Jehovah's Witnesses and The Resurrection of Christ

Welcome to the Dividing Line this Saturday afternoon. I'm your host, James White, along with me, Rich Pierce, two rather tired gentlemen this week after a very long week of ministering. Those of you who are familiar with our ministry realize that for the past five days at least, we have been out at the Mormon Easter pageant in Mesa, where they're expecting 75 ,000 out there this year over the six nights of the Mormon Easter pageant, but I don't think they're going to get anywhere near that.

But there have been quite a number of people out there, and so we've been there on the street corners around the Mormon temple, passing out literature, witnessing the people. We've spent, well, we've got ten people out there, and they spend five hours a night.

That's about 50 hours a day. That's 250 hours so far just this week. That's pretty good, talking with people, witnessing the people. Lots of opportunities this week to share the gospel with folks, and we'll be out there again this evening if you happen to be going by, and you see a bunch of people staying on the street corners, surrounded by crowds of people, and somebody's talking and everybody's listening, or well, it doesn't always work that way, does it?

But anyways, we've been out at the Easter pageant, passing out thousands of tracts and witnessing the people, and it's been a great week. A great couple of months, actually, with the seminar, witnessing the Mormons last month, and we were up in Salt Lake at the general conference, and now at the Easter pageant, and we have the Jehovah's Witness seminar next month, and the district convention of Jehovah's Witnesses in June, and I keep saying July comes, and I'm just going to pass out.

That's all there is to it. But we're busy ministering and sharing the gospel with those involved in false religions and cults, and today, though, we are going to be addressing another issue, and that is the issue of the resurrection.

The Resurrection as the Central Christian Claim

We're going to be talking about a lot of issues relevant to the resurrection, because there are a lot of questions about the resurrection that people have, and we'd like to get you involved at 245 -0375, obviously.

Tomorrow is Resurrection Sunday, unless, of course, you're a member of certain groups that deny the resurrection, or who believe that the resurrection took place on Saturday, or something like that. We'll be talking about some of those issues this afternoon.

But we're going to be talking about the resurrection. Before we do that, I'd like to mention the fact that we're back on KXTG. Last week was our first week back, after about a month off, and we're back because of the kindness of Dr. Martin Galluz of the Black Canyon Chiropractic Center, helping to sponsor the program.

WTC Consulting, who are people who can help you with your software needs, your computer needs for business or home, they've chipped in to help. Some people have helped to put the program back on the air, but obviously we need more sponsorship beyond that.

So we want to say thank you to those folks, and encourage you Christian business people, that if you are interested in helping to support a program like this, or if you're just a plain old Christian person who would like to be able to support us, we do need that help to be able to continue.

We're going to continue talking about the subjects that we're addressing here on the dividing line. Now, this afternoon we're talking about the resurrection. I was on the way driving in going, what in the world am I going to start off with?

Because there are so many issues to address. There's the issue that is very common these days of what day was the crucifixion, how long was Jesus in the tomb, at what time did the resurrection take place?

And we will address those things. Then there's the issue of, for example, what Jehovah's Witnesses believe, that Jesus Christ was raised only spiritually from the grave, that he was not raised physically whatsoever.

There's the Muslim claim that Jesus did not really die on the cross. All these things that we're going to try to get around to addressing, depending on the phone calls and how many people call and which direction they're taking the conversation.

But one of the first things I figure we had to address right off the bat was the fact that of all the claims of Christianity, the resurrection is the one that mankind has seemingly dedicated the most time to trying to figure out a theory to explain away the miraculousness of the resurrection.

Now, of course, there are some people who don't even believe that Jesus Christ ever existed. They don't believe that he ever lived. But they are, fortunately, in the vast minority these days, because there's plenty of evidence that he did indeed live.

Even the Jewish people accept that he lived, that he was a teacher, and that the stories we have from him are at least generally accurate in what they have to say. But, given that Jesus lived, then you come up with basically a humanistic attitude toward the resurrection.

