Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas
Jeremy approaches Bible teaching with a passion for getting the basic doctrines explained so that the individual can understand them and then apply them to circumstances in their life. These basic and important lessons are nestled in a framework of history and progression of revelation from the Bible so the whole of Scripture can be applied to your physical and spiritual life.
Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas
NT Framework: How Unbelief Rewrites The Resurrection
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Why do smart people cling to weak explanations when the stakes are highest? Faced with how they will spend eternity, these smart people argue, dismiss, and reinterpret to avoid changing.
More information about Beyond the Walls, including additional resources can be found at www.beyondthewalls-ministry.com
This series included graphics to illustrate what is being taught, if you would like to watch the teachings you can do so on Rumble (https://rumble.com/user/SpokaneBibleChurch) or on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtV_KhFVZ_waBcnuywiRKIyEcDkiujRqP).
Jeremy Thomas is the pastor at Spokane Bible Church in Spokane, Washington and a professor at Chafer Theological Seminary. He has been teaching the Bible for over 20 years, always seeking to present its truths in a clear and understandable manner.
Welcome to Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas and our series on the New Testament framework. Today, the full lesson from Jeremy Thomas. Here's a hint of what's to come.
SPEAKER_04:Did Jesus himself remove the tightly wrapped linen with over a hundred pounds of spices wrapped within all by himself? I mean, have you ever thought of that? I mean, how in the world would you actually get out of that?
SPEAKER_05:The truth is, we all hate to be wrong. And we will fight tooth and nail to defend our beliefs, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. Sometimes that can be violent protests, loud arguments, shouting. Sometimes it can be ad hominem attacks, calling the other person names and ridiculing them. Sometimes it can be redefining things, reinterpreting it so that it fits within your existing framework. That dress isn't blue, it's white. Well, what I mean by white is these are all very common human fallen human tactics to avoid admitting something. Because if we admit something different to be true, we might just have to change our life. Because if our belief system changes, then our actions change. The things that we get to do or the things that we get to enjoy might change. And that change. That life-altering change is hard for humans to comprehend and to accept. Just search for the number of books in the corporate world about change management, and you will see what I'm talking about. And so within this truth, isn't it surprising? Not at all. About how people choose to accept and respond to the resurrection of Christ.
SPEAKER_04:The birth, the life, the death, and now the resurrection, we have in the previous three always looked at the unbelieving responses to that event. So the reason we do this is because what I'm ultimately trying to teach you is what the human heart looks like. And basically the sin nature and how it addresses or handles truth. So we've seen with each of these now, it'll be four events, how unbelievers have responded. Now that that that there therefore is a mirror. It's showing us what the human sinful heart looks like and what it does to truth. Um this is very important because we go out there and we speak truth in the world. So when we speak truth in the world and we get a response from someone, well, we need to know ahead of time what that might look like. So we're, you know, equipped. Okay. Human heart's not a very pretty place to look either. Right? One of the great prophets said, you know, the human heart is extremely wicked. You know, who can know it, right? So I want to use this as a tool to teach us about the human heart. And uh, of course, we also have you know a sinful you know disposition still with us until the resurrection. So we also it's a guard against our own heart. So as we go through this, first of all, let me just briefly remind us of how how the world responded to the birth, life, and death. As far as the birth, what what event this is take, what event is taking place is the incarnation. That is where God, the eternal, infinite, personal creator, took to himself true humanity, right? The incarnation, the God man. What is the what was the response to that in the Gospels? Well, that can't happen. So therefore, the only explanation for this child is, you know, that was claimed to be virgin-born is Mary must have fornicated. That's in the Gospels. So that was the unbelieving response to the claim of the virgin birth. You can see how unbelief took a claim and reinterpreted it to fit it into their naturalistic unbelieving worldview. Okay, now this is always the way it will be. They will take a fact, if it's an isolated fact, if you present something in the Christian system as an isolated fact outside the system, say just the idea of virgin birth, unbelief will always reinterpret that inside a system of unbelief. So that's how they dealt with the birth. Now, the second event, what we call the life, is where we talk about Christ. The gospels obviously talk about Jesus Christ. Um, what the liberals did with this in the 1800s and 1900s and now in the 20th, 21st century, is they divided the discussions about Christ into the historical Jesus, right, and the charismatic Christ. In other words, what liberal scholars of the Bible are saying is that the picture we get in the gospels of Jesus is not the real Jesus. Okay, that's the preached Jesus. Now, the real one is kind of hidden in there somewhere, but we don't really know who or what he was like exactly because the people who wrote the gospels are just putting their spin on what they thought about Jesus, what they thought he was. But we're still searching for the real one. So they can't come face to face with the real one. And so what they've said about the gospels is that it's just a preached paradigm of what Jesus was like and not the real deal. So it's to search now, they say, for the historical Jesus. But see, that's another example of how unbelief approaches the scriptures and looks at the data about Christ and says, Well, no, that can't be the real one. And so they reinterpret it inside a system of unbelief. You'll find this over and over and over. Anytime a truth of scripture or fact is presented isolated, unbelief will always reinterpret it. Always. You can count on it every single time. And so, what I'm going to say through all this is that you want to train yourself to not think of these truths as isolated. They are in a network or system. You don't have a virgin birth without a creator, right? Creation and the virgin birth, these are linked ideas. Okay, all the ideas of Scripture are linked. Um, and so don't think of them as isolated. The third event was the death of the king. And of course, what is truly happening on the