In today’s episode, Real Science Radio hosts a riveting discussion that transcends skepticism, uncovering truths that liberal and conservative scholars alike cannot deny. From the transformation of the apostles to the enemy conversions of skeptics like Paul, the evidence mounts to an undeniable crescendo. As we navigate the rapid spread of Christianity and the historical witness of 1 Corinthians 15, we unravel the profound historical impact that the resurrection has had, proving once again that truth is powerful enough to transform even the most hardened doubters.
The other apostles ran away in fear at first. Exactly. Like, wait a minute, this is a guy that’s been trying to get my head on a bike.
SPEAKER 04 :
Right. Scholars can’t explain it all away. Get ready to be awed by the handiwork of God.
SPEAKER 1 :
Tune in to Real Science Radio.
SPEAKER 04 :
Turn up the Real Science Radio. Keeping it real.
SPEAKER 02 :
Welcome to Real Science Radio, where we talk about real science and truth, and how it overwhelmingly supports not only the Bible, but the fact that Jesus is God. That’s right, Fred.
SPEAKER 03 :
And so today, being Good Friday, we’re going to dive into one of the most important questions in all of human history— Did Jesus really rise from the dead? Because if he did, Christianity is true. If he didn’t, then as the Apostle Paul said, our faith is in vain. Yeah, might as well drink and be merry.
SPEAKER 02 :
That’s right. Eat, drink, and… Yeah, for tomorrow we die.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER 02 :
So we’re going to examine the top 10 evidences for Christ’s resurrection. And Doug, these aren’t just wishful thinking. I mean, they’re rooted in historical, logical, and eyewitness testimony. And stick around to the end because we’re going to address some of the most common objections. And before we get started with number 10, I wanted to go through a quick list of what Virtually all progressive liberal scholars agree with these following well-established historical facts, and that’s one, Jesus Christ was a real historical figure. Pretty much everybody, it’s amazing when you run into somebody who says, oh, Jesus wasn’t a real historical person. Yeah, there aren’t too many of those. And the scholars, the people who study this stuff, you just don’t find them. Now, you’re going to find the Joe on the street that says that, but he’s ignorant of what science and what… I think that, actually, that’s what my Uncle Joe says.
SPEAKER 03 :
My Uncle Joe says he doesn’t even think Jesus was a real guy.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
Speaking of Joe on the street.
SPEAKER 02 :
I’ve been witnessing to my Uncle Joe for like 30 years. Yeah, and so atheists in academia actually agree that he was a historical person. That’s right, Joe. Even the liberal scholars. Come on. So scholars also agree that Jesus Christ claimed to be God in the flesh, the son of the triune God. Jesus Christ was crucified, died, and was buried. Everybody agrees with that, that it’s in academia, basically.
SPEAKER 03 :
Wait, do the liberals stop with buried?
SPEAKER 02 :
They pretty much, yeah. That’s the problem. We’re going to get to that. That’s what makes them liberals. Yeah, exactly. And here, a big one. The tomb Jesus Christ had been buried in was empty several days later. That’s huge. They actually admit that it was empty.
SPEAKER 03 :
They’ve got to come up with stories. So you’re saying even the liberal scholars… Say that the tomb was empty.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes. Okay. And there are numerous witnesses claimed to have seen the risen Christ. That’s not disputed historically. The disciples transformed from doubting cowards to courageous advocates. And skeptics such as James, who was Jesus’ brother… and Paul, and you’ve got interesting insights on Jesus’ brother. So these skeptics, James and Paul, they had persecuted Christians and later converted to Christianity. So these are all facts that the liberal scholars admit these are facts of history. So we’re going to now go through
SPEAKER 03 :
And just to be clear, James just never believed Jesus during his life, only after his resurrection. And then Paul actively was persecuting the church.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, until Jesus actually appeared to him. That’s right. Super interesting story in Acts. Number 10, Jesus died by crucifixion. That’s right.
SPEAKER 03 :
So Jesus had to die because… The resurrection means nothing if Jesus didn’t actually die. In fact, the reason the Apostle Paul talks about the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is because all three are necessary for Christianity to be true.
