The Authenticity of the Appearances

Listen Online:

Watch Online:

Transcript:

If you’ve ever watched a reality show about law enforcement, something like Live PD or cops, you’ve probably noticed, like I have, the power of an eyewitness. An eyewitness can completely change the direction of an investigation. I’ve seen instances where the police have stopped to deal with somebody, maybe for a welfare check or something to, you know, somebody laying on the side of the road.

Are they okay? Are they on something? Do they need medical attention?

And then you’ll have an eyewitness or maybe a couple of eyewitnesses testify that we saw this person do something that they weren’t supposed to do. Maybe they robbed a liquor store. Maybe they assaulted somebody.

Maybe they were selling drugs. Maybe they were taking drugs. But the entire trajectory of the investigation can change from a welfare check to now a criminal investigation simply on the word of an eyewitness.

It can also go the other direction. Some of us here at the church experienced the other day where something that seemed criminal, none of us were involved in it, we just happened to be witnesses to it, might have seemed to the police like it was criminal in the way that they were asking questions. But as we began to answer, I think they came to the conclusion that nobody assaulted anybody.

Again, that wasn’t somebody at the church. It was something that some of us happened to witness out on the street. But the entire direction of an investigation can change because of the eyewitnesses.

That’s particularly true when you have multiple eyewitnesses who show up and say the same thing. And I’ve seen, again, some of these videos of law enforcement where they will be dealing with a he said, she said situation. And they’re listening to the two sides.

And based on what the two sides are saying, they think one person is the victim and one person is the aggressor. But then eyewitnesses show up and say, this is what we saw. And especially if you have multiples of them coming from the outside saying, we as bystanders, this is what we witnessed.

then the police can, based on what the eyewitnesses say, say, that doesn’t match up with this story over here. And we now think the aggressor is the victim and the victim is the aggressor, and so on and so forth. And it completely changes things.

It’s because eyewitness testimony is a powerful thing, particularly when you have multiple credible eyewitnesses all saying basically the same thing, telling the same story. And the reason for that is that most people are not pathological liars. Human beings lie, but as a matter of course, we don’t wake up in the morning, most of us, saying, what story can I fabricate today?

How can I pull the wool over somebody’s eyes today? That’s why I tell my children, I’m going to believe you when you tell me something, unless and until there’s some reason not to. You know, if evidence points in a different direction or just plain common sense says, no, it can’t possibly be true, but I’m going to believe you and until there’s some reason not to believe you.

And that tends to be how our justice system works with eyewitness testimony. Unless and until there’s some reason, some compelling reason, not to believe the eyewitness, we tend to take those things at face value in almost every single circumstance. There’s one glaring example, though, that I’ve noticed, where as a society, as a whole, we will look at a story and say, no, that can’t possibly be true.

What about the eyewitnesses? Yeah, no, they’re lying. All of them?

Yeah, all of them. But there’s multiples of them. They’re all saying the same thing.

Yeah, it can’t be true. There’s one story I can think of where we do that, and it’s with the resurrection of Jesus. Now, there may be exceptions out there, but that’s the one event I can think of where we just automatically, and I don’t mean we as a church, but as a society, we automatically just dismiss the statements of the eyewitnesses and say, no, that can’t possibly be.

I am convinced that with any other given event, whether it was in ancient history or the modern day, any other event that had as many witnesses, as credible of witnesses, with as much cohesiveness in their stories, meaning their stories matched up as well, any other circumstance with the same of eyewitness testimony, as the resurrection story has, any other circumstance would just be accepted as fact. And so I think then, in order to be intellectually honest, we need to consider their claims. Now, some of you this morning may be saying, well, I already believe it’s true. Good.

You need to know why you believe that. Some of you may be saying, I’ve never thought about it. I hope you will think about it.

Some of you may be saying, yeah, I don’t believe that’s true. And I’d like to invite you to consider the claims that the eyewitnesses make and ask yourself, are they credible? Are they people who should be believed?

I’m going to ask you to turn in your Bibles this morning to 1 Corinthians chapter 15. 1 Corinthians chapter 15. And once you’re there, if you’re able to stand, I’ll invite you to do so.

I’m not because there’s nobody to move the camera. Everybody in my house is sick. So I’m going to stay seated, but I’m standing with you in spirit.

1 Corinthians 15, We’re going to start in verse 1 and read through verse 7. It says, Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, and in which you stand, by which you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. He said, Let me summarize the gospel for you again, because this is the message that has saved you.