cross is the satisfaction of God's justice. Christ is paying the penalty for our sin, and therefore it's judicial primarily. God was offended, his justice system was broken by us in the fall, and Christ has come to pay our penalty on our behalf. It's a substitutionary blood atonement. But the world doesn't want to face that, that Jesus and that justice system. They eschew this restitutionary concept of justice, that someone actually has to make payment for that. And in exchange, what do they say was happening on the cross? Oh, he's just, Jesus is just a man who is dying for his sincerely held religious beliefs. I mean, isn't it such an example? Or he's a martyr or something like that. All of that is to avoid the justice of God. Because again, it's it's a it's an idea that's coming from unbelief of how to interpret this single isolated fact of the death of Jesus Christ. So now we're going to turn to the resurrection, and we'll do the same thing. We're going to look at the unbelieving responses. First, the believing responses, which we basically know because we've looked at them over the last few weeks. Initially, at the resurrection, there's uh surprise, um, even you know, skepticism, of course. I mean, you know, who is, you know, Mary goes to the garden and she begins talking to the one she thought was the gardener, right? And, you know, where's the body? And, you know, show me where you took the body, you know, and you know, when when it comes to realization that, hey, I am the Messiah, you're speaking to him, you know, she's she's shocked and surprised, right? Then you have the skepticism of somebody like a Thomas, right? Who said, I'm not, I won't believe unless I put my hands in the side, you know, and I see the scars. And, you know, then a few days later, of course, uh, it happens. So it was a lot of skepticism. He's I'm not gonna believe this until I see it with my own eyes. And that's the context where Jesus said, Well, blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed, right? And uh even, you know, unbelief, you know. So the guys on the road to Emmaus, they they they were like, We were thinking it was him all this time, and well, he's killed. So that's that. So they didn't believe, you know. But then followed by belief, right? They come around. They come around. And so uh these are basically the believing responses. And what's interesting about these responses is they they didn't just immediately jump on the bandwagon and say, He's risen, you know. Even though the Old Testament predicted this, right? 1 Corinthians 15, when he talks about the gospel, he says, For I delivered to you as of first importance, but also received, right? That Christ died for our sins on the third day. Um sorry, and and according to the scriptures, and he was buried and raised on the third day according to the scriptures, right? The death and the and the resurrection are both according to the scriptures. In other words, it's it these two events are not isolated events, they occur within a network of beliefs that started in the Old Testament, right? And we're coming to consummation in the New Testament. So none of these truths are isolated, they are all linked and tied together. And if we want to present a powerful exposition of what of the gospel, let's say, we have to do so inside this larger network of truths. We don't just come to someone as I was talking to someone this week and say, hey, just believe in Jesus for eternal life. Oh, yeah, who's he? Jesus Alvarez? I mean, like which Jesus are you talking about? What did he do for me? Okay, people don't intuitively know. I mean, I was raised in a Christian home. So when the gospel came to me with all the background information that I'd learned in Sunday school and from my parents, okay, I know what you're talking about. But what about people who've never, let's say, lightened the door of a church?
SPEAKER_00:What about those people who don't have any background? Jesus, who's she?
SPEAKER_04:You know, that's, you know, we don't think of it if you're raised in this context, but those people have no context. And you can't just say believe in Jesus for eternal life. You've got to talk about who he is. Well, who is he? He's the creator. I mean, he his whole story begins in in Genesis 1. His story doesn't begin in Matthew 1 or Luke 1. Okay, it begins in Genesis 1. And that establishes the context for understanding who he is. He's the God, Creator, man. And then we can, of course, talk about what he did because we've got a fall. You know, what's the fall all about? Our problem. We have a sin problem. So why is he coming? He's coming to resolve the sin problem. So if you don't, if you don't know what the problem is, how can you understand why we have this solution over here? You know, so you don't just start talking about Jesus and the solution. You you've got to back up and talk about God and our problem. Then you can talk about Jesus and the solution. It's just giving context. I call it contextualizing the gospel. So all these truths hang together. So let's look at the unbelieving responses now to the resurrection. Uh there, I'm going to talk about three theories. There's others, but these are the main ones that have been popular down through history. We'll start by turning to Matthew chapter 28.
SPEAKER_00:All right, Matthew 28, verse 11.
SPEAKER_04:This is called the theft theory. The idea, of course, is that the disciples stole the body, and because the body wasn't there, they then made the claim that, well, he must have risen. So this is called the theft theory. It's the oldest of all the theories about what uh what happened to the body of the Messiah. So Matthew 28, verse 11, let's just walk through it. Now, while they were on their way, these are the guards, some of the guard came into the city, that city of Jerusalem, and they reported to the chief priests all that had happened. So these are the Roman guards. Remember, they set a guard, they requested a pilot, hey, you know, the Jews said, Hey, can you set a guard there? Because they said he's going to rise. We want to make sure that doesn't happen. So, can you set a guard? And they did, right? So these are soldiers, Roman soldiers. And now, of course, resurrection's already taken place. These guys come in to report to the chief priests all that had happened. Meaning, if you look back in the context, they must have reported, well, I mean, there were these guys here who were angels, the stone rolled away. I mean, body's not there. Uh, they had to have reported these things to the chief priests. Now, they didn't go to their Roman superiors, they went to the chief priests, which would have been the Sadducees, which is very interesting. I mean, do the Sadducees believe in resurrection? No. So that's very interesting. They got to go to them, right? And so they make this report, which obviously must have contained things related to resurrection. Verse 12, and when they had assembled with the elders and consulted together, they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers.
SPEAKER_00:What do you always follow? Is there anything new under the sun?