SPEAKER 02 :
And the Roman method was obviously brutal and it was efficient. And the Journal of American Medical Association published a medical study affirming death by crucifixion.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, and it’s terrible to read when you read what, not just Jesus Christ, by the way, but hundreds if not thousands of Roman prisoners were killed this way. And Boy, you couldn’t think of a more brutal way to kill someone than to hang them on a piece of wood and out in the elements until they literally suffocate to death under their own weight in the elements. Just awful, awful. And there were eyewitness accounts to Roman crucifixion, well-documented. Historians like Tacitus have well-documented the fact that crucifixion was real.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, and prophesized in the Old Testament too, which was fascinating, about how he would die. So God picked his method of how he was going to be executed just because of the gravity of the sin he’s paying for. He picked, I don’t know how you could argue for anything worse, and that was to take on all of our sins. So, number nine’s a big one, and that the tomb was empty.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s right. You just said that even liberal scholars who, by the way, we only bring up liberal scholars because we want to start with our adversaries’ points, right? We want to give our adversaries time and acknowledge what they believe, even though I’m a Bible believer. So the fact that it’s in the Bible, that convinces me, but it hasn’t convinced a lot of leftist scholars. But even the leftist scholars are mostly convinced that the tomb was empty.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, absolutely. Dr. Gary Habermas, who’s an expert in really Bible apologetics, he said this, quote, Again, scholars that are liberals recognize the historical evidence for this, and they agree that the tomb is empty. That’s a pretty big problem now for them to deal with.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, yes. And so there’s also the contemporaneous fact that the Jewish leaders never produced the body. The people who had the most to gain by refuting this idea that Jesus rose from the dead were not able to produce his body contemporaneously. And so they made up the story, of course, about the disciples stole his body while we were asleep. And it’s like, well, wait, if you were sleeping, how do you know what happened? So that whole story, nobody ever bought it.
SPEAKER 02 :
And then the Roman guards who were guarding the tomb, they’d be executed. They were under threat of execution if something like this happened. So you have to have a lot of people in on this whole thing. I believe they still believe that to this day. It’s documented in the Bible what they believed back then, which you just described. That’s from the Bible. Yeah, that’s in the Bible.
SPEAKER 03 :
And so we’ll quote another critic, atheist historian Bart Ehrman. And by the way, Bart Ehrman, his mom and dad must be thrilled. They paid for Princeton Theological Seminary and Bart graduated and he’s an atheist. But he’s also a biblical scholar and considered a Bible expert. And he writes books on early Christianity, and his website is Why I’m Not a Christian by Bart Ehrman, which is just avoid theological seminary, avoid textual criticism, because you might end up like Bart. You have a theology degree from Princeton, and you’re on your way straight to hell with jet rockets. And we just don’t want to see that happen. But even Bart Ehrman admits that the tomb was empty.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, all these higher education, you know, like Princeton and Harvard, they all started off as Christian universities. Yeah. And you know the founders of those places are rolling in their graves. You know it. What those schools are producing now. I always, I tell people a lot about Bob’s idiom about after he passes away, the church ends. And, you know, you start a new church or something. In fact, you know more about that history than I do. Yeah, yeah. But it’s just how men over time just become more corrupt and they’re, Gravity, sin is like gravity pushing down on us all the time. And over time, we mess things up. And just Harvard and Princeton are a testimony to that truth. I mean, they’re just bastions of atheists and hate towards God.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, yeah. Every institution ends up being corrupted by sin the more generations it goes on. And the guys who founded Princeton would have never imagined that you could graduate and be an atheist, and then publish books. It’s just bizarre. Exactly. But even he admits, Mr. Ehrman, who, by the way, I would love to have Bart Ehrman on the show. Maybe we’ll try to reach out to Bart because we don’t want him going straight to hell. But even he admits that the tomb was likely open. And then number eight. Okay, the disciples believed they saw the risen Jesus. They believed it.
