Ep 784 ｜ Did the Resurrection Really Happen？ ｜ Guest： Jeremiah Johnston
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Summary
Jeremiah Johnston is a New Testament scholar, an apologetics pastor, and a writer. He wrote the book, Body of Proof: Seven Reasons to Believe in the Resurrection of Jesus and Why It Matters. In this episode, Jeremiah talks about how he and his wife, Audrey, raise Christian thinkers.
Transcript
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Christians are to love God with all of our heart, with all of our soul, with all of our
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Loving God with all of our mind means we need to know what we believe and why.
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So today I'm sitting down with Dr. Jeremiah Johnston.
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We will be talking through some apologetics questions, but we will also be discussing
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Why it is a factual truth on which Christians rest our faith.
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He wrote this book, Body of Proof, Seven Reasons to Believe in the Resurrection of Jesus and
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Oh my gosh, I could have talked to him for five hours because our entire discussion was so
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This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.
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If you could tell us first who you are and what you do.
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Allie Beth, I'm the overstressed father of multiples.
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My wife and I have five children, three of which are triplet boys.
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They're six years old, so we haven't slept in six years in the Johnston household.
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I studied in Oxford, did my PhD on the physical bodily resurrection of Jesus.
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And then in the course of doing that, my wife, Audrey, and I, what sent us to Oxford,
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Allie Beth, is we wouldn't have described ourselves as Christian thinkers.
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We read the great commandment, Matthew chapter 12, Matthew, Mark 12, excuse me.
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Jesus messianizes the Shema and he applies it to himself.
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We don't, we're Christians, but we're not loving God with our mind like we should.
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And we started a ministry called Christian Thinkers Society because we wanted to teach
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Christians to be thinkers, thinkers to be Christians.
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It was this side hustle for a long time and then God just blew it up.
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This is why I'm so excited to be on your show because you're a Christian thinker.
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You can answer first and foremost, your own questions.
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You can wrestle with those, but then you help us model a conversant faith in the marketplace
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So I've been so excited about our conversation today.
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And before I even get into what that looks like through your ministry, because you're
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now an apologetics pastor at a large church in Dallas, Prestonwood Baptist Church.
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But first, since you mentioned being a father of lots of busy kids, I imagine that one of
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your highest priorities and your Aunt Audrey's is raising Christian thinkers yourself.
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So how have you figured out how to do that as a parent?
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And I think everyone watching this wants to know, how can I raise Christian thinkers?
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It comes right out of the book of 2 Timothy, where we pass on a legacy of faith to our kids.
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But one thing that we have really helped our kids understand is it's not a sin to question
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Unfortunately, so many Christians raise their kids, don't ask questions, just believe.
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And so I think one of the pillars of how we raise Lily, Justin, Abel, Ryder, and Jax is
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I want to invite them into a faith conversation.
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And it's amazing to me because they want to ask questions.
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Like they always want to bring up, like literally, we were going to bed the other night.
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And Lily, who is our teenager, she's like, Dad, let's talk about Job.
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Alex is like, well, we'll talk, we'll do a highlight and we'll go deeper tomorrow if
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So the big aspect for us is, you know, we, Christianity is something we do every day of
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So we talk about him as if he was living in our home.
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And, but really allowing them to own their own faith through grappling with those difficult
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And not shying away from any questions they may have or calling, as you said, a question
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But just realizing that that's a healthy part of our faith, just like, you know, just like
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And so have you ever dealt with a question from your child that you're like, I actually
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Um, you know, they ask questions all the time and especially with five.
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I mean, we can't get, Audrey and I can't get a word in edgewise at dinner.
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There's, there's a lot of chatter and, you know, usually it's a question that requires,
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And then our kids, you know, it's like, Hey, listen, I'm answering the question you just
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So we do take our time, but yeah, there's some difficult ones.
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And, you know, that's the fun part about growing in our faith is we don't have all the answers
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You know, you can have a PhD, you can write a bunch of books and guess what?
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They'll pop a question off that I haven't even ever considered in my entire life.
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And that's the fun journey about the life of the mind and faith.
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You know, we, as Augustine said, we think and believing and we believe in thinking.
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That's what it means to be a Christian, to think and believe and believe in thinking.
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So, you know, we're going to have unanswered questions till the moment we see Jesus face
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And I still think we're going to have questions in eternity someday.
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Ephesians 2, 7 says that God is going to continue through the ages to come to show us his grace
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We're not going to be omniscient when we get to heaven someday as God is.
