Lee Strobel
Appearances
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So he died on the cross, they put him in a tomb. Yes. Why was it three days? There's some really powerful new analysis of the shroud that indicates it may very well be the burial cloth of Jesus.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It's interesting, too, that when you look at the Koran, which I read when I was doing my investigation, you know, trying to check out all the possible options and so forth, when you get to Surah 4, verse 156, 157, most people interpret it as saying Jesus was not crucified. and therefore couldn't have been resurrected. So... I thought they thought he was crucified, but he survived it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It wasn't him. No, it wasn't him. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. God replaced him with something, there's Judas that he replaced him with.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But the point is, the Quran specifically highlights things and says that are not true that you must believe if you're a Christian. So it says in Surah 4, 156 or 157 that Jesus didn't die on the cross. Well, then he wouldn't have been resurrected. And history. Yeah, well, yeah. Secondly, it says no one can bear the sins of another. It also says God does not have a son.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So these are specific teachings the Quran explicitly rejects that Christians must accept. Now, I have a good friend who's a Muslim, and he came over, we were grilling steaks, and I said, let's set aside religion. Let's just look at history.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And I said, here's what I have from first century sources about the crucifixion of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus, and I went through some of that, and I said, now, what have you got on your side? Honestly, you've got a guy 600 years later in a cave that said it isn't true. Which is the most credibility? And his response was, I choose to believe the Quran. Okay, that's his choice.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But I think the evidence of history points powerfully toward the truth of the Christian's claim in a way that it doesn't support those claims of the Quran.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And we see this in the, in my book I talk about these supernatural dreams that people are having and visions of Jesus in closed countries, Islamic countries, where God says, I love these people so much that you can't close out my gospel from them. I'm going to intervene through supernatural dreams that are happening to these people.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
in a remarkable way, and they're corroborated by outside events and so forth, so we know they're not just being generated by a subconscious mind, because he loves them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Oh, the Shroud of Turin. Well, the Shroud of Turin is a very fascinating topic. I've been doing research into this. Yes, John Campbell, Dr. John Campbell. There's some really powerful new analysis of the Shroud that indicates it may very well be the burial cloth of Jesus.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
In fact, many years ago, they did a study of it, and they took a piece of it, and they did radiocarbon dating, and they said, oh, it dates back to the Middle Ages, so it's a forgery. Well, they had taken... by mistake, threads that were part of a patch that was added in the Middle Ages.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So they accidentally dated that. But now when they date it, there is, and I'm not an expert on it, but Dr. Jeremiah Johnston and several others are writing books and doing lectures on it now. There's a lot of new stuff coming out on the Shroud that really does suggest. By the way, one of the most powerful moments
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I've ever had was, there was a guy, and I met him, I used to do a TV show, and I had him as a guest. He was the official photographer of the Shroud of Turan.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yeah, a Jewish guy, Barry Schwartz, I think his name. And he made several life-size, actual-size copies of the photo of the Shroud. And I met a guy who has one. He has a traveling exhibit that he has. It was out east. And so he said, do you want to see it? And I said, yes. I'm telling you, when you come face to face with this image and you contemplate the possibility that is an image of my Jesus,
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Wow. That's fascinating. Didn't they find some pollen in the shroud that they could trace back to first century Jerusalem? I don't know about that. I think that's true. Anyway, it'd be great to have an expert on who could really.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Like that? Yeah, like that. No, there's a lot of fraudulent stuff. A lot of fraudulent. There's a piece of the cross. You can buy it for $1,500.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
You know? Yeah. There's another species of evidence, not physical evidence, but interesting, about the darkness that fell over the earth at the time of the crucifixion. The Bible says the earth went dark for a period of time. And I'm thinking when I'm reading this for the first time— No, specifically from the sixth to the ninth hour. Right. So— Yeah, exactly.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It says those three hours it was dark. Right, right. And I'm reading this thinking, wouldn't somebody have noticed this? Wouldn't somebody else have written something about this if the earth actually went dark during that time period? Well, there was a guy named Thallus who was a historian who wrote a history of the eastern Mediterranean world about 50 AD, which is shortly after this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Couldn't you just do stuff directly rather than dispatch agents?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
The Roman history. Roman, that's right. And his works have been lost, but in the year 221, a guy named Julius Africanus had a copy of what he wrote, and he was kind of responding to it and said, oh yeah, Thales says that the darkness was as a result of an eclipse. Of the sun. Which we knew it couldn't have been because of the timing of the Passover.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Right. So there you have it. report by a Roman scholar and historian that is corroborating a claim in the scriptures that many people would read and say, that can't be true.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Actually, footnote in my book, Case for Christ. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, it's fascinating. It really is. There's so much. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
That's the name of the podcast? Yes.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yeah. John Payton was a Scottish missionary in the New Hebrides Islands in the South Pacific. And he and his wife lived in this little cottage. And the local tribespeople didn't like the fact they were talking about Jesus all the time. So they came to burn down their house and kill him. So this mob is forming. So what do they do? They're praying.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I actually have a chapter in my book on ghosts and psychics. And I talk about the biblical admonition to avoid mediums, to avoid psychics. I actually talk about ways in which psychics use different techniques of cold readings, warm readings, and hot readings. There are different ways in which they can make it appear that they know things that they don't really know.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
They're discerning things supernaturally, which they're really just trying to figure out by a naturalistic means. Do I believe some are demonic? Yeah, I believe some are in contact with demons.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Exactly, yeah, who their contact is. There was a case with President Carter. And there was an airplane that went down, I think in Africa somewhere, a twin-engine plane. And the government, CIA, was trying to find it. And they couldn't find it. They moved satellites. They're looking for it. They couldn't find this plane.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So there are those cases. What do you do with that? And I think there's probably, I mean, my hypothesis would be that there was a demon who was very intent on convincing others that she is psychic and a reliable source of information for future tapping into. And so he might have had knowledge of where the plane was and provided it that way. I'm not saying the psychic herself was culpable.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
