FIRSTFRUITS by Dr. W. euGene Scott (Ph.D., Stanford University)
Category: Religion and Philosophy

              "FIRSTFRUITS"

         by Dr. W. euGene Scott (Ph.D., Stanford University)

Every year, this ministry has acted on the promises God laid down to those who are obedient in the giving of First Fruits. If we start the year right (obediently), God's promises are mighty for each participant, as well as for the ministry that we have in "Giving the Winds a Mighty Voice." On Festival several years ago, I taught the meaning of First Fruits. Read this transcription, and ask yourself if it isn't equally applicable today. Go to Exodus 23:10-11:

"Six years thou shalt sow thy land, and shalt gather the fruits thereof. But the seventh year thou shalt let it rest and lie still, that the poor people may eat; and what they leave the beasts of the field shall eat. In like manner thou shalt deal with thy vineyard, and with thy oliveyard."

Over this past year, when there's been a lot of controversy about giving to churches and giving to ministries, we have survived because from Day One we have taught the Biblical truths that giving to God is not the same as charity. God always provided charity.

Here's a perfect case in point. They were to work six years. "Sow thy land...gather the fruits thereof." but in the seventh year, "let it rest and be still." Why? "That the poor people may eat; and what they leave the beasts of the field shall eat." God's providing charity for the poor. That's just one of His methods, but it's a very important one. Another one was when they gleaned, they were always to leave a little in the field.

Don't confuse charity with God's claim on what He provides you. The thing that's wrong with so much of the church world is that about the only time they raise money is for charity. They do it, most of the time, in order that they might piggy-back their administration costs on charitable motivation.

I want you to notice these Israelites didn't take any administration costs out of this charity. That meant that, going out the gate, these landowners, these privileged of God who had been given their lot, and were going to have that lot assigned to them by Joshua, were the inheritors of what God gave to Abraham as he strode up and down the land, and God said to him, "As far as you can see, and wherever you walk, is for you and your children."

Now in Exodus, they are going back to that land, as God promised, and Joshua is going to divide the lots to the people, and they're getting their instructions. "When you get to this land that I gave you, there are strings on it." Deuteronomy is going to say, "Remember, when you get to the land, and you get wealthy, remember it's the Lord that giveth you the capacity to get wealth."

Here's one of the strings: charity. You've got to make do in six years. You don't till the land the seventh year.

But man has an amazing capacity to convince himself that he can't make it. So they didn't keep this promise. They tilled the land year after year, never keeping the Sabbath year, for 490 years. Do you know what God did to them? He carried them off into bondage for 70 years so the land would lie fallow for 70 years.

He'll eventually get you, because the laws of God are as operational as laws in the natural world. The spiritual laws operate with, if anything, more unchanging force.

They got the land. God gave it to Abraham, and they were going to inherit it. "You don't till the seventh year." And God cared enough about charity for the poor and for the beasts that he put these people in bondage for 70 years for not doing it. So, let no one ever dare say that it's not part of God's program for Christians to give charitably.

That's why we did the telethons for the City Library and the Rose Bowl Aquatic Center. We even reran the Library telethon. The pledges were for three years. I wanted to remind the people that they had that duty to God. We have taught you, when we get involved with charity, we don't want to process the money. We tell you to send the money directly to the charity.

I met on New Year's Eve with Chairman Lod Cook and Co- Chairman Tom Bradley, and the decision was made, as we offered it, to play this refresher telethon around the clock. I want to commend those of you that worked and those of you that responded. That's charity - in this case, for books that are available for all.

Don't ever confuse that with giving to God of tithes and offerings, burnt offerings, FIRSTFRUITS, and those things that you give directly to God. Don't ever mix the two. Don't think that because you pay tithes and offerings you are exempt from charity. Don't ever think that because you give big charitable gifts (one- seventh) you are exempt from God's other requirements.

The seventh year, letting your land lie fallow, no plowing, no sowing, did that eliminate tithing? You know the answer: NO!!! Verse 12:

"Six days thou shalt do thy work, and on the seventh day thou shalt rest; that thine ox and thine ass may rest." (All of us need to rest our ass once in a while). "And the son of thy handmaid, and the stranger, may be refreshed."

I want you to pay attention to what God was going to require of these people:

"Three times thou shalt keep a feast unto me in the year. though shalt keep the feast of unleavened bread," (in the spring, starting immediately the day of Passover) "and the feast of the harvest, the FIRSTFRUITS of thy labors, which thou hast sown in the field," (or Pentecost) "and the feast of ingathering" (or Tabernacles) "which is in the end of the year."

They had two New Years; they had a spiritual New Year and a civil New Year. The civil New Year started in the seventh month, when the feasts of Trumpets, Atonement and Tabernacles began. The religious New Year began with the Passover.

Three times a year, every single one of them had to drop what they were doing and go to Jerusalem (or to the place designated by God until Jerusalem became that place of permanence) to keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which was a week long, during the time of Passover; the Feast of Pentecost, or Harvest; and the Feast of Ingathering, or Tabernacles.

It didn't matter what you had planned. You went three times to those feasts, and one of the tithes (the third tithe) was laid in store to pay the bill for this.

The seventh year took care of charitable needs - the poor and the beasts of the field. Every seventh year, they were not to sow. They could use the land for six years; the seventh year they didn't do it. Three feasts they had to pay for and go to every year.

All God was saying by all of this is, "See? All the land I've given you, and I'll bless you there, but there are some strings. You do it my way. You can work it six years, you don't work it the seventh year. You can work it six days, you don't work it the seventh day. Three times a year I'll call you to leave it, and you'd better be ready to go. And you come to the place that I have designated to worship, or show my `worthship.' You're a lease-holder. You get everything you've got, with these terms that go along with it."

I could go on: "Not only do you work it for six days and not the seventh, and six years and not the seventh, and leave it three times a year to come to the place that I have designated to give proper thanks to me and to worship me, but there's going to be three tithes laid on you.

"I've given it all to you, but you're going to work one-tenth of all that I've given to you for me. If you've got ten acres, I've given it to you. You can only work the ten acres six days out of seven, and you've got to leave the ten acres and make it provide for you in such a way that you can leave three times a year to come and worship me. And in addition, of the ten acres, one-tenth of the total acreage, you must till for me, and all that comes from that tenth belongs to me, the Lord.

"Then, of the nine-tenths that remain, ten percent of the earnings off that belongs to me as the second and third tithes, and you have no claim on them. That means you end up with 90 percent use of the land, the earnings of which are yours after you deduct the tithe from those earnings and have faithfully tilled the full tenth of the whole as God's portion.

"And you work it six of the seven years, six of the seven days, and three times you come to see me every year, at your expense. The only concession I'm making is the third tithe pays the bill for the trip."

"Why can't I have it without those strings?" The ways of God!

"What happens if I don't meet the strings?" A curse on all you do.

"What happens if I meet the strings?" A blessing on all you do.

"Is that all?" No, God's not done.

"What does this have to do with me in the 20th century?" All that you have comes from God.

Lenin used to call Communists "dead men on furlough." That's why they had more commitment than most Christians. Christians know that they deserve to die, they've been bought with a price, they are not their own, redeemed by the blood, as Paul said to the Corinthians, "In that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him that died for them and rose again."

We are men with life given back - eternal life - on a temporary tenure in which all we have comes from God, and we use it according to His terms.

You say the tithe is under law? Baloney! the tithe is not limited to the law. The same argument of Galatians that what God promised to Abraham 450 years earlier, cannot be annulled by a law given 450 years later, applies here. Abraham paid tithe to his teacher, Melchizedek, none other than Shem. Jacob paid tithe in his agreement with God after the ladder came down from heaven.

..00711/http://www.drgenescott.org/tab.gif">All the law did was refine the application of the tithe to the purpose of the law, that was the schoolmaster. And it is changed to a promise at the end of the Old Testament, where God literally says, "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse ... prove me now herewith," and see if I don't "pour you out a blessing." (Malachi 3:10)

Jesus said concerning the tithes, "This ye ought to have done."

We're no longer an agrarian society. Still, the tithing principle doesn't change. Your estate is God's gift. He has a tenth on it; that's the first tithe. A tenth of all you own belongs to Him. And of the 90 percent that remains, He gets the tithe, ten percent of the earnings. So don't think you can get by with just a tenth. But is that all?

That brings me to the 19th verse: "The first of the FIRSTFRUITS of thy land thou shalt bring into the house of the Lord thy God."

What is FIRSTFRUITS? Don't complicate the simple. The Jews had two new years, a civil and a religious. It doesn't matter what the month is; the principle is, there is a designated starting point of the new year, and the firstfruits of the new year belong to the Lord. You start a new job; the firstfruits of that new job belong to the Lord. You start a new investment; the firstfruits of that investment belong to the Lord. You get a raise on the job; the first paycheck that reflects that raise, the portion of that check that is the raise, that's new - FIRSTFRUITS!

We could have picked any time; I would just as soon have picked the new year of the ancient Hebrew calendar. But we live in this country by a calendar that comes out of the Middle Ages, rooted in the old Roman and then the Medieval Empire. January 1 is the new year. Don't argue with me - I imagine every one of you celebrated it. How wonderful it would be to celebrate the New Year, and then, when the price tag on it hits you today, to say, "Well, I'm going to pick a different time to celebrate." This is the New Year.

What is the FIRSTFRUITS application of the new year? The first check you get.

You say, "Well, what if I get paid once a year?" Divide it by 52. The first week's pay is FIRSTFRUITS.

"Well, I can't live without a week's pay." Do you know how many times in my life I've had people tell me that? They get out of step, lose their consecration, then they get fired - but they're still alive!

Do you know how quick an accident or sickness or emergencies that hit you and yours can wipe out a week? Just think about last year; did any of you lose a week?

"Well, why should I give the FIRSTFRUITS to the Lord?" Well, first and foremost, because He said for you to do it. But in this case, He gives a pretty good reason:

"Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared."

Now, of course, the way most of us like to have that read is, God says, "Behold, I send an Angel before the to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which you would like to have prepared."

If you've listened to anything I've preached, God's going to control the orbit. But, if He has to, He will take us into a place where we will find how painful it is not to have the angel in front of us. But when His word has already declared it, there is no going back on His word.

"Bring the FIRSTFRUITS into the house of the Lord thy God ... Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared."

I like that! There is nothing you could buy with your first week's salary in the new year worth that.

You say, "Well, I'm lucky. I don't get paid until the 16th." God knows - and you know - how much of that check represents the first seven days of the year. He knows you know how to divide and you know how to count.

And don't you go holding out on what was withheld and give just the check and then keep the tax returned at the end of the year. Some of you are getting your rebates back from the tax people; 1/52nd of that is return on the first check.

"Huh? 1/52nd?" Get yourself a calculator. You don't even have to know how to count; just be able to punch buttons. Because the state of the law is such that they withheld on your first week's income.

You may have given your FIRSTFRUITS check, and think you can keep the tax rebate when it comes back. But 1/52nd of that is return on the first week.

I'll make it real simple for you. Do you want an angel in front of you "to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared."?

You may say, "I'm not sure." Well, you're crazy! I mean, even if you don't believe in one, you ought to want one!

You might say, "Well, I haven't seen much of Him this last year." If you get too smart with God, He might let you live this next year without Him so you can see the difference. You may have thought it was bad ... let me tell you, I don't have to defend this; this is God's word.

I've been saying to you for all these years: if you're going to be a Christian, be one!

"Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way; and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. Beware of him," (that means he's a mean one!) "obey his voice, provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgressions; for my name is in him." (Exodus 23:20-21) That means he can be a mean angel.

"But if thou shalt indeed obey his voice, and do all that I speak, then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries." (Verse 22)

You say, "Well, this is for those Israelites going into the Promised Land." II Corinthians 1:20, in the context of these very people, says, "All the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen..." These were but Types of the way God deals.

"For mine Angel shall go before thee," lists the enemies, and says, "I will cut them off." (Verse 23)

Boy, I'm telling you, I've got an upgraded list for God the first week of January. I had a list last January, and God has been rather successful, because I can't even remember that list. I've got a whole brand new list, so it must have worked last year.

I would like the adversaries that I could list right now to be as far from my memory a year from now as the ones that were bothering me last January are from my mind right now!

"And ye shall serve the Lord your God, and He shall bless thy bread, and thy water." (Verse 25)

You might find it had to believe this next one, but why don't you try it?

"And I will take sickness away from the midst of thee. There shall nothing cast their young, nor be barren in thy land; the number of thy days I will fulfil." (Verse 27) "I will send my fear before thee, and will destroy all the people to whom thou shall come, and I will make all thine enemies turn their backs unto thee." (Literally, "their necks unto thee;" Verse 27) "And I will send hornets before thee..." (Verse 28)

Boy, do I like that idea! Hornets! All of this for paying the FIRSTFRUITS. There's not a bargain that you can make with God (second only to the tithe, where He promises to bless everything), where God has committed so much for so little.

I want you to take these verses seriously. How many of you believe God's Word and are willing to get on the way of faith with God? Let's go into the new year right! God's made grand promises, and He's capable of keeping them. Our problem is we won't take the step of faith to claim those promises from God. DO IT NOW!

Don't anybody confuse FIRSTFRUITS with tithes. Don't anybody confuse FIRSTFRUITS with charity. "The tithe is the Lord's." FIRSTFRUITS is that first result of your labors on which God has smiled His blessing - in this case, in the new year. God wants your commitments on the first week's check. It doesn't matter when you get it in January. God wants your commitments of FIRSTFRUITS now. I want it testified to. I want the church that I pastor to be full of people with this angel in front of them.

You say, "I won my first Lotto of the year and got $77 today." As long as you understand that that's the FIRSTFRUITS in the Lotto and it doesn't compensate for the first paycheck of the first week. You've got to give the FIRSTFRUITS from the Lotto and the first week's paycheck.

You say, "Well, I'm not working." Well then, you give the first week's unemployment check.

Do it God's way! Do you want the angel in front of you? Make up your mind, "This is the year I'm going to give it a go, and I'm going to go God's way."

We're teaching on doing it God's way. God gave people the land in Israel, but they were like lease-holders. He gave it to Abraham, and as He brought them back to the land, He says, "All the land I'll give you," and Joshua was going to divide the lots, but He put His conditions on it. "You work it six years, leave it vacant the seventh year for the poor and the beasts of the fields" - God's provision for charity.

Don't ever confuse charity with giving to God for religious reasons. Even though God considers a cup of cold water given in His name as unto Him, there is a difference in the focus between that which ascends to the Lord as a direct gift to Him as tithes and offerings (burnt offerings, peace offerings, meat offerings, FIRSTFRUITS offerings), and that which provides horizontally for charitable acts.

../www.drgenescott.org/tab.gif">He says, "Six days you work; you don't work the seventh." (Verse 12) And three times a year He made them come to the spiritual headquarters, and there was no exception, to give recognition to Him and worship Him. Then He said in verse 19, "The FIRSTFRUITS are the Lord's." And the condition attached to it is an angel before you - a mean one or a good one. God's promise of an angel that goes before you to prepare the way, to tackle your adversaries for you - the best deal God makes is the promise that He gives because of the FIRSTFRUITS.

Now, I'm collecting FIRSTFRUITS. I'm asking those that truly believe God's Word and want that angel in front of you that's promised in Exodus 23 to make that commitment NOW.

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GIVING - A Synonym for Righteousness by Dr. W. euGene Scott (Ph.D., Stanford University)
Category: Religion and Philosophy

GIVING - A Synonym for Righteousness

by Dr. W. euGene Scott (Ph.D., Stanford University)

I Corinthians 15: The basic message of the church: "Christ is risen." You know, when you stop being just poetic, and actually begin to confront the necessity of believing that as the basis for Christianity (and the miracle that is involved), are you really going to say that the Lord providing for you, and honoring such a promise as Malachi 3 cannot happen?

Christ was raised from the dead "according to the promise of the Father." In Malachi 3, the Promise of the Father is: "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, and see if I don't pour you out a blessing you can't contain." Are you really going to say that God, knowing your address and your capabilities, finds it harder to keep that word of promise with you, and work the miracle of provision in your life, than raising Christ from the dead?

You see, most Christians don't really believe the Resurrection. Most Christians are Christians because they fell into it, or because they've been falsely motivated. And because they really don't believe, most Christians don't give.

This is the basis of Christianity: Christ is risen, and He is coming again, and we shall rise - either caught up to meet him in the air, or raised in a twinkling. That's Christianity. What goes in the middle? You're already there with me. The 16th chapter opens: "Now...the collection for the saints."

"Now," in case somebody thinks we're just going to be poetic: "Now, give money and things." That is Christianity, past present, future.