SPEAKER_04:I mean, these backroom deals are going on in our political echelons all the time, folks. Because it is all about the money. Didn't didn't wasn't there a very popular uh talk show host who used to say this type of thing a lot before he passed away? So always follow the money, and here it is, it's all about money. Now they gave him a large sum of money because the soldiers are gonna have to admit tacitly that they were derelict in their duties, right? I mean, they failed, which they would have been in a lot of trouble with their Roman superiors. And so, first thing that they do is they say, hey, we're gonna we're gonna give you a lot of money. A little money wouldn't have done it, okay, but a lot of money would have got them to admit dereliction of duty. And they said, You are to say this. Here's the story. His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep. So that's the theft theory. And um, this was a story they're supposed to tell their Roman superiors. Now, obviously, you're admitting we totally failed in our duties. But hey, here's the thing: does this story sound realistic? Um first of all, how do you know the disciples came and stole his body if you were asleep? How do you have any clue what happened if you were asleep? Since by nature, you know nothing that's going on if you're asleep. And if you did know what was going on, so much that you can tell us, why didn't you stop him? So this story is, on the face of it, a silly and ridiculous story. Verse nine, uh, verse 14, and if this should come to the governor's ears, we will win him over it, we will keep you out of trouble. And we already know that um those Jews in leadership at the time of Christ had quite a bit of influence and sway over people like Pilate. You know, you can read it and see that they were quite influential with him and could kind of get their way if they worked and so worked with him. And so they promised, hey, we'll we'll keep you out of trouble. Here's a large sum of money. Okay. And then verse 15, they took the money and they did as they had been instructed. And this story was widely spread among the Jews and is to this day. What day? To today? Well, no, the day that Matthew was authored, probably 80-50. But that's going to be about, you know, 17, 18 years or so after these things happened. And this is the primary story on the street, right? What happened to the body of Jesus? Where is it? Not in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea anymore. Where is it? Oh, well, the disciples stole it. So that is the earliest story, but it's again to emphasize, it's an unbelieving response to the resurrection. We have to stop this idea that he was actually raised from the dead. Um, so you know, I've been through most of these points that are here on the screen, just describing it. And um, here's the other thing, just point five here. How likely is it the disciples would risk moving the stone, which would obviously make a lot of noise, and steal the body when it's guarded by Roman soldiers? I mean, what are the odds that you would try something like that? Absolute silliness. Okay, and if they did, would they then take the time, as the Roman guards are right outside, let's assume, asleep, and fold the face cloth up and they're nicely set aside. I mean, is that is that what robbers do? Uh or are they in a hurry to flee the scene? So, anyway, follow the money, right? That's the first uh unbelieving response to the resurrection. Uh now this was noticed early on, so this is a quote from John Chrysostom in the fourth century A.D. He says, For indeed, even this establishes the resurrection. I mean, this silly story. For this is the language of men confessing, hey, the body wasn't there. When therefore they confessed the body was not there, but the stealing of it is shown to be false and incredible, as it is, by their watching it, Roman soldiers watching it, by the seals on the stone, and by the timidity of the disciples. I mean, are they really going to do that? The proof of the resurrection, even hence, appears incontrovertible. So, even from the earliest days in the church, this was uh known to be, you know, basically a ridiculous story that was spread.
SPEAKER_00:But will do people believe ridiculous stories?
SPEAKER_04:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Next point.
SPEAKER_04:The second theory is known as the hallucination theory. And don't need to say much about that other than, you know, it's the idea that those who claim to see the resurrected Christ are actually having hallucinations. And in their hallucinations, they thought they saw uh the resurrected Christ. Um there's no this this has been on going on for centuries, this idea. But, you know, hallucinations by nature are individual events. If you take or have some hallucinating agent in your body, uh, you may have hallucinations, but you're not going to share them with the person sitting next to you, even though they may have hallucinating agents in their body. They'll have their own hallucinations, but they're not shared experiences. Um, hallucinations also we know happen to certain kinds of people or tend to happen to certain kinds of people, usually paranoid people and schizophrenic people. Of course, Christ didn't appear to just paranoid and schizophrenic people. I mean, he appeared to all different kinds of people. None of those of which seemed to be paranoid or schizophrenic. Because these even these people typically disbelieved it when they first heard of the resurrection, right? They weren't they were like, no, that people don't come back from the dead. That's right. And there's multiple appearances over a period of 40 days. I think one of the things I think one of the things that that uh gets written into the scriptures, so we won't be tempted to come up with certain ideas, is things that kind of head things off at the past. Like there's this uh passage in the New Testament Gospels, which the people are saying about Jesus' mother Mary, blessed be the fruit of her womb and the breast that nursed him, right? And Jesus cuts that off real fast. He says, No, blessed is he who knows the word of God and follows it. Because Jesus knew what was going to be the tendency in church history is that people are gonna magnify Mary. So he cut that right off at the pass. And he said, No, no, no, no, no. The word of God is way over Mary. Let's get this, let's get this straight. This is the thing that mattered, not Mary. Okay, the thing is the word of God. And so there's things written into the text that kind of head things off because the Holy Spirit embeds those through the text because he knows what's coming, right? And there's several of these we'll we'll talk about some more of them. But uh these hallucinations, you know, are one of the things that kind of X's out the concept of hallucinations is, you know, I mean, how many people did he actually appear to? Uh over in 1 Corinthians 15, you know, it starts giving a list of the people that he let's just look at 1 Corinthians 15.
SPEAKER_00:We're looking some verses. After he talks about the death for our sins in verse 3, and um the burial, the historical evidence, then the resurrection, according to the scriptures, and then the the the evidence of that, the appearances.