That is, obviously, there's no way, if one rejects the fact that miracles exist and that miracles could happen, there's no way for the resurrection to have taken place. There must be some naturalistic explanation for the resurrection.

And a number of theories have been put forward. Undoubtedly, one of the most popular theories is the swoon theory. Ever heard of the swoon theory?

Yes, as a matter of fact, I have.

You've heard of the swoon theory.

There's a big difference between death and swoon.

Yes, a very big difference between that. So people can understand what the swoon theory is. The swoon theory is basically that Jesus Christ did not die on the cross, but he swooned. He simply passed out.

And the guards, whoever was mistaken, they thought he was dead. He wasn't. They took him down, and in the coolness of the tomb, he revived and came out of the tomb and convinced his disciples he was alive.

And then, generally, as people would say, sometime later, who knows, when he was 60, 70 years old, he died a natural death, and that was it. And this was the beginning of Christianity. Well, the swoon theory has so many holes in it, it's almost unbelievable, just to start off with, what the swoon theory has to say.

First of all, you've got a person who was crucified, and the gospel narratives tell us what happened, relevant to the whipping, the scourging, the loss of blood, the nailing of the hands and feet to the cross, the piercing of the spear into Jesus' side, the fact that the Roman guards standing there could tell the difference between a person who had passed out and a person who was dead.

They were trained to know that. If they messed up, it would be their life, so they obviously knew what was going on. So that doesn't obviously jive with the swoon theory whatsoever. Then you have Jesus being wrapped in a burial cloth, laid in a cold tomb.

How that's supposed to revive someone, I'm not sure. It's sort of hard to breathe when you're wrapped in a burial cloth. You do not have any medical attention being given to him whatsoever, so it would be much more likely that he would die rather than simply revive from some coolness of a tomb.

How he managed to get out of the burial cloth, the gospels tell us, one of the gospels tells us that the burial cloth that was wrapped around him just basically collapsed, that it hadn't been unwound and then wound back up, but just basically collapsed itself.

Now was that burial cloth similar to mummification, Jim?

Well, there's a lot of questions about that, and of course if you believe that the Shroud of Turin is correct, then that wouldn't make a whole lot of sense because the gospels tell us that there was a wrapping around the face that was taken off and laid aside, but there would seem to have been a wrapping, same with Lazarus.

Lazarus had, he said, release him from those burial clothes. He was bound. He was bound by them. If he was just some loose thing that was just sort of laying on him, he could have loosed himself from it, but obviously there needed to be something more than that.

That's one of the reasons I don't accept the Shroud of Turin as being the actual burial cloth of Jesus, because it doesn't really jive with what the gospels themselves say concerning him. But anyhow, how he managed to extract himself with hands, wrists that would have been basically obliterated by the nails, how he managed to stand up on feet that had just been recently nailed to a cross, then, in his weakened condition, managed to roll away a very heavy stone from the entrance of the tomb, fight off the Roman guards who obviously would have attempted to keep him in there, or sneak by them or something like that, if they're Roman guards.

There are some who feel that they are temple guards. But even the temple guards themselves were under the same strictures that the Roman guards were. In the Mishnah, we read that the temple guards, if they ever were to fall asleep, would receive a whipping and their garments would be burned.

And so obviously they would not try to fall asleep either. But whoever the guards were, and they're most probably Roman guards from what Matthew has to say about him, managed to slip by them or fight them off or something like that, walk the determined distance into Jerusalem to find the disciples, and then have completely healed scars to show the disciples, somehow managed to show up inside of a locked room.

I mean, I think we've made it pretty obvious so far that the swoon theory just doesn't hold any water whatsoever. It has no way of jiving with the facts that we have them. About the oldest theory that has been put forth to explain the resurrection away is the theft theory.

And that is the disciples stole the body of Jesus and then to have a job, I guess, after the death of Jesus, they started preaching the resurrection, started their own church. Well, this one, of course, we were even given the origins of this one by Matthew.