They're praying, God, here we are, we're alone, we're in this home, they're coming to kill us, they're coming to burn down our house, pray us, protect us, help us. And by dawn, the crowd dissipated. Later, he leads the head of that mob to Jesus Christ, and they become friends. This is a year later.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I'm just saying I Given the Bible's admonition against psychics, against divination, they call it, against mediums, I don't think God would honor that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
In Deuteronomy, there's... Actually, in my book, I quote it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And he says to them, by the way, do you remember that night that you led that mob to come to our house and burn it down? Why didn't you kill us? They said, well, who were all those men that you had? I said, what do you mean? I didn't have any mission. It's just my wife and I. What are you talking about? Your house was surrounded by these muscular men in white garments with drawn swords.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
There's no way we could have come into your house. Wow. Lots of stories like that. Lots of stories like that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yeah, that's an interesting question.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Lee, what were you going to say? Oh, I was just going to reference, I interviewed a scholar on this question of psychics and mediums and so forth for my book, and this is what he said. The Bible condemns all forms of occultism. Leviticus 19.26 commands, do not practice divination or seek omens. Similarly, Leviticus 19.31 warns, do not turn to mediums. Sorry, I don't have my reading glasses.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Do not turn to mediums or seek out spiritists, for you will be defiled by them. The Old Testament asserts that those who associate with familiar spirits are cursed by God. Furthermore, Exodus 22.18 and Leviticus 20.27 mandate that sorcerers and mediums living at that time be put to death. Deuteronomy 18 verses 10 through 12 is explicit.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Let no one be found among you who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord. Revelation 9.21 promises that all who practice sorcery will face God's judgment. Their destiny is not heaven, but rather the lake that burns with fire and sulfur. Take a look at Revelation 21 verse 8 and 22 verse 15. So I think you're right.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I think it's dangerous because of how Satan may intervene in ways that people are unconscious of and lead people to conclusions that are not biblical.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I will follow you. An unrepentant sinner is in trouble.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Someone who persists despite admonition and despite biblical teaching and persists to the end and resists to the end. I wouldn't want to be in their shoes. I mean... You know, I lived an incredibly immoral life before I became a Christian. God has forgiven me of all of that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And all of us who have come to faith have been forgiven of things that, you know, I look at the grace of God and say, I can't even fathom how deep and how wide and how strong it is. So anyone who comes to him in repentance and faith, I believe, has eternal life through Jesus Christ and him alone.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
That's why Scripture, I think, is so important in terms of the guide. You know, that's our plumb line. And we go to that and say, what can I learn from that? That God told me through Scripture to protect me and to nurture my spirit and not to defile me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
covered a lot of ground today. We did. I'm excited about Easter, doggone it. You know, it is awesome. When you think about Jesus and the shroud kind of brings that to life, whether or not we determine ultimately it is authentic or not, it just kind of reminds us this is a person who died for me to pay the penalty I should have died for and said, no, no, no, I love you so much.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yes, the penalty has to be paid for because that's justice and God is just, but I'm going to offer you forgiveness. I'll take it upon myself. It's just awesome. And then to the resurrection, to say, as I have conquered death, so will you. So will you, who follow him. We'll all conquer death.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It reminds me of a story of a woman who is a hospice nurse. She's retired now, and I have her story in my book where she came into the room of a guy who was dying, and he was weeping, uncontrollably weeping. He was a brilliant guy. His name was Frederick, and he was in his 70s, but very highly educated person, weeping uncontrollably. And she said, what's wrong? What's wrong?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And he said, Jesus was here. I saw him. He came. He stood right here. And I felt the love and the grace, and it was so overwhelming. And she said, if I saw him, would I cry? I said, oh, yes, you'd cry. She said, why would I cry? Because you would feel the depth of his love and forgiveness, and it would just overwhelm you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And here's a guy, a brilliant guy who knew a lot about life, but he didn't know the depth of God's love until he had that pre-death vision right before he died where God met him in that moment through Jesus Christ. And it just reminds me of that moment when we recognize Easter what it is and you go, oh my goodness.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I had – I usually didn't talk – I never talked about this for years because I was embarrassed by it. And never talked to a group of people about it until my ordination, where I had all these theologians questioning me about my doctrine. I thought, do I tell them that I had an angelic encounter with my guardian angel? You did? Yeah, I did.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And I was embarrassed by it because I thought, they'll think I'm nuts. I'm not going to talk about this. But with all these theologians there, I thought, I better tell them. They're going to ordain me. They better know about this. So I tell them. And when I was 12 years old or so, my guardian angel appeared to me. And you asked what he looked like. I knew that's who it was.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Even though I can't describe him in detail, I knew that he was an angel. It was intuitive. It was intuitive. And here's what was important about the incident. I'm in my kitchen at home. I'm a little kid, 12 years old. And he starts extolling heaven, how beautiful and wonderful heaven is. And so I casually said, well, I'm going to go there someday. And he looked at me and said, how do you know?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
What do you mean? How do I know? I'm a good kid. I obey my parents pretty much. I get good grades in school. I'm nice to my friends. You're saying that? I'm saying this to them. I'm trying to justify that I'm good enough to get to heaven. Is it verbal communication?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
No, verbal communication. Interesting. And he looks at me and he says, that doesn't matter. And a chill went down my spine. How could my efforts to be a good kid and to do good, how does that not matter? I was just at a loss. And he said, someday you'll understand. Well, about 16 years. And that was it? That was it. He disappeared. And that was the only dream I remember from my childhood.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It was more vivid than any dream ever. Was it a dream? It was a dream. Oh, a vivid dream. But it was a vivid dream unlike any I'd ever had. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I suppressed it. I thought, oh, I must have had a bad pizza. That's crazy. And ultimately became an atheist. But then my wife brought me to church on January the 20th of 1980. And I heard the gospel for the first time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It's not based on your good works, how hard you try to be good that the doors of heaven are flung open. No, it is a free gift of God's grace that we receive in repentance and faith. Good deeds come later because we're seeking to please God and to live and to love others as he loves us. And so here I am, and two things happen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Number one, I realized that angel told me something when I was 12 years old that I didn't know. So it wasn't just something coming from my imagination. And secondly, he made a prophecy that someday I'll understand that came true 16 years later.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
