Our friends the
atheists will tell you that
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the resurrection of
Jesus was just a legend.
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Our Muslim friends
will tell you that Jesus
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just swooned, He didn't die.
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But I'm going to tell you
why the apostles were right.
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Jesus is alive.
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The resurrection of Jesus
is just central to everything.
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Without the resurrection,
there's no Genesis.
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Without the resurrection,
there's no second coming.
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But with the resurrection
of Jesus, Genesis is true.
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And with the resurrection
of Jesus as a reality,
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the coming of Jesus is certain.
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Let's go to the Scriptures
and just see why the apostles
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put the
resurrection at the center
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of the great story of Jesus.
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Jesus Himself, at the
resurrection of Lazarus
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or just before the
resurrection of Lazarus,
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declared to Martha
these marvelous words.
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And we also find
similar declarations of His
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resurrected power in
the book of Revelation.
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And we'll talk about
that at another time.
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But now in the New Testament
we have Jesus saying to Martha
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in John 11:25, Jesus says, "I am
the resurrection and the life.
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And he who believes
in Me, though he die,
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yet shall he live."
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That's a powerful declaration.
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"I am the
resurrection and the life."
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So Jesus made that
center to His own mission
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as Messiah of the world.
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On the day of Pentecost
the apostle Peter declares
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powerfully in Acts 2:32-33,
"This Jesus God has raise up,
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of which we are all witnesses."
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The apostle Peter
said, "We saw this.
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We know what happened."
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"And He's exalted Jesus
to the right hand of God..."
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And then the apostle Paul
gives a very powerful picture
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in 1 Corinthians
15 as he declares
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the centrality
of the resurrection.
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"For I delivered to you first
of all that which I received:
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that Jesus died for our sins
according to the Scriptures,
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and that He was
buried, and that He rose again
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the third day
according to the Scriptures.
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And after that He was seen by
Cephas, and then by the twelve.
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After that He was seen by over
five hundred brethren at once,
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of whom the greater
part remain to the present,
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but some have fallen asleep.
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After that He was seen by
James, then by all the apostles.
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And then last of
all He was seen by me,
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as one born out of due time."
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That's a quick summary
of the powerful witnesses
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to the resurrection of Jesus.
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Romans 4:23-25 says
something about how important
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the resurrection is for us.
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For the sake of
time I won't read it all,
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but I want to look at
the last part of that.
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Paul says there that
Jesus was raised from the dead.
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But then he says in
the end there, he says,
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talking about Jesus,
"...who was delivered up
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for our offenses..."
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In other words,
Jesus died for our sins.
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Now I say this, and
sometimes people want me
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to make sure I clarify this.
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And you might be
quiet for a moment.
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I believe in that
old song where it says,
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"Jesus paid it all."
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Jesus paid it all.
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I love that song.
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And He did on Calvary's cross.
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But the death of Jesus
alone was not enough to save us.
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You say, "Are you sure?"
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I'm positive
because of the text.
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Listen to the text again.
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Jesus, "who was delivered
up because of our offenses,
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was raised," or resurrected,
"because of our justification."
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So in order to be
justified, we have to have both
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the death of Jesus and
the resurrection of Jesus.
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We serve a living Christ
who is able to transform us.
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Well why is it that people
say, "Well, it's just a legend
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or it's just a myth,"
or something like that?
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People like to do
that sort of thing.
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But I'm telling
you, and I say it kindly,
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they don't know what
they're talking about.
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There's a thing called the
study of ancient documents.
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In other words, when you went
to school and you studied about
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ancient history
of the Roman empire,
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where do you think
they got that information?
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Well they got it
from ancient documents
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that have been
somehow preserved.
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And that goes
true for many other
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ancient stories and history.
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Most all of it's based on a few
documents from ancient history.
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And scholars study
this, they make a study of
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studying these ancient documents
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in order to make
sure that they've got them
00:05:09.84\00:05:12.24
correct and
they've understood them.
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They criticize the text
and look at it carefully,
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and all of
those kinds of things.
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Well let's take a look
at some of those documents
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and how many we have.
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Because only by
understanding those documents
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are we going to be able to
understand how much information
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and documentation we have for
Jesus and for the resurrection.
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So let me start with those, I'm
going to share some of those.
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Back in, oh, I think
the 1970's, late 1970's,
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a person by the
name of Lee Strobel,
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he was a legal journalist
for the Chicago Tribune.
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He was an atheist. He
didn't believe in Jesus.
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But one day through
the course of time his wife
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became a Christian.