Because Matthew tells the Jewish leaders, approached the guards and gave them money and said, this is what you're to say, and if it comes to the governor's ears, we will intercede for you. Well, the reason that they had to say this was that if the guards admitted to having fallen asleep, if they were Roman guards, they were subject to the penalty of death.

And so obviously the Jewish leaders would have had to have interceded on their behalf to keep them from dying. And since this is found even in the New Testament, it's not too surprising to find it common today.

It has been brought up numerous times. Refuting it is rather interesting because, first of all, just on a very psychological basis, this band of disciples, as we see them presented, of course, someone who believes in this would say, well, that's their writings, they must be saying it that way.

Well, Luke wasn't one of them. And you'd have to assume that all of them are lying. This band of disciples, from all the evidence we have, were a very downtrodden, downcast group of people who were not out to go stealing bodies, fight off Roman guards or anything of the kind.

These were not trained soldiers who'd slip past Roman guards and rob tombs. They had no reason to do it. They were not inclined to deceiving people in the first place. There's no evidence that they were.

There is no way to explain the fervor with which they proclaimed the gospel by saying that they themselves were well aware of the fact they were lying to people. The Jews themselves did not react in such a way as to accuse them of having stolen the body.

They circulated the story. But whenever Paul or Peter or these others actually confronted the Jews, the Jews are not recorded as having accused them of doing that because it would have been folly for them to have done that.

There were over 500 people that had seen Jesus alive after his resurrection, alive at that time. So the theft theory dies for lack of support. It's just simply some way of getting around the clear evidences presented in the New Testament about the resurrection.

There's nothing in the New Testament that would support it. There's not even anything really within the secular time period that would say, yes, the disciples were this great A-team group of individuals that came running in with their M -16s and stole the body.

What they did with it, of course, is not known. And the Jews later on in later history would accuse them of that after the witnesses were dead. But when the witnesses were alive themselves, we don't have any evidence that they talked about that.

So the theft theory, that's a very difficult word to say. The theft theory simply does not jive with the facts as we have them. The next one that has been listed, and I'll just briefly mention what it is, and we'll take a break and come back.

And we'd like to hear your comments at 245 -0375, 245 -0375. Concerning the resurrection, what you think about the resurrection, what your feelings are at this Resurrection Sunday season that we are about to celebrate tomorrow.

You've probably already begun the celebration with the Good Friday yesterday and the Resurrection Sunday services tomorrow. We'd like to hear what you have to say at 245 -0375. But very briefly, I'd just like to point out that another theory that has been given is the hallucination theory, that the appearances of Jesus Christ were mass hallucinations.

The Hallucination Theory and the Wrong Tomb Theory

And we'll be looking a little bit at what that has to say after we take this break and take your phone calls at 245 -0375. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Dividing Line. This afternoon as we discuss the subject of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we're going to go to Phoenix, and one of our faithful callers is standing in a phone booth.

Hello, Edwina. Hello, Edwina, can you hear me? Hello, Edwina, can you hear me?

Yeah.

Okay, you're on the air.

Oh, hi.

Can you hear me all right?

Yes.

I just want to ask a question about in Luke 24, verse 13, where Jesus was walking with those two men along the road, and it said that they couldn't recognize him. Why was it that they couldn't recognize him?

Okay, I just happened to have my Bible open to that passage. On the road to Emmaus, Jesus encountered two disciples, and he walked with them. And it says in verse 16, but they were kept from recognizing him.

And later on in verse 31, it says,. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. It's very clear that a power was acting upon them to keep them from recognizing him.

It was not that he was unrecognizable, but that there was a power, God's power working on them to keep them from recognizing him until the purpose that he wished to work in their lives was accomplished.

So it wasn't that Jesus was some different person or was appearing in different forms and things like that and confusing people.

Okay.

But it was the fact that Jesus himself was exercising a power to keep them from recognizing him. They were kept from recognizing him by the power of God itself.

Oh, okay. Okay?

All right, thanks. Okay, thanks a lot, Edwina. Bye-bye.

Bye.