SPEAKER 02 :
They believed it, and it’s something that transformed a group of basically some cowardly fishermen, right, in a sense. And then, you know, they became bold proclaimers of a risen Christ. And it’s interesting to read Peter, you know, the way he talked and acted before Christ rose from the dead when he was a disciple walking around with him. And then when Christ is going to get crucified, he gets all scared and hides and denies Christ three times. He would have denied him 38 times, but Christ says, well, you’re going to deny me three times. I’m going to make that rooster crow. I’ll make him crow on the third one. You would have done it 30 times.
SPEAKER 03 :
Right, I’m just going to give you a break.
SPEAKER 02 :
And then after his death, they all went into hiding. They were literally in hiding. And then guess what? They saw the risen Christ. And man, wouldn’t that have been something else? And it transformed these guys into bold proclaimers willing to go to their deaths for it.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s right. They were willing to, in Acts chapter 2, to walk right down into the temple itself and start preaching Christ as the Messiah. In front of God and everybody. Wow.
SPEAKER 02 :
Something definitely changed. Can you imagine doing that at a Bernie Sanders and AOC? Or, you know, right into the Antifa and you just start preaching this stuff.
SPEAKER 03 :
You’d walk right into the crowd and start preaching the truth.
SPEAKER 02 :
You’d drive right into the crowd with your Tesla and start preaching.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, that’s what it was like because the men who had crucified Jesus Christ… They ran the temple, and Peter and the twelve walked right up there and started preaching, this Jesus that you’ve crucified is the Christ. Repent and be baptized for the remission of your sins.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes. Boy. So people generally, they don’t die for a lie, right? They don’t die for something that was made up. Not very often. They’re cooking up this whole thing. And then they just get nothing in return. It’s not like they were profiting. Some people do twist Christianity into a profit. These guys weren’t doing that. So number seven, the rapid spread of Christianity. How did a tiny group become the largest religion in the world?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, and it did. Within 300 years, it became the official religion of the Roman Empire, within 400 years. And so, how does that happen when you start with a group with no political power, no money, they just have one message. He is risen. Well, that message is extraordinarily powerful. Not only is it powerful enough to motivate small groups of people to believe and to be actual Christians and to follow Christ, but it’s also enough and compelling enough and powerful enough that extremely ambitious politicians and religious leaders also want to take that and utilize the power of that. And that’s how Christianity… I’m going to put that in quotation marks, became the official religion of the Roman Empire was because of the power of the cross and the power of that testimony that he has risen. It was very convenient and profitable to the political and religious leaders of the day.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, and you recognize just the power behind it. You were telling a story off air about somebody you ran across with the purple hair and And all kinds of piercings. Yeah, yeah, the curl.
SPEAKER 03 :
And what else was… So if you’ve noticed, all the people who dress goth or death, or if they’re into death metal, or even going back to like Black Sabbath, what’s the one thing in common that they all have? They all wear giant crosses everywhere. Madonna, when she became famous, dressing like a prostitute, but big crosses everywhere. Why? Why? Because it’s an extraordinarily powerful icon. It’s an extraordinarily powerful image. And people tend to steal from God His power and His glory for themselves. And… That’s what happened with the Roman Empire and Constantine. Yeah. They borrowed illegitimately the glory of God for themselves because the glory and the power is real. Absolutely. And it’s based on the resurrection. Yeah. And that power and that glory wouldn’t be so attractive to the political and religious leaders of the world were it not functional. It works. Yeah. Because it’s real.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yep. Okay, so number six as we count down, enemy testimony. And this, of course, was huge. We mentioned it earlier as a summary, but James, his own skeptical brother, he didn’t believe him during his ministry. But guess what? When you see the guy, you see him crucified. And there’s no way you survive a crucifixion. You don’t survive that. I’m sure he saw him die. I mean, people were watching. And then you see him rose from the dead. And so he became a leader of the Jerusalem church after that happened. Yeah, changed his mind. He also became martyred. Yeah. And then, of course, Paul. I mean, that’s the big one. Paul is the… There’s a guy named Paul.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. The biggest of all, the guy who was actually persecuting, having believers arrested, who stood by and consented to the stoning of Stephen. I mean, this guy was the enemy of Jesus Christ. And in a moment… Jesus appeared to him, and Paul was utterly converted and immediately started preaching Christ. The other apostles ran away in fear at first.