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And when she became a
Christian, he was kind of
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perturbed about that
because he was an atheist.
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He thought, "Well, I've
got to do something about this.
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This is too close to home."
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And so he decided that
he would prove that Jesus'
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resurrection never took place,
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and the whole
thing was just a myth.
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He thought he could
do it in one weekend.
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So he put all of his legal
skills and journalistic skills
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together, and a
year and a half later
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he laid down his legal
pad, laid down his pen,
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and gave his
heart to the Lord Jesus.
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Because what he had
discovered by being fair
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with the ancient
documents, that you can't deny
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the resurrection of Jesus.
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Now a lot of these
people are not Christians.
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And they'll tell you,
"I'm not a Christian, but
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we cannot deny the resurrection.
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We can't deny
that it took place.
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We can't tell you
how it took place,
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but we can't deny it."
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And the reason they
can't deny it is because
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of the authenticity of
these ancient documents.
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Let's take a look at a
few other ancient documents
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just to show you the
great difference between them
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and the New Testament gospels.
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But let me give you a
little summary statement
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first of all from
Dr. Michael Gleghorn.
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He said, "The New Testament
gospels, along with the other
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New Testament writings, were not
written within hundreds of years
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of the ministry of
Jesus, as some atheists allege.
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Anyone who thinks this is
relying on shoddy scholarship.
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All the New Testament documents,
including the four gospels,
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are products of the
first century church."
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In other words, they
were written right after
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the story of Jesus
and the life of Jesus.
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And they were
written by the apostles.
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But let's look again at
some of these ancient documents
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that you learned about in
school from ancient history,
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just to show you the difference.
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Here we've got Josephus.
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He was a Jewish historian.
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And he has a work
called, The Jewish Wars.
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We have only nine
complete manuscripts
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dating from the fifth century.
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That's four centuries
after they were written.
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That's the
earliest we have of that.
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Here's another one.
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Tacitus, The
Annals of Imperial Rome.
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Much of the history we
know about Imperial Rome
00:08:18.93\00:08:22.00
comes from this source.
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And copies were made,
the earliest copy we have
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is like 700 to 900
years after his death.
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And we only have a very few.
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Only, I think, two
manuscripts all together.
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That's where all your history,
much of the history about
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the Roman empire comes from.
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And then there's Julius Caesar.
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Everybody knows
that Julius Caesar lived.
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And he did his own
work on the Gallic Wars.
00:08:45.12\00:08:47.69
We have about
twelve manuscripts.
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The oldest, however, is 900
years after Julius Caesar lived.
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And then, of course, you've
heard of Socrates and Plato.
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Their philosophies
are still around today.
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Plato wrote the story
of the life of Socrates.
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But we only have seven
copies, and the earliest one
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is 1200 years
after Plato wrote it.
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Yet, nobody questions the
truth of Socrates and Plato.
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And then, of course,
there is Homer's Iliad.
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Everybody knows
about Homer the poet.
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He was written about
850 years BC, Before Christ.
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Great manuscript.
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We have quite a few documents.
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We have about 2000
fragments and manuscripts.
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However, there's a 900
year gap between the earliest,
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the earliest fragment we have.
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And there's
hundreds of other years
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between the actual
manuscript that we have.
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So most all of these documents
that tells of ancient history,
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we only have a handful of them.
00:10:01.33\00:10:03.33
And also there are
gaps of 800 to 2000 years
00:10:03.87\00:10:08.27
between when they were written
00:10:08.30\00:10:09.80
and the earliest
documents we have.
00:10:10.11\00:10:11.97
So it means you
have copies of copies,
00:10:12.01\00:10:13.54
of copies, of copies, of copies.
00:10:13.58\00:10:15.41
And yet, scholars today
don't doubt that they don't
00:10:15.64\00:10:18.31
have an accurate story.
00:10:18.35\00:10:20.25
They've studied
these documents carefully.
00:10:20.28\00:10:22.48
So people put it in the school
books, and you go to school,
00:10:22.72\00:10:27.06
that's what you learn.
00:10:27.09\00:10:28.42
And we accept it as fact
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because it's based
on good scholarship.
00:10:29.82\00:10:31.79
But I want to share with
you the stunning, the stunning
00:10:33.19\00:10:37.77
manuscripts and
documentations we have
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for the resurrection of Jesus.
00:10:40.64\00:10:42.27
The most recent count
that we have is that we have
00:10:42.94\00:10:46.21
over 5280
fragments and manuscripts
00:10:46.24\00:10:51.45
dating back on the life
of Christ, very early ones.
