Fact: He is Risen

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And the text for the morning is going to be 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verses 12 to 23.
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1 Corinthians 15 verses 12 to 23.
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And I'd like to preface the reading of Scripture with a question.
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And I ask this question, I want to give a brief little introduction to the introduction.
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I actually asked this question to a group of about 100 and some odd teenagers this past Thursday.
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I had the opportunity to go and to speak at a Christian school.
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And while I was there giving the chapel service, I began the lesson with the same thing I'm going to ask you today, and that is this question.
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If someone were to ask you what is the most significant moment or the most significant event in all of human history, what would you say that it was? Some might say it was the dawn of man, when man came to be.
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That was the most significant event and everything else has paled in comparison since then.
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Others might argue that it was the invention of the modern technology and the advent of the modern age, when we broke the bonds of earth's gravity and sailed not even above the clouds, but above the very atmosphere and went out into space and went to the moon.
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That that was the most significant event in all of human history.
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As I was speaking to the teenagers, I said, I imagine some of you might think the most significant event in the history of man is the invention of the internet.
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When all of man's collective knowledge is placed into a storehouse, which is able to gather all of man's collective knowledge and wisdom in one place, and it's accessible through a simple search through a computer or a phone.
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And it's true that all of these things are significant.
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We can walk back through history and we can say it was significant when Gutenberg invented the printing press.
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That changed the world because up until that time, handwritten communication was all that was used, but then printed communication made mass publication a possibility.
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And there are so many things that we can look at and we should say, yes, that was a significant moment in human history.
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But I would argue that none of them is as significant as our subject for today.
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Because I believe, and my thesis for the morning, is that the most significant event in all of human history is the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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And that's why this talk, when I gave it at the school, was entitled, A Resurrection Worldview.
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But this morning I'm going to re-change the title a little.
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I thought about this on the way in.
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Even though it says A Resurrection Worldview in your handout, I'd like to simply call this, Fact.
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He is Risen.
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Fact.
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He is Risen.
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Josh McDowell is a pastor and a teacher, and he wrote a book called Evidence That Demands a Verdict.
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And in his writings he has written this.
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He said, Few people seem to realize that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the cornerstone to a worldview that provides the perspective to all of life.
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And basically what McDowell was saying is very simple.
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If we believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that has impact on everything else.
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That has impact on every area of life.
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If we deny the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that too has impact on every area of life.
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So, as a result of that, we can say the most significant event in all of human history is the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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Because it's either going to impact us toward Him, or if we reject it, it will impact us away from Him.
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And I believe the Apostle Paul says something very similar in 1 Corinthians 15.
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And if you have your Bibles open, we're going to read verses 12-22.
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He's talking to the Corinthians, and I know you guys know this because we've been studying 1 Corinthians as a church.
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The book of 1 Corinthians is written to a church that is dealing with a lot of misbehavior in the church.
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It's dealing with a divided church, a clique-based church, a church that's divided over all kinds of issues.
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They were prideful and they were arrogant.
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They thought they knew a lot more about the world than even it seems as God did.
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They believed their wisdom was higher than God's wisdom.
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And in this book, Paul challenges their seeming sense of spiritual pride and their sinful behavior that went along with it.
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And one of the things that marked some of the Corinthians was a denial of the resurrection from the dead.
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Some of them did not believe that there was a resurrection.
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And that's what Paul addresses in verse 12.
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He says, Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection from the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.
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And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.
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We are even found to be misrepresenting God because we testified about God that He raised Jesus from the dead.
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And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.
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Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
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And if in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.
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But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.
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For as by a man came death, by a man also has come the resurrection from the dead.
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For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.
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Now I want you to think for a minute about this passage because this passage always, and I've preached on it many times, I've preached on it many Resurrection Sundays, I've looked at this passage and every time I read it I see something and it just gets at my heart because at the heart of this passage you have to understand the objection.
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There are people in the Corinthian church who don't believe in a resurrection.
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You got to understand that.
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There are people in the church who don't believe there is life after death.
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There are people in the church who think when you die, that's it.
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When you're dead it's like the computer that just goes off and it's over.
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I want you to just imagine that for a minute.
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Why would you even come? Why would you even worship? Why would you even be here if you thought this life is all there is? Why would you even focus on God or anything if you thought this was it? And yet there were.
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There were people in Corinth who believed that death was the end.
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I want to ask you a question.
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Have you not seen in our day a rise in that thinking? Is there not in our day a rise in people who will go on television and with great confidence say death is the end, this life is all there is? YOLO, you only live once.
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Get all you can at this time and grab it all because you only go around this miracle, the miracle round once and so you better grab for all the gusto you can get while you're here.
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You've heard this, you've seen this undoubtedly.
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You've heard people say this.
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Beloved, this is nothing new.
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This has always been a fear of man.
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That death is actually the end.
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And at the time of the Corinthian church there were people in the church who believed that that was so.
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I would hope by the grace of God no one in our church would be so foolish as to think this life is all there is.
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And I don't want you to, if you do think that today I don't want you to think I'm calling you a fool in the conventional sense what I mean is that I want you to think about it from a biblical world view.
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If you're coming to church and you're worshipping Christ and you don't believe in a resurrection then you're worshipping a dead man.
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That's what Paul says.
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He says if we say there's no resurrection from the dead then not even Christ has been raised.
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You understand the logic, right? One has to proceed from the other.
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If we say there's no resurrection then Christ isn't raised.
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And if Christ isn't raised, what's the result of that? Your faith is useless, Paul says Futile in the ESV, it means useless.
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In vain is another biblical way of saying it.
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Your faith is in vain or futile or useless and you're still in your sins.
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If Christ died and didn't raise, there was no atonement.
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And if there was no atonement, you're still lost.
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And if you're still lost, you're still condemned.