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So I think we're even going to have questions someday in eternity, Allie Beth.
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So we better get used to asking and answering those.
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And for all of the people, all the parents in particular out there who are in
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intimidated by the idea of discipling their kids to be Christian thinkers, very often
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it's because they are maybe ashamed of the fact that they either don't have the answers
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or maybe they don't even know the questions to ask, whether they were raised at home where
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you couldn't ask questions or they were raised in a non-Christian home.
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So it's important for us as adults, no matter where we are in our faith, to start being Christian
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I mean, that's part of why you wrote this book, right?
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That's a huge reason why you do what you do as apologetics pastors.
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So for someone who's like ground zero, just starting out, like how do they start to be
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First off, it's the goal of, it's God's will for all of us to love him with all of our
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Not just the Delta Force Christians like Allie Bestucki, but every follower of Jesus is called
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And so I think first and foremost, understanding that's not, there's no prerequisites to that.
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You don't have to go own your faith in such a way that you have degrees behind your name
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And so I would get in the Gospels immediately and I would understand the Gospels.
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And what's amazing is there was a time in my life when I remembered I couldn't answer
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And I remember being silent when a friend asked me questions and I made a commitment to the
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Lord Allie Beth, not on my watch ever again, Lord.
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And the really cool thing about that is we need to have healthy conversations.
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You model that so well for us, how to have a healthy dialogue, to be aware of the facts,
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to not shy away from the truth, and then to have healthy dialogue and to confront evil.
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You know, part of having a Christian worldview isn't just knowing what we believe, but we've
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got to poke holes in all the crazy beliefs around us.
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That's part of having a good Christian worldview.
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And so modeling that well, reading the Gospels, getting close to Jesus, it's not hard.
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But we, as soon as we do that, we see that God activates addiction to truth in our life.
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When I was a junior, probably between junior and senior year of high school is when I started
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I thankfully was raised in a Christian home, went to church.
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I went to a Christian school, kindergarten through 12th grade.
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Lewis and a couple apologetics books that were assigned to us in school, Mere Christianity
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Screwtape Letters, that I really started recognizing the depth of just the intellectual richness
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that is Christianity and Christian apologetics, that you can spend, you know, 13 years at a Christian school
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and you haven't even scratched the surface of the things that brilliant people and theologians
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are asking about God and they don't even have the answers to.
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And that opened like a whole new world for me of just, I don't know, intriguing aspects
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of God and Christianity that I hadn't thought about before.
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And so I wish I had had an apologetics pastor kind of like shepherding through that journey
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because I was reading at the time all different kinds of teachers and looking back, I'm like,
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But so tell me what you do as an apologetics pastor at such a large church.
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How do you help people who are like, I want this, but I don't know where to start?
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What I love is you've helped, you realize that there's a great intellectual tradition
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When you look at those early apologists, they out thought everybody around them, Allie.
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They were writing letters to the emperor talking about why Christians were great Roman citizens
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I mean, think about that in the marketplace of ideas.
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They were willing to step up and share why Christianity made sense, the best sense of
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And so, you know, apologetics seems like a new thing, but apologetics has been around since
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the nascent Christianity, the early days of the church.
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Apologetics, for those that are just hearing that word for the very first time, it's a word
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that Socrates used 500 years before the New Testament was written.
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It means to give an answer, apologia, a reason for what we believe.
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Can you give an answer, a reason for what we believe?
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Today's post-Christian world, when I think about your children and our children, Generation Z,
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growing up the first post- and post-Christian generation in the United States.
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And I hope pastors who are watching and listening right now will hear my heart.
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I can't imagine a church today not having an apologetics pastor on staff.
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We have music pastors, we have student pastors, we have NextGen, we have media pastors.
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How on earth could you not have an apologetics pastor on your staff right now who helps you
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parse through this secular humanist worldview that's encroaching on our children, trying to
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The scales of truth tip in our favor, don't they?
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And so what I do is I work with our pastoral staff, of course.
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I do a meeting quarterly called Level Up, where we talk about cultural issues and how we need
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to address them at every level of our 150 ministries at our church.
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And it's not, you know, it's apologetics and cultural issues because those go hand in
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The end of this is, of course, always evangelism to win people to Christ.
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But a lot of people forget that apologetics is just important for the people of God in the
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I mean, when Paul writes to the Colossians, the Colossian church in Colossians 2.8, be
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It's the force as if someone were to come into your house and kidnap your children.