This is the message that holds you secure. This is the message that you need to cling to. Here it is.

Verse 3. For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures, and that he was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. After that he was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remained to the present, but some have fallen asleep.

After that he was seen by James, then by all the apostles. So this morning, what we need to understand, in particular, if you’re skeptical or if you’ve never studied this, you’ve never thought about it before, there are numerous eyewitnesses, numerous eyewitnesses who claim to have seen Jesus alive, claim to have encountered Jesus alive after his death and burial and resurrection. And that’s important because we’re working on a case for the resurrection.

And I’ve told you there are four points to this case, that the existence and death of Jesus Christ are historically verifiable, that Jesus was buried and his tomb was discovered empty three days later. Today, our point is that numerous eyewitnesses claim to have encountered Jesus Christ alive after his death and burial. Next week, we’ll talk about how the resurrection stories were followed up by extraordinary changes that require an extraordinary cause or extraordinary explanation. But today we want to focus in on these eyewitnesses.

And I want you to realize there are numerous eyewitnesses who claim they saw Jesus alive. It’s not one or two. It’s not made up years down the road.

These were credible eyewitnesses. And so this morning we want to look at what they claim. What is it that they claim?

What is it that these eyewitnesses say? Hundreds of people. You heard me right when I said that.

Hundreds of people who were intimately familiar with Jesus during his ministry experienced prolonged interactions with Jesus after his death. Now, all of those words are important there. These were not fleeting glances by total strangers.

These were extended interactions with the people who knew him best. If there was anybody on earth who would have known whether or not it was Jesus Christ who was walking among them, it would have been the people that he spent three years with. And those were exactly the people who reported these experiences. And it’s not like they just vaguely saw him through the fog one day.

These are people who spent time with him. And I want to talk to you this morning about some of their specific claims. Because there are 10 to 12 recorded appearances of Jesus after his death and burial and resurrection. There are 10 to 12 instances in the Gospels where it’s recorded that Jesus appeared to somebody and they gave their eyewitness account.

This is what we saw. This is what happened to us. Now, I say 10 to 12 because some of these may be retellings of the same event.

I lean toward 10 myself, but I’ve seen where people count as high as 12. I could be wrong in that. Let’s talk about what some of these are.

First of all, Mary Magdalene talked with Jesus outside the empty tomb just after Peter and John left to go back where they came from. That’s in Mark chapter 16 and John chapter 20. By the way, my notes for this will be out in the Welcome Center if you need a copy of these with the scriptures.

Mary Magdalene, we talked last week about how Peter and John ran out there to see the empty tomb and they were among who testified that they saw that tomb empty. After they left, Mary Magdalene sat there and cried, and then Jesus showed up. She was the very first one that’s recorded to have seen Jesus after his death and burial. Then there’s another event shortly after that where Mary, the mother of James, Salome, Joanna, and some other unnamed women talked with Jesus while they were out spreading the news of the empty tomb.

While they were out telling people that they had seen the tomb empty, they’re out going from house to house telling the story. Jesus shows up and he talks with them. He spends a moment talking to them.

They recognized him for who he was. And we see that recorded in Matthew 28, Mark 16, and Luke 24. Then there was Luke and Cleopas.

Now, I say Luke and Cleopas. Not everybody agrees that Cleopas’ unnamed associate companion was Luke. That’s my suspicion.

I could be wrong in that. But there were two men, one of whom was Cleopas. They walked and talked and ate with Jesus on their way back to Emmaus.

They spent considerable time with him. And they were convinced when it was finished that they had seen Jesus. And we have it recorded in Luke 24 and 1 Corinthians 15 that Jesus appeared to Peter.

Now, Peter didn’t say much about what happened. My guess is, well, I don’t know for sure what Jesus said to Peter. But after the three denials, if I were Peter, I’m not sure I would want everybody to know what Jesus said to me either.

But we have it recorded that Jesus did at least tell the others that he had, Peter did at least tell the others that he had seen Jesus, that he had met with Jesus. Then that same night, all of this happened that first day. That same night, 10 of the disciples, all of them except Thomas, encountered Jesus while they were in hiding.

That’s recorded in Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20. Jesus appeared to them. They were in hiding.

They had heard the news of the empty tomb, but they still weren’t really convinced. And Jesus showed up there. These men that had spent the last three years of their lives, day in and day out with Jesus, they saw him, they recognized him, they came away convinced that it was him alive again.