All kinds. Those intuitions that you believe are really from God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Wow. And there are these moments. I mean, I think the question, how do you hear the voice of God, for me, and you, I'm sure, agree, generally through reading Scripture. Yes. You hear the voice of God through the scripture that speaks to you and tells you what God wants you to know and so forth.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And everything has to be measured against that to make sure because God's not going to lead you to do something that's inconsistent. But I've had those moments too. I had one in 1994 back when we used travel agents, remember, to book airline flights. So I had to fly to a city in Ohio.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And so I'm on the phone and the travel agent said, okay, you got to fly to Pittsburgh and then you get in a smaller commuter plane and it takes you, it lands right across the street from where you're going in Canton, Ohio. And I said, okay, sounds great. And you hear the type, type, type, she's typing my reservation. And I had one of those impressions of, Is there another way to go?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
No, no, no, you have to fly, I think it was to Cleveland and rent a car and drive for several hours. No, no, this is perfect, gets you right where you're going. I just don't feel comfortable with it. All right, well, I can, so type, type, type. She unbooks me on that first flight, books me on the United flight heading somewhere else to Cleveland or wherever it was.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Both flights took off at the same time, the one to Pittsburgh that I would have been on and the one to Cleveland that I was on. And I rent a car, I get dinner, I get back in the car, I'm going to drive down to Canton or whatever it was, and I turn on the radio and that other plane had crashed. Wow. That was the 1994 crash in Pittsburgh of the US Air flight that killed everybody on board.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I think about that and I go, was that God impressing on me that, you know what, I don't want you on that flight? Or was that just me saying, you know, it's US Air, I don't like them as much or whatever. I think it was God. I think it was God protecting me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
What I typically do in my prayers in the morning is at the end, I say, Lord, I'm just going to stay still for a few minutes. And if there's something you want me to know, if you want to communicate something more directly to me, I'm open, I'm in a posture of receptivity, and I just spend a minute or two in that posture and most of the time, nothing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But then every once in a while, there's this impression about something. And I remember when I was in, I was a journalist at the Chicago Tribune, very successful in what I was doing, and I felt God was starting to call me out of that into, after I became a Christian, into the staff of a church at a 60% pay cut. And- I remember that too.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
You're gonna have to tell me three times for this. But those are the moments that you're receptive to that kind of thing. I think to take the initiative to say, almost like putting up an antenna and saying, God, I'm here, I'm waiting, I'm listening. And if you don't have anything for me, that's fine. But if you do, then please,
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
That's a good example, too, of how we evaluate whether or not it's God really speaking. It's to go to a brother, to go to a sister, a fellow believer, and say, hey, what do you think? And to have you say to him, no, no. And by the way, he didn't listen. Yeah, well. Usually don't. But the demonic world is real. And I have a chapter on my book. I tell the story.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
This is really amazing about the reality of the demonic world. There's a guy named Richard Gallagher. He's a psychiatrist. So he's a medical doctor as well as trained in psychiatry. Ivy League trained. He was a professor at several major, very influential elite institutions in the Northeast.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I have a quote from the president, former of the American Psychiatric Association, saying this guy is a total man of integrity, total man of credibility. I mean, just this is a great, great human being. And he and his wife had two cats. And they loved each other. They slept together. They were always together. But one night— They went nuts on each other.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
They're attacking each other, hissing, they're growling, they're snarling, they're trying to kill each other. They literally had to rip them apart. So what the heck is going on? And they couldn't figure it out. Well, the next morning, the doorbell rings at nine in the morning, and it was a previous appointment.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
A Catholic priest was bringing a woman who claimed to be a high priestess of a satanic cult to be evaluated by him to see if she was mentally ill or perhaps demon-possessed or whatever. So 9 o'clock, the doorbell rings. He opens the door, and here's this woman who claims to be a priestess of a satanic cult. And she kind of sneers at him, and she says, how'd you like those cats last night? Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Wow. I'm talking about a chill going down someone's spine. He ended up spending 20 years investigating the demonic worlds. He's written books about it. Incredibly credible individual who talks about exorcisms that he has witnessed, that there are things that take place that, as he says, are not the results of a psychiatric issue because he's a great psychiatrist.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
He knows what psychiatry can tell us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And this is different when people are speaking Latin in a language they don't know. When one petite woman picked up a 217-pound Lutheran deacon and threw him across the room. When eight witnesses observed someone levitating off a bed. Wow. This kind of thing. So, the demonic world is real. Satan can present himself as an angel of light. Mm-hmm.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And we have to be so careful when we think we're, you know, our heart is deceitful and we have our own motivations and so forth. So, you know, you have to consult scriptures, assist with scripture. I have a good friend, Mark Middleburg. You know, Mark, very godly individual. He knows everything about me. I know everything about him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And if I ever have something that I think is an impression from God, I call Mark. What do you think? Do you think this is legitimate or not?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
We have to be really careful. But does God communicate in these – gosh, there are 200 examples in Scripture of dreams being used to communicate to people. So, yeah, God does that through dreams. He speaks in different ways, as you say. So, we have to be open to it, but at the same time, I think, discerning. Cautious. Yeah, cautious and discerning. So, is –
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, I read it when I was an atheist during my investigation and found a lot of it, like you say, very hard to understand and put together in a coherent way. But what I discovered is God gifts certain people to be able to teach the Bible in a way that – truthfully and accurately conveys to us the contents.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And so I think being part of a church that systematically goes through scripture and is based on the Bible, there's a lot of churches that aren't, but a church where the Bible is taught in a systematic way is very, very helpful. I found it very helpful being part of a small group of guys. We'd get together on Saturday morning and we'd go through a book of the Bible together and talk about it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And there's some wonderful books called commentaries written by scholars and experts that illuminate each book of the Bible and tell you things that You had no way of knowing because we don't know the context of a lot of this stuff independently. It was written a long time ago.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And a good commentary really explains the context, the background, some of the nuances of the language that the layperson just doesn't understand. So I think it's really important to be part of a Bible-believing church that teaches the Bible, some sort of, if you can, a mentoring or a small group relationship with someone.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