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Don't let anyone take you captive through empty deceit, philosophy, the things of the
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Jude three, epigenes of mine, grief, continue to attack.
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We have to outthink those around us, Allie Beth.
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And so the really cool part is, is, you know, we guide the church at all levels through real
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So I can tell you that we're getting ready to go through a four week Bible study that
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And we're taking 200 life groups through that on difficult questions.
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I announced it during one of our sermons where I said, if you want to join my task force,
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I got a thousand emails the next day of men and women who I said, I need first, I'll help
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But we need to raise up an army of Christian thinkers that pass on a legacy of faith that
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can be on the front lines and share the hope that they have within them and do it with gentleness.
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Well, I deal with atheists every week of my life, agnostics, secular humanists, and I don't
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get nervous talking to them because the truth is on our side.
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I've heard all their arguments and I really want to try to reach them.
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And so I can be very comfortable and I'm a better listener now than I've ever been.
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I have, I have so much to say and so many questions to ask.
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One of the things that you said was that Christianity makes sense.
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And I think we would be, or maybe I would just be amazed at the number of Christians who
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would actually kind of be uncomfortable saying that.
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They might say Christianity makes sense to me, or even worse, they would say it feels right
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As you mentioned, the history of apologetics of the church from the very beginning has a very
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rich intellectual component and intellectual history.
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There's a reason why all the Ivy League universities in the United States were actually started by
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There's a reason why they're all dying right now, too.
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Because they've reached that post-Christian era long before the rest of the country has.
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But the Reformation and even before that, I mean, you mentioned this, which I just think
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is fascinating, is that Christians at one point were not scared to say, no, Christianity makes
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sense, not just for me, but actually for everyone.
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And it makes the most sense, more than any other worldview, any other ideology.
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Like, that is something that I think a lot of Christians today, they won't defend that.
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It's very similar to how the world needs to be and how the world is.
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And Christianity helps us understand why we're here, the great purpose of why God has us here.
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And when we understand that, when we unlock that, we become great citizens.
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And we do need to poke holes, because let me tell you, secular humanists are trying to
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say that their ideology makes the best sense of the world.
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So, Christians, it's a time for us to stand up and be counted.
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And, you know, that's why Winston Churchill was called that great defender of Christian
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It's why in September of 1943 at Harvard, he stands up, he couldn't sleep the night before
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And September 6, 1943, he makes the point, he was almost as a prophet, Ali Beth, he said,
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now the empires of the future will not be nation states.
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And you think about the time attacking fascism, Nazism, communism.
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He said the empires of the future will be empires of the mind, these ideologies that will attack
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And this is where, friends, our way of life, our way of thinking, the very fabric on which
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Western civilization is based, is under attack.
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Rufus Fears, the now deceased OU professor, made it clear that not until the dawn of the Bible
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did the idea of universal freedom, that means freedom for all, not until the dawn of the
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That comes right out of the cut and thrust of the Christian worldview.
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We don't realize so many of the amenities that we enjoy in society right now come from
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And most Christians, they remind me of that generation.
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And there arose after them a generation that did not know the Lord or the works which he
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And so, gosh, I want my kids to know the great intellectual tradition of our faith, the intellectual
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I mean, it's one negative about the Reformation in my mind.
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The New Testament stops, and we can't tell you who.
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Of course, we don't pray to saints, et cetera, but we've lost track of the great intellectual
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And friends, if we don't do it now, we're going to lose it.
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I mean, it's game, set, match right now if we don't stand up.
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I think people don't realize what you just said is that in a post-Christian world, what
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A lot of people who say, whether Christians or not, you know, we don't really need Christianity
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Like, the idea of a human right is a Christian idea.
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You go to different countries today, outside of the West, and increasingly even in the West,
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but outside of the West, the idea of human beings having innate value because they are
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created by a power that's higher than the government is completely foreign to China.
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Get on a plane and go check it out for yourself.
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And it wasn't new in the early Christian era as well.
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It's a love letter from a man named Hilarion to his wife, Alice, in Egypt.
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She will give birth to their child before he returns from work.
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And he writes, and it sounds like this in Greek,
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No one would have batted an eye in the Roman Empire at, if it's a boy, keep it.
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So we have to ask ourselves, even though we have historical distance, but as critical thinkers,
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Jesus and his movement that said, let the children come to me.
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I mean, we have to ask ourselves, why did Christianity have to invent a new term for burial?