SPEAKER_04:He says verse uh five, he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. That would include Thomas, right? The doubting Thomas episode there. After that, he appeared to how many? More than five hundred of the brethren. Now, why did he why did he make this appearance? This was all at the same time, at one time. Was it not to head off the idea that, oh, those people that saw the resurrected Christ, they were just having a hallucination. Because 500 people all had the same hallucination? I don't think so. Uh nobody's ever documented anything like that. And I'll give you some background from a psychologist who spent all his years studying people who had hallucinations, and we'll get his analysis of this. But more than 500 at one time, most of whom he says remain until now, in other words, whenever 1 Corinthians was written about 55, 56 AD, you can go talk to these people. I mean, you can ask them, hey, what did you see? You can go do interviews. You know, you can be like a, we would say like a reporter, right? Go do your journalistic uh, you know, work and interview these people, right? So most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep, which makes sense. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all, Paul says, as to one untimely born, he appeared to me also. That's Acts chapter 9. So that those things all show that this hallucination theory doesn't explain things very well, but it's been one attempt of unbelief to explain it. Gary Collins, who, as I mentioned, a psychologist who studied people who had had hallucinations, typically paranoid and schizophrenic people, he says hallucinations are individual occurrences. By their very nature, only one person can see a given hallucination at a time. They certainly aren't something which can be seen by a group of people.
SPEAKER_03:And how many people did he mention in 1 Corinthians 15?
SPEAKER_04:On one occasion, 500, right? Neither is it possible that one person could somehow induce a hallucination in somebody else. You just can't uh induce them to have a certain hallucination. That's not possible. All right, let's um in in light of this, I want to bring up a little discussion about modern what we call neo-orthodox theology and interpretations of the resurrection. These are neo-orthodoxy is probably the most prevailing form of Christianity even to our own day now. Um it really began strongly, I would say, like in the 1940s, so kind of post-World War II there era. And uh Neo-Orthodoxy, it sounds like orthodoxy, right? We know what orthodoxy means. Orthodoxy means, hey, this is sound doctrine. Neo-orthodoxy is the the new orthodoxy, right? And it kind of started in the 1940s. Now, what it basically has two elements. Um one element is rationalism, the idea that reason is a perfect purveyor of truth. It can give us all the answers we need. Reason. Or we might even say unaided human reason, just your human reason, unaided by something like the Bible. But it also has a mystical component to it. So these are really the two rationalism and mysticism are kind of the two key elements that are behind neo-orthodoxy. And it's really derived from a guy in the 1830s named uh Soren Kierkegaard, who developed existentialist philosophy. He was actually a Christian, but uh he develops existential philosophy. And in the 1920s, this gets married, in the 1920s and 30s gets married to rationalism. In one particular theologian who was very influential in the 20th century, his name is Karl Bart. And Bart was the guy who was basically uh training all the people who were teaching in the seminaries. Uh he was basically the go-to mind, you know, of the 40s and 50s, and therefore responsible for the spread of Neo-Orthodox theology through the seminaries across our country and the world. So now these guys they don't believe in the resurrection, but they talk about the resurrection. What I mean is if you asked them, do you believe in the resurrection? they would say, Well, yes.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_04:But they don't mean by the resurrection the same thing that you and I mean. They don't mean the literal bodily physical resurrection of Jesus out of the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. Now, probably 99 out of 100 pastors, even today, if you go there on Easter Sunday and you listen to their resurrection sermon, they'll talk about the resurrection and Jesus rising from the dead and all that, and they don't even mean for one second what we believe. Not even for one second. Now, if you ask them straightforward, do you believe in the resurrection of Jesus? They will tell you 100% of the time, yes. But the reason they can say that is because they mean something different. You didn't ask them a question that's precisely worded enough to nail down what they really believe. So, what I'm gonna do here is give you a recounting of a story that involved Karl Barth, okay? Now, um, Neo-Orthodoxy will basically say that something in the Bible becomes true to you when you have an experience with it. In other words, the Bible is not true until you experience it to be true for you. So the Bible contains truth, but it's not truth. It contains truth, and when you experience it, it then becomes true for who? For you. Not for me.
unknown:Okay?
SPEAKER_04:I have to have my own personal experience with it for it to be true for me on that point. So they would say their doctrine of inspiration is that they would say the Bible contains the word of God. And most of us will say, oh, yeah, yeah, the Bible contains the word of God. No, they don't, no, no, no, no, no. You don't want to agree with that statement. They're saying just what I just said, okay, pieces and parts of the Bible are true when they become true for you. Therefore, it contains the word of God. Not that it is the word. They don't believe that for a second. So things that, because they're rationalists, they don't really believe in the resurrection, okay, but they do believe that the apostles had experiences. And somehow they imagined that the resurrection was true. And that's what people like Bart are talking about. So you can't ask them, do you believe in the resurrection? That one you'll never get the answer you're looking for. So Carl F. H. Henry, years and decades and decades ago, was the uh editor for Christianity Today, which has basically gone defunct today. I mean, if you want to read that, you just find all the heresy you want. It's unbelievable. Um so he he actually wasn't a theologian, he was a reporter, a journalist. And he had the opportunity to go and listen to Carl Barth speak. And afterwards, uh the AP press is there, you know, all these various press uh groups are there, reporters, to, you know, uh have, you know, uh, you know, get to ask Bart some questions. So Carl F. H. Henry was on to what Carl Bart was doing as a neo-orthodox guy. And so I'm gonna read this little exchange that he wrote about. When the question period began, I asked about the factualness, the historicity of the resurrection. Now, over at the table are newspaper reporters. I noted the religion editor of the United Press International, the religious news service correspondent, and the religion editors of the Washington Papers. Here's this question. If they had these present repertorial responsibilities in the first century, in other words, if we took these reporters sitting over here at the desk and put them back in the first century and stuck them in Jerusalem in 33 AD, right, was the event of the resurrection of Jesus Christ of such a nature that covering it would have fallen into the area of the repertorial responsibility? Now, do you see what Carl F. Henry is doing here? He's not saying, Hey, do you, hey Bart, do you believe in the resurrection? Because if he asked him, then he said, he would have never got to the truth. Instead, what he said was, hey, if you put these reporters back in the first century and the events of the death and resurrection occurred, would they have responsibility to cover that event as a newsworthy item? Because at this time, at least, in the media, you're supposed to do what? Report what actually happened. History. This actually happened. So he's really smart, right?