I once pointed out that any organization has purpose, function, structure, controlling forces - and that's the "what" of an organization. It has personnel, clientele, patrons and products, as people. Those are the "who:" the product being people in whom the purpose has been fulfilled; the patrons who support because they know the purpose and want to support it; the clientele who willingly offer themselves to have the purpose worked on them; and personnel who join the team because they want to participate in effecting that purpose.

The purposes of any organization are both objective and subjective. Objective purposes, by definition, ultimately are official written declarations of purpose, which are supposed to reflect the founder's or creator's purposes, and which are reduced in the founding document to official written statements of purposes, and are perpetuated by a legal procedure here on earth, where the activities of the organization objectify these official written purposes, which in an ideal sense carry out the purpose of the one who put it together.

Obviously, the church is God's. We've already taught that the word "church" comes from kuriakon - the Lord's - a people who belong to the Lord. That's the root of the word "church" in English, German, Latvian and Scandinavian. The Latin languages get their word from ecclesia - "out-called ones" - again, a people that are called out by the Caller for His purposes. The church is, therefore, a people who belong to the Lord, and they exist for His purpose.

Subjective purposes are what anybody thinks the purpose may be. That's what's wrong with the church today. We've got a world out there that has its subjective purposes for the church, which primarily is to reduce us down to a powerless lot, happy for the opportunity to have a little dribble of tax-deductible dollars that we use to take care of the poor - that the rest of the world made poor by their self-seeking behavior, but don't want to have to take care of them; they want the church to do it. Subjective purposes.

And chief among the subjective errors of the world, who looks on and knows nothing of God's purposes as revealed in His Word - chief among their errors is that money and the giving thereof is not a part of the central purpose of the church. That's their view.

That's why we had court cases that we fought for years, in which the church was subjected to the attack of governmental agencies, who justified their actions by saying they were only interested in financial matters, not the ecclesiastical matters; that ecclesiastical matters and financial matters were separate; and that the Constitution protected a church in the free exercise of its ecclesiastical matters, but finance is not ecclesiastical.

Therefore, they could do what they wanted in that category, including in the case of this church, two government agencies demanding the names and addresses of every donor, what each donor gave over a period of seven years, and what each individual donation was used for in each and every case of each and every donation. When caught with their tail in a crack by a judge where we had pinned them down, they said, "Oh, we don't want that."

But then, when that particular pressure would go away, clear to the Supreme Court they argued, seeking, in technical words, "the best probative evidence" - that is, that which enables you to probe. And the government probers claimed the best probative evidence that you, as a contributor to a church, will not become the object of fraud, is to have your name, your address, what you gave and when you gave it, so they can come to you and probe you, "Did you know what you were giving for? Are you sure it was spent for what you gave it for? Are you looking out for your money properly?"

Now, of course you know what we told them to do. If I were not on television and could select the most mature elements of this congregation, I could tell you what we told them to do - and we're still telling them that!

There is nothing more ecclesiastical than the giving of money - money is the testament of worth. What's something worth? How much are your shoes worth? Oh, five years of walking? That isn't the answer you get. Ten pounds of that deodorizing stuff? That's not the answer either!

There's only one criteria that makes sense. What's your shoe worth? Five dollars, twenty dollars, a hundred dollars? Money is the vehicle by which we exchange testaments of worth. It's a medium of exchange, taken as a testimony of value.

Now, I will mix some old ingredients today, as I will in all of these messages, just like you cook a meal with some salt, and with some water, and with some common ingredients. But not every meal comes out the same, just because it has some well-known ingredients - so don't go tuning me out!

"Worship" is a contraction of two words: worth and ship. That means you are "shipping worth." That's what you're doing - you're engaging in an activity that transfers or "ships" worth. Tell me any activity of man in relation to God that is more ecclesiastical, namely, expressing that which we are called out to do, as "called out ones" (the meaning of ecclesia); tell me an activity more ecclesia, fulfilling that which the "called out ones" are called out to do - tell me one, more than worship. That's why we were created. Even the Catholic catechism recognizes that: to worship God; to ship to Him constantly a testimonial of worth.

Now, let some meat-head, D-minus student who barely squeaked through his law exam, who can't make it in the normal marketplace, who got his civil service job, goes home and pats his little dumbkopf kids on the head every night, on his six-hours-a-day, four-days-a-week work program - try to tell him what God's purposes are - some damnable bureaucrat - "burac-rat" - who has his subjective view of what the church is or ought to be, and says, "Money is not a part of it."

Money is just... the heart of it! By money, we ship worth. Worship is a contraction of "worth-ship" - thus, it's at the heart and soul of what being a Christian is.

How have I countered the subjective view of the government "burac-rat?" With the objective view of God's Word, to which we go to find the purpose of the church. And God's Word puts money front and center.

Now, let's look at something else. Functions are of three kinds: reason-for-being functions; self-continuity functions; auxiliary functions.

Let me take care of auxiliary functions first. Those are activities with a separate purpose, that bring their purpose with themselves, and attach like barnacles to a structure, in order to function on this structure, in conflict usually with the purposes of this structure, to function free. Maybe the purposes coincide; but every church, every structure, has to confront people who come along, who haven't paid the price of developing a structure for their function according to their purpose; they just want to latch on to you. They are people with different subjective purposes - maybe even a part of God's total purpose, but not for the church - who come and tack on.

Some auxiliary functions are okay. I wouldn't hesitate if we had the space, as we do at one of the subsidiary organizations that's controlled by this church, to store emergency supplies for a disaster. That's an auxiliary function. I wouldn't mind at all - as we've done, using our facilities - to raise money for the library, which is an auxiliary function. Auxiliary functions are not necessarily bad, but they must always be kept in perspective as extra baggage, not necessarily a part of the purpose of the church. Auxiliary functions.

Self-continuity functions are the things you do to stay alive. It's like eating. Self-continuity functions are not to become reason-for-being functions; they are exactly what the word says, "self-continuity" functions. There are things necessary to stay alive in order that you might perform your reason-for-being functions.

Now, the subjective view of the whole church, particularly by government "burac-rats" who separate money and finance from ecclesiastical activities, and contributed to - and this is the terrible thing - by the false prophets, lays a moral obligation on anyone to whom the light has shown. The church has created the frame of reference that gives the world the chance to separate money and giving from reason-for-being functions of the church, because they act like the giving of money is an attachment, a necessary evil, a self-continuity burden that must be carried on in order to do what the church really exists to do.

That's why you have the "love gifts." That's why you have the mini-society that surrounds television ministries and large church ministries, who exist to come up with fund-raising ideas - rusty nails to mail in an envelope at Easter time, that if you'll write your request on, put the nail through it and send it back, they'll put that nail on the Cross at Easter, and all the rusty nails will be returned with the prayer request plus a $5.00 "love gift."

A hand, drawn on a piece of paper; Brother Whoever's hand, and if you lay your hand on it now... Rocks from Jerusalem; records... I don't object to Jimmy Swaggart's little boy selling Jimmy's records; I like Jimmy's singing. I think he's a great singer; I'd buy his records. I don't care who he sleeps with; he sings good! On the record, I don't care if he sings naked or dressed. I'll buy the record, if they'll just come out front and say, "We have this record to sell." Don't say, "For everybody who sends an offering, no matter how large or small, we'll send you this record."

I don't care if you sell Bibles, parts of Bibles, multiplied Bibles, big Bibles or little Bibles, just sell Bibles. Don't link them to an offering. Quit contributing to this worldly frame of mind that makes fund-raising an auxiliary or self-continuity attachment to the church. Fund-raising (money) is part of the "reason for being" of the church.

You do not raise money to teach people to be witnesses; you teach people to be witnesses, which includes the giving of money. Big difference. Do you know what the word "witness" comes from? Martyr. The word translated "witness" in the King James, in the Greek is the cognate of our word "martyr." Which said martyrdom is to ship a worth that you could invest for yourself, you deny yourself that investment, to testify and ship a worth to God, as you martyr a little bit of your pleasure to testify to God's worth in giving.

The church for years has seen its purpose to send people out with the Great Commission: "Go, and tell the world." They have neglected the direct order of our Lord, given after the woman brought the alabaster box and broke it, and poured the valuable ointment onto Christ, and Judas, who handled the bag and would have skimmed some off, said, "Why this waste? This valuable ointment could have been sold and the money given to the poor." Subjective viewpoint of why the followers of Christ exist: to help the poor; subjective viewpoint of where the money should go.

Jesus said, "Why trouble ye the woman? She has done a good work unto me." Then He added an order: "Wherever this gospel is preached, see to it you tell what this woman did."

Now, what started this series of messages, and opened this one, right in the middle of "He arose" and "We shall rise" is "Now, concerning the collection..." You can't separate it. As we matriculate on the faith of being what He was, raised by God's power, lifted up and raised again, claiming that promise, "The same spirit that raised up Christ from the dead shall dwell in you," as we matriculate toward that day where that promise becomes our reality and this corruption puts on incorruption, this mortal puts on immortality - in between, we are giving. The Commission cannot be separated from the testimonial of the right response to the Commission.

Jesus went to a well at Samaria, and there a woman of sin, to whom He revealed her own secret sins, ran and got others and brought them to hear the message of the Water of Life. He never said, "See to it wherever this gospel is preached, you tell what this woman has done, who ran and got others and brought them to me." You may wish that's what He had said, but He didn't. He said that of the woman who gave her most valuable possession.

Even though He commended the one leper who came back after being healed and said, "Where are the other nine?," He did not say, "See to it wherever you preach this gospel you tell what this leper did," who returned to testify to the healing power of the Savior. He said it only of the woman who gave to Him her most valuable possession.

When we preach on this message, we are battling 2,000 years of subjective tradition that has replaced the objective place of money in God's Book. Jesus spoke at least four times as much about money and the right use of it in regard to pleasing God than He did about heaven. And Paul, in II Corinthians 8 and 9, concluded, "You prove the genuineness of God's Spirit in you by the way you give."

I can almost feel in the air the difficulty of battering down the tradition that has walled it away, and the subjective opinion that has allowed the giving of money to fall into a disreputable, apologetic, defensive posture in the church, to where when you say, "You can't be a Christian if you don't give," you just feel the nerves jangle. Well, you can't be a Christian if you don't give.

"How can you say that?"

"If any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of His. To the Corinthians: "If ye have the spirit of Christ, ye have the mind of Christ." To the Philippians: "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus." "And we have seen," he said to the Corinthians, "of what the grace of God appears and looks like, as it is revealed in Christ. Though rich, He became poor for our sake."

He gave His all. You cannot have the mind of Christ, which is the fundamental criteria of the salvation of grace, which is the gift or implant of God's living spirit in us, which brings the mind of Christ - you haven't got it if it doesn't make you want to give.

"Hallelujah, He has risen!" Shout, shout, shout! "Hallelujah, we shall rise!" Shout, shout, shout... shout, shout, shout! "Now, concerning the collection..." Oohhh, groan!

Go to Exodus 30. God has always been doing it the same way. The Tabernacle is a Type in the Old Testament of our relationship to God in this journey down here. The Tabernacle was the Type of God's presence in their midst, and the Tabernacle, that God said to Moses, "You make it exactly according to the specifications I gave you on Sinai," and becomes the road map of man's relationship to God down here.

Now to you who know the way the Tabernacle was laid out, there was an outer court, then the tent or Tabernacle proper. There was an altar of burnt offering and a laver of cleansing. So in the Holy Place, inside the first enclosure, was a candlestick, the table of shewbread, and an altar of incense; then the Ark of the Covenant, where God met man's representative, the High Priest, on the Day of Atonement.

The altar of incense is what He talked of in Exodus 30: "Thou shalt make an altar to burn incense upon: of shittim wood shalt thou make it." That altar of incense symbolizes the prayer life, the position closest to God. And true to the New Testament message in Matthew 6, behind these curtains in the Holy Place, in secret before God, as Matthew 6 says, "You don't pray on the street corner as other men do, to be seen of men. Shut the door and go in your closet and do it. Pray to your Father in secret..."

Likewise, behind these curtains in the Holy Place, the altar of incense by its positioning was one of the things closest to God. We'll skip over that, but I just wanted to point out they were talking about those Types of worship; that goes through the 10th verse.

Now let's skip the 11th verse and go to the 17th verse: "The Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Thou shalt also make a laver of brass..." This laver of brass was made from the melted-down mirrors of the people, used for looking at themselves, and they made this laver of cleansing, with the water in it that did the cleansing, typical of the Holy Spirit doing His cleansing work, so it's the Type of sanctification that's in the Tabernacle.

Then go to the 22nd verse: "Moreover the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Take thou also unto thee principal spices..." and it goes to the anointing oil. Preachers love to talk about the "anointing," the anointing oil that comes from God, that sets them apart as vessels anointed of God. Then, in the 34th verse: "Take unto thee sweet spices..." The incense itself that is to go on the altar of incense is defined.

We cannot get to purer worship, or expression of "worth-ship," than the offering of ourselves to be the tabernacle and the inhabitant of the Spirit of God, to wash us and to do His work in us, apart from our work. You can't get closer to God than that life of prayer and the incense that goes on it, that ascends to Him, and the anointment that goes on the set-apart vessels of God.

Right in the middle of that - and this is the point of going to the chapter - the 11th verse: "The Lord spake unto Moses, saying, When thou takest the sum of the children of Israel after their number, then shall they give every man a ransom for his soul unto the Lord, when thou numberest them; that there be no plague among them, when thou numberest them. This they shall give, every one that passeth among them that are numbered, half a shekel..." (too bad they translated it that way; it's ten gerahs.) "...Half a shekel, after the shekel of the sanctuary (a shekel is twenty gerahs); half a shekel shall be the offering of the Lord. Every one that passeth among them that are numbered, from twenty years old and above, shall give an offering unto the Lord."

And because the love of money is the root of all evil, this is the one that has plague attached to it. You want to suffer? It's the same message everywhere you turn. See Malachi 3: "You have robbed me."

"Wherein have we robbed you?"

"Tithes and offerings. But prove me now herewith. Bring all the tithes into the storehouse and prove me now herewith, and see if I don't give you a blessing you can't contain." Curse if you don't, blessing if you do.

Right in the midst of these obviously spiritual acts: "Now, concerning the collection...," then to the laver, then to the anointing oil, then to the incense.

I'm making a simple point: the reason-for-being function of the church includes giving. I don't object to prayer being there; I don't object to anointing being there; I certainly don't object to the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit being there. God - and I speak for Him today - God doesn't object to you seeing that all of that is there, as long as you put giving there.

Paul commends the Corinthians for the other gift expressions of the Spirit. "See to it," he says, "that this grace - gift - is added, by which you prove the genuineness of God's Spirit in you."

Now, I end with what I pointed out earlier this week: you take the word in Matthew 6 - go to it; you will see the same thing we just saw in Exodus 30: "Take heed that ye do not your alms before men." Circle the word "alms." The word in the Greek is dikaiosune. It has that word in it, always in the word "righteousness," dike. Next verse, same word: "alms." "When thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet." "Alms;" there it is eleemosune, from which we get "eleemosynary." "Alms" in both verses of the King James, but different words in the Greek. In the first verse, it's talking about righteousness. The second verse is talking about eleemosynary giving of money for worthy causes - no cause of which is more worthy than God and His Word.

There is your proof that the word for righteousness and the word for giving, the very ecclesiastical word "righteousness" and the finance word that the world would subjectively separate from the reason-for- being of the church, are synonyms. "Righteousness" and "giving" are synonyms.

But a proper translation of this verse would be, "Take heed that ye do not your righteousness before men, to be seen of them. Otherwise ye have no reward of your father which is in heaven." Which tells you why all these legalists and dump-on-you preachers that are parading their righteousness, if their view of righteousness were correct, they've lost their reward, because they've got to do it to be seen of men.

But what this should say is, "Take heed ye do not your righteousness before men." "Alms" shouldn't even be in that verse, because what follows is a chapter full of righteous activities, starting with the giving of alms, going to prayer, following with fasting, and then bringing up the point of, "Lay not up treasures for yourself down here, but lay them up in heaven, where rust and moth doth not corrupt," and all of that, twice: the giving of alms first, and the laying up of treasures last, in this chapter, with prayer and fasting in between - all are righteousness, qualified by the first verse.

In Exodus 30, it is in the same order: cleansing, sanctification, anointing and the altar of incense; and in Matthew 6, it is included in the highest order of righteous acts that are to be done for God, that you might lay up a treasure in heaven. How, then, can anybody dare apologize for including the teaching on and participation in giving in the heart and center of their message?

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THE RESURRECTION by Dr. W. euGene Scott (Ph.D., Stanford University) repost
Category: Religion and Philosophy

THE RESURRECTION

by Dr. W. euGene Scott (Ph.D., Stanford University)

Preached at the Los Angeles University Cathedral on April 19, 1992.