SPEAKER 02 :
Exactly. Like, wait a minute. This is a guy that’s been trying to get my head on a bike.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s right. That’s right. Paul saw Jesus Christ and it changed him. He saw the resurrected Christ in a vision from heaven. And enemies like Paul and skeptics like James, they don’t convert unless they believe something dramatic happened.
SPEAKER 02 :
And that was the resurrection. Boy, it’ll be fun to talk to Paul someday. We’ll meet Paul. and what an impact he had with all the letters he wrote in the New Testament. Here’s a guy again that was persecuting the church, and now he’s this guy that has great writings everywhere about really the new gospel.
SPEAKER 03 :
He presented the gospel of grace. Paul presented the grace gospel. You can read the whole Bible, and no one else talks about the power of the cross. Nobody preached the power of the cross, the glory of the cross, until Paul, because he became the apostle to the Gentiles, revealing God’s dispensation of grace to us, apart from any works, apart from any law, just through faith. Yeah.
SPEAKER 02 :
And like we said, skeptics admit that these guys were critics. Historical evidence supports that these guys were persecuting Christians. So enemies don’t convert, Doug, unless they believe something real actually happened. Yeah, absolutely. That’s true.
SPEAKER 03 :
All right, now, number five. In the Bible, in the biblical account, the first witnesses to the resurrection were women. Yeah.
SPEAKER 02 :
Right? They were women. And that’s in a culture where a woman’s testimony did not even count in court. That’s right.
SPEAKER 03 :
A woman could not testify in court.
SPEAKER 02 :
And this was just a bias against women. And people don’t realize how Christianity is a religion or it’s a belief, it’s a following that supports all people. It doesn’t put man and women, we’re all one in Christ. Now, we have our different… You have some talents and different things where God wants us to do. But guess what? Women are considered equal in God’s eyes and not this lower status where you can’t even testify in court because you’re not trusted.
SPEAKER 03 :
Right, right.
SPEAKER 02 :
So why would they invent that detail with women? Why would women be the first witnesses? It’s more evidence of the truth that Christ is who he says he was. That’s it. Women is the witness. Right.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s right. It’s what Bob Enyart used to call the flavor of reality. The fact that the first reports were from women, if it didn’t happen that way, it wouldn’t have been written that way. The only reason it was written that way is because that’s how it happened. Had they been making up the story in order to create a religion to make people feel guilty and to subjugate women, they would have said that Peter and James and John were the ones who initially discovered the empty tomb, but they didn’t make that up. The reports came in first from the women because it was true.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes. And so this is what scholars call the criterion of embarrassment, details that are awkward but truthful. Right. Right. Okay, number four, 1 Corinthians 15.
SPEAKER 03 :
What is that all about? Yeah, well, the whole chapter is about the resurrection. You know, there’s a heresy in the Corinthian church. People are saying that there is no resurrection. Paul is like, are you out of your mind? So he writes 1 Corinthians 15 in his letter. to prove the resurrection, that it wasn’t a legend or it wasn’t just a fantasy. He names witnesses. He talks about Peter and the 12 and how Jesus appeared to over 500 people at one time. And Paul says some of them, most of them are still alive right now. You can go ask them. So this is contemporaneous testimony that at the time, People could have checked and said, oh, well, Paul says this. And then there would have been 12 guys in the room saying, yeah, I saw him too. It was all real. And that’s why Paul recorded it that way in 1 Corinthians 15.
SPEAKER 02 :
You could have read that, you know, in, let’s say, 100 AD. And he lists names of people. And he says, go ask him yourself. You have eyewitness testimony. So, Doug. That’s right. Before we get to number three, I think we still need to do our interesting fact of the week.