My wife had a friend named Linda that they met with all the time, and Linda would help walk her through Scripture. And I think over time, and it takes a period of time, you begin to feel like you have a better handle on not only what the Bible is saying, but how I can find in the Bible guidance for this particular issue that I'm facing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So I'll call my friend Mark, say, Mark, I'm wrestling with something and I feel like God's leading me in this direction and I don't know what to do. And he'll say, Lee, you know what? You should read the fourth chapter of Ephesians or something and let's talk about it because I think you may or may not be on the right track.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
To have somebody like that in my life who cares about me and helps me and guides me along in understanding scripture and how to apply it to my life, is invaluable to me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And I would encourage anybody who feels that, as we all do when you first open the Bible, it's very confusing, take advantage of those resources, but especially a local church where you can really dig in and over time develop that confidence that you're understanding not just the general flow of the Bible, but the specific teachings of it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I have a friend named Skip Heitzig who wrote a book called The Bible from 30,000 Feet. And the idea is kind of get that orientation, you know, get the basics and get it kind of figured out in your mind how this all fits together. That's a great resource. I like the Net Bible. You ever use the Net Bible? No. It's a pretty new translation headed up by Daniel B. Wallace of Dallas Seminary.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But what I like about it, it has thousands of footnotes explaining why certain translation decisions were made. And you can really get into, oh, you could have translated this way or this way, and footnotes and say, this is why we chose this way, because this and this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Things you wouldn't understand about the Greek or the Hebrew, but they kind of illuminate and help you understand the decisions that were made behind the translation.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yeah, I'd be glad to pray. Yeah. Lord, thanks for this opportunity to talk not just to Sean, but all these folks who are listening in, watching in. We pray that you would move in all of our hearts to draw us closer and closer to you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Those that are skeptics or those that are seekers, we pray that even today be the day that they cross that line, receive you as a forgiver and leader through your son, Jesus. And for those of us who are your children and been your followers for a long time, we pray that you would encourage us, enlighten us, and point us ever more strongly toward the reality of who you are. In Jesus' name, amen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yeah, I mean, I would go back a little further to the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus, it says, sweated blood. And I read that when I was a skeptic and thought, that just shows this is just fantasy land. This is just a literary device to suggest that he was under stress or something.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And then I find there are like 70 cases in medical journals of this medical phenomenon called hematidrosis, hematidrosis, which is when you're under extreme stress, your capillaries in your sweat glands break down and blood seeps in and you sweat a combination of sweat and blood. And so there's actually a medical support for that description of Jesus sweating blood.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But the other thing that happens with that medical phenomenon is that it makes your skin ever more sensitive. And so Jesus was set up for an incredibly painful next step, which was being flogged by the Roman soldiers.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Now, there's only like a sentence or so in the Bible that says he was flogged, but that was an incredibly brutal experience, that he was stripped, that he was tied to a post, that he was beaten with a whip that had jagged bits of sheep bone embedded in it and balls of lead. The balls of lead would break open the back. The jagged sheep bone would cut the flesh.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
There's an eyewitness to a Roman flogging who described it this way. He said, the sufferer's veins were laid bare, and the very muscles and tendons and bowels of the victim were laid open to exposure. So this was a horrific beating. Torture. Yeah, torture. It was a horrific beating that he endured. And it put him in what's called hypovolemic shock, which is shock from a great loss of blood.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And you can see evidence of that in the fact he couldn't carry the crossbeam of the cross very far. And also he had great thirst and so forth. So here he is already in critical condition before he's even crucified. And then nails are driven through his wrists, not through the hand, because it would just tear, but driven through his wrists and through his feet. He's hoisted on the cross.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And what happens when you're in that position is that it puts incredible stresses on your chest muscles. So you can't breathe. And so you're hanging on that cross, you're having trouble breathing. You can take air in, but should not expel the air. And so you're on the cross, and the only way you can continue to breathe is by lessening the stress on your chest muscles.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
The only way you can do that is push up with your feet, which of course have a spike through them, and your bloodied back is now scraping against the coarse wood of the cross.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
and you let up and you can exhale, and then you inhale again, and then you settle down, and then you just keep going through that motion time and time again until you can't do it anymore, and your acidic qualities are building up in your blood, your heart rate is now getting irregular, and you actually end up dying of asphyxiation, ultimately can't breathe, that causes your heart to fail.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And what's interesting as well is that this would cause fluid to collect around your heart and around your lungs. And so when the spear was thrust into him to make sure he was dead, John interestingly describes water and blood coming out. And people think, oh, well, that's just a metaphor for baptism or something. No, no, no. That is what would happen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
The pericardial effusion, in other words, the membrane of fluid around the heart and the lung was punctured. And what looked like water would come out as well as blood. And he was declared dead. Now, I used to think like a skeptic, oh, wait a minute, maybe he survived the cross somehow. Maybe he fainted and they thought he was dead.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, that's been disproven a thousand times in many different ways. But the Journal of the American Medical Association several years ago published an evaluation of the death of Jesus Christ. And the conclusion was, quote, clearly the weight of the historical and medical evidence indicates that Jesus was dead even before the wound to his side was inflicted.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So, and in fact, the atheist New Testament scholar, Gerrit Ludeman, says it's indisputable that Jesus was truly dead after being crucified. We have no record anywhere of anyone ever surviving a full Roman crucifixion. And not only do we have multiple reports of his death in the documents of the New Testament, we got five-inch sources outside the Bible that confirm his execution.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So we have Josephus, a first century Jewish historian who worked for the Romans. Tacitus, another early historian. Meribah, Serapion, Lucian. Even the Jewish Talmud admits that he was executed. So this idea that somehow Jesus survived the cross and was revived by the cool, damp air of the tomb is ridiculous.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I would say... it approached how bad it was, but didn't fully capture it. I don't think it could have because people would have been so, people would have been vomiting in the audience watching if they had taken it to the, don't you think? Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And that's how many years before the death of Jesus, 600 years or so? So 780 years before Jesus, Isaiah writes.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So if Jesus isn't the Messiah, there will never be a Messiah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