SPEAKER_00:He is he is he is nailing Bart down. Okay.
SPEAKER_04:He says, um, that is, was it news and history in the sense in which the man in the street understands news and history? That's what we're I want to understand from you, Carl. Bart became angry. Yeah, you bet he did. Uh because he realizes he's put been put in a corner. And he's now gonna have to answer in front of the press what he really believes. He says, Since I had identified myself as editor of Christianity today, he reported cleverly, I might add. Did you say Christianity today or Christianity yesterday? Rather taken aback, I replied only by quoting the scripture text yesterday, today, and forever. Certainly a hurried misappropriation. Barth then responded to the question obliquely by saying this the resurrection had significance for the disciples of Jesus Christ. It was to the disciples that he appeared. But that wasn't in the question at all. On the way out, the United Press correspondent remarked to me, we got his answer.
SPEAKER_00:His answer was they had an experience with the resurrected Christ. As someone might have an experience taking hallucinogen, but it was nothing good.
SPEAKER_04:And that is what is pawned off in most churches today, the same thing that Karl Barth trained, all these people in the seminaries like Bultmann, Niever, and all the rest of them, okay, who trained the pastors that are across this country and across the world. That the Bible is not the word of God, that it contains the word of God, that the resurrection literally didn't happen, but the disciples, it had relevance and significance to them, but that's all.
SPEAKER_00:And we wonder why our country's in the state it's in.
SPEAKER_04:I mean, God's not, you can't pull the wool over God's eyes. God knows these people don't believe in the resurrection of his son for even one split second. This is just unfaithfulness in the church in the United States of America and now around the world, since we are the one who send most of the people around the world. Okay, so that's uh enough about the hallucination theory or the experience and the experiential theory that people project today. The last view I want to talk about is called the swoon theory. This was made popular by a guy named Schoenfield, I believe he was Jewish. Uh it's a swoon plot or theory that there had been planning ahead of time. So Jesus knew in this view that he would be arrested, uh, he would be crucified, he foresaw these things that were going to happen. Uh, so he made arrangements beforehand with the private disciple. And when he was on the cross, you know, there was the vinegar sop, you know, like a sponge. And this was typically set at the foot of these crosses, these crucifixion events, so that, you know, you could give the person on the cross something to help them uh along the way. And so, because that would be there, well, this private disciple would put a drug in that sponge. This would knock him unconscious, so that when the Roman soldiers came along, you know, they would look on the cross, they would think he was dead because he was unconscious. Then his body could be removed from the cross, right? Taken away to a tomb which they knew the location of, the tomb of Joseph Arimathea and buried there. And then later on, he would regain consciousness several hours later, after which he would be in the tomb and he can recover in the cool air with the linen wrappings and spices in the bandages, uh, after which he could depart from the tomb sometime Saturday night, and then appear to his disciples uh, you know, a few days later, okay, meaning the day of the resurrection. Uh but this is kind of the idea that he didn't really die, in other words, right? But he kind of swooned, and but he he he got better in the tomb, you know, and so forth over the short period of time. Uh and but evidently this this this theory kind of has a problem because the plan kind of went wrong because Jesus didn't predict that the soldier would come with the spear, right? And stick it up under the ribcage into the heart, and you know, the blood separated into the gelatinous form and water would come out. Um so the the plan kind of went sideways. Um so after his appearances, he actually did succumb to his womb, but I forgot to add this to the slide, um, but there was that angel, right, who was there. Uh this got added into the story, the sconefield story. This idea that this angel that was at the tomb, one of them, was thought by the disciples to be the resurrected Christ. And so that you know, that becomes kind of the solution to the problem that Jesus actually did succumb to his wounds wounds. And then and then, you know, they would go on and and claim the idea that he had risen. Uh so this is the the swoon theory. There's a few problems with this, of course. I mean, are you really serious that Jesus healed up in the cool, damp air? Is that a good place to be? Um, you know, within a few hours, you know, 20, 30 hours? Uh would the beatings alone, I mean, you know, take weeks to recuperate from? I mean uh did Jesus himself remove the tightly wrapped linen with over a hundred pounds of spices wrapped within all by himself? I mean, have you ever thought of that? I mean, how in the world would you actually get out of that? I don't think you can do that. Nobody can do that, right? Uh, did Jesus actually roll the stone away from inside the tomb? I mean, like, are you serious? I mean, how would you do that? You just got to put your hands on the rock and move. I mean, these are giant stones. They're not little bitty, they're big. So, and in his condition, he did that?
SPEAKER_01:Okay, a little odd.
SPEAKER_04:Um, and so after he gets out, let's assume he's able to move the stone aside. Did he just sneak by the Roman guards or did he actually fight them off in that condition? You know, I mean, like, come on, seriously. And then Jesus walked seven miles on the road to Emmaus with those kind of injuries? Well, none of this seems very convincing, does it? But these are all unbelieving responses because what unbelief has to do is it has to reinterpret uh facts. And they're always going to interpret it inside their framework of unbelief. Okay? I mean, the unbelieving heart does not want to accept a fact inside the Christian frame of reference or Christian network or system of thought. It wants to isolate the fact, just look at just that fact, and then it has freedom to reinterpret it however it wants. Now, and we've seen several strategies for how that's done, right? The theft theory, the hallucination theory, and the swoon theory. All of which you may say, these are absolutely silly stories or silly ideas. But I mean, do people believe silly things? Do they believe ridiculous explanations all the time? Um, that's what they're excellent at doing. And so now I want to move and talk a little bit about the unbelieving strategy of envelopments. Remember, I wanted to talk to you about the human heart and how desperately wicked it is. Okay, so basically the principle is the idea that the unbelieving mind, when confronted with an isolated fact, rather than a fact that's placed within a network or system, will always reinterpret that isolated fact inside a framework of unbelief. Now, the Bible shows us over and over that people do this.