I lost my faith, in college. I lost it because of a subtle psychological pressure. It was all right to believe in Jesus as a good and wise teacher, and elevate Him on an equal plane with Mohammed, who founded the Islamic faith, with Gautama Buddha, who was a prince of India and founded Buddhism, with Confucius of China (more of a political philosopher, really) whose sayings affect so much of that portion of the world - in short, with any respectable founder of a religion.

I could put Jesus in that category and dispense with him as a "good and wise teacher," and be accepted - get my intellectual wings - but to hold to the belief that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, super-natural... Parenthetically, I might say there is a current hour-long advertisement for tape sales, no matter how slick they disguise it, telling you the origin of all religions.

And it's really "intelligent" because it starts in Egypt, and they never go to Sumer where the religions started that flowed to Egypt (and they never got to Babylon), and there is no one with any sense that denies the influence of Egypt on both the Hebrews and the Greeks. Cyrus Gordon settled that.

But some portly little guy sits there, and some suave, slick-coifed tamed TV evangelist-looking guy sits there, and they tell you how all religions started, and then they make an oblique reference to the "16 crucified saviors" - which can't be found in the implication of the analogy drawn.

And forever you have this ecumenical approach to religion - "the religion of no religion," because all religions have "the same root." That subtly comes at you as though you are not intelligent until you release this "primitive" attitude toward Christ as the supernatural, divine Son of God and accept Him as but another expression and another founder in the stream of common religiousness, as a "good and wise teacher."

The papers recently had some new guy writing about Jesus as a dumb peasant with social revolutionary ideas, but it is speculation drawn upon analogous peasant societies rather than documented fact.

The only problem with the intellectual substitute for a faith in Christ, namely a "good and wise teacher," is that He can't be either one unless He is both.

To be good, you have to tell what's true. You can be insane, you can be a nut, and honestly believe something that's dead wrong, and be good - but not wise. To be wise, you've got to be right; to be good, you've got to be honest, and their Jesus could be good but not wise, wise but not good, but not both.

Why? In any source that you have for Jesus in history, if you are going to call Him good and wise, you are going to go to His sayings and you are going to go to His actions. I don't care whether you go to the Gospels, for that is where most of the opponents go as they hunt and peck and pull certain verses out, and highlight them in red on television.

You can go behind the Gospels. There is a hypothetical "Q" document_ One of the early church fathers said that Matthew wrote down the sayings of Christ as he travelled with Him, not in Greek but in his native language, Aramaic. We know his Gospel was written most likely at Antioch and written in Greek. This "Sayings of Jesus," written in Aramaic, may have been the common source that those who can read Greek, and see the change in style, recognize as the source used by all three of the Synoptic Gospel writers, Matthew, Mark and Luke.

We know that Mark was written first, because we can see in the change of style when Matthew and Luke copy Mark, but there is a common source behind all three of them called the hypothetical "Q" document_ I don't care if you go to the ancient songs, the earliest fragments - wherever you encounter Jesus doing something or saying something - attached to every one of those records will be a saying by Christ or a projection of a self-image that He has of Himself that precludes calling Him "good and wise" because you will find the following in every source:

1. He thought He was perfect. It doesn't matter whether He was, He thought He was. Carlysle says the greatest of all sins is to be conscious of none. There's nothing as despicable as a person who thinks he's never made a mistake. That conscious, self-righteous, perfectionist image is not something we respond to, because the wisdom of mankind combines in the knowledge that nobody's perfect.

Now the issue is not whether He was; we just don't make saints of people who think they're perfect. The record of people used by God goes throughout the whole Old Testament: "I am not worthy of the least of Thy mercies... Who am I that I should lead forth the children of Israel?... I am but a child... I cannot speak."

Always the criterion of acceptance by God and acceptance by man is that conscious attitude of imperfection. Holy men are aware of the distance they are from God. There was only one man in the whole kingdom who saw God; in the year King Josiah died, Isaiah was the only man who saw God sitting on a throne on high and lifted up (that means he was above everybody). His first words were: "Woe is me; I am undone."

We just don't make saints of people who think they're perfect - but Jesus thought He was. Everywhere you meet Him, He projects that. He judges other people: "whitened sepulchers...strain out a gnat and swallow a camel." He looks at the most righteous people of the day and puts them down. The reason that no man ought to judge, and anyone who is a judge should have this sensitive conscience, is that it's hard to judge your fellow man because we know way down deep we have the same kinds of faults.

But Jesus never had any sense of imperfection. He changed the Law, saying, "You have heard it said unto you, but behold I say," and then, self-righteously with a consciousness of moral perfection, says, "Think not that I have come to destroy the Law. I am come to fulfill it."

There is one possible exception to that, when the rich young ruler came to Him and said, "Good Master." He stopped him and said, "Why callest thou me good?" Those that want to talk about Jesus not thinking He was perfect point to that verse; they miss the rest of it, because Jesus said to him, "Wait a minute. Don't come and call me good rabbi, good teacher. If you are going to call me good, also recognize that only God can be good, so don't tap the appellation on to me without recognizing that I am also God."

He had that sense of moral perfection; no sense of a moral inadequacy is ever exhibited anywhere in His behavior. He had all authority: "You build on what I say, you build on a rock. You build on anything else, you build on sand. All authority in heaven and earth is given unto me."

Again to point to the other illustration used, He said concerning the law (generations of approval had been placed on it): "You have heard it said unto you, but behold I say..."

He pronounced judgement without a flicker. Now, we don't make saints of people like that. We ask the criteria, "On what do you base this authority?" He based it on Himself: "Behold, I say unto you..."

2. Center of the Religious Universe. He went further and put Himself at the center of the religious universe. Jesus didn't come preaching a doctrine or a truth apart from Himself. He said, "I'm the way. I'm the truth. I'm the life. By me if any man enter in... I am the door of the sheepfold. He that hateth not father, mother, wife, children, brother, sister, yea, and his own life also, taketh up his cross and come after me, cannot be My disciple." He made your relationship with Him, putting Him the center of the religious universe, the determinative of all religious benefits.

3. He would die, a ransom. He said something's wrong with the whole world that could only be set right by Him dying, a ransom in the context where they knew exactly what a ransom was. The ransom was what you paid to restore a lost inheritance, to deliver someone destined to death because of their error. It was the price paid to redeem from the consequences of falling short, doing something wrong, losing an inheritance - and the ransom restored you to that which had been lost. He said the whole world was lost, and He came to die and pay the price of ransom, to redeem them.

4. He would raise again. He said He would raise again (there was more than that, but I'm choosing very selectively just a few), that when He died, He would raise from the dead.

Now, if Dr. Craig Lampe (and my admiration for him has been made clear), if he walked up to the podium at the Cathedral and picked up the microphone and said "All authority in heaven and earth is given unto me," I would think, maybe he means he's going to quote, "that into my hands has been delivered this word of God to preach with authority." So I would check that one off, that maybe this is a different Lampe.

And if then he went on and said, "Here I am Father. I have done all you sent me to do. There are no flaws in me, no imperfections. The law doesn't bother me, I have fulfilled it," and started projecting a perfection like Jesus did, I'd start backing up and start looking with sympathy toward Mrs. Lampe. And if he went on, "Your eternal destiny is dependent upon putting me in the center of your life and making me your master," by then I would have been interrupting. I don't think he would have gotten to what I didn't include here, that he would have me think that he was a denizen of eternity.

And he would stand up here and say, not in spiritual terms but expecting to be believed, "Before Abraham was I was. You know, that guy that came out of Ur; I was there. I saw Satan when he was cast out before Adam was ever born." And then he'd talk about heaven with a familiarity with which we talk about our homes. If I tell you the couch in my home is beige, and you say, "How do you know?," I'm going to think you're crazy.

..ab.gif" align=left>There is a certain frame of reference of familiarity with your home; that's the frame of reference Jesus projects when He talks about eternity. Matter-of-factly, He says, "I'm going back. I'm going to prepare a mansion for you. And after a while, I'll come back and get you and take you there."

You put people in a nut house that talk like that! And then if Dr. Lampe would say that he was somehow a ransom, I'd lay hands on him, and I'm quite sure his wife would, too.

We don't stop to realize that this is the only kind of Christ who walked around on the stage of history and is the only one you can find. You don't find other religious founders doing this.

Buddha never thought he was perfect; he struggled with the essence of tanya, which was their meaning for that corrupt desire that produces sin. He sought the way of the sensual release; he sought the way of the aesthetic yogi, and neither one worked. He came to the eight-fold path that brought him into a trance-like state where he lost conscious identity with this life, called nirvana. And when he came out of that state, he offered those who followed him the eight-fold path, and all he would say is, "It worked for me. Try it; it will work for you."

He never thought all authority was seated in him. Instead, he told his disciples (and it's part of their tri-part basket of scriptures) that he wasn't worthy to lead them. All he left them was the way that worked for him. No assumption of authority seated in him. He never thought he was the center of the religious universe. The way worked. Same with all the others.

Mohammed never thought he was perfect. He was God's - Allah's - prophet. He had visions of eternity that impressed the desert man, but he never claimed to have been there. He never died a ransom for anybody. He had a criteria for authority: God revealed it to him in a vision. Jesus never pointed to a vision like the prophet who would say, "The Lord said..." He said, "I say...

Confucius did a logical analysis of society, and he pointed to that external analysis as his authority. None of the other leaders made themselves the center of the religious universe, seated authority on themselves, had a consciousness of perfection about themselves, claimed an identity with authority before and after their temporary stay here on earth. None of these traits attached to the others. That's why you can respect them as founders.

With Jesus, you've got what C. S. Lewis called the "startling alternate." Either He thought these things were true, but was too stupid to know it's impossible for a man to make these claims, and thus He could not be wise, or He was wise in knowing these things weren't true, but was capable of duping His followers because of self-serving motives into believing that about Him, and that makes Him not good. The conclusion is, that those who say He was a "good and wise teacher" reveal they have never really taken the time to encounter the only Christ that ever walked the stage of history.

C. S. Lewis says you have "the startling alternate." You must either view Christ as one who considered Himself of the order of a poached egg, or you take Him for what He says He is, and if He is God, then He is perfect, and authority does rest in Him, and He is the center of the religious universe, and He did have the qualities necessary to die as a ransom for the whole world. He did have a knowledge of eternity, and He will raise again.

You can't put Jesus in the "good and wise" bland teacher package and forget about Him. He is either a nut or a fake, or He is what He claimed to be.

Well, when I came to that crossroad, I decided I would settle it for myself. The issue revolves around this fact of history. Jesus said, to some who wanted a sign, "I'll give you one." There's only one guaranteed sign on which faith can be built. God has apparently gone beyond this guarantee, but the only sign that God guaranteed to vindicate His truth was the sign of Jonah, interpreted by Jesus to be the death and resurrection of Christ.

At one point in the vast flow of history, a FACT emerges. God deigned to move into this tent of human flesh, fulfill the law that it might become incarnate, chose then to die in our place as the price of redemption, namely the fulfilled law that He might raise again and adopt us into a family with His new life without the burden of the law, that was but a schoolteacher to teach us our need of God's delivering power.

That He moved onto the stage of history is the claim of Christianity, and He vindicated Himself with a FACT that can be analyzed.

Now it is a FACT there is no such thing as historic certainty. I did my undergraduate major in history. Historic certainty means every conceivable piece of evidence is there. That which you can conceive as possible evidence must be there to have historic certainty. The moment an event is past, and no more, you have lost the eye-witness ability to see it.

Cameras help, as the Rodney King case shows, but there is an element gone, so all historic certainty by definition is relative. All you can hope for is psychological certainty, where exposure to the relevant facts of history that are available produces a reaction psychologically, and that reaction is impossible not to have.

Any smart attorney knows that in a courtroom, there isn't an attorney that says something and the judge rebukes him, that the attorney knows before he said it that he shouldn't have said it; he wants the jury to hear it. And the judge bawls out the attorney, and he says, "Yes, your honor," and plays his little meek role. He knows exactly what he is doing. And then the judge pontifically looks over at the jury and says, "Discard that from your consideration." Okay, BANG! That's about the only way you can discard it; it's in there. And you see and hear and feel, and whatever else the evidence, you have a reaction.

God vindicated His Son. Paul comes to Mars Hill; the philosophers are gathered there trying to consider all the gods, so worried they will miss one that they have a monument to the Unknown God. He seizes on that as a lever to talk about Christ. He says, "I'll tell you who the Unknown God is," and preaches Christ, whom he said God ordained by the resurrection. Paul said if there is no resurrection, our faith is vain, and we are found false witnesses of God, as we have testified of Him that He raised up the Christ.

The first message of the church was the one Peter preached on the day of Pentecost, "This Jesus whom ye know... And he named the fact that they knew Him crucified; that they also knew. Then he testified of that which they didn't know, "This Jesus hath God raised up of whom we all are witnesses," and he introduced that vindicating fact. Paul says in one of his speeches, "He was seen and He was seen," and he catalogues the witnesses and comes to the cluster he says to above five hundred brothers at once.

In those days, you could assemble eyewitnesses; not today. But like any other historic fact, from who wrote Shakespeare to Julius Caesar's existence, you can look for the FACT of history on which Christianity is based, namely: Jesus came out of the tomb.

And I will say, to set the frame, that if Craig Lampe or Ed Masry or anybody else came in to the Cathedral making the claims Jesus made about themselves, I would offer the suggestion that they should submit to psychoanalysis and go to a hospital - unless I could see a twinkle in their eyes, that they were putting me on - because no mortal man can make these claims.

But if in the claims they said, "Slay me and in three days I'll come out of the tomb and sail off into the blue," and three days later they came out of the tomb and sailed off into the blue, I'd take another look at Dr. Lampe and I'd take another look at Ed. And I don't need anything else as a basis for my faith; I don't need all the fancy philosophic trinitarian doctrines.

If I can find on the stage of history the One whose words I can spend my life researching, who was perfect, the center of all authority, the center of the religious universe, and all of these things, including having redeemed me, raised and prepared mansions in eternity, that's all the God I need. I could start right there.

THE ISSUE IS: DID HE COME OUT OF THE TOMB?

You won't settle that by thinking about it; you research it. Now, to research anything you have to get a foundation in facts. Most people are fuzzy-minded; they argue a resurrection didn't occur because it can't occur, and anybody who says it did must be lying. Any other fact, you research it.

If you're going to ask, "Did Scott preach this message within an hour on April 19, 1992?" you've got to assume that I was here and preached at all. You've got to assume that the Cathedral exists. You've got to assume that April 19th came and went. We don't discuss that; we take certain things for granted. But before you start arguing whether I preached an hour (or more), let's at least agree that I preached. You don't have to agree whether it was good or bad, but that I was here and my mouth moved and said things. That's known as the frame of reference - what's taken for granted.

And if someone says "Wow, I don't believe you were there!," then to hell with debating clocks. It's much easier to prove I was here - maybe not all there - but there, than to prove how long I preached, because you don't yet know when I started. Was it the preliminary remarks? Was it the first mark on the board? That's more debatable, but to prove whether I was here at all or not, that's a little easier.

You need to approach the resurrection the same way. There are certain facts that have to be assumed before you discuss the resurrection. One is, did Jesus live at all? Why are we talking about whether He raised if we don't believe He lived? There was a time that was debated; not much anymore. For purposes of today and any meaningful discussion of the resurrection, you've got to at least assume:

Fact 1. That Jesus lived. If you don't believe that... Do you agree that it's probably easier to prove that He lived somewhere sometime than that He died and rose again? Do you agree with that? So give me the easier task.

"Well, I'm not sure He lived, so don't give me that resurrection bit."

I have more time to do other things than that. Don't get into any argument about the resurrection with somebody who doesn't believe Jesus lived. That's easy to prove; until that's crossed, don't get to the next one:

Fact 2. That He was crucified. At the instigation of certain Jewish leaders - not all the Jews; they weren't to blame for that; His disciples were Jews - just certain Jewish leaders, at the hands of the Romans. The Romans carried out the execution; Jewish leaders instigated it. Unless you believe that, there's no sense going to the resurrection. The crucifixion's much easier to prove than the resurrection.

Fact 3. That He was considered dead. Notice I say considered dead, because a lot of people believe He recovered from the grave; "resuscitated." He was considered dead: pierced with a sword, taken down from the cross, taken to a grave. Of course, Holy Blood, Holy Grail comes up with a concoction that He practiced this, and had people take Him to the grave knowing He was going to come out. He practiced on Lazarus first (so goes the theory) but of course Lazarus was stinking before He started practicing, but it's a real nice theory. Some of the theories stretch the brain more than just accepting the resurrection, but at least He was considered dead.

Fact 4. He was buried in a known, accessible tomb. By accessible, I mean you could get to the tomb; you couldn't get in because of the rock and guards, but a known, accessible tomb.