2 -4 -5 -0 -3 -7 -5, 2 -4 -5 -0 -3 -7 -5 is the phone number for your questions and comments. And we'd like to talk to you today about the resurrection of Jesus Christ and what it means in your life at this time of the year, this season.

And just before Edwina's phone call, we had been talking about another one of the theories that is put forth to explain away the resurrection, and that is the hallucination theory. And that is that all the appearances of Jesus Christ, as we have them recorded in the New Testament, were due to mass hallucination.

The disciples so much wanted him to be alive that they all hallucinated that he had risen from the dead. Now, that's rather interesting, obviously, considering the fact that Jesus had to repeatedly appear to the disciples just to convince him of the reality of the resurrection.

Those who are wishing for something so strong that they create hallucinations aren't going to be sitting there going, well, I'm really not sure, sort of like Thomas. It was called doubting Thomas because he did not believe in the resurrection until he had bodily proof standing in front of him.

People who would suggest this have to assume that all the disciples were under the same mental state, that they are all subject to hallucinations, and not all people are subject to hallucinations, that somehow this hallucination could be agreed upon by a large number of people.

This type of thing just doesn't occur very often at all. 500 people don't normally have the same hallucination at different times, in different circumstances, in different surroundings. Hallucinations normally take place when a person is encountered with a familiar situation that reminds them of something.

You don't have 500 people who would be using the same context and the same situation to remember something like that. It's obviously a very broad attack upon the very credibility of the disciples themselves.

The disciples were a very variegated group of people. They did not come from the same backgrounds. They did not have the same type of mental makeup. Matthew was as different from Simon the Zealot as you could have, and obviously people who are that different don't tend to have the exact same hallucination at the exact same time, in the exact same detail.

So obviously these people were in different states of mind. John the Beloved was one who would be more willing to allow for the miraculous to take place. Thomas wasn't. Mary was weeping. Some were afraid.

When you look at the very mental states they were in, they weren't even in the same mental states. So you have different people, different contexts, different mental states that simply does not allow for any type of mass hallucination to be taking place.

And finally, the last theory that we'll look at, we'll at least give any credence to anyhow, is the wrong tomb theory. This one's one of my favorites. That the women and John and Peter went to the wrong tomb.

Now of course the scriptures tell us that Mary and the women followed after and saw the place where they laid Jesus. But these people would say, well they may have seen it, but then in the darkness of the Sunday morning they went to the wrong tomb and it was empty and there was nobody there and maybe they had visions of angels and ran off and started the whole thing and this is how it happened.

This can be dealt with so quickly. It's rather well done when I heard someone first do this. And that is, if it's just the wrong tomb, if Jesus died and his body was in the tomb and they went to the wrong tomb, it would have been so easy for the Jewish leaders to have wiped out Christianity.

As soon as Peter and John and the others started preaching, they could have just gone to the right tomb, rolled away the stone, taken the dead body out, stuck it on a cart, carted it through downtown Jerusalem, put it back in, and that would have been the end of Christianity.

Obviously they did not do that. I'm sure if they had been able to do that, they would have done that, but they didn't. And so obviously the idea that the women went to the wrong tomb was contradicted by the fact that they were there when Jesus' body was laid in the tomb.

Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, who we were told are involved in laying him there, they would have known. And as soon as someone told them about the resurrection, they would have gone to the tomb and found it sealed, the guard there, the body inside, and they would have put a kibosh on it.

But none of those things happened. And so obviously the idea that the wrong tomb was gone too and this is how the whole thing started ignores the vast majority of the evidence in the context of which we're speaking.

And so those are some of the theories that have been raised by folks concerning the resurrection and how to explain away the resurrection. Most people who are coming, for example, from an atheistic viewpoint that's not just atheist but anti-theist, there's a bit of a difference there.

An atheist just simply says there is no God, an anti-theist is militant in his denunciation of those who believe that there is a God. And I've encountered a few of those in my lifetime. These people probably aren't going to get too much into these theories because they're going to go farther back than that and attempt to deny Jesus even existed.