Then a week later, the next Sunday, we don’t know what happened between one Sunday and the next, but the next Sunday, all 11 living disciples were visited by Jesus. That includes Thomas, where Jesus said, if you don’t believe, because remember Thomas said, I’m not going to believe unless I can see the nail prints. That’s where Jesus showed up and said, you want to see the nail prints?

Here they are. That’s recorded in John chapter 20 and 1 Corinthians chapter 15. Then in John chapter 21, it records sometime later when seven disciples, including Peter, Thomas, Nathaniel, James, and John, and two others that are not named, they talked and ate with Jesus at the Sea of Galilee.

And we know that sometime after that, The 11 remaining disciples, along with over 500 other followers of Jesus, they all gathered together and met with Jesus at a predetermined time and spot on a mountain in Galilee. That’s recorded in Matthew 28, Mark 16, and 1 Corinthians 15. 1 Corinthians 15 tells us that James, the half-brother of Jesus, met with Jesus at some point.

We’ll talk about that a little bit more next week, and some of the changes that that brought about in James’s life. But James went from being a skeptic to being a follower of Jesus, and it was his meeting. It was his experience with his half-brother, who had been crucified and buried and now was alive again.

It was that experience that convinced him. And then we know from Mark chapter 16 and Luke chapter 24 and Acts chapter 1 that there was another large assembly of believers who met with Jesus and listened to his teaching until they watched him ascend to the Father. So there you have a couple of those maybe where I’ve combined two that should be separate.

But I lean toward 10 appearances. There are at least 10. We know that there were others.

John talks about how there were others, that there wasn’t room to write down everything Jesus did. And we know that he spent that 40 days with his followers. So there were other times that Jesus appeared to his followers.

But these are the ones recorded in the Gospels. These are the ones where we can say there are names that are assigned to those. Names of people who put their lives and their credibility on the line to say, we saw him alive again.

And so when we talk about what did they claim, here are the names and the dates and the events of people who said, we saw Jesus alive. We know he was crucified. We know he was buried.

We know the tomb was empty. And then we saw him. Here’s our experience.

And I’d encourage you to go back and read some of those stories, especially if you pick up a handout with the notes and can find where each of those stories are recorded. Now, what these claims show us is something very important about how Jesus came back. I think the claims themselves, it’s hard to overcome the claims. It’s hard to look at that and say, well, 500 people were all lying.

I think the story, I think the resurrection account has a ton of credibility because of the eyewitness accounts, because these people put their names on it. The claims also show us something about how Jesus came back. Their stories point to a personal bodily resurrection.

Now, what I mean by that is for it to be bodily, Jesus’ crucified body came back to life. For it to be personal, it means he was there walking around among them. Okay, for it to be personal, some people have said, well, he showed up in spirit, or it was his spirit in another body.

No, he was personally there in the same way that he had been with them before. So the same way that he had walked with them for three years, he was back among them walking with them for another 40 days. And for it to be bodily, there are people who say not just that he was there in spirit, but that he was there as a spirit.

I’ve heard some people describe it even as a hologram. But there’s reason in their stories to believe both that it was him there personally, but also that he was there in the same body that was crucified. Okay, first of all, he was not a spirit.

And some people think that there’s biblical support for the idea that he appeared as a spirit because of some of the stories about him appearing all of a sudden in locked rooms, like he did with the disciples in John chapter 20, or him disappearing suddenly, like he did in Luke chapter 24. But the idea that Jesus would appear and disappear suddenly is not surprising, because Jesus was able to do stuff like that all along for three years. For three years of his recorded ministry, he was doing miraculous things.

He was doing things that defied physical explanation. So for him suddenly to be able to appear in a room, or I should say, for him to be able to appear in a room suddenly or disappear suddenly doesn’t prove that he’s there in spirit. It just, again, points to him being Jesus.

He spent all those years doing miraculous things, but he demonstrated that he was physically present, not just spiritually present. Think about some of the ways that he demonstrated he was there in his body. Mary Magdalene in John chapter 20, Mary Magdalene grabbed hold of him.

She held on to him for dear life. Can’t do that with a ghost. I mean, I’ve not had experiences with ghosts, but from what people tell me, that’s not how ghosts were. In Luke chapter 24, he broke bread with Luke and Cleopas.

Again, it may not have been Luke, but he broke bread for them. So he was, he’s not just a spirit. He’s able to have an impact on the physical world.