00:10:51.48\00:10:55.85
Some of these are, of course,
complete manuscripts nearly,
00:10:56.52\00:10:58.99
and some of them are fragments.
00:10:59.09\00:11:02.86
We have virtually brand,
not brand new, but virtually
00:11:03.43\00:11:07.26
complete New
Testament manuscripts
00:11:07.30\00:11:11.40
that go back within 300
years or less after Calvary
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within just about 200
years after the apostles lived.
00:11:16.54\00:11:19.47
That's early.
00:11:19.51\00:11:20.84
That's getting very, very close.
00:11:20.88\00:11:22.34
Let me give you just a
little summary of some of those
00:11:22.38\00:11:25.08
right now that would be
kind of fun just to know about.
00:11:25.11\00:11:27.95
I want to run
through some of them.
00:11:27.98\00:11:29.35
We have the Magdalen Papyrus.
00:11:29.38\00:11:33.09
And they think that it
was written about 200 AD.
00:11:33.19\00:11:37.59
That's just 100 years
after the last apostle died.
00:11:37.89\00:11:41.43
And some concluded
that it was actually written
00:11:41.46\00:11:45.13
in AD 70 while the
apostles were still alive.
00:11:45.17\00:11:48.30
That caused an uproar.
00:11:48.34\00:11:50.27
Another amazing one
is John Rylan's Papyri.
00:11:51.17\00:11:54.81
It was written, they think,
about 117 years after Christ.
00:11:55.24\00:12:00.45
Not after Christ.
00:12:00.68\00:12:02.02
That's after the
turn of the century.
00:12:02.05\00:12:03.39
That's after His birth.
00:12:03.42\00:12:04.75
So within a few
decades after the death
00:12:04.79\00:12:07.12
of Christ we have this.
00:12:07.16\00:12:08.72
Here's another one,
it's very important.
00:12:08.76\00:12:10.19
Part of this is held in
the University Of Michigan.
00:12:10.43\00:12:14.33
And it's called the
Chester Beatty Papyri.
00:12:14.36\00:12:17.63
Some people have said, "Well..."
00:12:18.80\00:12:20.14
And by the way, it contains
just about all the writings
00:12:20.17\00:12:22.70
of the apostle Paul.
00:12:22.74\00:12:24.21
And some have said that it
probably dates about 200 years,
00:12:24.67\00:12:29.31
200 AD, or about 100 years after
the death of the apostle John.
00:12:29.34\00:12:32.48
160 or 170 years
after the death of Christ.
00:12:32.81\00:12:35.75
That's getting pretty close.
00:12:36.05\00:12:37.95
Getting pretty close.
00:12:38.15\00:12:39.65
But then someone came
along by the name of Young Kim.
00:12:39.69\00:12:42.89
And he did a very scholarly
work, and he said, "No."
00:12:43.16\00:12:45.89
He says this was written
probably about AD 60 or 70.
00:12:46.09\00:12:50.53
The apostles are still alive.
00:12:50.90\00:12:53.03
The criticism of
him was very reserved.
00:12:53.34\00:12:56.60
He had done
very, very good work.
00:12:56.64\00:12:58.57
So we have documentation
now that gets very, very close.
00:12:59.24\00:13:03.38
The accuracy of the New
Testament has been translated
00:13:03.81\00:13:07.98
into many languages.
00:13:08.02\00:13:09.65
And I'm going to pick up
on that in just a little bit.
00:13:09.68\00:13:11.89
But I want to share with
you that when you look at the
00:13:11.92\00:13:14.56
evidence, you look at the
thousands of documentations
00:13:14.59\00:13:18.03
for these ancient
documents that we have
00:13:18.23\00:13:20.96
to tell about
the life of Christ,
00:13:21.00\00:13:22.83
that's why the scholars
are coming back and saying,
00:13:22.86\00:13:25.17
"You know,
something big happened.
00:13:25.90\00:13:28.77
The resurrection happened.
00:13:28.80\00:13:30.47
But we can't tell you how."
00:13:30.84\00:13:33.11
But the fact is
that it's a reality.
00:13:33.48\00:13:36.75
It's not a myth.
00:13:37.15\00:13:39.05
And if you compare
the documentation we have
00:13:39.45\00:13:42.08
for Jesus, it's overwhelming.
00:13:42.12\00:13:46.09
When we get back
we're going to look
00:13:46.45\00:13:48.26
at the evidences
of the resurrection.
00:13:48.69\00:13:50.83