SPEAKER_00:So let's go to Exodus 32, and I'll just show you some examples. Exodus chapter 32. Now, y'all know what this event is, right? What's Exodus 32? The sin of the golden calf, right? Where's Moses? He's up in the Mount Sinai, he's receiving what?
SPEAKER_04:Okay, receiving the law. And the people are down below. Now, let me ask before we go into this chapter and what kind of happens here what has happened in the last year in the life of these people?
SPEAKER_00:Okay, weren't they in Egypt, right? And there were these 10 plague things that kind of Happened to you know like an owl turn to blood frog into darkness hail the gnats darkness the death of the firstborn did that happen did they walk through the Red Sea?
SPEAKER_04:Did they see the greatest army in the world the greatest superpower army in the world totally drowned within just a few moments?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Did they have the pillar of fire by day or by night and cloud by day? Did they drink water out of a rock? Did they eat manna off the ground? Had God done great and marvelous things for them? Now, here we are at Mount Sinai. You know, and I mean, who brought them out of Egypt, by the way?
SPEAKER_04:I mean, did they not know that God led them forth through Moses?
SPEAKER_02:I mean, did they know it's only been a few months, right?
SPEAKER_04:Now, verse 1. When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people assembled about Aaron and said to him, Come, make us a God who will go before us. As for this, Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we don't know, we don't know what's become of him. And so Aaron said to them, Tear off the gold rings. Now, it's interesting. They just basically said, Hey, you know, Moses took us out of Egypt. But now look what they say. Verse 2, tear off the gold rings, which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters. Where'd they get all that, by the way? That was the national treasury of Egypt. They walked out. Can you imagine somebody coming? Well, we don't have any gold anymore in America, so never mind. But imagine somebody walking in here and taking all the gold right out from under us. Can you imagine? I mean, only God could do that, right? Something like that. And he's done it all for them. Verse 3. Then all the people tore off the gold rings which were in their ears, they brought them to Aaron. He took them from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made it into a molten calf. And they said, They said, This is your God, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.
SPEAKER_00:Huh? Huh? What? Did they not just entirely reinterpret the Exodus?
SPEAKER_04:I mean, these people lived through it. And weeks later, they changed the whole story and reinterpreted it to be no, this golden calf brought you out of Egypt. That is what I mean by the unbelieving heart taking a isolated fact, in this case, the Exodus, and reinterpreting it and giving credit to another or explanation from another source.
SPEAKER_00:You say, Well, I would never do that. Next, Acts chapter 2.
SPEAKER_04:Here's another one. This is the this is the fallen sinful heart. This is what it does to truth.
SPEAKER_00:It manipulates. Remember on the day of Pentecost? They're all there waiting in the upper room.
SPEAKER_04:The Spirit comes, they begin speaking in tongues, right? The 12 are speaking in tongues. And uh there's some discussion about this. They're speaking not only in other languages, but in also other dialects. So it's as if they were native speakers of these languages. In verse 12, they all continued in amazement and great perplexity, and they said to one another, What does this mean? But others were mocking and saying, There it is.
SPEAKER_00:They are full of sweet wine. In other words, these people are drunk. See how they took an isolated fact?
SPEAKER_04:The fact that these individuals are speaking languages they've never studied, and they reinterpreted it. And they said they're drunk. Because that's what the heart of unbelief does. It always will reinterpret the facts. Of course, Peter says, Are you serious?
SPEAKER_00:You know, it's nine in the morning. Come on. Um, Acts 14. Here's another. Let's just do Acts 17. Acts 17.
SPEAKER_04:We don't need to do all these. But you see this repeatedly. I'm trying to show you there's a pattern. You can watch how unbelief uh reinterprets an isolated claim. Here we are in Athens, verse 16. Okay, Acts 17, 16. Paul's waiting for them at Athens. His spirit is provoked within him as he walks around the city, observes, right? The city's full of idols. I mean, it's Athens. What did they say? It's it's easier to find a God than a man in Athens. So he was reasoning in the synagogue with Jews and God-fearing Gentiles and in the marketplace. That's just out there with, you know, various philosophers or philosopher wannabes every day, right? With whoever happened to be present. Verse 18, and also some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers were conversing with him. Some were saying, What would this seed spitter, this idle babbler wish to say? In other words, they thought he had just like thrown together pieces of various philosophies and was trying to pond it off sort of his own philosophy or whatever, and they're like, What are you trying to say? Others said, Well, he seems to be a proclaimer of strange deities because he was preaching Jesus and Anastasis, Jesus and the resurrection. Now, let me ask you a question. Did they understand the gospel? I mean, he obviously talked about Jesus and the resurrection, right? But they think that he's trying to introduce two new gods into the Greek pantheon. Did they understand his message? No, they were they were interpreting Jesus in the resurrection inside their pagan frameworks of unbelief. And they were putting him in a Greek pantheon. This is what happens when we preach the gospel, and this is what makes it so difficult. You preach it, you think you've been perfectly clear with someone, and then they come out with something like this. I mean, do you think Paul was like, you know, I mean, my goodness, you know, like, Lord, you know, I'm doing my best to preach the gospel here, and they come back with they think I'm putting two new gods in the Greek pantheon over there? I mean, like, you know. So, this is but this is the frustration we face because we assume too much knowledge on the part of our unbelieving friends. We think they know what we mean when we say Jesus. We think they know what we mean when we say sin. We think they know what we mean when we say God. They don't know any of that, okay? They don't know any of it. You have to define who God is, who sin is, who man is. You've got to define who Jesus is. You've got to define all these things. If you don't, you are allowing them to define the terms. Whatever they hear is what they hear, unless you define it differently so as to clarify. And this is why I'm basically a proponent of convert conversational evangelism. You know, that we actually sit down with a person and have a conversation. And what we're trying to do in all conversations is have communication, right? If I mean one thing and you think another, have we communicated? No, that's a negation. And so then you find yourself in a ball of wax going, wait a minute, how'd we get way over here in the conversation? The reason is because at step one, we didn't define our terms, we didn't define what we meant, and therefore they're hearing something different than what we're saying. And that's what was happening to Paul here. And the reason is because we're permitting their sinful nature to interpret the their whatever fact we've thrown out there inside their framework of unbelief. It's like an amoeba. Uh Charlie Clough used to use this uh this illustration of this idea. You know, you've seen the big, you know, amoeba thing, and it just kind of like moves and like just slurps over everything and just like engulfs it, right? And that's what you you're that little, you you give them that little truth, and they're like an amoeba and they just slurp it up.