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Those were the three options for burial in the time of Christians.
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So if you're slave drive, just kick them to the curb, literally the body.
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Christians began, because of the belief in the resurrection, to be buried together.
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They had to come up with a new term for burial.
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They called it koimitarion in Greek, dormitory, sleeping rooms.
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Every time we drive by a cemetery today, we should be reminded of the fact that that's
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They even took care of dead bodies of slaves if they were Christians and they were interred
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We've got to know these things so that we can keep passing on this great legacy of faith.
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Because when you think about the Apostle Paul becoming a Christian, Galatians 3.28, he was
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He just didn't like people as a Pharisee, not just women.
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And the fact that he could have this experience with a resurrected Christ and then write something
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like Galatians 3.28, that there's neither Jew nor Gentile, there's neither slave nor
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female nor female, we're all one in Christ Jesus, that would be looked on as seditious
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in the Roman Empire, to say something like that.
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I have a friend who has been in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
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You know, you go to Saudi Arabia to the department store.
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And when she was talking, I was like, oh, praise God, there's a Dunkin' Donuts in Riyadh,
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She sits down inside the Dunkin' Donuts in Riyadh and tries to enjoy her donut.
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Man walks around the counter, begins shouting at her in Arabic, women eat outside.
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And she said, Jeremiah, I've never felt so much shame.
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So again, when we talk about ideas and worldview, you know, as they often say, you know, bad
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But he wrote a book about the invention of children.
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And when I first read about this, I thought that this was such an incredible concept that
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it's exactly what you're talking about, that if you go to pagan Greece and Rome and what
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they looked like, the adult free male was basically the nucleus of society.
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The only person who really had rights because they were really the only person who could offer
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Or so they thought women, children, slaves, the elderly, the disabled were all pushed to
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Many times they were sexually exploited or they were simply left to die.
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It was so rare for them to grow into adulthood that they were really just kind of seen as
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It wasn't until Christians came along and universalized what was already a Jewish idea
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But then doubled down on that, reemphasized that by introducing this radical equality that
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we are all equally dead in sin apart from Christ and equally alive in Christ with him.
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This radical equality of the gospel that we read in Ephesians 2, Christians didn't just
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They said, no, this makes sense for all of you.
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It radically revolutionized how societies treated marginalized people.
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It's a lot easier to enslave people if there's no Christianity.
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Moral relativism, humanity's dehumanized, no individual freedom, law of the jungle.
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We can study more than one half of the world's population has turned their back on God in the
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I wouldn't want to raise my family in those places because anytime you have the absolute truth
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deniers, like in China, where they have their own edited Bible and they have the people's
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the PRC Bible, it's an opportunity to insert a new truth.
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And so the communist Bible today, you can't say you will have no gods before me because
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And so anytime you have the absolute truth deniers, make no mistake, they always insert
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their own truth, which, of course, marginalizes someone.
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And it still exists in places like Libya and throughout Africa today.
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So how do we deal with, as Christians, in a world that tells us that Christianity doesn't
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only not make sense, but it's stupid, it's backwards, it's evil?
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Actually, the opposite of what is true, that it has been the primary driver of oppression
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and of even violence and slavery and the marginalization of women and things like that.
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And yet we're standing here and we're like, well, I still believe in it.
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And not only that, but I believe all the things that you're telling me are bigoted.
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I still believe that God made us male and female.
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I still believe that marriage is between a man and a woman.
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I still believe that life inside the womb is sacred.
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How do we start being bold in those things and knowing why we believe that?
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Well, the first thing we need to know is I'm a big immediate next steps guy.
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And my wife is like, Jeremiah, you've got to make this practical.
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Every time you share an evidence for the gospel, make it practical because, you know, I'm a
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We need to do a better job of being bold about the impact that here's the answer.
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The church unified and mobilized is the greatest force for good on planet Earth.
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That is right now the most effective apologetic in my mind is for us to get conversant on what
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happens when there's a tragedy, when some unspeakable horror.
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When we look at the fact that today there are 90 million Americans who live in federally
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recognized shortage areas of a mental health professional, what fills the void?
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Pastors, 353,000 congregations strong that donate 10 to 20 percent of their week to do biblical
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counseling to minister to people who are hurting, who are on the edge.
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When I look at the fact that America would starve if there were no Christians, we have
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46 million Americans right now that don't know where their next meal is coming from.
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46,000 food bank agencies, 60 percent of which are Christian organizations.