Fact 5. He was then preached raised. I'm at this point not saying He raised, but He was preached raised, the tomb was empty, and He ascended. It's important to remember that the whole preachment included: empty tomb; raised from the dead; and ascending into heaven. That's the total message.

Now, if you don't believe that He was preached, I'm doing it today. But He was preached early on; if you don't believe that, that's easier to prove than the resurrection.

Fact 6. The Jewish leaders were interested in disproving His resurrection. Common sense will tell you the Jewish leaders who instigated the crucifixion had more interest in disproving the resurrection than someone 2,000 years removed, considering it intellectually with a lot of skepticism mixed in, because the Jewish leaders' reputations and bread and butter and lives were at stake.

If they instigated His crucifixion, accusing Him of trying to set up a kingdom and accusing Him of blasphemy, and all of a sudden it's true that He raised from the dead, they are going to be looking for new jobs. So common sense says they had more psychological interest in disproving the theory, and would put themselves out a little more than most people on an Easter Sunday would.

Fact 7. The disciples were persecuted. They were horribly persecuted because of this preaching, starting with those Jewish leaders who first persecuted them: first they called them liars, said they stole it away. The whole Book of Acts tells of the persecution for preaching the resurrection.

Later, centuries later, Christians in general became a target for the evils in the Roman Empire and became scapegoats, and were just punished for other reasons, but every record agrees that the earliest persecutions could have stopped immediately if they would have quit preaching this resurrection message, and the ascension and the miracles attaching to Jesus. That's why they were persecuted, because the Jewish leaders had their reputations at stake. Thus,

Fact 8. The tomb was empty. All this leads to the fact, common sense says, if the Jewish leaders who instigated the crucifixion, having the extra interest because their livelihood was at stake, and if He was buried in a known, accessible tomb, they would have gone immediately to that tomb and discovered the body. Therefore, it is axiomatic that the tomb was empty.

The tomb was meaningless for centuries; many centuries went by. The tomb was lost to history because there was no body in it. Then, when the relic period began to grow, people got interested in His tomb, that had had no interest because there was no body in it, and tried to find it. And the whole church world still fights today over the classical site of the ancient historic churches, and Gordon's tomb that most of the Protestants identify with, just off from the bus station below the escarpment of a rock called "Golgotha" that has an Arab cemetery on top. The fight is because the tomb was lost to history; there was no body in it.

Now, these facts are easier to demonstrate than the resurrection, but unless these facts are accepted, you can't deal with all the theories about the resurrection. For example, the preaching has been so effective that all through the centuries people have come up with theories to explain it. Now, the reason that I do this every Easter is I try to demonstrate that you don't have to park your brains at the door of the church when you come in.

"Faith cometh by hearing, hearing by the word of God." You don't just make people believe, but if you expose yourself to evidence, something happens inside and there will be a psychological reaction. My quarrel with people who deny the resurrection and live a life style that pays no attention to it, is that I can ask them 15 questions and find they haven't spent 15 hours of their life looking at it.

If this is true, this is the center of the universe. If this is true, this is the central fact of history. You have to be a fool among all fools of mankind to not think it's worth at least 30 hours of study in your whole life. But there are many intelligent people in the world who have looked and come away convinced. That's why I am doing this. But the preachments are so sincere in their nature. All kinds of theories have been broached, but the theories won't fly if you assume these eight facts.

Theory 1. The disciples stole the body.

Theory 2. The Jewish leaders stole it.

Theory 3. The Roman leaders stole it.

Theory 4. The women went to the wrong tomb. You know, it was dark and they got lost like women walkers - they didn't have women drivers, but "women walkers." They went to the wrong tomb, and they believed He rose, and I mean, my God, the screaming and crying out of the garden. "We went and He wasn't there!" They went to the wrong tomb; they went to an empty one waiting for somebody else.

Theory 5. It was all hallucinations. Glorified day dreams. They were sincere; they believed that this happened because they had all these hallucinations.

Theory 6. Resuscitation theory. He was crucified and He was considered dead, and He was buried in a known tomb, but He wasn't dead, and in the coolness of the tomb He revived and came out wrapped in the grave clothes and, thank God, the guards were asleep, and He pushed that rock out of the way - and here comes Frankenstein!

Theory 7. The disciples lied. They made the whole thing up. They'd bet on the wrong horse and they just couldn't live with it so they made up this whole story and it took them seven weeks to figure it out, and then they told it.

Theory 8. It's all true. They are telling exactly what they experienced and what they saw. Now, just as you've got the "startling alternate" when you consider the only Jesus in history, that He's either a madman, a nut, a faker, or He's what He said He was, and that requires a definition of divinity, you have a "startling alternate" here.

All these theories - not all of them, but most of them - sound good in isolation. The first theory (the disciples stole the body) the Jewish leaders themselves concocted, but when you take these facts for granted, you are again forced to a "startling alternate."

I hate - I've always hated it when I was doing my degree in history - I hate a self-righteous objective historian: "I'm objective; I take no opinion." There's no such thing as a knowledgeable person that doesn't have an opinion. Knowledge forces an opinion; no exposure to facts keeps you neutral. Knowledge forces an opinion, and when you study the facts, there are only two options:

OPTION 1: The disciples lied.

They stole the body, (Theory 1), then they obviously lied (Theory 7).

The Jewish leaders stole the body (Theory 2)? These facts preclude that: they were more concerned than anyone to disprove the preachment, so why would they make the tomb empty? And if they had, they would have said, "Wait a minute; we took His body from the tomb." They couldn't even think of that story; they told the one about the disciples, but even if it were tenable, they didn't just preach an empty tomb and the resurrection.

They preached a seeming Jesus with Whom they partook; they preached the ascension with equal vigor. So even if the Jewish leaders' stealing the body would explain the empty tomb, they're still telling the add-ons of the encounters with the resurrected body and the ascension, so they're still making up a lot of the story: they lied.

Roman leaders took the body (Theory 3)? With the controversies in Jerusalem, with the contacts the Jewish leaders had with the Romans, enabling them to get the crucifixion done, do you not think they would have exposed that fact, that the official Roman government took the body? But even if that explains the empty tomb, it does not alleviate the disciples' responsibility for preaching a resurrected body that they had encounters with, and the ascension, so they're still lying.

The women went to the wrong tomb (Theory 4)? It was a known accessible tomb. The Jewish leaders' interest would have taken them to the known tomb, and all they had to do to explain the wrong tomb theory was go to the tomb where the body is - and they would have done it.

Hallucinations (Theory 5)? Well, the empty tomb blasts that. If it had been just hallucinations, there would have been a body in the tomb. You have to couple it with spiriting the body away. So, they're still lying. Even the Holy Blood, Holy Grail theory requires that they be liars to conspire and carry this out.

Resuscitation (Theory 6)? Well, that Frankenstein coming out of the tomb doesn't quite measure up to the good Jesus that was preached. It might explain the empty tomb, but it doesn't explain the kind of Jesus that they had preached, doesn't explain the ascension... They still made the rest of it up!

So no matter how you look at it, if you assume the eight facts which are much easier to demonstrate than the resurrection, there are only two options, two conclusions, because it boils down to the veracity of the witnesses. That's why I have no respect for those who deny the resurrection and have not read the classic, Sherlock's Trial of the Witnesses. He postulated a courtroom scene where all the witnesses were gathered and subjected to the kind of evidence of an English court.

You are faced with a "startling alternate": either these disciples made the story up to save face and the whole thing is a lie, or:

OPTION 2: They're telling what they truly experienced as honest men.

And when we come to that point, the entire Christian faith revolves around: were these disciples who were the witnesses honest men telling what they saw, or conspirators who concocted a lie to save face, and there are four reasons why I cannot believe they were lying:

Reason 1. Cataclysmic change for the better on the part of the witnesses.

Everybody agrees Peter was unstable, and with a group he could not be counted on to stand. He fled in fear and he denied his Lord; he was always in trouble because of his instability. After the resurrection, he is the man that preaches to a mocking mob, he fulfills his destiny to become the Rock, he dies with courage requesting that he be turned upside down because he is not worthy to die in the position of his Master - a cataclysmic change that can be identified to a point in history, and that point in history is where they began to tell this story of the resurrection.

John? He was one of the brothers called "Sons of Thunder." He wanted to call fire down from heaven on everyone that opposed him. He and his brother used their mother to seek the best seat in the kingdom. After they began to tell this story, every scholar agrees John was a changed man. Instead of a "Son of Thunder," he's almost wimpish in his never-failing expression of love. He is known as the "Apostle of Love" - a total cataclysmic change.

Thomas is consistently a doubter; from start to finish, he's a doubter. He's a realist; he questions everything. When Jesus is going to go through Samaria and faces death, and tells His disciples about it, Thomas then says, "Let us also go, that we may die with Him." That's courage, but he thought Jesus would actually die; that's a humanistic view.

When Jesus is discussing going away, building mansions in heaven, says, "Whither I go ye know, and the way ye know," all the rest of them are surely shouting about the mansions. Thomas is listening to every word. He says "We don't know where you are going; how can we know the way?" Now that's a consistent thumb-nail sketch of a personality trait.

Who is it that's doubting when the resurrection comes? Same guy! "I won't believe 'til I touch Him, put my hands in the marks of death." The moment arrives. Jesus is there and says to Thomas, "Behold my hands and my side." Jesus says, "It is more blessed to believe without seeing." That is an axiomatic truth, but He did not condemn Thomas. He just stated that fact, and then He offered to submit to the test, which is what we are doing today. He said, "Behold my hands and my side." And Thomas cried, "My Lord and my God."

It is significant that in the most philosophic area of the world, where the Vedanta philosophies have produced Buddhism and the Eastern religions that flow out of it, it is Thomas that pierces the Himalayas to die a martyr near Madras, India, to be the herald of faith in the most challenging philosophic area of the world at that time, and never again does he waver an instant in faith - a total change from a consistent doubter to an unwavering "faither."

Now, you can say, a crisis will change people, but a lie will seldom change people for the better; they'll get worse. These men are cataclysmically changed for the better; I don't think that telling a lie would do that.

There are indirect evidences of truth. Mark wrote to Gentiles; you can count it in Mark's Gospel, he has Christ referring to Himself as "Son of Man" more often than any other Gospel. Count it yourself. Now if he was a liar, knew he was lying, trying to perpetrate a fraud, why would he have Jesus refer to Himself with a phrase that suggests humanity when his purpose is to try to represent Jesus as the Son of God? If he's a liar, he'd just have Jesus refer to Himself as the Son of God. But ironically, as God's little hidden evidences of honesty, in Mark's Gospel, written to Gentiles, designed to prove that Jesus was the Son of God, he had Jesus refer to Himself as the "Son of Man" more than any other Gospel.

Now, Jesus did refer to Himself as the "Son of Man" because Jesus was preaching to a Hebrew audience that read the Book of Enoch and read the Book of Daniel where the "Son of Man" was a messianic picture of coming in clouds of glory to set up His kingdom. So it's quite proper for Jesus to refer to Himself as the "Son of Man" in a messiah mentality, but if you are writing to Gentiles who don't know anything about the Old Testament, and trying to perpetrate a lie that Jesus is the Son of God, unless you're just basically honest and telling the truth, you wouldn't have Jesus say "Son of Man" as often. Why not change what He said to serve your purpose? Inherent honesty. I could give you a dozen of those, but that is what historians call indirect evidence of honesty.

Reason 2. Internal consistencies.

The fact that the disciples waited seven weeks is used by those who say they were lying as the time needed for them to cook up the lie. If they are smart enough to tell a lie of this nature, my judgement is, they would have figured that out. They waited seven weeks because Jesus told them to wait. That's the action of honest men, even though waiting that long hurts their story - if they were going to make up a lie.

Reason 3. Price paid.

You don't pay the price these men paid to tell a lie. All of them, save John, died a martyr's death: Bartholemew flayed to death with a whip in Armenia; Thomas pierced with a Brahmin sword; Peter crucified upside down, St. Andrew crucified on St. Andrew's cross (from which it gets its name); Luke hanged by idolatrous priests, Mark dragged to death in the streets of Alexandria. These men paid beyond human belief for their "lie."

Reason 4. They died alone.

St. Thomas Aquinas' great - greatest, I think - proof of the veracity of the disciples and the resurrection is that they died alone. Now, as I do every year when I finish this message, I can conceive of a group of men trying to save face, telling a story, having bet on the wrong man, crushed by His failure (as they would view it), trying to resurrect Him with a lie.

I can conceive of them staying together and group pressure holding together the consistencies of their lie, because they don't want to be the first one to break faith and rat on the others and collapse the whole thing.

Let's assume that Dr. Badillo and Ed and Louis (one of our horse trainers) concocted this story. You don't have television, you don't have satellite, you don't have FAX, you don't have telephone, and as long as you three stay together under great pressure, you don't want to be the one, Ed, to let Louis and Dr. Badillo down.

But now separate you. You, Ed, be Bartholemew in Armenia, and you, Dr. Badillo, be Thomas over in India. And Louis, you be Peter in Rome. You have lost contact with each other. You can't pick up a phone and call anybody; nobody knows where you are, and since you know you are telling a lie and you know you don't really expect the generations forever to believe it, and you are being literally flayed to death - that is, skinned with a whip, your skin peeled off of you - all you've got to do to get out is say, "It's all a lie," and "Forgive me, I'm leaving town."

Ed wouldn't know it; Louis wouldn't know it. You could see them next time, playing poker together and saying, "Boy, I really tore them up there in Armenia. I told the story, and nobody could forget it the way I told it." They wouldn't know you lied. You, you're going to be pierced with a sword in India; you are never going to see these people again. All you have to do to get out of the pressure is say, "It's a lie."

You, you're off in Rome; you're a little more exposed, but with your life at stake, all you have to say is, "Sorry. Maybe I dreamed it," and wiggle out and head to France. As Thomas Aquinas said, it is psychologically inconceivable that these men, separated, each one paying the supreme price for their story and each one dying alone, that some one of the group wouldn't break away from his fellows and say, "Hey, it wasn't true!"

To die alone. And not one shred of evidence surviving 2,000 years of hard-looking critics, you will never find one record anywhere on the face of this earth where any one of these men ever wavered unto their terrible death in telling this story. Therefore, I came to the conclusion there's no way these men were lying. They were telling what they thought and experienced and saw as true.

I remember doing this with my professor at Stanford, and he said to me, "Gene, I am convinced. These men believed what they were telling. Therefore, some one of these other eight facts must be wrong." Well, if you're honest and you say that, I've got you, because those other eight are a lot easier to demonstrate. What is the alternative?

IT'S TRUE, AND HE CAME OUT OF THAT GRAVE.

Well, if that is true, then what? All the rest of this is true, and I have a starting point for a faith in a God eternal. And I then have crossed over that threshold where I can now comprehend what Christianity is, for if I can believe that Jesus Christ came through those grave clothes, through that rock, through that door, and sailed off in the blue, then molecular displacement is nothing to Him - He can do it without creating an explosion. It is true that all things consist in Him, and He can control them.

..genescott.org/tab.gif" align=left>Therefore, it's not difficult at all to believe that that same substance of God, placed in Mary, came forth as Jesus of Nazareth through the Holy Spirit. God says He places that same God-substance in us when we trust Him. That is the true born-again experience - a generator of life, a regeneration, a new creation that penetrates my cell structure and is placed in me as a gift from God when I connect by trusting His word.

That's the genesis of all Christianity, properly seen, that Christ is in us the hope of glory. I don't have to become some mystic or far-out freak to understand what Christianity is. I can now spend my life pursuing His words, including the authority He attaches to the Old Testament, and the promises that are written therein. And each time I grab hold of those and act on my belief, and sustain the action in confidence, that faith connection keeps in me a life substance the same as that that raised up Christ from the dead, as capable of changing my nature as radioactive material, invisible though it may be, can change your cell structure as you hold it.

God puts a life in us capable of regenerating, and that's why spirituality is the expressions of the spirit, and why spirituality is called the fruit of the spirit. It is that new life growing out through us which can only be maintained by faith in His word, but it was founded and based upon the solid rock of the provable quality of "He raised from the dead," and it gives me faith to believe that He will do the other thing He said, which is come again.

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Galatians 4: The "ABC’s" of Faith by Dr. W. euGene Scott (Ph.D., Stanford University)
Category: Religion and Philosophy

Galatians 4: The "ABC's" of Faith

by Dr. W. euGene Scott (Ph.D., Stanford University)

I'm sure the image some have had of the Great Reformer, Martin Luther, is shattered when he says that "harlots and tax collectors and sinners have a better chance of getting to heaven than legalists who rely on their works." There are some people that almost committed hara-kiri when they heard me say that, particularly when I demonstrated it by reading it out of Luther's sermons on Galatians.

