[00:35:33] But this chapter is really kind of my baby in the sense of were the apostles willing to die for their belief that they had seen the risen Jesus? And sometimes apologists, as you know, Kirby, have overstated this argument.

[00:35:46] I think the bottom line is the earliest account we have was to be a Christian was to believe that Jesus had risen from the grave. We see this in 1 Corinthians Chapter 15 where Paul is passing on this creed

[00:35:59] that probably dates to the 30s AD, possibly, where he says Jesus died, buried, rose from the grave on the third day. Basically, he says for our sins. So, the apostles believed. Now we look at Acts, what happens? They become witnesses to proclaim the risen Jesus.

[00:36:19] They were witnesses of what they had seen. And they intentionally put themselves in harm's way. They get threatened. They get beaten. They get thrown in prison. We see Stephen martyred. We have James, the brother of John, the son of Zebedee, martyred in Acts 12.

[00:36:37] And so, this doesn't seem like the kind of activity of somebody proclaiming something they know is false to intentionally put themselves in harm's way. And some of them we can establish died as martyrs. Now, this doesn't prove it's true.

[00:36:53] I think it shows they're not liars and minimally proclaiming what they believe firmly they had seen with their own eyes that Jesus had risen from the grave. Again, I appreciate you putting that there because, first of all, I appreciate about your book

[00:37:07] because there has been a little extrapolation and maybe a little bit of embellishment. We know some things. We don't know other things. But certainly we do know individuals were willing to die. Now, some people sometimes say, well, I know people that die for a lie all the time.

[00:37:22] Yeah, but do they die for a lie knowing it is? And that brings us back to two of the alternative explanations that you have for the resurrection. One is that Jesus didn't die, you know, the so-called swoon theory.

[00:37:35] I don't know how anybody in the 21st century, after seeing a movie like Passion of the Christ, could even hold to that. But that theory is pretty quickly dismissed. Of course, another theory is that, well, the disciples stole the body.

[00:37:50] And, of course, then that gets back to the disciples because then you knew that it was a lie and you were willing to die for a lie. I mean, you're just thinking of all sorts of issues.

[00:38:02] Of course, you take on whether it was a hallucination, a variety of others. The bottom line is that we are standing on very firm evidence indeed for our Christian faith, and the resurrection is the foundation point for that because that's exactly what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15.

[00:38:20] I think that's right. You know, it's really interesting, Kirby. You and I both know that probably the living person who studied the resurrection more than anybody is Father Moss. And he's coming out with this four-volume, I think 5,000-word, light resurrection.

[00:38:36] And one of the things that he said not long ago was in academia people used to debate, did the women go to the wrong tomb? Did Jesus not die on the cross? It did pop up on the Internet, but in academia really the main objection now is naturalism.

[00:38:52] Really people know that the facts largely point towards Jesus died, being buried in Joseph's tomb, the tomb being empty, people claiming that they have seen the risen Jesus. So instead of having an alternative hypothesis that can account for all these facts,

[00:39:08] this naturalistic worldview just says, well, we know miracles don't happen. We know God doesn't act in history. Therefore, there must be some other alternate explanation, which to me is a backhanded compliment on the power of the facts, but also shows the power of worldview.

[00:39:28] Well, it also brings us back to kind of your final chapters, and that is Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 15. I alluded to that just a minute ago, that if Christ is not raised, then as you put it, nothing else matters.

[00:39:42] But because we do indeed know that Christ rose from the dead, then the issue of resurrection is not just a historical issue, but it really ultimately is the foundation for our faith. And one of the reasons why, whether it's Gary Habermas or your own dad,

[00:39:59] Josh McDowell spent so much time studying the resurrection, and why through history, you know as well as I do, the number of people that tried to actually dismiss Christianity and dismiss the resurrection who ended up becoming believers.

[00:40:13] Yeah, it's really true. I hope folks listening to this would benefit from evidence for Jesus, but minimally I'd encourage people to pick up their Bibles and just read the Gospels and Acts and ask themselves this question.

[00:40:27] And even the letters of Paul, how central is the resurrection to not only anything true, but to the practice of the Christian faith? And I'm telling you, the sending of the Spirit, the conversion of sinners, forgiveness of sins,

[00:40:41] freedom from the penalty and power of sin, God's judgment on the world, how we confront death and doubt and grief, on and on it's tied to the resurrection. It's no exaggeration to say Christianity is a resurrection faith.

[00:40:59] It changes everything. And that's why, like you said, so many journalists are skeptical, like Lee Strobel, cold case detectives like J. Warner Wallace, skeptics like my father, so many who press back on the facts with an open heart and open mind, step back and say,

[00:41:17] wow, there's a really powerful case here that we need to wrestle with and make sense of. Well said. Sean McDowell's been with us. The book is entitled Evidence for Jesus, and it is published by Thomas Nelson. We also have a link to Sean McDowell dot o r g.

[00:41:34] First of all, I think you could contact him if you'd like to have him come and speak. You could find out about his other books. But can I also encourage you to go and get his podcast and link up to it? Think biblically conversations on faith and culture.

[00:41:48] So many topics that we address here on Point of View. He addresses as well. And as always, it is a great privilege to have you on the program and look forward to the next opportunity. Thanks, Kirti. I think you really enjoy that.

[00:42:01] And that was a great opportunity to hear from our good friend Sean McDowell. Such great material. And you know that we are really dedicated to helping you know more about these very important issues,

[00:42:12] especially so that you not only know how to articulate a biblical worldview, but also know how to defend a biblical worldview. So if you find yourself saying, I'd like to know a little bit more about some of these topics.

[00:42:23] First of all, of course, we have information today on the website Point of View dot net. So you can find out more about his book, but all sorts of other resources.

[00:42:32] You can type in words like apologetics or defending the faith in our search engine and find so many interviews, so many good articles and resources. So we really want to equip you to make a difference in your community, in your sphere of influence.

[00:42:47] That's all we have for today. If you would like to listen to this again, you can go to that button that says Watch or Listen.

[00:42:52] And most importantly, I want to thank Megan for help engineering the program and also want to thank Steve for his producing of this program. We look forward to seeing you tomorrow right here on Point of View. At Point of View, we believe there is power in prayer.

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