This is before the Romans invented crucifixion. And Psalm says his bones were out of joint, which is what happens to your shoulders when you're crucified.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And that's actually a quote. In the old days back then, they didn't have numbers on the Psalms. So they would quote the first line to indicate I'm applying this Psalm. So here Jesus is on the cross and he says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? That's the first line of Psalm 22. The Psalm of David in 1000 BC, 1000 years before. Go ahead.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Foretelling, I mean, the bones be out of joint and so forth. This idea of the crucifixion before crucifixion was even invented.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Okay, so that's what Lee studied with Dr. Metherell, you and I. Yeah, Dr. Alexander Metherell, who was like the world's leading authority on the crucifixion of Jesus. I interviewed with my book, The Case for Christ. And of course, all of this, predicting it just amplifies the reality of what we're talking about.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
This was an event in history, but it was an event foretold hundreds and hundreds of years in advance, which gives it that much more credibility and supernatural implications.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And the hand in that day, in the Greek and Hebrew, the hand was considered, or the wrist was considered to be part of the hand. Yeah. Yeah, and that's where people say it was. Which you can imagine the nerve there. There's a nerve there. And it's like taking your nerve here and taking pliers and just squeezing it when you insert a seven-inch spike through your wrist. Horrible, horrible way to die.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
They exempted Roman citizens from crucifixion. You couldn't crucify a Roman citizen because it's too awful.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I have a friend who was a GI from Vietnam and came back and was on a street corner, ran into an evangelist there. And he was Jewish, my friend. And the guy showed him Isaiah 53 and 52 and 53 that John's talking about that foretold Jesus. And he said, who do you think this is talking about? And my friend Lewis said, well, Jesus, but obviously that's been doctored. Obviously it's been, you know.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So he called his relative and said, send me the original, you know, our scriptures. I want to compare. He read it and realized this is the original. And the odds of all of this coming true were so ridiculously astronomical that he received Jesus as his forgiver and leader, and he became a pastor. Louis Lapise is his name.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
That's how they would accelerate the death, break their legs.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Right. John the Baptist pointed to Jesus and said, behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. So he's applying this Jewish sacrificial system to the ultimate sacrifice, who is a sinless son of God, who would pay the sacrifice that we deserve for the sins that we've committed, and yet takes that on so that we can be forgiven. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
The guardian angel thing is a fascinating topic. I have a chapter in my book, Seeing the Supernatural on Angels, and I deal with the guardian angel question. Do we really have guardian angels? And it's interesting. There's some Christian scholars who say no. But you go back in history, Jerome, the great Bible translator, said yes. Thomas Aquinas said yes.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And Martin Luther certainly believed in guardian angels before. Well, I would say in angel, protective angels. But there's two passages that jump out to me. Yeah, there's two passages that jump out to me. One is Jesus was talking to some folks and he said about little children. He said, do not despise these little ones because their angels see the face of God in heaven every day.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, our sins separate us from God. God is holy. God is perfect. God is pure. We're not. We sin every day. We violate His commands. You still do? Yeah. Let me tell you about it. And that has separated us from God. And the question is, how do we become reconciled with God? Somebody has to pay the price of the sin.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And either we do, which would be an eternity separated from God, or Jesus says, let me pay the price for you on the cross, the penalty you deserve for the sins that you've committed, so that I can offer forgiveness and eternal life as a free gift of my grace. And still be just. And still be just. That's the key. And so Romans 6.23 says, for the wages of sin is death.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
In other words, what we earn, what we deserve, because of the sin in our life is death, which is separation from God for eternity. But, the verse says, the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. It's Jesus who paid the penalty to bridge that gap between us and God. And when we receive his free gift of grace, then we become reconciled with God forever. And so,
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It required a payment of that kind, of the sinless Son of God, in order to atone for the sins that we've committed.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, they're angels. That would be a guardian angel, right? And then Peter is in prison in the book of Acts, and an angel frees him. And he shows up at a house where some Christians are gathered, and he knocks on the door and says, hey, Peter. And the servant says, hey, Peter's at the door. And they say, he can't be at the door. He's in prison. It must be his angel.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And I interview a scholar for my book on that question. He says, I think that is sufficient biblical evidence to say that yeah, we do have a guardian angel. The Orthodox Christian Church believes that at the moment of baptism, you're assigned a guardian angel. So this is a very interesting phenomenon, because people don't think of that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
We're cautioned, I think, through the experience of John in Revelation, not to worship angels, And therefore, I would suggest from at least the Protestant writings that you don't pray to angels, but to pray about angels and to pray for God's intervention through his angels is certainly biblical, I believe.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, the Trinity is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. Three persons, one God. What's interesting, Jesus, at one point, shortly before he was killed, got up before a group and he said, I and the Father are one. But the Greek word for one there is not masculine, it's neuter, which means Jesus was not saying, I and the Father are the same person.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
In fact, Jesus, when he was being arrested, said, could not my father right now send, what was it, 12 legions of angels? Yeah, to protect me if I wanted to? Yeah. Yeah, and in the small catechism that Martin Luther wrote, his evening prayer says, Lord, send your angels to protect me from the evil one.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
He was saying, I and the Father are the same thing. We're one in nature. We're one in essence. And that's why people picked up stones and kill them, because they said, you're just a man and you're claiming to be God. So Jesus claimed to be the Son of God. He was saying, I'm not the same person, but we are the same God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And that's part of the mystery of the Trinity, that he was praying to the Father. And on the cross, it's interesting too, when he prays, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Here are these people, we've talked about the horror of the cross, the flogging it went through, this torture of the cross, and yet...