The issue he is focusing on, is where you place your reliance for salvation: on your works, no matter how much they may surpass others in approximating or moving in the direction of the Law of God, or whether your reliance is totally apart from those works, on God's work of grace - which is a gift, charisma, unmerited favor - because of something else: FAITH.

Faith equals (how many times have I told you?) 90% courage, 9% tenacity or endurance (what the King James translates as patience) and 1% all that other super-spiritual stuff. Courage is 90%; raw guts. There are those who ignorantly say, "Scott preaches an easier Gospel."

God likes courage; He doesn't like cowards. Cowardice and fear are not synonyms. Cowards give way to fear; men of faith are like David, who said, "What time I am afraid, I will (that's guts; reach down and grab hold of your innards) - I WILL trust in the Lord."

This is the ABC of faith. Faith (pistis in the Greek) comes from pisteo which is a verb; it was never intended to be just a noun in the original language. Without the verb to undergird it, distortion happens. The English language has conveniently separated "believing" from the rest of faith, thereby confusing the entire stream of the Church.

"Faith" and "belief" are not synonyms. You cannot translate the derivatives of the verb pisteo simply with the word "belief;" faith is more than belief.

FAITH involves Action, based upon Belief, sustained by Confidence that that which is believed is true. By this definition, you have a subject, you have the act, you have an object.

Biblical FAITH is an Act based on a Belief and sustained by Confidence that God's Word is forever settled in heaven.

We ought to have a new word in our language; we ought to translate pisteo with the verb "faithe." Then we could have the noun "faithers." "Faithers" are the subject who are doing the "faithing" and they produce a result, which is "the faithed."

A lot of confusion would go out of the teaching on faith if we'd just bury the word "belief" and make it but a subordinate part of faith, and only refer to it when the meaning of the text has to do with only that mental activity which is belief. Belief involves the mind, and faith involves the mind plus the will and action. It also involves the emotions, confidence to sustain faith.

If I were a teacher on Mars Hill with a bunch of philosophers in front of me (as I've told you probably ten thousand times since I've been here), in the usual neutral and disengaged role of the teacher, I would teach my students in the Greek frame that pisteo defines an activity of mankind without which you cannot survive.

You cannot act without it being based subconsciously or consciously on some kind of belief, sustained by confidence, including getting out of bed in the morning. You don't think about it, but you expect your feet to hit the floor and not the ceiling which, thought about, is an action based upon a belief that came, probably, through experience rather than teaching of theories, and a confidence that gravity works.

I would have taught students in that day that nobody has a choice not to faithe; "not to faithe" doesn't exist. The only choice you have is on the objects to which you will attach your faithing action, what you decide is true enough that you can have enough confidence in it to hang your body on it in continuing action. And until Jesus came, that would define faith.

But God, in His rightful and preemptory way (and, I believe, as part of the fullness of time that existed when He sent forth His Son), reached into the stream of that language which dominated the world frame in that day (so much more precise than the Hebrew or the Aramaic) and He grabbed this word and made it His.

Whereas on Mars Hill, as a philosopher without the knowledge of God, I'd sit there as the teacher and say, "Okay, students, faith is an action based upon belief sustained by a confidence that you must maintain in order to live; and your choice in life is to pick the object of your faith that can satisfy the truth that you feel sufficiently to say, `I believe this;' then hang your body on it, sustain it with confidence, start acting on it, thus trying your theory.

"No matter what your object of faith is, it's still faith, equal in merit and value in the abstract. You prove it to yourself, and it will become valuable and meaningful to you to the degree that your continued action builds the confidence, sustains the belief, and strengthens the action by proven experience as you act on it."

By this definition, I could conveniently step back as a teacher and say, "Now, since your choice is among the objects, plan your life and carefully examine that which you are going to believe, have confidence in, and hang your body on, but that's still theory - you're not faithing until you attach your body in action to what you believe and what you have confidence in."

In the fullness of time, God sent forth His Son into a language frame providing the word pisteo and He made it His for His Word. Real FAITH, saving Faith, became Action, based upon a Belief in God's faithfulness to His Word, sustained by Confidence in God's own nature of faithfulness - that He's not a man to lie, nor the Son of Man to repent; what He says He'll do, what He speaks He'll make good; that God, as Jeremiah said, "will hasten His Word to perform it," as a magnifying glass grabs the rays of the sun and penetrates by focusing on the object, He'll bring every strength as Lord of Hosts to focus and cause His word to come to pass. That confidence in God's Word will cause you to act, hanging your body on a Promise made by God, forever settled in heaven, even though time has not yet adjusted to it.

At faith encounters with time/space conflicts, you have the choice of letting the stream of time and circumstance defy God's Promise, or reach up and grab God's Word and say to yourself, "I am that catalyst point which will reach through the stuff of time, and grab this Promise of God because forever, O Lord, Thy Word is settled. When God spoke, not-a-thing became everything; He will again speak on future time, and everything will rearrange. God's Word was, is and shall be, before and after the earth that now is. His Word, forever settled in heaven, is where I will put my grasp, and no matter what the circumstance says, I will hang on to it. If I die still hanging on, I'm translated instantly into the realm where there's no friction with, `Thus sayeth the Lord...Forever settled in heaven.'

"Until that time comes - with Luther - though the whole world be against the Word, a "faither" will be against the whole world, hanging on to God's Word."

That is what God chose to identify as FAITH. Action based upon Belief and Confidence, that "Forever, O Lord, Thy word is settled in heaven."

I repeat that God will hasten His Word to perform it. Any other action, no matter how meritorious the object, is not Biblical "faithe." Unlike the professor who can stand back and say "choose among many objects," the preacher of faith knows that only those acts of man based on a belief in God's Word, sustained by a confidence in God's nature to be faithful to His Word - that and that alone qualifies as "FAITHE."

Everything else is apistis. Greek has a nifty little verbal transmission: there is no neutral gear. Pistis or apistis. Pistis is going in faith, apistis is opposite, or wrong direction. That means your object of faith can be bad, or your object of faith can be good, in the human, horizontal, ethical evaluation frame. It'll be saving "Faithe" only if it is "faithe" focused on a Promise of God, sustained by confidence in God's nature to be faithful to His Word and to Himself. Every other act, no matter how bad, and how far down the spectrum in that direction, or how good, just qualifies as apistis (not faith - even "against faithe").

If I were to use adjectives, such "other-object-faith" would be "not-saving-faith" - but God doesn't use adjectives here. God saw the word "faith" and He made it His, just like the word logos. To those in the Greek world who believe in a personal being behind all reality, logos was the word they used to identify the mediator between man and that heretofore unknowable Ultimate Being of reality. God made the word logos His, and Christ became "the Logos." God took faith over, and everything else is a kind of apistis.

Now, our nature is such that we just really don't want to be lumped into a pot with an Adolph Hitler or a Saddam Hussein. And you don't have to be lumped in a pot with them in the horizontal sphere of relative ethics and good and badness, measured by the performance of men. But from God's view, there is that which saves eternally, and there is that which doesn't do anything, that has its rewards down here, and doesn't do a thing for you in terms of eternity and relationship with God.

Faith - action on God's Word - gets you eternal life, God's spirit in you, salvation. Everything else gets you things down here. It doesn't mean you say, "Then nothing matters, relative distinctions down here make it not worth pursuing any ends designed to help mankind." Go to that extreme and you become an Antinomian.

You know the Greek word for law, nomos; Antinomians were anti-law to the nihilation of grace as power to change. They were those who made the preaching of grace an excuse for sin, caused Paul, Jude and Peter to combat this heresy in the New Testament. This same heresy (the Antihuchisons) divided colonial Massachusetts, and includes the present-day people who believe that since works can gain nothing for you in eternity, then works are unimportant, and go sin all the more that grace may abound.

I am now approaching that place in the book of Galatians that many of you have been waiting for with bated breath. "What's he going to do with the phrase, `Faith working in love'?"

I'm going to tell you a little history about it for openers, and the fights during the Reformation where the Papists said, "See, even Paul finally had to concede that works of love save and undergird faith."

Sorry, that won't fly. But I'm not to that verse yet. Or, "I wonder what he's going to do when he gets to the lusts of the flesh?"

Well, there are about fifteen different lists. And going out the gate, adultery is not even in the list of the earliest manuscripts, and it leads the list in the King James. "Oh, goody!"

Fornication is pornea in the Greek. You don't have to stretch your brain too much, or become a semanticist to know the cognate of pornea do you? Porno? Now just maybe the good old King James that "Michael handed Moses on Mount Sinai" (whoa!) might need a little help.

Contrary to what a lot of you think, I'm going to scare the bejesus out of you. I'm going to scare your britches off. It's obvious that some of you need it. Every preacher of grace from Paul to Luther to Gene Scott, and anyone else on the current scene, has to deal with the problem of grace as a message producing license.

I've told you the story of Bond Bowman in Detroit, Michigan, who had prayed for four years and said to me when he called me, "Gene, God has only shown me one man and I know it's you that must succeed me in Detroit."

He told me all the reasons why, and I told him that he'd prayed for four years and I'd had four seconds to hear it, and I needed some more prayer; but I had enough respect for Bond that I went and filled in for two months while he took a leave of absence. God didn't want me to pastor there, but Bond was so sure he turned loose completely, which he hadn't done for forty years, and that enabled him to relax sufficient to get the strength to come back and have some of his best years.

But I shared with you the long discussions Bond and I used to have. He said, "Gene, the message of grace is the message, I know that. But when I preach it, my congregation takes advantage and it turns into license, and I have to get the Law out to whip them back in line."

I determined then, thinking I probably never would pastor, if I ever pastored, I would dare to give grace its full chance to work. I'd dare to give God the chance to do it without me creating a temporary corral to beat you into sufficient insensibility that I could start over with grace again, and hope that somehow God would show up before you wrecked yourselves this time around.

I want it clear, even before I get to the passages which follow (which is Paul's attempt to deal with Antinomianism - those that took the message of grace and abolished all moral restraint because the Law was dead); I want it clear that I am deliberately hammering the Law into the death insensibility that it should have, not to resurrect it again as the cure for Antinomianism, but to teach through these verses that follow, when Paul finally comes to that phrase and says, "You've been called unto liberty, brethren, only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, to understand the life in the spirit which is the antidote to Antinomianism.

Not once in the history of the Church has any church yet transitioned through this stage. Luther didn't. Paul didn't. And I'm camping out on the closing passages of the fourth chapter and the opening of the fifth chapter because I want the Law so dead that it can't resurrect, at least until I get through the next phase.

Now I've put this foundation up here because I want you to just recognize the only thing that will save is Faithe, period. That's all. Faithe in a Promise of God, like plugging a cord in a wall circuit, causes the current of God to flow from God. That current flows, and the faither, when he contacts a Promise of God, hangs his body on it with the guts to hang on no matter what; he is plugged in, if you will, to God's own life. The manifestation of God's presence may be different than the reality of God's presence in eternity.

But those manifestations of God's presence, that omnipresence of God and that born again presence in-dwelt which God implants in Faithers occurs the moment that the grip of faith kicks in and, at that instant, God gives the gift of salvation - seating you in Christ in heavenly places - and the judicial act of imputation is done; God puts on the spectacles of Jesus Christ and looks at you as though you were Jesus.

Instantly, when Faithe takes hold of God's promise, the kaporeth or covering (which is what `atonement' means) is there in place, and between you and God's Law is that fulfilled Law incarnate in Christ which died on Calvary; and we, our old man, died with Him. God now looks at you (the Faither) as though you were Christ. That's justification. You're taken as just like God, and imputed to you is the righteousness of Christ, and God views you as though you were Christ, with those spectacles he looks at you, and you are seen as seated in heavenly places with and in Christ, already there.

But beyond the judicial act is the born-again, life-changing experience. You don't have to vibrate, your hair doesn't have to stand on end. The reason the Resurrection is the basis of the faith is that if you can believe that Christ came through a locked door, through that rock (molecular displacement meaning nothing, or the putting them back together again); and if you can believe that the Life that raised up Jesus from the dead, took His regenerated body through a locked door, through the rock, and ascending off into the blue occurred, you aren't going to have any trouble taking the next step with your mind, that God can, through that same Word that raised up Christ from the dead, place a deposit of Himself in You.

Withdrawn when Adam sinned, barred by the barrier of our sins, walled away by the swords of the cherubim, God having no access to us without being inconsistent with Himself, by His own voluntary act broke the wall of partition between us that Ephesians talks about. He ripped it apart (symbolized by the veil torn from top to bottom when Christ died) that He might now, on the basis of Christ, send to us the deposit of His life.

And God places in you, the moment faith connects, a deposit of His life. And that Life in you makes you a dual creature; a new creation in Christ Jesus, placed in you, capable of affecting your whole being. You don't have to see radioactive material carried around to know your very cell structure will change. This is the reason I said earlier that I may be the only preacher on television (and now on shortwave radio world-wide) who really believes in the born-again experience.

God places a substance of Himself in you, and that new life in you comes as God's gift because of faith's connection - an act on the basis of God's Word, sustained with confidence that defies every circumstance, and wherever you're doing it, that keeps you in contact with God.

I cannot sever your relationship with God as long as faith is connecting. He places that unit of Himself in you, and left there long enough - more correctly said, maintained there long enough (because as the Hebrews letter said, you remain the house of God the same way you became the house of God, by continuing the faith connection), that spirit in you maintained will change you.

As the Bible says, that which is created of the spirit cannot sin; there is a new life in you incapable of sinning; there is an old life in you dominated by the desires of the flesh. Paul picks a wartime phrase, that these two are dug in like military trench warfare, for a fight to the finish. The outcome is pre-determined: let God's life stay in, the flesh will be displaced and the new life will bring forth fruit. You don't get the fruit of the spirit by will-power copying of the dead Law any more than you can get apples by shaking a tree. It comes from within; it is an out-growth.

Spirituality, by definition in the Greek, is the expression of the spirit. The spiritual person, by definition in the Greek, is the Spirit's person. When that power is in you, it will change you. You can't keep it from happening if it's there.

"Well, what if the surface portrayal of behavior shows that if it's there it ain't doing much?" You need to renew the connection. This is the tragedy of the Church (and I'm anticipating the teaching of the end of the fifth chapter and into the sixth chapter). The tragedy of the Church is, they do what's necessary as an act of faith to get the Spirit in, and then when they see the slow growth, particularly with the buzzards looking on, they panic and seek to pound it from the outside on, instead of reinvoking the steps that keep God's spirit there, renewed and outflowing.

How did you get the spirit in? A simple act. What did Paul say? "Christ is formed in your heart by faith." Christianity has always had a problem in the Grecian world over one thing, and that's Aristotle's logic: "A" cannot be "A" and "not A" at the same time, when the Christian faith starts out in defiance of Aristotle's logic by saying in Christ (in the incarnation) you have "A" and "not A" all the time, in every way. He's man and not man at the same time, He's God and not God at the same time, all the time, everywhere, in every way.

And the deepest truths that Jesus teaches are paradoxical truths: you go up by going down. You don't go up because you went down in order to go up, you go up by going down - concomitant, simultaneous, paradoxical happening. You don't even think about going up. You go down, God puts you up. You get by giving. You live by dying; you become first by being last; you become great by being least. Paradoxes. Aristotelian logic confuses it and tries to make it logical when it's a paradox.

Likewise, the confusion of the Church when it wedded itself to Greek philosophy is they have forgotten that you become righteous by not trying to be. You get righteousness by seeking something else, or more accurately, activating another track. You become righteous by faithing. God does the "righteousing," we do the "faithing." When righteousness wanes, instead of beating yourself to death, find an object of faith in God's Word, get out on that front line with courage, and go for it! Forget about your righteousness. The more righteous you become, the less you'll be aware of it.

How many of you came to this church, probably because I said to you, "You will never be told by me you have to change!"? How many of you in this congregation hadn't been to church in five years until you came to this one? How many of you hadn't been to church in ten years? Hallelujah! Thank God we're saving souls and not transplanting saints. How many were told you didn't have to change, that we don't make you change as a criteria for coming here? How many of you are surprised, you changed? How many of you didn't try to change? How many of you changed in spite of yourself? You're a success.

As we close the fourth chapter of Galatians, Paul compares those who go back to Sinai and pull the Law off that hill, and come to some new Jerusalem as the interpretive center, and from that new Jerusalem begin to lay the Law on you as an added necessity of being a Christian, Paul compares that to Abraham going into the tent and fornicating with Hagar. He says Hagar is Sinai, and Sinai is "new Jerusalems" which are now, and they produce children of bondage.