In fact, during this week on a secular radio station, I heard a program where a guy called in and said that the Dead Sea Scrolls show that Jesus is completely different than the New Testament presents him, that Jesus actually did write things.

There's a Joshua mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and these people think that that's Jesus, and this Joshua wrote things, they identify him as a teacher of righteousness, all these other wonderful things.

And this is sort of some of the areas that more of the anti-theists are going into than these theories, which were very, very common back in the last century. In the rationalist German viewpoint that came out that time, people had to come up with a rationalistic explanation of all miracles.

For example, when Jesus walked in the water, you know what that really was. There was a sandbar there, and the disciples were confused, and they thought he was actually walking in the water when actually he was walking in the sandbar.

And maybe when Peter got out of the boat, he was also in the sandbar, but then he stepped off the sandbar and started to sink, and Jesus reached down and picked him up, and he got in the boat. And this is how people are trying to explain away all the miracles that occur in the Bible.

That's quite convenient. You know, a storm's just blown over, and all this is going on, and he just happens to know where that sandbar is, and it takes him all the way from shore, right out to where they are.

But there has to be a rationalistic explanation if you deny the miraculous, if you deny the supernatural. There must be a rationalistic explanation. One scholar responds to the resurrections that Jesus performed of Lazarus and the widow of Nain's son as rescues from an early grave.

These people weren't dead. Jesus just resuscitated them, and all things like this. So anyways, that's where a lot of these theories came from. They're a little bit out of vogue these days because people are now getting to the point where they're simply denying that Jesus ever existed and go from that way.

You don't have to deal with the resurrection. You don't have to deal with the New Testament. Just throw the whole thing out the window and start from scratch. So that's how they're dealing with that. 2450375, 30 minutes past the hour.

2450375 is the phone number for you to call and get involved. We'd like to hear from you about what you believe about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. What do you feel at this time of year? Do you feel that the resurrection season has been commercialized?

Do you feel that most Christians are missing the message of the resurrection? What do you think about it? Call us at 2450375. Another aspect of the resurrection that we're going to address this afternoon is the fact that there are some groups that deny the resurrection by saying that Jesus Christ rose only spiritually from the grave.

One of the major groups that does this is the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society or Jehovah's Witnesses. Jehovah's Witnesses believe that Jesus Christ died on a stake. They believe that Jesus did not have a spirit, that no men have spirits, actually, but that Jesus was a man who died on a stake.

He was buried, and as one early Watchtower Society publication put it, the man Jesus is dead, forever dead, that he was not resurrected physically from the grave, but that he was recreated as a spirit being.

Now, in Watchtower theology, they are teaching that Jesus was created as Michael the archangel, that he then became a man. Michael the archangel is a spirit. Then he became a man, Jesus Christ, and then when we come to the quote-unquote resurrection, then we have Jesus being recreated as Michael the archangel.

This is the Jehovah's Witnesses' position relative to the resurrection. What does the Bible say about the resurrection of Jesus Christ? Was it spiritual, or was it physical? We're going to address that subject right after we talk to Dell and Glendale.

Dell, can you hear me? Dell, you're on the air.

Oh, hi, Jim.

Hi.

I'm glad you're back on.

We're glad to be here.

I missed you. I want to ask you something. I guess I'll tell you something and ask you. As I was studying about the resurrection, you know, over the last, oh, about 15 years or so, it began to dawn on me how real it was.

And what helped me to realize that was to realize how Christ had to lead the apostles who were right there with Him all the time, step-by-step through His telling them He was going to die and His actual death and then His burial and then His resurrection and then revealing Himself to them and crowning it with Thomas, you know, doubting Thomas.

Did you get that impression of like step-by-step, even though He told them they didn't understand until He showed them what happened?

Oh, yes, indeed. In fact, the disciples, as the Bible presents it, were very confused, very flustered. All through the gospel narratives, the writers tell us that the disciples did not understand that the Messiah must suffer and die.