SPEAKER_02:And you're like, why didn't they believe the gospel?
SPEAKER_04:What and how'd they come up with these strange ideas? Well, I mean, this stuff is, we have examples of this in the Bible, so we shouldn't really be surprised. So, what does Paul do? He does exactly what I just described. He backs away from the whole situation and he says, Okay, wait a minute. I've got to start with God, the God of creation, okay, and who made the whole world and everything in it, right? And the one who you know set up our boundary in habitations, where we live, when we were born, all that. He starts to put them inside the Christian worldview. He says, This is the way it is, folks. And he says, even some of your poets have written about this when he says we when they wrote, we are God's children. So his point there is he's saying, hey, look, uh, you you have poets and things, they kind of tacitly have recognized at points that the God that I'm talking about is there. And so all pagans at times kind of let you know they know there's a truth. Maybe it's just by making a moral judgment that shouldn't be done. Uh why not? See, there's that's the question. The question isn't I agree, you don't say I agree with you, that shouldn't be done. You say, why do you think that shouldn't be done? I mean, by what standard? I mean, maybe you want to get mad at the Nazis for what they did in the 30s and 40s to the Jews and Poles and blacks and non-Aryans, right? Maybe you want to get mad at them. And maybe you want to say that's wrong. And maybe unbelievers want to say that's wrong, but guess what? Your question isn't, your answer isn't I agree with you. You're you're you're you say, why is that wrong?
SPEAKER_00:I mean, who makes the rules? By what standard, right? By what standard is that wrong?
SPEAKER_04:Then you can actually get somewhere with a person because then you're finding out what their standards for what and right. Well, I just feel like. Well, I mean, I don't think we can go with that. I mean, because I just feel like you shouldn't be here right now. You know? I mean, you is that really gonna work? You know, that doesn't work in the real world. So, you know, you can use questions to find out where people are coming from and get to get to where you need to get to, which is what Paul did in Acts 17. Now, uh the last thing I'm gonna do is I'm going to talk about Mr. White, Mr. Black, and Mr. Gray. This is uh a dialogue, and this illustrates this whole point, uh, just another way. This whole idea that what unbelievers do with a truth. Um, the guy who came up with this dialogue is a guy named Cornelius Van Til. He was a uh Christian apologist at Westminster Seminary back in the 30s and 40s of the last century. Brilliant, brilliant mind. I don't agree with all his theology, but he I think he was great, had some great points with apologetics. He put together a little dialogue between Mr. White, who is, let's just call him the consistent Christian, the Bible-believing, consistent Christian who puts the authority of Scripture above all else.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, that's what I'll call a consistent Christian. What's the authority? The Bible and the Bible alone. Now, Mr. Black is an unbeliever.
SPEAKER_04:That's easy to remember. Mr. Unbeliever. Both these guys, Mr. White and Mr. Gray, want to witness to Mr. Black. Mr. Gray, he is a compromise Christian. He believes in the authority of the Bible, but guess what he also believes? He believes in the authority of logic and reason. He believes in the authority of history. The difference between him and Mr. White is Mr. White says, okay, yes, we have reason, we have history, but those things are not authorities over scripture or on equal plane with scripture. There are lesser authorities in the scripture. If it contradicts something that someone says is history or some reasonable or rational idea, the scriptures are true. So he goes through the dialogue, and Mr. White is presenting his position to Mr. Black, which is very untenable, and he will not accept it because it's Bible-believing Christianity, and Mr. Black is an unbeliever. So he's obviously not going to just accept it. Mr. Gray, however, will produce arguments that try to, let's say, lure him over or bring him closer to Christianity. Say, see, we agree with you here, we agree with you, Mr. Unbeliever here, and we agree with you over here, Mr. Unbeliever. At which point you should be thinking, if you're thinking Christian, you're giving up ground. You're not presenting biblical Christianity.
SPEAKER_02:You're saying, we share a lot with you, Mr. Unbelievers. Do we share anything with unbelievers? I mean, are you serious?
SPEAKER_04:No, but that is a common way of doing apologetics. It's we assume Mr. Unbelievers' reason is working properly just as Mr. Believers' reason is properly working. Is that really true? I mean, they are completely under the auspices of the sin nature. So they're going to employ the sin nature through their human reason. Whereas you're a Christian, you can use the Bible as your authority and it trumps your human reason, doesn't it? So we don't really share that. We have human reason, yes, but it's a tool to organize the scriptures. It's not a tool to say the scriptures are wrong, or it's not even a tool to say the scriptures are right.