And he then says we are the "children of the free" as Isaac was, born of faith in the promise of God, a miracle that cannot be done by human effort, and then he draws that conclusion that no church has been able to live with to the present day: Then as now, the children of bondage, who have resurrected off Sinai new rules to add to your relationship to God, will persecute the children of the free. They cannot live in the same house together.

From the Textus Receptus to the present, every major accepted text in the Greek adds the first verse of the fifth chapter to the last of the fourth chapter, because it is the conclusion, saying, "What shall we do, then, to these persecutors of the free?"

Throw them out! Separate from them! Because those who rely on works will continue to persecute, they cannot live in the same house together with those who derive righteousness from FAITH and are the children of the free (Isaac's).

Then Paul says, as the closing verse of the fourth chapter in the original manuscripts rather than the opening of the fifth, "Stand fast therefore in the liberty - or freedom - wherewith Christ has set us free."

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Now for something on the lighter, nostalgic side...

I thought I would post a few nuggets of Doc trivia, some of his wit and wisdom and various quotes gathered from all around the web. See if you remember some of these:

"Nicholson and Lips! That's all that movie was!"

"Titus angled up to the urinal, and all of a sudden these guys started eyein' him kinda funnily..."

"After a couple of whacks to the well-parted part of the behind, I'd say: "you ain't Dr Scott!""

"Where'd you get your degree from? A mail-order university?"

"My relatives always hated me, because they were dumb and I was smart"

"Play it again."

"When I yell I wanna be heard."

"It's too hot in here Joe."

"You ever imagine the Pope sittin on a toilet? That's right! Take the present Pope and sit him on a toilet. Ya see, popes don't sit on toilets. Angels come and delicately take 'those things' away."

"If God were to make a toilet talk, and you were to receive teachin' from that toilet, then you would have no choice but to get out your wallet and to flush it down that toilet."

"God's not hung up on piddlin' sins."

"The problem is that some people go overboard and read more into the Pyramid than the Pyramid allows."

"And Noah was lyin' there, naked and drunk, for all to BEHOLD!"

"If I had a dog as ugly as her, I'd shave its ass and teach it to walk backwards."

"Blow the damn speakers out Joe! And blow 'em out good!"

"Jimmy Swaggart's a jerk. I should add another word there but I'll just leave it at that."

"For it was the time of the King's castration, and all the counts and no-accounts came to see the last of the King's balls."

"If Jake Hess claimed what Jesus claimed, I'd think Jake should be committed. But if Jake died and walked out of his tomb two days later, I'd take another look at Jake."

"We're gonna have a stare-down."

"It's like the guy who went to a doctor and said, 'Doc, I've got a ringin' in my ears.' The Doctor said, "don't answer it.""

"God is like a woman."

"I can't remember when I didn't go to the funeral of a relative and say: "praise God they're gone!"

"Some people are saying they're going to call the army out on me! Hey, I haven't declared war on the United States!"

"It gives one a great sense of power to light a match on top of Winston Churchill's head."

"And the King said: 'where's my daughter?' And they answered: 'she's in bed with tonsillitus." "That son-of-a-buck!" said the King. "Is he back in the kingdom again?!"

"And the King said "bleep!" and all the nobles drained their bowels, for the King's word was the law in those days."

"You know who that guy on the ship was? It was Albert Einstein!"

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Who can forget Doc's response to Jimmy Swaggart getting caught with a hooker (again) and the ensuing, escalating drama as the mid-80's televangelists sex and money scandal some referred to as 'PreacherGate' unfolded right before our eyes and ears every evening on the news. Particularly shocking was the hooker Swaggart was caught with who sold her story (and her absolutely tawdry, if not downright ugly photos) to Penthouse magazine. As the photos circulated throughout the media and her interviews hit prime time coverage, Doc's reaction to Jimmy Swaggart's taste in women and sex was classic Scott: He looked into the television cameras and said,  "...take a job in a mortuary!"  Give these a read:

"Ha ha! There's some funny people on the other end of this camera too... Anaheim, "if I had a dog as ugly as her, I'd shave its ass and teach it to walk backward!" Ha ha! I like that!

I laughed till I cried. You folks in Texas and New York that just joined us, you missed the previous hour when I gave a commentary on Do-bred Morphine, or whatever her name is, the New Orleans whore that's makin' a profit off of the best trick she ever had. I mean, boy, when you can sell the news for the money she's making. I said when I started, I'm tempted to start selling myself. If dingin' a preacher can make people that rich, as long as they'll share.

I don't have any use for Swaggart. His tastes in sex are both disgusting and laughable. But neither do I think that the whore who did him should be paraded in our living rooms and treated with respect. Neither do I have respect for her story, sold for monumental figures - figures better than hers - accompanied by a parade of disgusting crotch shots and lessons in dildo use, deserves any respect. I'll bet you I kept my audience for 45 minutes on the subject, and I didn't need some cheap whore sitting cross-legged in a miniskirt to do it.

Who's Donahue trying to kid? The media is exploiting this for dollars. Why is a 14 minute juvenile sex job by Jim Bakker in a motel room in Florida, and why is a 20 minute trip to a whore gonna make a body that can't even be airbrushed into beauty, something that sells to the American public? I mean, if being dinged by a preacher can do that for a worthless woman, they oughta commend preachers for dingin' em! I mean, that's almost equal to God creating the world. Bringing something out of nothing!

The hypocrisy of Penthouse magazine. To start an article, most of which is ugly crotch pictures, and I mean ugly, not just ugly, eugly, with a quotation from Christ. And they insult my intelligence, that I don't know that they're making a mockery of Christ, not believing one word he says, but pickin' this verse of scripture to rub it in our face, because stupid Swaggart had his brains where his genitals are.

I wanna be sure you hear what I'm saying and understand what I'm saying. Criticize him for his sexual taste, that's where it oughta begin. While at the same time, the magazine should criticize itself. I mean, it has set an all-time record of presenting the worst in female genitalia. The only thing it did for me was make me finally sympathize with gynecologists, because now I know that there must be something worse than I thought possible that they have to view once in a while.

To me, the worst sin Swaggart committed, next to his hypocrisy, was to pay twice for that. One trip he could be forgiven. Two! But to begin that article with a quote from Matthew 7. All Christianity and our Lord is being mocked. And I'm telling you about the article in such a way that anybody with intelligence would not waste their money, buy it, or look at it. My Lord, take a job in a mortuary! You'll see better than what you'll see in Penthouse!"

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Festival of Faith, June 1980 "Missing link doctor":

"I don't know whether to call him a bureaucrat or a whoopee Christian. It's the same way... all a whoopee Christian wants to do is dance, clap and be happy and if ya hit him on the head all he's gonna do is squawk. I don't know who did it, but somebody, I think it was one of the Lee College student singers said, call it a whoopee-crat. Before I knew it in my discussions, the bureaucrats had representatives of the Attorney General's office filing formal papers produced at taxpayer expense down in the LA federal and state courts complaining that I was denegrating them by representing them as mechanical monkey, windup, electric toys on TV... and I said, so be it. Since they recognize the resemblance, I'll go along with it.

And these monkeys became our Bureaucratic Monkey Band, it's the Festival Monkey Band. And when a bureaucrat performs or a civil servant performs in such a manner that he can only be adequately represented as the missing link, we give him a particular honor. I formed a university called CUSS-U University. CUSSU comes from Come On United States, Stand Up.

I invite all of you to become alumni. All you have to do is be sufficiently educated in police brutality and bureaucratic idiocy, to have had such exposure that you recognize it as such and you are graduated. We grant honorary degrees to particular abuses of civil power. This will be the only time we've granted 2 such degrees in the same night.

To officers Ryan and Valles... I'm gonna give them an honorary degree tonight. Dr. Gene Scott grants to officers Ryan and Valles this week's graduated Bureaucratic Monkey award, otherwise known as a graduated BM award. On behalf of CUSSU University, Dr. Gene Scott president confers upon you its most rankest honor... the MLD degree, Missing Link Doctor. This degree should be prized by you, framed and displayed prominently for all to see. It is based on your contribution to science by personifying the answer to a question baffling scientists for generations... you are, the missing link. Professor Darwin sends regrets from the grave that he did not live to see this day. However, in his absence on June 9, 1980 you were saluted on Dr. Gene Scott's network television series by the Festival Bureaucratic Monkey Band for at least one minute, to the rapt attention of hundreds of thousands of delighted listeners. You have earned this MLD degree by the distinguished actions described in the attached descriptions of your activities. The Festival Bureaucratic Monkey Band gave you its salute in recognition of your proof by your actions of their link to the human race, even though lowest of all human forms, namely a bureaucrat."

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The Doctor Is In, Jan. 5, 1985 "Oral Philosophy":

"Tulsa, Oklahoma... 'I'm the president of the Doctor Scott fan club here at Oral Roberts University.' [laughter from the Voices of Faith] "Well that oughta make Oral's day... 'We're a bunch of students that meet in a meeting room at the Oral Roberts University.' "Well, I used to meet in his horse barn when that place was bein' built. I'd see Oral in the morning in his hip-boots, wadin' thru the snow, comin' and lookin' for me. And we'd go over to the horse barn and philosophize."

'Doc we want to know if we had enough who support you if you'd come and speak at our chapel.' "You'd better ask Oral!" 'Also we heard that you assisted in setting up a curriculum at our university'... "I was the first consultant that ever came in there. I wrote the philosophy for the school at the outset...but I was aimin' people for eternity. I don't know what they're doin' now."

"I remember playin' golf with Oral Roberts... I was playin' out of his clubs, with his little pull cart. I always noticed, he'd hit the ball and then he'd start walkin', like he used to come out from behind the curtain. And he'd leave that golf club and the cart there. Well you know, I was a guest so I pulled it the first hole... the second hole, we teed off and Oral starts swingin' off down the fairway leavin' the golf cart sittin' there, for me to truck along and pull it. Finally, I think it was a 5 par, I hit my ball and just took off walkin'!"

[reading another message]: 'I'm the lady from Dallas who's mentioned my cousins are Assemblies of God and Church of God preachers. I was telling them about an incident the other evening and used the word damn. They almost died. My cousin said, couldn't you have expressed yourself without using that terrible word? I looked him in the eye and said, Hell no! [Voices of Faith applaud] 'His reaction was, You must still be listenin' to Gene Scott!'

"Bless those Assemblies of God folks' hearts. They wouldn't have been the fastest growin' denomination in the world if I hadn't been the research director on their Committee on Advance. They owe me somethin', at the very least they oughta quit criticizin' me. It took a man who knows how to say hell and damn to tell 'em how to grow!"

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The Doctor Is In, Jan 8 1985 "17,000 Elephants":

"The minute I sit down and tell ya we got a budget problem, that if you think it's hard for you, you oughta sit in my chair! Satan never fights me! I walk in here with 17,000 elephants on my shoulder! 'cause I'm not raisin' money the way the rest of these shysters do it. I'm fightin' a life and death battle. And instead of bein' a help, all ya do is dump some more dung... you don't even dump the elephants, you dump what comes out of 'em on me."

"Now, I've told my Voices of Faith to put 'em under the phone. There's a time and a place for all things. Can we get it in our heads, the people that I teach, that when money's the subject, STAY ON THE DAMN SUBJECT! I'm not interested in the rest of the crap. And you all know I'm right. All I've had tonight is a bunch of stupidity dumped on me. And if I lose you over it 'cause you're not man enough to take correction... goodbye! Otherwise grow up and kiss the paddle and apologize and get on with the job that's in front of us."

"I'm not in a popularity contest... I'M IN A WAR! Tryin' to get some people to understand how to fight the Devil. Now keep your crap to yourself tonight! What can I do tonight about a bloomin' PBS program that's full of lies...when I'm sittin' here live... except destroy what we came here to do. Why don't ya get smart, instead of bein' a willin' instrument of the Devil!"

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Festival of Faith, June 7, 1980 "Pulled over like a pimp!":

"My secretary and I were returning back up Glendale Avenue. Officer Johnston swung in behind us, pulled us over after a few minutes. I got out and said, 'What's the problem officer?' He said, 'Get back in your car.' So I stood at the back of the limousine. He got out and starts walkin' up to the driver, my secretary, and I say 'What's the problem officer?' He says, 'My discussion and my problem is with the driver of this automobile, not with you.' I said this car is owned by Faith Center and I'm the pastor of the church.

Continuing to ignore me he said to my secretary, 'Have you got your license?' She showed him the license, which was in good order. He said he wanted the registration... I said, 'The car is gifted to a church a week ago, the registration's on the windshield there.' Three consecutive times he asked my secretary, 'Have you been drinking?' I said, 'Good Lord no, I'm a pastor of a church, I just told ya that.' Three times he repeated the question and each time she said no.

He walked around with his little flashlight, looked at the registration, came back around and I said, 'What's the problem?' He said, 'Erratic driving, going too slow and weaving.' I said, 'Aw hogwash.' Then he said apologetically, 'Maybe it's because the car is big and it's new and you've only had it a week.' I I said, 'My name is Pastor Gene Scott, what's yours?' He said, 'Johnston... what church?' I says, 'Faith Center...the big church 'cross from Forest Lawn Been 33 years in town.' He says, 'Who gave the car?' I said, 'I don't know to tell ya the truth... a lady up north.' He says, 'Somethin' else kinda contribution isn't it?' I says, 'Yeah, it's a good church.' Then he left.

I called Ed Masry and said, 'Will you tell the sergeant?' I'm not dumb... here's a big, stretch, silver limousine he hasn't seen before... at 2:30 in the morning and I'm havin' to be pulled over like I'm a pimp or a rock group... it's pulled over 'cause he wanted to look around in it, thinkin' he was gonna make a drug bust. And when I tell him I'm pastor of a church that sits on a corner for 33 years, he oughta have enough brains to check that out first before he starts askin' my secretary if she's drunk. And I said to Ed Masry, 'Will you get on the phone with the sergeant and tell them to do their make on the car I'm drivin?'... 'cause I don't wanna hafta go up and down the streets of Glendale with every curious cop actin' like a jackass ever time I turn a corner!"

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THE RESURRECTION by Dr. w. euGENE SCOTT Ph.D., Stanford University
Category: Religion and Philosophy

THE RESURRECTION

by Dr. W. euGENE SCOTT, Ph.D., Stanford University

Preached at the Los Angeles University Cathedral.

I lost my faith, in college. I lost it because of a subtle psychological pressure. It was all right to believe in Jesus as a "good and wise" teacher, and elevate Him on an equal plane with Mohammed, who founded the Islamic faith, with Gautama Buddha, who was a prince of India and founded Buddhism, with Confucius of China (more of a political philosopher, really) whose sayings affect so much of that portion of the world – in short, with any respectable founder of a religion.

I could put Jesus in that category, dis-pense with Him as a "good and wise teacher,"­­­ be accepted and get my intellectual wings.  But to hold to the belief that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and thus super-natural was simply not acceptable. Parenthetically, I might comment that there is a current hour-long advertisement on television for tape sales, telling you the origin of all religions.

It starts in Egypt, but they never go to Sumer where the religions started that flowed to Egypt (and they never got to Babylon). Still, there is no one with any sense that denies the influence of Egypt on both the Hebrews and the Greeks. Cyrus Gordon settled that.

But in this ad some portly little guy sits there, and some suave, slick-coifed tamed TV evangelist-looking guy sits there, and they tell you how all religions started, and then they make an oblique reference to the 16 crucified saviors – which can't be found in the implica-tion of the analogy drawn.

It's just another example of the current "ecumenical approach to religion" – the reli-gion of no religion (as it was called by one of my professors in Comparative Religion at Stanford) because all religions (they say) have "the same root." That approach came at me, persuasively suggesting that I was not intelligent until I graduate from this "primi-tive" attitude toward Christ as the super-natural, divine Son of God and instead accept Him as but another expression, another founder, in the stream of common religious-ness; thus reduced to simply a "good and wise teacher."

The only problem with the intellectual substitute for a faith in a supernatural Christ, namely just a "good and wise teacher," is that He can't be either one unless He is both.

To be good, you have to tell what's true. You can be insane, you can be a nut, and honestly believe something that's dead wrong, and be good – but not wise. To be wise, you've got to be right; to be good, you've got to be honest, and "their" Jesus could be good but not wise, wise but not good, but definitely not both. Why?

In any source that you have for Jesus in history, if you are going to call him good and wise, you are going to go to his sayings and you are going to go to his actions. I don't restrict the source to the Gospels, even though that is where most of the opponents of a supernatural Christ go as they hunt and peck and pull certain verses out to illustrate his life and sayings, even highlighting them in red on television.

You can go behind the Gospels. There is a hypothetical "Q" document_ One of the early church fathers said that Matthew wrote down the sayings of Christ as he traveled with Him, not in Greek but in his native language, Aramaic. We know his Gospel was written most likely at Antioch and written in Greek. This "Sayings of Jesus," written in Aramaic, may have been a common source for the Gospels. Those who can read Greek see changes in style in sections of the Gospels, and can reconstruct these sections to propose a source used by all three of the Synoptic Gospel writers, Matthew, Mark and Luke (particularly Matthew and Luke).