He was able to take bread and break it. He, in Luke chapter 24, and John chapter 20, he allowed the 10 disciples who were there on Easter Sunday evening, he allowed them to examine his hands, his feet, and his side to see all the places that he had been pierced, where he had been wounded. He allowed them to examine those things to show them it was his body.

He wasn’t just back as a spirit. Then he sat there with the 10, and according to Luke chapter 24, he ate with them. From what I understand, ghosts don’t eat.

He ate with them. As a matter of fact, there was an event where they were convinced they were seeing Jesus as a ghost, or when they saw Jesus, they were convinced he was a ghost, and he went to great lengths to demonstrate to them that he was not a ghost. He allowed Thomas to examine his hands and his side as well in John chapter 20, and then in John chapter 21, after he showed them where to catch a ton of fish, he prepared breakfast for the seven. So again, he was able to manipulate the physical world because he was there in physical form.

He was not a ghost. He was not a spirit or was not just there in spirit form. He was there in his own physical body. He was also not a hallucination.

And this is something that a lot of people like to suggest today as an explanation for the entire resurrection that people just hallucinated their experience with Jesus. What I have discovered in my study of hallucinations and in reading things that others have written about this idea, I’ve discovered that people don’t typically just have hallucinations out of nowhere. Usually it’s going to come because of some cause, and typically somebody’s going to be in a high-risk category for hallucinations.

somebody is going to have a record of mental illness. Somebody is going to have a history of drug abuse or alcohol abuse. There’s going to be some cause.

These don’t typically, I use that word typically, but they don’t just typically come out of nowhere. According to the definitions for the conditions listed by the U. S.

National Library of Medicine, there’s no evidence that I’ve ever seen that the disciples were in any of the high-risk categories that would put them at high risk for hallucinations. There’s also an article in Science Magazine that says, quote, hallucinations arise when the brain gives more weight to its expectations and beliefs about the world than to the sensory evidence it receives, end quote. So what they’re saying there is that hallucinations are the result of when our brain listens to what it expects to see and hear as opposed to what it’s actually seeing and hearing out in reality.

Hallucinations are all about what the brain expects. Now the problem with this is that the disciples very clearly did not expect a resurrection. Mark 16, Luke 24, John 20, you go back to all of these, you see examples of the disciples acting like the story of the empty tomb was absolute nonsense.

They simply were not primed. They were not there in a place where they would expect to have a resurrection. They were not in a place where they would expect to encounter Jesus.

And without that expectation, it’s hard for me to see where the hallucination would have come from, just based on what I understand about how hallucinations work. Now, another article says that roughly 5% of people experience at least one hallucination in their lifetimes. Now, they’re saying, see, hallucinations, the point of that article was hallucinations are very common.

5%, that’s one out of 20. And that’s not saying they experience them every day. That’s saying at some point during their lifetime, they’ll see or hear something that’s not really there.

In some cases, it can be a one-time thing brought on by fatigue or alcohol or something like that. The idea that 5%, 5% experience a hallucination at least sometime in their lives does not account for, Those kinds of numbers do not account for how unlikely it is that a large functioning community of otherwise rational people would experience a hallucination rate of 100%. Folks, that’s just one more time where I’m telling you the alternative theories require a greater leap of faith than believing that Jesus rose from the dead.

On top of that, hallucinations are often described as individual experiences that have no connection to reality. I read an article from a young lady who recounted her hallucination experiences, and she said it’s not like she’s hallucinating things that are interacting with the real world. She said it’s sort of her hallucinations superimposed on the real world.

They’re not connected with each other. So it’s not like they were all just sitting around in a boat, and then suddenly there’s Jesus superimposed. There’s no evidence I’ve ever seen for mass hallucinations, for collective hallucinations, shared hallucinations.

It sounds, as I read these accounts of what hallucinations are like, it sounds much more like each person is sitting there having their own experience. Now, how that comports with the reports of multiple people at the same place, at the same time, saying we all saw the same thing, that is not how hallucinations work. so the idea the idea that skeptics have that this was a hallucination you have to get rid of everything we know about what causes hallucinations what puts people at high risk for it we have to get rid of everything we know about how they work and what they’re like and we have to assume that even though there’s nothing supernatural going on this one event is unique in all of history that everybody just imagined and hallucinated the same thing all at the same time.

An otherwise functioning large community, 500 people, all saw the same thing at one time. Folks, I’m too skeptical to buy that explanation. Jesus Christ in his appearances after his death was not a hallucination.