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Cut off from God and separated from Him.
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Beloved, to say there's no resurrection is to say that Christianity is a farce.
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That's what Paul is saying.
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He said to say there's no resurrection is to say that Christianity makes those who believe it the most to be pitied.
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Think about that.
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Think about how Paul is using this language.
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He says, if the resurrection is fake you are pitiable.
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Shameful.
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I've heard people say this.
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I'd rather believe in God and be wrong than to not believe in God and be wrong.
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That's the philosopher's wager.
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Rather believe in God and be wrong than not believe in God and be wrong.
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And I understand the philosopher's wager but here's the deal.
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Number one, I'm not wrong, but that's not the point.
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The point of the wager is wrong.
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It would be a shame to believe in God all your life and be wrong.
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It'd be a pity to believe in a resurrection all your life and be wrong.
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So even though the philosopher's wager could be argued for from the sense of pure pragmatics that it's pragmatically more practical to believe in something in the hopes that it's true than to not believe in it and it be true but the reality that philosopher's principle lacks one important thing if you believe in God if you believe in the resurrection and it's not true, that's a shame.
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That's a pity.
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And you say, well I'm just going to die and not know about it.
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How do you know? See the whole idea behind that is we don't really have a faith we have a bet.
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I'm betting on what's right.
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Beloved, Paul didn't come to us with a bet.
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He didn't come to us with a wager.
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He came to us with a fact.
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He said, but in fact Jesus has been raised from the dead.
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And that's why I titled the message I retitled it, Fact He is Risen because according to the apostle Paul it is fact.
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It's not a wager.
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It's not a bet.
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I'm not holding up the best cards and hoping that I come out on top and I don't get messed up by the river.
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If anybody ever played Texas Hold'em, you'll know what that means.
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It's a little card joke, you know? We're not wagering here.
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We're trusting in something that is a fact of history.
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And here's the thing that's the way Paul treats it.
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That's the way all the writers of scripture treat it.
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Jesus Christ is risen and it's a fact of history.
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You say, how can we call it a fact of history? How could we say something so fantastic is a fact of history? I want to ask you a question.
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I asked this to the kids on Thursday.
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I said, how do you know anything from history? How do you know anything from history? How do you know Columbus sailed the world in 1492? How do you know that? How do you know the Eastern Orthodox Church split from the Roman Catholic Church in 1056? How do you know that? Maybe you didn't know, but they did.
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And how do we know? How do you know that in 325 all the leaders of the area churches gathered at a place for Nicaea for the first ecumenical council of the church? There's a phrase that's real popular now among kids.
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Pics, or it didn't happen.
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I don't know if you ever heard that.
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What that means, unless I see it, it didn't happen.
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It's sort of the Thomas mindset, right? Unless I see the nails, unless I see the scar on the side, I don't believe it.
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Pics, or it didn't happen, is only relatively recently even able to be used at all.
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Because photography wasn't invented until the mid-1800s.
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Photography didn't really get popular until the mid-1900s.
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It didn't become a household item until the latter part of the 1900s, and it's only been in this generation that people generally carry around cameras wherever they go.
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So the idea of pics, or it didn't happen, is just ridiculous from a historical standpoint.
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So how do we know anything from history? Corroborating evidence of eyewitness testimony that is documented and recorded and passed down to the next generation.
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That is how we know anything from history.
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Corroborating evidence of eyewitness testimony which is documented and passed down to the next generation.
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That's how we know anything from history.
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I said it twice because I want to make sure you hear that.
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Because I want to argue for this today.
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The Bible is documented historical evidence.
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The Bible was not written 300 or 400 years after the fact.
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The Bible was written by eyewitnesses.
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It was written in the lifetime of eyewitnesses.
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And it was written during a time where if they were saying something that were not true, there were eyewitnesses who could corroborate the falsehood of their statements.
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This is why we don't see the popularization of the Gnostic Gospels, the false Gospels, until the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries.
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Because it was only then that the Apostles had died.
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It was only then that the 1st generation church had died and they could come in with their heresies and propagate their heresies and not have eyewitnesses to stand against them and say you are false! The entire 1st, the entire New Testament is written in the 1st century.
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Written during the time of the Apostles and those who saw Jesus arise.
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And brother Chris read for us this morning over 500 people saw Jesus alive after He rose from the dead.
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And those 500 witnesses, many of them went to their deaths giving testimony of Jesus Christ.
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I read something this week he said, a guy I don't know who it was but it was so interesting he said Watergate made me believe in the Resurrection.
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He said Watergate made me believe in the Resurrection.
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He said because the Resurrection you have 12 men, 12 Apostles you know we take Judas out, put Matthias in or take that out and say the Apostle Paul.
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He said you had 12 Apostles who were able to live for over 40 years testifying to the same thing was true and all of them going to their deaths for the belief in that it was true.
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Watergate, those 12 powerful men couldn't keep a secret for less than a month! He said if this was a secret, if they'd stolen the body or if Jesus had simply passed out and woken up in the tomb or some other ridiculous thing that the world has tried to put forward as a Resurrection had actually happened.
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If Jesus' body was still in the tomb they could have went and exhumed it and showed the world that they were lying.
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We have testimony to a fact of history not a wish not something that we hope but we have eyewitness testimony corroborated documented and passed down to us we have every reason to believe and thus Paul says but in fact he has been raised Paul uses the word fact because there's no other way to describe it.
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It's not a wish, it's not a hope it's not a wager it is a fact and let me tell you one of the greatest testimonies to the fact and I want to draw to a close here one of the greatest testimonies to the fact of Jesus' Resurrection is the man who wrote 1 Corinthians 15 because the man who wrote 1 Corinthians 15 is the Apostle Paul himself and if there was any man in history who did not want a resurrected Jesus to be true it was him.