SPEAKER 01 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 02 :
Now, this one’s going to be challenging for me because, you know, I admit and people tell me in the comments. You really like to buzz, Doug, don’t you? I love that red button right here. But this becomes super challenging because Doug is a theological expert. Oh, no, I’m a Bible student. Yeah, Bible student and amateur comedian. Yes, an amateur comedian. That’s right. Okay, so here’s the question. And this one is kind of tough, but I can see you maybe coming up with the answer. Okay. How many baskets were left over… After Jesus fed the 5,000. Wow.
SPEAKER 03 :
So the feeding of the 5,000 is one of the most popular stories in the Bible. And there were five baskets left over.
SPEAKER 02 :
So we just talked about a number. He appeared to Peter. Twelve baskets.
SPEAKER 03 :
And so the reason I miss that is because I generally don’t focus on the gospels. I generally focus on the Pauline epistles because the stories of the gospels, those are relevant to the people Jesus was preparing to go into his kingdom. But the letters that Paul wrote, those instructions are relevant to us right now, today, in the body of Christ today. So I spend a lot more time in the epistles, but still I should know.
SPEAKER 02 :
I had to find one that, yeah, but that one, I wouldn’t have got that. I mean, you know, there’s, I think most people listening who are super Bible experts and went to seminary for four years, that one. Because it’s a number, and you just kind of have to think, okay, what was that number again?
SPEAKER 03 :
Okay, so I’m just going to file a, not a protest, what do you call it? Just an advisement that I think there’s another story where there was five baskets, I think. Ooh. I think that’s a possibility.
SPEAKER 02 :
We’ll have to, you know what? You’ve done one before where I had to do a retraction the next week because you were right about the biggest organ in the body. Remember that one?
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, yeah, yeah, the interstitial, yeah. Now, you know what we could do, Fred, is we could send this question up to our Princeton-educated friend. We could invite him on the show to settle. Is it Bert or Bart? It’s Bart. Bart from Princeton. We can see if he can settle. Dr. Bart. First of all, I know there’s more than one account of Jesus feeding people with bread. I know that.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, if Bart doesn’t know it, we’ll ask Bart Simpson. All right. Okay. Okay, so number three, the martyrdom of the apostles. We kind of briefly mentioned this before, but nearly all the apostles suffered, and many were killed for proclaiming Christ’s resurrection. Right, and they didn’t recant. We’re happy with that. They did not recant. Yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
No, and so Jesus told Peter. That he would be crucified. And the legend is Peter was crucified. The legend is upside down. That’s extra biblical. We don’t know. But Peter was most likely martyred. There’s the legend of Thomas being killed in India. Again, extra biblical, but probably true.
SPEAKER 02 :
By a spear. Yeah. I don’t know if it was like a firing squad, except they’re spears. I don’t know. I’m not sure how that… He has a spear that has the sharpest point. I was not familiar with the story about Thomas. I wasn’t either. And yeah, we just kind of came across this.
SPEAKER 03 :
But we know that James, the brother of John, we know he was beheaded in Jerusalem. That’s in the Bible. He was the very first apostle to be beheaded. And it’s not in the Bible that Paul was beheaded in Rome, but it’s almost certainly a fact that he was beheaded in Rome after his second trial.
SPEAKER 02 :
So, you know, these guys aren’t dying for some abstract beliefs. You don’t die for a lie. You just don’t. Liars make poor martyrs. Yes. These guys, they testified what they saw, and they went to their deaths for it. That’s exactly right. Because the evidence is so overwhelming. What they got to see in person and witness. You know, we get to witness that ourselves by what we present on this show. Because the science we present is so overwhelming for the Bible community. Just time and time again, we have so many things we covered. Our last week’s show on the list of not-so-old things. Yeah, the not-so-old things. The top 10 of a list of at least 50. We’ve got so many shows we do all the time where science actually supports the Bible. And it’s great for… We think for witnessing to people who don’t have this information, a lot of times people are willing to talk about science and origins. They don’t want to talk about Christ because the Bible says Christ is a stumbling block to those who maybe already knew the truth, like the Jews, but foolishness to those who have no foundation. And so they believe the fake science, so they think everything’s foolishness. So, hey, that’s why we like to approach with science first and then present the gospel, because then maybe it’s not so foolish once they hear the science. We’re presenting evidence today for Christ’s resurrection. That’s right. He is who he says he is.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, and we boldly proclaim that the Bible never… contradicts real science. Never, not even one time.