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
The imperfect tense of the Greek in the original language in which that passage is written suggests he didn't just say it once, but he kept repeating it over and over again, maybe even while the nails were being driven through his feet, maybe while the nails were being driven through his hands, maybe when he was hoisted on the cross.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
He kept repeating, he kept praying, Father, forgive them, Father, forgive them, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. I mean, that is an expression of the love of God that, you know, how can we not pray for people in our life who are spiritually confused after him praying for people who are so depraved they're torturing to death?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But that just is another expression of the depth and the breadth of the love of God for us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So for us to pray to God for protection by angelic beings, to believe and trust that he has perhaps even assigned a guardian angel to protect us, I think tells us something about the love of God the power of God, His concern for every aspect of our life. And I just find it very encouraging. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Am I a heretic? No, no, no. That's a process. But for me, when you delve into scriptures A to Z, Genesis to Revelation, I see four things being taught. Number one, the Father is God. Number two, the Son is God. Number three, the Holy Spirit is God. And number four, there is one God. That's the Trinity. How it fits together, I think your analogy is fascinating. We may not understand.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I don't see it as a contradiction. I see it as something beyond our, perhaps, ability to comprehend. But I don't think it's necessarily a contradiction. No. A mystery, yeah. A mystery, yeah, yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And if God is love, there must be an object of that love, which is the Trinity, which is existing from eternity past in a perfect love relationship. Otherwise, if it's just God, one God, one person, not triune, who is he loving before he created humankind?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
What is the— Well, we said earlier Jesus claimed to be the Son of God. He said, I and the Father are one. People recognized that was his claim. They picked up stones to kill him. But so what? I could claim to be God. John could—well, maybe not John. Anybody could claim to be God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But if Jesus claimed to be God, died, and then came back to life on the third day, that's pretty good evidence he's telling the truth. So for me as a skeptic, the first confirmation of his claim of divinity was whether or not he fulfilled this prophecy of the Messiah returning from the dead. And I think the evidence is clear. I think it's compelling.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I look at it, I summarize it with four words that begin with the letter E. That way it's easy to remember. First E is execution. We talked earlier about all the evidence that Jesus truly died when he was crucified. Even the atheist scholar Gerd Ludemann says it's indisputable that he was dead. Even the Journal of the American Medical Association says that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
No, no. So first E is for execution. Second E stands for the word early. We have early accounts that he rose from the dead. In other words, reports that go back virtually to the cross itself. Why is that important? Because I used to think, like a lot of skeptics, that the resurrection was a legend. Gotta give you the fact he was dead. Okay, I'll give you that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Raising from the dead, that's a legend. It must have taken a few generations to develop in the ancient world. Stories were invented, mythologies were created. That's where I thought it came from. But we have preserved for us a creed of the earliest Christians. The first Christians right there in the first century gathered around this creedal statement based on facts that they knew to be true.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It's kind of a rallying point. And this creed says Jesus died. Why? For our sins. He was buried. On the third day, he rose from the dead.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And then it mentions the specific names of eyewitnesses and groups of eyewitnesses to whom he appeared, including 500 people at once, including a skeptic like James, a half-brother of Jesus, who didn't follow Jesus during Jesus' lifetime and yet ended up dying as a leader of the church in Jerusalem. Why? Because Jesus appeared to him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So we've got this creedal statement that, including named eyewitnesses and groups of eyewitnesses, that has been dated back by scholars, including James D.G. Dunn, who is one of the most eminent historians of, he recently passed, but of the last hundred years in England. It has been dated back to within months of the death of Jesus.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So if I can, from memory, quote what Dr. Dunn said, he said, this tradition, this creed, we can be entirely confident was formulated as a creed within months of Jesus' death. I mean, that is a newsflash from ancient history, far too quick, in my opinion, to be a legend that developed over the 100, 150, 200 years later.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
That's right, if anybody wants to check it out.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
No, no, no, in the 50s, yeah. 50s. Yeah, well, but we can go back.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Not only that, you're right, but within 20 years or so, that would tell us it existed, but... We know Saul of Tarsus became the Apostle Paul one to three years after the crucifixion. So he's on the road to Damascus. He has this encounter with the risen Christ. He becomes the Apostle Paul. Immediately he goes into Damascus and he meets with some apostles.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Many people believe this is when he was given that creed that he later wrote to the church in Corinth. Others say it was three years later, he went to Jerusalem and he met for 15 days with two eyewitnesses to the resurrected Jesus who were named in the creed, Peter and James.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And they had a meeting in Jerusalem for 15 days and some believe that's when he was given the creed by two people named in the creed as eyewitnesses. Either way, that means within one to six years after the death of Jesus, this creed is already in existence, therefore the beliefs that make up that creed go back even earlier, virtually to the cross itself.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And then you have a scholar like James D.G. Jones say, no, it's within months. So this is— And even Bart Ehrman, doesn't he— I'm not sure where he's at on that. But, you know, I read stuff like— Can we go through the timeline real quick?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, why was it three days? You know, he predicted like Jonah was in the fish for three days that he would be coming back in three days. So that was kind of a—I don't think it's a requirement necessarily, but it was three days on the third day he returned. The Jewish word for day was reckoned as an onah, which is O-N-A-H. And it meant a night and a day is an ona.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But any portion of an ona was considered as the whole. And so he died on Friday. He was in the tomb on Saturday. And he rose sometime Sunday morning. That's parts of three days that he was in, one day fully and parts of two others. But according to the Jewish reckoning of time, that's the third day. So he returns on the third day. You don't think there's any significance to that?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
What would you say, John? I think the fact that he did liken it to Jonah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It's a fulfillment of that. So I think that's the significance. Yeah, that would be the significance. So you've got the execution, and by the way, that's not the only early report we've got. We have others in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, the book of Acts, all of which were circulating during the lifetimes of Jesus' contemporaries.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And they would have pointed out the errors if they were making this stuff up. So we've got an execution, he's dead. We got early reports that he rose from the dead, too quick to be a legend. Third, we have an empty tomb.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And we could talk all day about all the evidence the tomb was empty, but the best evidence to me was we know from sources inside and outside the New Testament that when the disciples began proclaiming that Jesus had risen, what the enemies of Jesus said was, oh, well, the disciples stole the body. Now they're admitting the tomb is empty. They're admitting it's empty. The ones who crucified it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yeah. They're just trying to explain how it got empty. It's like if you're a teacher and a student comes up to you and says, the dog ate my homework. As soon as admitting it, look, I don't have my homework, but I can explain what happened to it. The dog ate. It's the same thing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So everybody in the first century, whether they're supporters of Jesus explicitly saying the tomb is empty or the enemies of Jesus implicitly admitting it was empty, everybody's conceding the tomb is empty. The real question is, how did it get empty? And you go through the usual list of suspects. The Romans weren't about to steal the body. They wanted Jesus dead.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