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When my wife and I went through Hurricane Harvey, we lived in the most diverse county in America
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It was amazing to me that the church outpaced FEMA.
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That's a whole nother conversation, passing out bottled water, helping people muck out
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But it was like Christian Delta Force groups of believers that were mucking out people's
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houses saying, hey, can we pray for you and help you with your house?
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And there were so many people reached that way.
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So an immediate next step for me is you have to get conversant.
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You know, you go to London, go to South Bank in London, go to the Florence Nightingale Museum.
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Understand that the whole science of modern nursing was the creation, the innovation of
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a Christian whose parents turned their back on her.
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She turned her back on wealth and her love for Christ compelled her to want to care for
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Florence Nightingale, every time a nurse is pinned today at a nursing school, that's a
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Christian, Florence Nightingale, who innovated in modern nursing.
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One after another to where that's why Churchill was protecting Christian civilization.
00:27:28.140
I met with Rodney Stark at Baylor, and I went through the facts that for a thousand years,
00:27:33.320
Christianity stamped out racism because a lot of people don't realize the same literature
00:27:43.220
Plato keeping the precious metal of Greece pure.
00:27:52.540
For a thousand years, though, there's no racist writer or thinker.
00:27:58.320
There wasn't a prominent thinker that espoused racist ideas until the Enlightenment.
00:28:04.260
And it's in the Enlightenment where these thinkers bring these old neo-atheist ideas back
00:28:10.540
You know, the Enlightenment thinkers had no problem with the transatlantic slave, by the way.
00:28:14.580
So as they're idolized, Nietzsche, Feuerbach, the big five thinkers, of course, Marx, Darwin,
00:28:25.860
But they're so immortalized in our modern philosophy programs and universities.
00:28:33.020
And these are the destroyers of people's lives, these ideologies.
00:28:38.300
Yes, I was thinking about this last night, actually.
00:28:41.520
We've got so many political interest groups in America that claim to be like fighting for
00:28:46.640
social justice, fighting for the least of these.
00:28:49.260
But really, if you look at whether they divide themselves by race or by socioeconomic class
00:28:55.300
or by what they think their sexual orientation is or by what they think their so-called gender
00:28:59.180
identity is, all of them are fighting exclusively for their own interests.
00:29:04.460
When I'm not just talking about all the people who identify in these ways, I'm talking about
00:29:08.940
the people who identify in the activist class of these groups, they claim to be fighting
00:29:14.240
They are only ever fighting for their own interests.
00:29:16.940
And then conversely, if you look at Christians, well, what are we always fighting for?
00:29:23.560
Someone having an abortion over here doesn't personally affect me.
00:29:27.980
The only reason we fight for unborn children or fight for those who are enslaved or fight for
00:29:32.860
the poor is because the love of Christ compels us to do that.
00:29:42.680
That's why we actually started hundreds of years ago, the universities, because we cared
00:29:46.580
about other people more than we cared about ourselves.
00:29:49.340
I'm not sure that you could say that for any other group.
00:29:55.520
So, you know, you're free to interpret the facts differently, but you can't argue with the
00:30:02.300
This is the bedrock of Western civilization, and it's why we have to take the mic back from
00:30:08.220
We have to get a conversant faith that can speak to these issues.
00:30:11.320
So immediate next steps for people that are watching, you've got to get conversant in what
00:30:17.440
The great blessing that the move of God, which is the church, it's the greatest force for good
00:30:22.600
on earth, but we have to have, like you evidence, a resiliency to our faith.
00:30:26.820
So that means, you know, as I follow Jesus, as I live out the gospel, make no mistake,
00:30:32.360
I am going to come into conflict with society and culture around me.
00:30:36.300
So I have to be bold in my witness and I have to be able to say, oh, no, no, no, that's wrong.
00:31:02.400
Okay, we haven't even gotten into your book yet.
00:31:05.000
There's a million other things I can talk to you about.
00:31:07.440
Yeah, but I mean, a lot of this has to do with this book.
00:31:10.020
So tell me about this book, Body of Truth, the seven best reasons to believe in the resurrection
00:31:20.180
And I think a lot of people, they're okay with saying that, you know, Jesus was alive.
00:31:24.240
He was a good teacher and sure he was influential.
00:31:27.380
Maybe they'll even agree with a lot of the things that we just said, but risen from the
00:31:32.860
So tell us why that matters and tell us about the proof.