SPEAKER 02 :
It’s not really a science book, but whenever it touches on science, it’s always accurate. That’s right. Number two is a big one, Doug. Yes, yes. The conversion of Saul, who then was renamed Paul. That’s right. He fared better than the Saul of the Old Testament. Saul of the tribe of Benjamin.
SPEAKER 03 :
Saul of the tribe of Benjamin was the first king of Israel. He started off well. He ended badly. Very badly. And then Saul of the tribe of Benjamin was initially a persecutor of Jesus Christ who ended up being the greatest evangelist in the history of mankind. Yeah, absolutely. Basically started the Christian church. He was… More than likely a relatively wealthy, successful Pharisee, a student of the number one, the equivalent of the Princeton Theological Seminary back in Israel. He studied under Gamaliel right there in Jerusalem. So he gave up and lost status, wealth, and position in the community for this belief he had that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah. He wanted to head to Syria to grab some more Christians, bring them back, persecute them, execute them. And on that way to Damascus, he had an encounter with God, which is such a cool and interesting story. And he would repeat. He would tell everybody about that story. Oh, yeah. Hey, I was looking to come kill some people, and God showed up and said, what are you doing, Paul? That’s right. Get your act together. I’m real. And he’s like, wow. It blinded him. He couldn’t see for several days. Yeah, very symbolic. Yeah. Of the blinding of the nation of Israel, yes. Yeah, very much so. So here’s a guy, he lost privilege. We’re talking about he was likely, like you said, wealthy. He lost his status. He said he was a Pharisee of Pharisees. Exactly. So he lost safety. I mean, imagine what he lost to do what he did.
SPEAKER 03 :
And then to write that he counts it all as dung. Yeah. His successful career, he later would refer to it as dung. That’s a pretty powerful testimony.
SPEAKER 02 :
It is. And we mentioned that he was executed. He had been beaten, imprisoned, rocks thrown at him. Oh, boy.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s right. Left for dead. A night and a day I spent in the deep, he writes. He was shipwrecked. I mean, he went through it all, all the way to martyrdom.
SPEAKER 02 :
Everybody got bit by a snake, too, and he’s like, whatever. That’s right. Being bit by a poisonous snake?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, just shaking it off.
SPEAKER 02 :
Anyways, what changes a man like that, Doug? So something real, something undeniable. It’s a pretty powerful testimony. That’s right. You just can’t get around it. Paul is such a great evidence that Christ is who he says he was. Amen. Okay, so we’re at number one.
SPEAKER 03 :
The resurrection is the best explanation for all of the circumstantial evidence that we see, the existence of a Christian church, the persistence of this idea that this man rose from the dead, and how it’s permeated all of society, and how it’s still one of the biggest questions and one of the topics that’s argued by more people on more occasions than just about any other debate The resurrection is simply the best explanation for all of that. There are other theories, right? Like the swoon theory. Oh, yeah. Well, he didn’t actually die. He just passed out.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, that they somehow gave him a drug to survive the crucifixion. You know, you look at different accounts of people desperate to explain this away. And it just doesn’t work. You know, the Jews tried it, documented in the Bible, about how they stole Jesus’ body. And then you look at the Islamic view.
SPEAKER 01 :
Stop the tape, stop the tape. Hey, this is Dominic Enyart. We are out of time for today. If you want to hear the rest of this program, go to rsr.org. That’s Real Science Radio, rsr.org.
SPEAKER 04 :
Scholars can’t explain it all away.
SPEAKER 1 :
Get ready to be awed by the handiwork of God. Tune in to Real Science Radio. Turn up the Real Science Radio. Keeping it real.