SPEAKER_00:The scriptures are right. Whether you agree with them or not, isn't it? It's absolute truth.
SPEAKER_04:So in this dialogue, what I'm wanting to show here, the last thing, is that an unbeliever, what Van Til showed was that he he put himself in the unbelieving worldview and he studied unbelieving pagan systems for most of his life. And what he figured out was if I was an unbeliever, this is an argument I could make where I actually accept the resurrection as an unbeliever and never ever believe in Jesus for eternal life. So it's just a prospective way that unbelievers could go. So super smart.
SPEAKER_00:Now he understood that in unbelief, okay, in the universe, that is all by chance. This is all by chance.
SPEAKER_04:I was taught this in university too. You have enough chance mutations over enough time you can get everything that we see today. Right? I mean, look, look at you. You're you're highly complicated organisms. Super complicated. We're not just talking the biology, the physics, and the chemistry, but you also are a spirit being. And somehow this is a hybrid inside of who you are. Look at the world around us. It's highly organized and complicated. These systems, there it seems to be some kind of system here. How did this come from chaos and confusion?
SPEAKER_00:How did this come out of chance? Right? Well, I know this seems befuddling, right? But let me repeat it.
SPEAKER_04:Do people believe crazy things? Absolutely, all the time. And the pagan story of the universe, cosmogony, and i is a crazy story. It's an absolutely ridiculous, stupid story.
SPEAKER_00:But lots of people believe it.
SPEAKER_04:So he says, no, if you begin with their premise that everything comes about by a chance universe, then they already have built in an explanation for the resurrection.
SPEAKER_01:Let's read it.
SPEAKER_04:Mr. Gray says, I'm sorry, Mr. Black. Now, as for accepting the resurrection of Jesus, continued Mr. Black, as thus properly separated from the traditional systems of theology, what does he mean they're properly separated? He means just looking at the resurrection as an isolated fact, not in the grand scheme of the whole Bible's narrative, but just as an isolated event in history. This one guy, this one tomb, this one day in this Jesus of Nazareth rose, right? Just looking just at that, he says, I do not in the least mind, uh, in the least mind doing that, that is accepting it. To tell you the truth, I've accepted the resurrection as a fact now for some time. The evidence for it, it is overwhelming. This is a strange universe. All kinds of miracles happen in it. You know, anything can happen in a chance universe, right? He says the universe is open. What does he mean by that? Anything can happen. That's what he means. This is a chance universe. Anything can happen. It may not be highly likely, but anything could happen. I mean, some people even win the lottery or get struck by lightning. Anything can happen. So why should there not be some resurrections here and there? The resurrection of Jesus would be a fine item for Ripley's, believe it or not. Why not send it in? Do you see how unbelief was able to just, like an amoeba, just take the fact of the resurrection and just gobble it up and slurp it up and reinterpret it? That is why we cannot go around just telling people, I believe in this isolated truth over here, like the virgin birth. Or I believe Jesus changed water into wine, or I believe Jesus walked on water. These are only, these events, these I only make sense inside a network of truths. And that's what I'm doing with the framework. It's called a framework for that very reason. I'm trying to train you to think about the whole thing, not just an isolated event. That you can kind of pick and choose which ones we believe in, which ones we don't believe. The framework was never meant to be to be taken that way. As a, well, I mean, we can take the fall, but we don't have to take creation. I believe in billions of years. You know, that, okay, well, you want to believe that, but that doesn't fit with resurrection, because resurrection takes place in a moment in a twinkling of an eye. You're not gonna evolve into a resurrection body over millions of years, are you? I sure hope not. You'd be dead before that ever happened. You see, these truths like regeneration, resurrection, they're creation truths.
SPEAKER_00:How do we know there are miracles? We're here. What they're saying now is that the universe came out of nothing.
SPEAKER_04:They're moving away from this eternal idea of the universe now. They're moving to an idea that the universe actually came out of nothing. What? I mean, I think that's the biblical story that not that it came out of nothing, but that there's a God who created it. But their point is that there's a beginning. Well, if there's a beginning, I mean, isn't this logically saying, well, who begun it? I mean, things don't just begin, do they? How did everything come from nothing? That it there had to be a creator. But that's why we believe resurrection, that's why we believe regeneration, that's why we believe these things, because God created all this. It's pretty obvious that these truths are all linked together. Um, okay, so maybe you'll have to listen to that again on audio. I don't know. Maybe it all made sense. But you can, my main goal in showing this is that there's been a lot of attempts to reinterpret the resurrection. Those attempts don't make any sense, but in this world you can believe whatever nonsense you want. That is how the sin nature works. Okay? It will reinterpret it every single time. So the best way to present the Christian truths is like Paul did in Acts 17 after he realized they were reinterpreting Jesus in the resurrection, and take them back and set the resurrection in the context of the bigger picture of God's plan. Once you do that, it doesn't permit them to reinterpret. Instead, what it does is it puts pressure on them to where they can be convicted, what we call convinced, convinced of the truth of this.
SPEAKER_00:And that's what is needed for them to believe and be saved. I mean, do we love men? We love men. Um if we love them, what will we do?
SPEAKER_04:We will present the truth to Them contextualized so that it puts pressure on them. The Holy Spirit begins to work through that, convict them, right? So that they would believe. I call this conversational evangelism. I spelled that term so from someone else. But I think it's a good term.
SPEAKER_05:Thank you for joining us on Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas. If you would like to see the visuals that went along with today's sermon, you can find those on Rumble and on YouTube under Spokane Bible Church. That is where Jeremy is the pastor and teacher. We hope you found today's lesson productive and useful in growing closer to God and walking more obediently with Him. If you found this podcast to be useful and helpful, then please consider rating us in your favorite podcast app. And until next time, we hope you have a blessed and wonderful day.