00:31:37.540
The body of proof for Jesus's resurrection is such that every believer needs to understand
00:31:46.400
We are not Christians because Jesus is like the Santa Claus myth or the tooth fairy or fairy
00:31:54.260
On April 9, AD 30, or if you will, April 5th, AD 33, Jesus physically, bodily rose from the
00:32:09.160
The Bible speaks of real people, real places, real events.
00:32:12.060
The resurrection of Jesus, though, unfortunately today, Allie Beth, and this is why I'm so thankful
00:32:23.240
And it has produced a weak, breathless Christianity.
00:32:27.080
The resurrection of Jesus is the only reason that nascent Christianity took over the Roman
00:32:33.560
There were 28 different messiahs in Judaism in the first century.
00:32:38.460
Jesus wasn't the only guy that said, hey, I'm the messiah.
00:32:43.360
They all came to naught with the death of the proposed messiah.
00:32:47.600
Only one had a movement that said, no, he rose again from the dead.
00:32:56.480
300 passages in the New Testament speak to the resurrection.
00:32:59.620
The promise that we are given more than any other promise, more than two dozen times in
00:33:10.820
And so that speaks to so many issues today right now.
00:33:13.860
And then finally, when we look at the fact that it is a historical fact, when we look at
00:33:17.720
the issue that every sermon in the book of Acts talked about the resurrection, we need
00:33:21.460
to be better equipped to be conversant why we believe the resurrection of Jesus happened.
00:33:25.840
And this isn't something we talk about only on Easter week or at a funeral.
00:33:29.880
Every Sunday was Resurrection Sunday in New Testament Christianity.
00:33:33.420
It's why we worship on Sunday, which was market day in the Roman Empire, a work day, not on
00:33:39.320
And so what I wanted to do was I wanted to, in about three and a half hours of reading with
00:33:43.640
Body of Proof, produce a book because I'm amazed that this is the centerpiece of our faith.
00:33:49.420
And make no mistake, the death and resurrection of Jesus is the center of a Christian worldview.
00:33:56.100
There is no Christian worldview without the resurrection of Jesus.
00:34:02.560
You know, there's a couple from 20 years ago, 10 years ago, maybe.
00:34:06.320
Very few books you could hand someone today and say, here's the best evidences.
00:34:11.800
As I mentioned, I've published 200,000 words academically.
00:34:18.940
But I wanted to have a book that would give you the seven best reasons to believe based
00:34:24.280
on the evidence, but also practically, again, back to immediate next steps, how that empowers
00:34:29.080
our church movements today and why it even matters.
00:34:33.240
And I'm delighted that you can be totally up to date on the archaeology, on the material
00:34:38.100
culture discoveries that we've had, on Jewish burial traditions, all those fun things.
00:34:42.180
But then we draw a line right over to how this gives us hope and encouragement, how it's
00:34:47.620
Wow, it's a really quick book for all of that information.
00:34:51.440
And this is something that it seems like we kind of just look over, that we don't talk
00:34:58.020
Of course, everything in Christianity requires a degree of faith, but you're saying that our
00:35:06.420
It doesn't just rest on some kind of superstition or hope that he rose from the dead.
00:35:10.280
So just walk us through a couple of the reasons.
00:35:14.040
So there's a couple of things that we need to know as we look in the bodily resurrection.
00:35:17.980
Number one, it is a fact of history, as I mentioned.
00:35:23.500
You know, some may disagree, but these are the seven best.
00:35:29.280
Allie Beth, if the church had a hashtag, it would be on the third day.
00:35:33.500
And by the way, we can't help you if you don't know what a hashtag is on this program.
00:35:39.520
And this is why we can't unhitch the Old Testament from the New Testament.
00:35:43.860
So we interpret Jesus and his ministry through the Old Testament.
00:35:50.320
Jesus messianizes and even eschatologizes Old Testament passages.
00:35:59.000
And I see myself in the disciples all the time.
00:36:01.000
I mean, there's like constantly, what is he doing?
00:36:02.840
And that will get to some of my other points, but Jesus takes Hosea 6, 2, and 3 very seriously.
00:36:11.700
On the third day, he will raise us up that we may live before him.
00:36:15.980
Jesus applies that passage from Hosea 6, 2, and 3 to his own life.
00:36:23.680
Jesus predicts his death and violent, his violent death and resurrection.
00:36:27.620
But he also predicts on the third day, after three days, after three days.