The numbers just are not there. So their claims indicate to us, based on their stories, that we saw him after we didn’t expect to see him and then we touched him and we spoke with him and we all had these experiences we know we all saw the same things they tell us that he was there personally and he was there bodily and I think there’s good reason why we ought to believe them and this ties in a little bit with what I’ll talk about next week but there’s some reasons why we should believe them and the biggest reason why we should believe them is what happened after these appearances shows that his resurrection was not a hoax see this is the other thing sometimes people will say he was he fine, he showed up as a spirit. Other people will say he was a hallucination.

These appearances were a hallucination. Other times people will say these appearances were a hoax. I don’t buy that this was a hoax.

Remember last week I talked about the nature of criminal conspiracies and how unlikely it is for such a large group to hold their story together over such a long span of time, especially when they had so many incentives to break ranks, especially when they had so many incentives to come clean if they had made it up. Here are those incentives I talked about. Each of these people went forward from this point telling people that not only had Jesus been crucified and he had been buried and that tomb was empty three days later, but they said, I saw him with my own eyes.

I touched him with my hands. I heard him with my ears. I spoke with him.

I ate with him. I know that the man was alive. They said this.

and they paid dearly for saying so. Peter was crucified upside down in Rome. He could have saved himself by denying that he had ever seen Jesus alive, and yet he was crucified upside down.

Andrew was crucified in Greece. Could have saved himself by denying the resurrection, but he didn’t. James, the son of Zebedee, was executed by a sword in Judea.

Could have saved himself by denying that Jesus was alive again, but he didn’t. John was tortured numerous times and he died in exile, the only one not technically to be martyred. He could have saved himself a lot of trouble by denying that Jesus was alive again, but he never did.

Philip was martyred in Hierapolis either by beheading or by crucifixion. Could have saved himself by denying the resurrection, but he didn’t. Bartholomew, also known as Nathaniel, was martyred in either Armenia or India.

Could have saved himself by denying the resurrection, but he didn’t. Matthew was martyred. According to the stories that likely took place in Ethiopia, he could have saved himself by denying the resurrection, but he didn’t.

Thomas was martyred in India. He could have saved himself by denying the resurrection, but he didn’t. James, the son of Alphaeus, was beaten to death.

He could have saved himself by denying the resurrection, but he didn’t. Thaddeus, also known as Levius, was killed with an axe in Syria. He could have saved himself by denying the resurrection, but he didn’t.

Simon the Zealot was martyred as well, possibly in the same area as Thaddeus. He could have saved himself by denying the resurrection, but he didn’t. These men never denied the resurrection.

And as they went forward telling their story, they came across to people as credible eyewitnesses. They didn’t come across like raving madmen. They were credible enough to convince people, to convince large numbers of people that what they said they saw, they actually saw.

And not one of them ever gave a hint of recanting. Not one of them ever gave a hint that maybe it wasn’t true. Even at great personal cost, they gave up their freedom, they gave up their lives insisting that Jesus was alive.

Those who knew Jesus best were the most convinced by his appearances. They were the most convinced that he was alive, even though they were the ones that had seen him die. And their testimony gives us reason to consider seriously the resurrection and all its implications.

If we consider what the eyewitnesses have to say, we can’t just write this off as a fairy tale. We have to consider the very real possibility that Jesus Christ really did die and rise again from the dead. And if Jesus rose from the dead, then he conquered death for us.

He conquered death for you and he conquered death for me. And Paul argued in the latter part of the passage that we looked at today or a few verses later, he said in verse 20, Now Christ is risen from the dead and has become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. Jesus Christ rose from the dead, but God’s word says he’s just the first of many.

He conquered death for me and for you. If he conquered death for us, then he’s our only hope for eternal life. He said that he died on the cross to purchase our forgiveness, and then he rose again to bring us eternal life.

And so for you today, if you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior, you need to understand that Jesus died for you because you’ve sinned against God. We have all disobeyed God. We’ve all done things that displease him, and that sin separates us from God.

And because of that sin, we can never be right with God. We can never do enough things to make ourselves right with God on our own. So Jesus Christ took all the punishment that we deserved.

He paid all the penalty that we owed when he shed his blood and died on that cross. And then he rose again three days later to prove it, to give us victory over death, to give us eternal life. This morning, if you acknowledge your sin to God, and you believe in Jesus Christ as your one and only Savior, you believe that he died to pay for your sins in full, and you believe that Jesus rose again three days later to prove it, then you can ask God’s forgiveness and you can be saved.