The Jewish leaders of the day weren't about to steal the body. They wanted Jesus to stay dead. The disciples weren't about to steal the body. They didn't have the motive. They didn't have the means. And they didn't have the opportunity.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
In fact, I found seven ancient sources, six of them outside the Bible, that report that the disciples lived lives of deprivation and suffering as a result of their proclamation that Jesus had risen. Why were they willing to do that?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And their willingness to die is well established. How a couple of them died gets a little bit misty in history, but their willingness to die, seven sources tell me that they willingly lived lives of deprivation and suffering. Think about this. Of all human beings who've ever lived on the planet, They were in a unique position to know, is this a lie or is it true? Because they were there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
They touched the resurrected Jesus. They talked with him. They ate with him. Of all people who ever lived, they knew the truth. They didn't just believe it. They just have faith in it. They knew the truth, and knowing the truth, they were willing to die for it. That's the difference between a terrorist today who crashes an airplane into the Trade Center.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
He believes if he dies that way, he's going to go to paradise. Does he know for sure? No, he couldn't know for sure. He just believes it so much that he's willing to die that way. That tells me nothing about the veracity of his claims. But the disciples were in a position to know for a fact, is this true? Is it false? Knowing it was true, they were willing to die for it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So we have an execution, he was dead. We have early reports, too quick to be a legend. We've got the empty tomb. And then fourth E is eyewitnesses. Over a period of time, Jesus appears alive in a dozen different instances to more than 515 people, a lot more than that, but to doubters and to skeptics, to men, to women, to groups, to individuals, indoors, outdoors, daytime, nighttime.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
What I found fascinating in studying this as a skeptic is that when you study ancient history, and you're looking at some fact about the life of Alexander the Great, for instance, and you dig down, how do I know this fact is true? Most of the time, it's based on one source, maybe two sources of information.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But for the conviction of the disciples that they encountered the resurrected Jesus, we have no fewer than nine ancient sources inside and outside the New Testament confirming and corroborating the conviction of the disciples that they encountered the risen Jesus. I can tick them off real quick so you know what they are.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
The first is that creed I mentioned earlier, a creed whose historical credentials are so strong that one of the few Jewish New Testament scholars, Pinchas Lapid said, it may be taken as a statement of eyewitnesses. Second, we have Paul's testimony, because Paul said, I encountered the risen Christ, and then he got to know the disciples.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It's huge, absolutely huge. No incentive to do that. But what's also interesting is after he became the Apostle Paul, he became friends with many of the disciples, the other eyewitnesses. So he knew Peter, James, and John. And he says in 1 Corinthians, in his letter he wrote, he said, whether it is I or they, this is what we preach.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So he's saying, look, I encountered the risen Christ, so have they. So he's confirming that the disciples were eyewitnesses. He's another point of confirmation. The third area of evidence, corroboration, is the Book of Acts. Even skeptical scholars will accept that the Book of Acts is the account of the spread of the early church. And what is the thing that drove it?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
It was the proclamation of the resurrection. So here we have Peter in Acts chapter two, who gets up before a crowd and he says, men of Israel, listen to these words. This Jesus, a man attested to you by miracles and wonders and signs, which he did in your midst, you know that he did. He's appealing to their common knowledge.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And then he says, this Jesus God raised from the dead, to which we're all witnesses. And how did they react? History tells us that 3,000 people said, Peter, we know you're telling this truth. What do we do? They repented, and the church was born. So that's the first three sources.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Then we have the next four sources, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which are historical biographies based on eyewitness accounts. There's, what, nine appearances of the risen Jesus in those four gospels. So that's seven ancient sources. But then... Plus you've got Luke who interviewed Mary. Oh, yeah, there's other sources, right.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But we have sources from people who sat under the teachings of the eyewitnesses. So, for instance, if you still were teaching at your church in Austin, if, Sean, if you were to come to his church for three years— you'd have a pretty good idea what he believes, right? Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, we have writings by people who sat under the teachings of the apostles themselves and can report what they said about the resurrection. So we have a letter that was written by Clement. Clement was, we believe, ordained by Peter himself. And Clement writes a letter in the first century to the church in Corinth, and he says that the disciples had complete confidence. Why?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Why did they have so much confidence? Because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, because there were eyewitnesses to the risen Lord. And then Polycarp, who was appointed by John himself to be bishop at Smyrna, He writes a letter to the Philippian church, and he mentions the resurrection five times in that letter.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And he said, talking about Paul and the other apostles, he said, for they did not love the present age, but him who died for them and was raised by God on the third day. So he's confirming the teachings of these eyewitnesses that they encountered the risen Christ. That's nine times.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
very early eyewitness-based account or accounts of the corroboration of the eyewitnesses, the disciples who encountered personally the risen Jesus. That is an avalanche of historical data.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
He's the guy who made Harvard Law School what it is today, the second best law school, because I went to Yale.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I remember when I was- When he looked at the evidence. That's right.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yeah, when I was an atheist, I went and I'm doing this investigation into the resurrection. I remember going to the library. And of course, they didn't have Simon Greenlee's book, which was written in the 1800s. And so I put an interlibrary loan, and it took about six months.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And six months later, they give me this copy from the 1800s of this book by Simon Greenleaf, this great legal scholar who reports on the resurrection and so forth. And it was held together by rubber bands. But back then, we didn't have the internet.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But, you know, that's another great example is Sir Lionel LeCoultre, who is the greatest defense attorney in the world, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
245 convictions in a row that he—well, he won acquittals 245 times in a row, either before the jury or on appeal. Knighted twice by Queen Elizabeth, became a member of the Supreme Court of his country, and he was a doubter about the resurrection. Same thing. He was challenged to investigate it. He did, and I'll recite to you one sentence he wrote that summarizes his conclusion.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