00:36:31.320
And then when you look at the earliest tradition of resurrection, 1 Corinthians 15, 4, and he rose from the dead, as the scripture said, on the third day.
00:36:40.360
So this was the rallying call of Jesus's passion prediction on the third day.
00:36:44.680
So he called it, Jeremiah, why is this important?
00:36:47.180
Because skeptics today say that Jesus didn't really know what he was doing, man.
00:36:54.620
Sixty-nine times in just the synoptic Gospels alone, Ali Beth, Jesus said he refers to himself as son of man.
00:37:01.820
If you and I were in the audience, we would know exactly what he was doing because we would actually read the Old Testament.
00:37:07.740
We would have been raised with the prophecy of Daniel 7 that son of man will sit next to the ancient of days.
00:37:13.680
So, again, do you see why it's so important he predicted it?
00:37:16.240
And then one of the other body of proofs is Jesus demonstrated resurrection power.
00:37:20.820
Not only did he predict he had power over death to raise himself up, he adumbrated his power over death by raising up Jairus's daughter from the dead.
00:37:33.320
Jesus shouts at that grave and he says, duro exo.
00:37:37.440
A lot of Johannine commentators actually say that if Jesus wouldn't have said Lazarus' name, everybody who's dead would have just come alive at that moment.
00:37:46.400
And then they want to kill Lazarus after he's been raised from the dead.
00:37:54.020
The really interesting, another point about the body of proof, this would be number four, is no one, none of Jesus's disciples expected the Messiah to die by Roman crucifixion, let alone rise from the dead.
00:38:06.580
They were all looking for a conquering Messiah, a Messiah who would vanquish a corrupt priesthood, kill the Roman occupiers, indeed, even kill the Roman emperor.
00:38:21.660
You know, the disciples of Jesus at times spoke for Satan.
00:38:32.280
And so we see that it wasn't what they expected.
00:38:34.780
So there's no psychological reason to make up a resurrection narrative.
00:38:43.940
It means that Jesus was the real Messiah, the 27 other guys.
00:38:53.400
What does that mean for us, both here in understanding the gospel and the power of it, but also for our future resurrection?
00:39:00.660
And I know that could be like a whole hour-long conversation, but that's something that also isn't talked about very much and is a little bit confusing.
00:39:07.240
So, yeah, I thought it was interesting how you said that Jesus demonstrated resurrection power by resurrecting others from the dead while he was alive, but he will also, we will also be resurrected.
00:39:17.520
And it's fascinating to me that in the New Testament, we actually hear more about the resurrection than heaven.
00:39:24.440
I mean, heaven is a great thing, but it's really about the resurrection, the new heaven and the new earth, the new cosmos recreated.
00:39:32.200
This is why one of my body of proofs is the resurrection is the only way we can ultimately make sense of the suffering in the world.
00:39:39.480
I can't compare the suffering, Paul writes, with what I'm enduring right now with the glory that's to come.
00:39:45.040
And so that answers your question, that Jesus is able to complete his atonement for us, and it shows that his death was validated before God, the Father.
00:39:58.860
He rises from the dead on the third day, showing that he had conquered and paid for sin.
00:40:07.440
200 times in the New Testament, salvation is conditioned on faith and faith alone.
00:40:11.660
It's not faith in faith, it's faith in the finished work of Christ, the facts of the gospel.
00:40:17.780
That immediately, when we turn to faith in Christ, we are forgiven, we're sealed with the Holy Spirit for eternity.
00:40:23.400
And then the beauty is, is that that linkage that we have with Jesus's resurrection, our resurrection and Jesus' resurrection are linked.
00:40:30.900
So much so that we can talk about our friends and loved ones who have died in the Lord, we can speak of them in the present tense.
00:40:38.860
And that's where it brings us great hope, Allie Beth, because, you know, as I was writing, and truly in about 150 pages, once you get through Gary Habermas forward and all the end notes,
00:40:48.480
I was thinking about my little sister, Jenny Lee, if you don't mind me being transparent for a minute on the show.
00:40:54.960
She and her husband, Jeff, their two daughters, they had a baby who was stillborn at 25 weeks.
00:40:59.740
She had to go in and deliver Wesley, and we say his name.
00:41:03.240
And Jenny had the, and she'll never be the same after experiencing that.
00:41:08.220
But Jenny had the wherewithal from the Holy Spirit to write a blog and say,
00:41:12.880
I know that the first time our son opened his eyes, he saw Jesus.