Most modern scholars regard Mark as written first, because we can see again in the change of style when Matthew and Luke copy Mark. The most persuasive "common source" behind the Synoptic Gospels is called the hypothetical "Q" Document (from the German word for "source"). You can even go to the ancient songs, the earliest fragments. Still, wherever you encounter Jesus doing something or saying something, attached to every one of those records will be a saying by Christ or a projection of a self-image that He has of Himself that precludes calling Him "good and wise" because you will find one or more of the following in every source:

1. He thought he was perfect.

It doesn't matter whether he was, he thought he was. Carlysle says the greatest of all sins is to be conscious of none. There's nothing as despicable as a person who thinks he's never made a mistake. That conscious, self-righteous, perfectionist image is not something we respond to, because the wis-dom of mankind combines in the knowledge that nobody's perfect.

Now the issue is not whether Jesus was perfect; we just don't make saints of people who think they're perfect. The record of people used by God seeing themselves as not perfect goes throughout the whole Old Testa-ment – "I am not worthy of the least of Thy mercies – Who am I that I should lead forth the children of Israel? – I am but a child. I cannot speak."

Always the criterion of acceptance by God and acceptance by man is that conscious atti-tude of imperfection. Holy men are aware of the distance they are from God. There was only one man in the whole kingdom who saw God; in the year King Uzziah died, Isaiah was the only man who saw God sitting on a throne high and lifted up – that means he was above everybody. His first words were: "Woe is me; I am undone."

We just don't make saints of people who think they're perfect – but Jesus thought he was. Everywhere you meet him, he projects that. He judges other people: "whitened sepulchers;" "strain out a gnat and swallow a camel." He looks at the most righteous people of the day and puts them down. The reason that no man ought to judge, and anyone who is a judge should have this sensi-tive conscience, is that it's hard to judge your fellow man because we know way down deep we have the same kinds of faults.

But Jesus never had any sense of imper-fection. He changed the Law, saying, "You have heard it said unto you, but behold I say," and then, self-righteously with a con­sciousness of moral perfection, says, "Think not that I have come to destroy the Law. I am come to fulfill it."

There is one possible exception to that, when the rich young ruler came to him and said, "Good Master." He stopped him and said, "Why callest thou me good?" Those that want to talk about Jesus not thinking he was perfect point to that verse; they miss the rest of it, because Jesus said to him, "Wait a minute. Don't come and call me good rabbi, good teacher. If you are going to call me good, also recognize that only God can be good, so don't tap the appellation on to me without recognizing that I am also God."

He had that sense of moral perfection; no sense of a moral inadequacy is ever exhibited anywhere in his behavior.

2.   He seated all authority in himself.

He even said he had all authority: "You build on what I say, you build on a rock. You build on anything else, you build on sand. All authority in heaven and earth is given to me."

Again to point to the other illustration used, He said concerning the law (genera-tions of approval had been placed on it): "You have heard it said unto you, but behold I say..." He pronounced judgment without a flicker.

Now, we don't make saints of people like that. We ask the criteria, "On what do you base this authority?" He based it on himself: "Behold, I say unto you..."

3.   He put himself at the center of the Religious Universe.

He went further and put himself at the center of the religious universe. Jesus didn't come preaching a doctrine or a truth apart from himself. He said, "I'm the way. I'm the truth. I'm the life. By me if any man enter in... I am the door of the sheepfold. He that hateth not father, mother, wife, children, brother, sister, yea, and his own life also, taketh up his cross and come after me, cannot be My disciple." He made your rela-tionship with him, putting him the center of the religious universe, the determinative of all religious benefits.

4.   He talked of the Eternal from the in-side.

There is a certain frame-of-reference of familiarity with your home. For example, I may matter-of-factly say, "The couch in my office at home is brown. You don't ask, "How do you know?" We speak of home with "inside knowledge" and it comes across that way. We don't argue; we expect to be believed. That's the frame-of-reference Jesus projects when he talks about eternity. Matter-of-factly, he says, "I'm going back. I'm going to prepare a mansion for you. And after a while, I’ll come back and get you and take you there."

He says again, matter-of-factly: "Before Abraham, I was." Or, again, "I saw Satan cast down." Or, again, "There is joy in heaven by the angels when a sinner repents." He projected and would have us believe he had "inside knowledge" of eternity and pre-earthly existence before and after "inside" the heavens with God.

5.   He would die, a ransom.

He said something's wrong with the whole world that could only be set right by him dying, a "ransom" in the context where his hearers knew exactly what a ransom was. The ransom was what you paid to restore a lost inheritance, to deliver someone destined to death because of their error. It was the price paid to redeem from the consequences of falling short, doing something wrong, losing an inheritance – and the ransom restored you to that which had been lost. He said the whole world was lost, and he came to die and pay the price of ransom, to redeem them.

6.   He would raise again.

He said he would raise again (there was more than that, but I'm choosing very selectively just a few), that when he died, he would raise from the dead.

Now, if I, the Pastor, walked up to the podium at the Cathedral and picked up the microphone and said "All authority in heaven and earth is given unto me," you would think, maybe Pastor means he's going to quote, "that into my hands has been delivered this word of God to preach with authority." So you might check that one off, that maybe this is the Pastor emphasizing the authority of the Word that he is reading from.

But if then I went on and said, as though talking to God: "Here I am, Father. I have done all you sent me to do. There are no flaws in me, no imperfections. The law doesn't bother me, I have fulfilled it," and started claiming a perfection like Jesus did, you would start backing up and start looking with sympathy toward Mrs. Scott. And if I further went on to say, "Your eternal destiny is dependent upon putting me in the center of your life and making me your master," by then I would have been interrupted or viewed as "off my rocker." I don't think I would have even gotten to what I didn't include here, that I would have you think that I was a denizen of eternity.

And what if I were to stand up here and say, not in spiritual terms but expecting to be believed? – "Before Abraham was I was. You know, that guy that came out of Ur; I was there. I saw Satan when he was cast out before Adam was ever born."

And then I would talk about heaven with a familiarity with which we talk about our homes. If I tell you the couch in my home is beige, and you say, "How do you know?," I'm going to reply, "Because I live there!" But I'm claiming that kind of familiarity with heaven! You put people in a nut house that talk like that! And then if I would say that I was somehow a ransom for the world, then, someone help my wife lay hands on me before I'm a "goner."

Will you please stop to realize that this proclaimer of impossible things about himself is the only kind of Christ who walked around on the stage of history and is the only one you can find in the sources. You don't find other religious founders doing or saying these things that Jesus said! Buddha never thought he was perfect; he struggled with the essence of tanya, which was their meaning for that corrupt desire that produces sin. He sought the way of the sensual release; he sought the way of the aesthetic yogi, and neither one worked. He came to the eight-fold path that brought him into a trance-like state where he lost conscious identity with this life, called nirvana. And when he came out of that state, he offered those who followed him the eight-fold path, and all he would say is, "It worked for me. Try it; it will work for you."

He never thought all authority was seated in him. Instead, he told his disciples (and it's part of their tri-part basket of scriptures) that he wasn't worthy to lead them. All he left them was the way that worked for him. No assumption of authority seated in him. He never thought he was the center of the religious universe. "The Way" worked, his eight-fold path. Same with all the others.

Mohammed never thought he was perfect. He was God's – Allah's – prophet. He had visions of eternity that impressed the desert man, but he never claimed to have been there. He never died a ransom for anybody. He had a criteria for authority: God revealed it to him in a vision. Jesus never pointed to a vision like the prophet who would say, "The Lord said..." Jesus said, "I say..." Confucius did a logical analysis of society, and he point-ed to that external analysis as his authority.

None of the other leaders made them-selves the center of the religious universe, seated authority in themselves, had a con-sciousness of perfection about themselves, claimed an identity with eternity before and after their temporary stay here on earth. None of these traits attached to or are claimed by the other respected founders of a religion. That's why you can respect them as "founders."

With Jesus, you've got what C. S. Lewis called the "startling alternate." Either He thought these things were true, but was too stupid to know it's impossible for a man to make these claims, and thus he could not be wise, or he was wise in knowing these things weren't true, but was capable of duping his followers because of self-serving motives into believing that about him, and that makes him not good. The conclusion is, that those who say he was a "good and wise teacher" reveal they have never really taken the time to en-counter the only Christ that ever walked the stage of history.

You must either view Christ as one who considered himself of the order of a poached egg, or you take him for what he says he is, and if He is God, then He is perfect, and authority does rest in Him, and He is the center of the religious universe, and He did have the qualities necessary to die as a ransom for the whole world. He did have a knowledge of eternity, and He will (and did) rise again.

You can't put Jesus in the "good and wise" bland teacher package and forget about Him. He is either a nut or a fake, or He is what He claimed to be.

Well, when I came to that crossroad, I decided I would settle it for myself. The issue revolves around this fact of history. Jesus said, to some who wanted a sign, "I'll give you one." There's only one guaranteed sign on which faith can be built. God has at times gone beyond this guarantee, but the only sign that God guaranteed to vindicate His truth was the sign of Jonah, interpreted by Jesus to be the death and the resurrection of Christ.

At one point in the vast flow of history, a FACT emerges. God deigned to move into this tent of human flesh, fulfill the law that it might become incarnate, chose then to die in our place as the price of redemption, namely the fulfilled law that He might raise again and adopt us into a family with His new life without the burden of the law, that was but a school teacher to teach us our need of God's delivering power.

That He moved onto the stage of history is the claim of Christianity, and He vindicat-ed Himself with a FACT that can be analyzed.

Now it is a FACT there is no such thing as historic certainty. I learned that while doing my undergraduate major in history. "Historic Certainty" means every conceivable piece of evidence is there. That which you can conceive as possible evidence must be there to have historic certainty. The moment an event is past, and no more, you have lost the eyewitness ability to see it. Cameras  help, but there is an element gone, so all historic certainty by definition is relative. All you can hope for is psychological certainty, where exposure to the relevant facts of history that are available produces a reaction psychologically, and that reaction is impossi-ble not to have.

Any smart attorney knows that in a court-room, there isn't an attorney that says some-thing and the judge rebukes him, that the attorney knows before he said it that he shouldn't have said it; he wants the jury to hear it. And the judge bawls out the attorney, and he says, "Yes, your honor," and plays his little meek role. He knows exactly what he is doing. And then the judge pontifically looks over at the jury and says, "Discard that from your consideration." Okay, BANG! That's about the only way you can discard it; it's in there. And you see and hear and feel, and whatever else the evidence, you still have a reaction.

God vindicated His Son by the Resurrection.

Paul comes to Mars Hill; the philosophers are gathered there trying to consider all the gods, so worried they will miss one that they have a monument to the Unknown God. He seizes on that as a lever to talk about Christ. He says, "I'll tell you who the Unknown God is," and preaches Christ, whom he said God ordained by the resurrection. Paul said if there is no resurrection, our faith is vain, and we are found false witnesses of God, as we have testified of Him that He raised up the Christ.

The first message of the church was the one Peter preached on the day of Pentecost, "This Jesus whom ye know..." And he named the fact that they knew Him crucified; that they also knew. Then he testified of that which they didn't know, "This Jesus hath God raised up of whom we all are witnesses," and he introduced that vindicating fact. Paul says in one of his speeches, "He was seen and He was seen," and he catalogues the witnesses and comes to the cluster he says, "...to above five hundred brethren at once."

In those days, you could assemble eyewit-nesses; not today. But like any other historic fact, from who wrote Shakespeare to Julius Caesar's existence, you can look for the FACT of history on which Christianity is based, namely:

Jesus came out of the tomb.

And I will say, to set the frame, that if any person listening came in to the Cathedral making the claims Jesus made about them-selves, I would offer the suggestion that they should submit to psychoanalysis and go to a hospital – unless I could see a twinkle in their eyes, that they were putting me on – because no mortal man can make these claims. But if with the claims that person said, "Slay me and in three days I'll come out of the tomb and sail off into the blue," and three days later that same person came out of the tomb and sailed off into the blue, I'd take another look at the one making the claims. I don't need anything else as a basis for my faith; I don't need all the fancy philosophic trinitari-an doctrines. This resurrected one, if it happened, is my starting point for a personal and real God.

If I can find on the stage of history the One whose words I can spend my life resear-ching, who was perfect, the center of all authority, the center of the religious universe, and all of these things, including having redeemed me, raised and prepared mansions in eternity, that's all the God I need. I start right there.

THE ISSUE IS: DID HE COME OUT

OF THE TOMB?

You won't settle that by thinking about it; you research it. Now, to research anything you have to get a foundation in facts. Most people are fuzzy-minded; they argue a resur-rection didn't occur because it can't occur, and anybody who says it did must be lying. Any other fact, you research it.

If you're going to ask, "Did Scott preach this message within an hour on this specific Sunday?" you've got to assume that I was here and that I preached at all. You've got to assume that the Cathedral exists. You've got to assume that that Sunday came and went. We don't have to discuss that; we take those facts for granted when determining if the message was less than an hour.

Before we argue whether I preached an hour (or more), let's at least agree that I preached. You don't have to agree whether it was good or bad, but that I was here and my mouth moved and said things. That's known as the frame-of-reference – what's taken for granted.

And if someone says "Wow, I don't believe you were there!," then stop with debating clocks. It's much easier to prove I was here than to prove how long I preached, because you don't yet know when I started. Was it the preliminary remarks? Was it the first mark on the board? That's more debat-able, but to prove whether I was here at all or not, that's a little easier.

You need to approach the Resurrection the same way. There are certain facts that have to be assumed before you discuss the Resurrection. One is, did Jesus live at all? Why are we talking about whether He raised if we don't believe He lived? There was a time that was debated; not much anymore. For purposes of today and any meaningful discussion of the Resurrection, you've got to at least assume:

Fact 1. That Jesus lived.

If you don't believe that... Do you agree that it's probably easier to prove that He lived somewhere sometime than that He died and rose again? Do you agree with that? So give me the easier task. "Well, I'm not sure He lived, so don't give me that Resurrection bit." I have more time to do other things than that. Don't get into any argument about the Resurrection with somebody who doesn't believe Jesus lived. That's easy to prove; until that's crossed, don't get to the next one:

Fact 2. That He was crucified at the insti-gation of certain Jewish religious leaders in Jerusalem. Roman authorities ordered and carried out the execution.

At the instigation of certain Jewish leaders (not all the Jews, they weren't to blame for that, His Disciples were Jews, just certain Jewish leaders), the Romans carried out the execution. Unless you believe that, there's no sense going to the Resurrection. The crucifixion's much easier to prove than the Resurrection.

Fact 3. That He was considered dead.

Notice I say considered dead, because a few people believe He recovered from the grave – resuscitated. He was considered dead: pierced with a sword, taken down from the cross, taken to a grave. Of course, one theo-rist has come up with a concoction that Jesus practiced this, and had people take Him to the grave knowing He was going to come out. He practiced on Lazarus first (so goes the theory) but of course Lazarus was stinking before He started practicing. Some of the theories stretch the brain more than just accepting the Resurrection, but at least He was considered dead. If you don't believe that, discussing the Resurrection is prema-ture.

Fact 4. He was buried in a known, acces-sible tomb.

People of that day, and particularly the Jewish and Roman leaders who participated in the crucifixion events, knew where the tomb was and could get to it. You couldn't get into it because of the rock and guards, but the tomb's location was known and accessible.

Fact 5. He was then preached raised.

I'm at this point not saying He raised, but He was preached raised, that the tomb was empty, and that Jesus ascended. It's impor-tant to remember that the whole preachment included: empty tomb; raised from the dead; and ascending into heaven. All three of those claims were preached.

Now, if you don't believe He was preached with all those claims, I'm doing it today: But He was preached early on and in the same city where He was killed! If you don't believe that (that this series of claims were preached), that's easier to prove than the Resurrection.

Fact 6. The Jewish leaders who instigated the crucifixion were more interested in disproving His Resurrection than we would be today.

Common sense will tell you the Jewish leaders who instigated the crucifixion had more interest in disproving the Resurrection than someone 2,000 years removed, consid-ering it intellectually with a lot of skepticism mixed in, because the Jewish leaders' reputa-tions and bread and butter and lives were at stake. If they instigated His crucifixion, accus-ing Him of trying to set up a kingdom and accusing Him of blasphemy, and then all of a sudden it's true that He raised from the dead, they are going to be looking for new jobs. So common sense says they had more psychological interest in disproving the theo-ry, and would put themselves out a little more than most people on an Easter Sunday would.