He said, I say unequivocally that the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is so overwhelming that it compels acceptance by proof, which leaves absolutely no room for doubt. This from the greatest defense attorney who ever lived. And here's the funny thing. I told that story at Saddleback Church in Southern California where Leslie and I had moved in the year 2000 to be a pastor there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And a woman came up to me afterwards and she said, hey, I'm your new neighbor. You're moving into my neighborhood. We haven't met yet. I said, oh, great to meet you. Said, yeah. Said, I'm Sir Lionel LeCoultre's sister. No way. It was his sister. And she not only confirmed the story, she showed me his private documents that he had done his research on. Oh, how great.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I remember sharing with Hugh Hefner in the Playboy Mansion. Really? Yeah. Wait a second. Yeah, well, I was— We're going to hear this one. I had a TV show at the time, and we were interviewing him about his faith. So he said, you want a tour? I said, no, I don't want a tour. I just want to interview you about your faith. So I interviewed him, but he was a very bright guy, very smart guy.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And I started to show him. He got fascinated by my book, Case for Christ. I showed him the table of contents. He said, look at this. He said, are you telling me there's evidence that Jesus, because he said, if the resurrection is true, it changes everything. Are you telling me there's evidence for it? I said, yes, yes. Had he ever checked it out? No. Did he read my book? I don't know.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So many people know it's the linchpin of the faith, but they don't investigate it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Wow. I think there's sufficient biblical evidence for it. And this is near-death experience stuff that just confirms that. It does. And I find that encouraging, don't you? Yeah. Because like you, it's like, yeah, I'm more interested in some of the stuff I can see and touch and evidence and so forth. But then to know that God cares about me so much that he's watching over me in that way.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Screw it up, right? For me, it was Leslie pointed out the verse John 1, 12. But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name. So that forms an equation of what it means to become a child of God. Believe, as you said, intellectually, I agree with that. I believe it. Plus receive. That's the heart. That's the heart.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
That's where you receive this free gift of forgiveness and eternal life and a prayer of repentance and faith. And you become then a child of God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
That's a great question. It is. It's a very interesting question because in first century Jewish and Roman culture, the testimony of women was not considered reliable. Wouldn't even allow it in a court of law. Right. They wouldn't allow it to be testified. And yet— the first people to encounter the risen Christ was Mary Magdalene. And Joanna. And Joanna at the tomb. It's Joanna.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And he's assigned someone to really provide protection and guidance and
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, and part of it too is that's one reason we know we can trust the story. Because if you're going to make up a story and try to convince people in the first century, you would never say women discover the tomb empty.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, when he appeared in the resurrection with Thomas.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yeah, we're talking about the women discovering the tomb empty. And that's become a point of contention among some skeptics. Because if you look at the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke say there were multiple women going to the tomb. But John only mentions Mary Magdalene. Right. And they say, oh, there's a discrepancy that it can't both be true, that's false.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But Dr. Michael Lacona, who's a historian, recently published an analysis of the Gospels based on how ancient biographers would write in that era. So Plutarch and others who were historians of that day the literary techniques they would use, because the Gospels are considered ancient biographies, and you would think they'd use the same literary techniques in writing the Gospels.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Well, one literary technique is called spotlighting. And what I mean by that is if I were to text my wife right now and say, hey, I'm sitting here with Sean Ryan, That would be true, but I didn't mention there's other people in the room. I'm spotlighting you because I want to highlight you. You're spotlighting the important people. Yeah, exactly.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
So it's not false to say I'm with Sean Ryan, but I'm just spotlighting you. And if you look at what John says with Mary Magdalene, yes, he's the only one that he mentions going to the tomb, but then she says, they have taken my Savior and And we don't know where they've taken them. Well, who's the we? It's the others who were there. But he's not highlighting them. He's highlighting her.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
But she refers to the we that, you know, we don't know where they've taken them. So that reconciled that issue. And there's virtually every... so-called contradiction in the Gospels, it disappears when you begin reading them in the same way you would read Plutarch or any other ancient historian, using the same literary techniques that they used in that day and they use today.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
That's right. But they didn't. And somebody did it in the year 175 AD. It was a Tatian. He developed what's called the Diatessaron. He went through the four Gospels and blended them. Took out all the discrepancies. Just blended them together. You know what? Nobody reads that. Nobody cares. The first century folks didn't see this as being an issue.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
They didn't see a discrepancy because they were reading it as they would read any other ancient writing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
They were the ones chosen through whom the Messiah would come into humankind and bless all nations.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I gotcha. You know, it striked me because you and I were talking about Santa Barbara earlier and how you love Santa Barbara. And I was thinking that, you know, we've talked about these prophecies that hundreds of years before Jesus that point toward the crucifixion, the resurrection, all this stuff.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And, you know, when I was a skeptic, I used to think, oh, he just maneuvered his life to, you know, like it says, the Messiah will ride a donkey into Jerusalem and he just got a donkey and rode in. So it He knew all this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
He knew all that, but there was all these things he couldn't have fulfilled, like where he was born and the time he was born and soldiers gambling for his garment, all these things he couldn't have fulfilled.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Nations coming together. Which happened, Rome. Exactly. Herod. You talk about Santa Barbara, there was a professor there at Westmont College named Peter Stoner. And Peter Stoner said one day, he said, you know what? You can quantify everything. the likelihood, what are the odds that any one of these prophecies could be fulfilled? For instance, Micah says- He's the one who did that?
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
Yeah, Westmont. Micah says that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. Well, how many people have been born in Bethlehem? So you could figure out the odds. So he got a group of mathematics students together and he said, let's run the odds. Because there are like 61 prophecies just of the Messiah. Right. So, he took 48 of them and he said, let's run the numbers. Here's this question.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
What are the odds that any human being throughout history could fulfill 48 of these prophecies? And they calculated it was one chance in a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion. That's equal to the number of atoms. It's like one atom in a trillion, trillion, billion universes.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
I mean, this is an astronomical—it's not 12 trillion. It's 12 trillions, you know, the odds of any human being fulfilling these— Yeah, I talked to one physicist. I said, when you get the numbers that big, what are the odds it can actually happen? He said, oh, we scientists have a term for that. I said, what is it? He said, ain't going to happen. It ain't going to happen. And yet it did.
Shawn Ryan Show
#192 Lee Strobel & John Burke - The Resurrection
And it only happened in Jesus. He's the only one. And as you pointed out earlier, quite accurately, that because of the timeframe, if Jesus isn't the Messiah, there will never be one. Can't be. Can't be. Because he had to come before the temple was destroyed. The temple was destroyed in the 70s.