00:41:19.840
The only reason my little sister could put one foot in front of the other after that experience is because we grieve, but we do not grieve as the heathen.
00:41:28.620
We grieve within hope and with hope because we know we will be reunited with our loved ones.
00:41:34.200
And so there might be people who are watching this program right now, and they've experienced a deep loss in their life.
00:41:40.560
The resurrection is what will make sense of that loss, ultimately.
00:41:44.920
The resurrection is this great hope that we grieve.
00:41:51.420
And 1 Peter 1.3 is a verse I've been memorizing right now.
00:41:54.600
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has invited us into a living hope.
00:42:06.300
And so I know that was a long answer, but it's something I'm really passionate about, about why it matters today.
00:42:12.940
For those of us that have experienced loss, disappointment, adversity, a resurrection-centric life will give us a living hope right now.
00:42:21.600
We live in a culture of despair and compare and despair.
00:42:25.980
So, Body of Proof, this is wherever books are sold, correct?
00:42:42.680
And like I said, it's a, I mean, it's a very short read.
00:42:45.060
It's a simple read, which is someone who has written as many words as you have and has such a great understanding of the New Testament.
00:42:51.560
I think it takes another level of understanding and skill to be able to break it down for those of us who are not New Testament scholars in a way that makes sense and is applicable.
00:43:00.400
So I encourage everyone to go out and get this.
00:43:02.900
Also encourage, I don't know, well, I can't say this.
00:43:07.180
But if there are pastors out there who are wondering, how do I start an apologetics ministry at my church or how do I get an apologetics pastor?
00:43:14.260
Is there, I don't want to say contact you, but is there any resource that you can point them to, to where they can start thinking through this for their own congregation?
00:43:22.620
If you go to Google and just Google my name, I've written a lot of op-eds about how we can get started.
00:43:27.440
I've done extensive interviews about ways in which you can start, even if you're bivocational or if you're a volunteer.
00:43:33.860
We need, every church needs an apologetics ministry.
00:43:38.180
Know that there are great evidences for our faith.
00:43:40.260
Help our people to go, stop going to Google and start going to God's word.
00:43:49.020
Like, I love that people listen to this podcast, obviously.
00:43:53.800
But there are people who listen to this podcast because, and this is what I don't like, because their pastors are not answering questions.
00:44:03.600
You know, they might say I even have a pretty good pastor, but I don't know what to think about gender.
00:44:09.160
I don't know what to think about these big worldview issues.
00:44:11.440
And that's not to say that a pastor from the pulpit has to talk about those every weekend, but there has to be some resource in the church so that they're not going to TikTok.
00:44:19.800
Because they might become interrelatable, but they might also be going to Joe Schmo on TikTok who doesn't actually believe in the authority of the Bible.
00:44:27.660
So pastors, your congregants have questions and they want to know the answers to them.
00:44:32.420
And you've got to lock in your own worldview if you're a pastor.
00:44:38.160
And we, I mean, I've been trying to bring this term back in vogue.
00:44:44.500
Protestants need to be comfortable with that word.
00:44:49.220
We have to train them up to stand and have a resiliency to their faith.
00:44:53.440
And every day I wake up, I'm excited because what I'm finding in all those churches, because I speak in churches of all denominations,
00:45:00.240
Lutheran, all the way to Presbyterian, everything in between, Christians want to be challenged.
00:45:06.720
They're sick of the dumbing down of Christianity.
00:45:09.480
We have the dumbest sermons of all time that are being preached right now.
00:45:15.780
I can't reconcile that with the fact that we're living in the golden age of Christianity from an evidential standpoint.
00:45:21.900
You know, just the great discoveries of the last decade even, even in the last year.
00:45:30.060
I mean, Christianity's closest cousin is archaeology.
00:45:33.780
And unlike any other belief system in the world, Christianity says, hey, test us against history.
00:45:39.200
You know, and I want pastors to lock into that, to not shy away from it.
00:45:48.360
Jeremiah, you show slides when you preach at your church that have fragments on them.
00:45:54.440
You show fragments of a heel bone of Yehohanan to talk about the archaeology, to support the resurrection narratives.
00:46:07.100
They have the capacity to ask and answer really profound questions.
00:46:11.860
And that's really when I fell in love with what Christianity is and offers intellectually.
00:46:16.440
And I think everyone has that inner hunger and capacity.
00:46:28.300
But definitely buy his books and look into making sure that you have an apologetics ministry at your church.