Fact 7. The Disciples were persecuted be-cause of preaching the claims of His Resurrection.

They were horribly persecuted because of this preaching, starting with those Jewish leaders who first persecuted them – first they called them liars, then said they stole the body away. The whole Book of Acts tells of the Disciples' persecution for preaching the Resurrection.

Later, centuries later, Christians in gen-eral became a target for the evils in the Roman Empire and became scapegoats, and were punished for other reasons, but every record agrees that the earliest persecutions would have stopped immediately if the Disci-ples had quit preaching this Resurrection message, and the Ascension of Jesus. That's why they were persecuted, because the Jewish leaders had their reputations at stake. Thus,

Fact 8. The tomb was empty.

All this leads to the fact, common sense says, if the Jewish leaders who instigated the crucifixion (Fact 2), having the extra interest because their livelihood was at stake (Fact 6); and if He was buried in a known, accessible tomb (Fact 4), they would have gone immedi-ately to that tomb and discovered the body. Therefore, it is axiomatic that the tomb was empty.

The tomb became meaningless because it was empty! Centuries went by and the tomb was lost to history, because there was no body in it! Then, when the "relic period" began to grow, people got interested in his tomb, in which there had been no interest be-cause there was no body in it, and tried to find it.

And the whole church world still fights today over the classical site of the ancient historic churches, and Gordon's tomb that most of the Protestants identify with, just off from the bus station below the escarpment of a rock called "Golgotha" that has an Arab cemetery on top. The fight occurred because the tomb was lost to history; there was no body in it.

Now, these facts are easier to demonstrate than the Resurrection, but unless these facts are accepted, you can't deal with all the theories about the Resurrection. For exam-ple, the preaching has been so effective that all through the centuries people have come up with theories to explain it. Now, the reason that I do this every Easter is that I try to demonstrate that you don't have to park your brains at the door of the church when you come in, intelligent analysis is in order.

You don't just make people believe, but if you expose yourself to evidence, something happens inside and there will be a psychological reaction. My quarrel with people who deny the Resurrection and live a life style that pays no attention to it, is that I can ask them 15 questions and find they haven't spent 15 hours of their life looking at evidence for it.

If the Resurrection is true, this is the center of the universe. If the Resurrection is true, this is the central fact of history. You have to be a fool among all fools of mankind to think it's not worth at least 30 hours of study in your whole life. Furthermore, there are many intelligent people in the world who have looked and come away convinced. That's why I am doing this. Because the Disciples' preachments are so sincere in their nature, all kinds of theories have been broached to explain their belief, but the theories won't fly if you assume the eight facts previously stated.

Theory 1. The Disciples stole the body.

Theory 2. The Jewish leaders stole it.

Theory 3. The Roman leaders stole it.

Theory 4. The women went to the wrong tomb.

You know, it was dark and they got lost like "women-walkers" – they didn't have women drivers, but women walkers. They went to the wrong tomb, and they believed He rose, and I mean, they ran screaming and crying out of the garden, "We went and He wasn't there!" They went to the wrong tomb; they went to an empty one waiting for some-body else.

Theory 5. It was all hallucinations.

Glorified day dreams. They were sincere; they believed that this happened because they had all these hallucinations.

Theory 6. Resuscitation theory.

He was crucified and He was considered dead, and He was buried in a known tomb, but He wasn't dead, and in the coolness of the tomb He revived and came out wrapped in the grave clothes and, thank God, the guards were asleep, and He pushed that rock out of the way – and here comes Franken-stein!

Theory 7. The Disciples lied.

They made the whole thing up. They'd bet on the wrong horse and they just couldn't live with it so they made up this whole story and it took them seven weeks to figure it out, and then they told it.

Theory 8. IT'S ALL TRUE.

They are telling exactly what they experi-enced and what they saw. Now, just as you got the "startling alternate" when you consid-er the only Jesus in history, that He's either a madman, a nut, a faker, or He's what He said He was, and that requires a definition of divinity, you have a "startling alternate" here.

All these theories sound good in isolation. Even the first theory (the Disciples stole the body), which the Jewish leaders themselves concocted. But this theory on its face forces you to indict the Disciples as liars. You are thus again forced to a "startling alternate."

I hate – I've always hated it when I was doing my degree in history – I hate a self-righteous objective historian: "I'm objective; I take no opinion." There's no such thing as a knowledgeable person that doesn't have an opinion. Knowledge forces an opinion; no exposure to facts keeps you neutral. Know-ledge forces an opinion, and when you study the facts about Jesus listed above, there are only two options allowed. Either the Disci-ples lied or they honestly reported the truth. Let's examine each Theory and deduce the option:

1 They stole the body (Theory 1), then they obviously lied (Theory 7).

2. The Jewish leaders stole the body (Theo-ry 2)? These facts preclude that: they were more concerned than anyone to disprove the preachment (Fact 6), so why would they make the tomb empty? And if they had, they would have said, "Wait a minute; we took His body from the tomb." They couldn't even think of that story; they told the one about the Disciples (Theory 1), but even if that were tenable, the Disciples didn't preach just an empty tomb and simply the Resurrection. They preached a seen and living Jesus with whom they partook food; they preached the Ascension with equal vigor. So even if the Jewish leaders' taking the body would explain the empty tomb, the Disciples are still telling the add-ons of the encounters with the Resurrected body and the Ascension, so they have expanded and "made up" a lot of the story – in other words, they still lied.

3. Roman leaders took the body (Theory 3)? With the controversies in Jerusalem, with the contacts the Jewish leaders had with the Romans, enabling them to get the crucifixion done, don't you think they would have ex-posed that fact, that officials of the Roman government took the body? But even if that explains the empty tomb, it does not alleviate the Disciples' responsibility for preaching a Resurrected body that they had encounters with, and the Ascension, so they're still lying.

4. The women went to the wrong tomb (Theory 4)? It was a known accessible tomb (Fact 4). The Jewish leaders' interest (Fact 6) would have taken them to the known tomb, and all they had to do to explain the wrong tomb theory was go to the tomb where the body is – and they would have done it.

5. Hallucinations (Theory 5)? Well, the empty tomb (Fact 8) blasts that. If it had been just hallucinations, there would have been a body in the tomb. You have to couple it with spiriting the body away. So, they're still lying.

6. Resuscitation (Theory 6)? Well, that Frankenstein coming out of the tomb doesn't quite measure up to the good Jesus that was preached. It might explain the empty tomb, but it doesn't explain the kind of Jesus that they had preached, doesn't explain the As-cension – they still made the rest of it up.

So no matter how you look at it, if you assume the eight facts which are much easier to demonstrate than the Resurrection, there are only two options, two conclusions, be-cause it boils down to the veracity of the witnesses. That's why I have no respect for those who deny the Resurrection and have not read the classic, Sherlock's Trial of the Witnesses. He postulated a courtroom scene where all the witnesses were gathered and subjected to the kind of evidence of an English court. Or they haven't read Who Moved the Stone? by an attorney who set out to disprove the Resurrection and ended up writing one of the most convincing proof arguments.

You are faced with a "startling alternate": either OPTION 1 (which is Theory 7): these Disciples made the story up to save face and the whole thing is a lie, or OPTION 2 (which is Theory 8): They're telling what they truly experienced as honest men.

Now, if you are having trouble distinguish-ing between "Facts," "Options" and "Theo-ries," let me make it clear: There are eight facts which reduce eight theories to only the startling alternate theories 7 and 8, which become the only two credible theories, thus the only two remaining options, "Theories" 7, they lied, or 8, they told the truth! And when we come to that point, the entire Christian faith revolves around this question: were these Disciples who were the witnesses honest men telling what they saw, or conspirators who concocted a lie to save face? There are four reasons why I cannot believe they were lying:

Reason 1. Cataclysmic change for the better on the part of the witnesses.

Everybody agrees Peter was unstable, and even when with a group he could not be counted on to stand. He fled in fear and he denied his Lord, he was always in trouble be-cause of his extremes and his instability. After the Resurrection, he is the man that preaches to a mocking mob, he fulfills his destiny to become the Rock, he dies with courage requesting that he be turned upside down because he is not worthy to die in the position of his Master – a cataclysmic change that can be identified to a point in history, and that point in history is where they began to tell this story of the Resurrection.

John? He was self-centered to the extreme. He was one of the brothers called "Sons of Thunder." He wanted to call fire down from heaven on everyone that opposed him. He and his brother used their mother to seek the best seat in the kingdom. After they began to tell this Resurrection story, every scholar agrees John was a changed man. Instead of a "Son of Thunder," he's almost wimpish in his never-failing expression of love. He is known as the "Apostle of Love" – a total cataclysmic change.

Thomas is consistently a doubter: from start to finish, he's a doubter. He's a realist; he questions everything. When Jesus is going to go through Samaria and faces death, and tells His Disciples about it, Thomas then says, "Let us also go, that we may die with Him." That's courage, but he thought Jesus would actually die; that's a humanistic view.

When Jesus is discussing going away, building mansions in heaven, says, "Whither I go ye know, and the way ye know," all the rest of them are surely shouting about the mansions. Thomas is listening to every word. He says "We don't know where you are going; how can we know the way" Now that's a consistent thumbnail sketch of a personality trait.

Who is it that's doubting when the Resur-rection comes? Same guy. "I won't believe 'til I touch Him, put my hands in the marks of death." The moment arrives. Jesus is there and says to Thomas, "Behold my hands and my side." He says, "It is more blessed to believe without seeing." That is an axiomatic truth, but He did not condemn Thomas. He just stated that fact, and then He offered to submit to the test, which is what we are doing today. He said, "Behold my hands and my side." And Thomas cried, "My Lord and my God."

It is significant that in the most philoso-phic area of the world, where the Vedanta philosophies have produced Buddhism and the Eastern religions that flow out of it, it is Thomas that pierces the Himalayas to die a martyr near Madras, India, to be the herald of faith in the most challenging philosophic area of the world at that time, and never again does he waver an instant in faith – a total change from a consistent doubter to an unwavering "faither."

Now, you can say, a crisis will change people, but a lie will seldom change people for the better; they'll get worse. These men are cataclysmically changed for the better; I don't think that telling a lie would do that.

Reason 2. Indirect evidences and internal consistencies.

There are indirect evidences of truth. Mark wrote to Gentiles; you can count it in Mark's Gospel, he has Christ referring to Himself as "Son of Man" more often than any other Gospel. Count it yourself.

Now if he was a liar, knew he was lying, trying to perpetrate a fraud, why would he have Jesus refer to Himself with a phrase that suggests humanity when his purpose is to try to represent Jesus as the Son of God? If he's a liar, he'd just have Jesus refer to Him-self as the Son of God. But ironically, as God's little hidden evidences of honesty, in Mark's Gospel, written to Gentiles, designed

to prove that Jesus was the Son of God, he had Jesus refer to Himself as the Son of Man more than any other Gospel.

Now, Jesus did refer to Himself as the "Son of Man" because Jesus was preaching to a Hebrew audience that read the Book of Enoch and read the Book of Daniel where the Son of Man was viewed as Messiah com-ing in clouds of glory to set up His kingdom. So it's quite proper for Jesus to refer to Himself as the Son of Man in a messiah mentality, but if you are writing to Gentiles who don't know anything about the Old Tes-tament, and trying to perpetrate a lie that Jesus is the Son of God, unless you're just basically honest and telling the truth, you wouldn't have Jesus say "Son of Man" as often. Why not change what He said to serve your purpose? Inherent honesty. I could give you a dozen of those, but that is what histo-rians call indirect evidence of honesty.

Let me give one more. In the New Tes-tament world, women were thought incapable of being a credible witness. The Disciples knew that, so why would they present women as the first witnesses of the Resurrection? If they were telling a lie, they would know that their world would discount women witnesses. Liars would have avoided recording women witnesses. More intrinsic evidence they were simply reporting what actually occurred.

The fact that the Disciples waited seven weeks is used by those who say they were lying as the time needed for them to cook up the lie. If they are smart enough to tell a lie of this nature, my judgment is, they would have figured that out. They waited seven weeks because Jesus told them to wait. That's the action of honest men, even though waiting that long hurts their story – if they were going to make up a lie.

Reason 3. Price paid.

You don't pay the price these men paid to tell a lie. All of them, save John, died a martyr's death: Bartholomew flayed to death with a whip in Armenia; Thomas pierced with a Brahmin sword; Peter crucified upside down, St. Andrew crucified on St. Andrew's 

cross (from which it gets its name); Luke hanged by idolatrous priests, Mark dragged to death in the streets of Alexandria. These men paid beyond human belief for their "lie."

Reason 4. They died alone.

St. Thomas Aquinas' great – greatest, I think – proof of the veracity of the Disciples and the Resurrection is that they died alone. Now, as I do every year when I finish this message, I can conceive of a group of men trying to save face, telling a story, having bet on the wrong man, crushed by His failure (as they would view it), trying to resurrect Him with a lie.

I can conceive of them staying together and group pressure holding together the consistencies of their lie, because they don't want to be the first one to break faith and rat on the others and collapse the whole thing.

Let's assume that Bobby Boyle and Jerry McIntyre and Richard Williams concocted this story. You don't have television, you don't have satellite, you don't have FAX, you don't have telephone, and as long as you stay together under great pressure, you don't want to be the one, Jerry, to let Richard and Bobby down.

But now separate you. You, Jerry, be Bartholomew in Armenia, and you, Bobby, be Thomas over in India. And Richard, you be Peter in Rome. You have lost contact with each other. You can't pick up a phone and call anybody; nobody knows where you are, and since you know you are telling a lie and you know you don't really expect the generations forever to believe it, and you, Jerry, in Armenia, are being flayed to death literally – that is, skinned with a whip, your skin peeled off of you – all you've got to do to get out is say, "It's all a lie," and "Forgive me; I'm leaving town."

Bobby wouldn't know it; Richard wouldn't know it. You could see them next time, exchanging stories together and saying, "Boy, I really tore them up there in Armenia. I told the story, and nobody could forget it the way I told it."  Bobby and Richard wouldn't know you lied.

You, Bobby, you're going to be pierced with a sword in India; you are never going to see Jerry or Richard again. All you have to do to get out of the pressure is say, "It's a lie."

You, Richard, you're off in Rome; you're a little more exposed, but with your life at stake, all you have to say is, "Sorry. Maybe I dreamed it," and wiggle out and head to France.

As Thomas Aquinas said, it is psychologi-cally inconceivable that these men, separated, each one paying the supreme price for their story and each one dying alone, that some one of the group wouldn't break away from his fellows and say, "Hey, it wasn't true!"

To die alone. And not one shred of evi-dence surviving 2,000 years of hard-looking critics, you will never find one record any where on the face of this earth where any one of these men ever wavered unto their terrible death in telling this story. Therefore, I came to the conclusion there's no way these men were lying. They were telling what they thought and experienced and saw as true.

I remember doing this with my professor Larry Thomas at Stanford, and he said to me, "Gene, I am convinced. These men believed what they were telling. Therefore, some one of these other eight facts must be wrong." Well, if you're honest and you say that, I've got you, because those other eight are a lot easier to demonstrate. What is the alterna-tive?

IT'S TRUE, AND HE CAME OUT OF THAT GRAVE.

Well, if that is true, then what? All the rest of this is true, and I have a starting point for a faith in a God eternal. And I then have crossed over that threshold where I can now comprehend what Christianity is, for if I can believe that Jesus Christ came through those grave clothes, through that rock, through that door, and sailed off in the blue, then molecu-lar displacement is nothing to Him – He can do it without creating an explosion. It is true that all things consist in Him, and He can control them.

Therefore, it's not difficult at all to be-lieve that that same substance of God, placed in Mary, came forth as Jesus of Nazareth through the Holy Spirit. God says He places that same God-substance in us when we trust Him. That is the true born-again experi-ence – a generator of life, a regeneration, a new creation that penetrates my cell structure and is placed in me as a gift from God when I connect by trusting His word.

That's the genesis of all Christianity, properly seen, that Christ is in us the hope of glory. I don't have to become some mystic or far-out freak to understand what Christianity is. I can now spend my life pursuing His words, including the authority He attaches to the Old Testament, and the promises that are written therein. And each time I grab hold of those and act on my belief, and sustain the action in confidence, that faith connection keeps in me a life substance the same as that which raised up Christ from the dead. That new life substance is as capable of changing my nature as radioactive material, invisible though it may be, can change your cell struc-ture as you hold it.

God puts a life in us capable of regenerat-ing, and that's why spirituality is the expres-sions of the spirit, and why righteousness is called the fruit of the spirit. It is that new life growing out through us which can only be maintained by faith in His word, but it was founded and based upon the solid rock of the provable quality of "He raised from the dead," and it gives me faith to believe that He will do the other thing He said, which is come again.

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