"If you ever read religious books, they start out talking about the ‘ultimate essence’ and the ‘basis of reality’ and the ‘true meaning of life.’
“You know how the Bible starts? You have two people naked in a garden. That don’t sound like any religious book I ever read. It starts out talking about whether you ought to put something in your mouth or not.
“The fact that the Bible is a book of history is really what rubs people the wrong way about it. It’s a record of what’s gone on. Now, God is all through the Bible. His history is HIS story, but it’s a record of what’s actually happened on this earth for 4,000 years.
“The trouble is that if it’s history, then it’s what’s really gone on, it’s what’s really happened and it’s what really is going to happen, and it really doesn’t matter what you believe about it.
“The worst thing in the world is to be sincere and be sincerely wrong. What you believe, if it isn’t true, if it isn’t historically accurate, if it isn’t real, it don’t make any difference if you believe it or not. If you believe Jesus rose again and He didn’t, believe it all day long; it’s not going to do you any good.
“Because the Bible’s a book of history means heaven and hell are real places. They’re not just theology, dogma. It’s not just religion. Paul says, ‘Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buriled, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.’
“That has to be true and that’s why he says in I Corinthians 15, ‘And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.’
“Jesus Christ, truth personified, once prayed for His disciples and said, ‘Sanctify them by the word; thy word is truth.’ Just like Jesus Christ was the perfect truth of God, He said His Word was the perfect truth of God. That’s what Paul said when he wrote, ‘Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.’
“If you’ve got a bible and you don’t believe it’s the truth—and I don’t mean generically the truth; I’m talking about when you read a specific verse and the words in the verse—then you have an entirely different attitude toward the Word of God than God Himself does.
"The historically proven reality of the resurrection is the foundation Christianity is built on. Biblical Christianity expects a person to believe certain indisputable facts:
*Jesus Christ was a real person who lived on earth
*He was charged by Jewish leaders and crucified at the hands of Roman authorities
*He was buried in a known, accessible tomb and then preached as risen
*The leaders of His nation tried to dispose of the message that He was resurrected by persecuting those who preached it
*The empty tomb, though, belied all their efforts
"The empty tomb is the central fact of the Christian faith. It's a fact that can be demonstrated to a historical certainty."
"People will tell you you can't prove the resurrection scientifically, but there's a lot of things in life you can't prove scientifically.
"The scientific method is a method of replicable events. It's science if you have something you observe, and you make a statement of it, and then others can come along and replicate the event. But there are a lot of things where you don't do that."
"Felons convicted in courts of law for murder, for example, are not convicted on science. They're convicted on historical evidences—the evidences which demonstrate something happened historically, in time, and jurors are pressed to a decision, or a conclusion.
"Individuals are forced to a conclusion based on the evidence. Whether you want to make a conclusion or not, the evidence demands that you come to a verdict."
(new article tomorrow)
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