Common Jewish expectation at that time was that the Messiah who would come would be a human conqueror, a military leader. In fact, as I was listening this week to a program where a Jewish person was on discussing his views of Jesus, that was one of the reasons he rejects Jesus, is that Jesus died.

I think I heard the same program.

Yes, in fact, a friend of mine was on that program. I had arranged for him to be on that program, Chuck Hoppus. But anyways, this is what they were expecting. They were expecting a military leader, not a suffering servant.

And so by far, Jesus had to, as Luke puts it, by many convincing proofs, prove to the disciples that he was indeed alive from the dead and that he had indeed been resurrected. Indeed. Oh yes, I noticed it, and it's very clearly presented in the New Testament that Jesus had to prove his resurrection even to his disciples.

They did not understand it until after the resurrection itself.

Well, you just verified the same thing to me.

Thank you very much, and God bless you.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. 2450375 is the phone number for you to call, 2450375, as we look at the subject of the resurrection this Saturday afternoon. Briefly before we take our break, I was mentioning that the Jehovah's Witnesses deny the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ.

They believe that he was resurrected as a spirit being, Michael the archangel, and go around proclaiming this in their books, in their literature. At this time of year, they would probably bring this up if you were talking to Jehovah's Witnesses.

But what does the Bible say about the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ? Well, for example, in John 2, verses 19 -21, Jesus, when talking about the temple, said, I will destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up, when talking to the Jews, when they asked for a sign.

And they didn't understand what he was talking about. But John goes on to say, he spoke of the temple of his body. And the fact is very clear that Jesus said that in three days he would raise up his body, the body being the body that he was crucified in.

And so, right after we take this next break, I'm going to talk about the fact of what is a resurrection? What is resurrection? What does resurrection mean? Does resurrection mean recreation, or does it mean arising again of that which died?

Relevant to what Jehovah's Witnesses were saying right beforehand, we want to define what a resurrection is. The Greek term anastasis, which is resurrection, means a standing again. And to qualify as a true resurrection, that which died must come back to life again.

Now, in the Jehovah's Witness position, they do not have a resurrection. There is no resurrection, really, in Jehovah's Witness theology. Because that which died was a human being, Jesus. That which was raised was a spirit being, Michael the Archangel.

That is not a resurrection. And hence, the society, if it were to be honest with itself, would have to say that they believe in the recreation of Jesus Christ as a new being, Michael the Archangel. But that is not what the Bible presents.

The Bible presents the resurrection of Jesus Christ. A physical man died. A human body died on the cross. And a human body was raised from the dead. Now, that human body was glorified and is far beyond what we can understand, as 1 Corinthians 15 says.

But it was still the physical body that died on the cross of Calvary. This can be seen from many ways. The Jehovah's Witnesses believe that the physical appearances of Jesus Christ after his resurrection were simply the materialization of physical bodies to convince the disciples of the resurrection.

In other words, Jesus had to fool them into believing he had risen from the dead. That's actually deceptive on Jesus' part. But that's what Jehovah's Witnesses are saying. I recall going over to California once, and we had gone over with some friends over to Disneyland.

It wasn't open yet. So we were driving around in the area there, and we saw these two gentlemen standing out on a street corner about 8 o 'clock in the morning on a Saturday morning, all alone. And nobody was around them.

They were standing there holding these magazines out. We're talking this place is dead. There's nobody there. There's these two guys holding these magazines. I sort of peered through the window, and I recognized them as Watchtower and Awake magazines.

So we had a radical change in driving plans and hung a Yui in the middle of the street. And I and one of the people that was with me got out of the van and grabbed our Bibles and spent about an hour talking to these two Jehovah's Witnesses on the sidewalk.

And we eventually started talking about the resurrection of Christ, and that's what they're saying. We've got to realize that angels can materialize bodies. And since Jesus was resurrected as Michael the archangel, he materialized a body to prove his resurrection.

Well, that proves nothing. That's deceptive. Because if that body had not actually risen from the dead, that's not a resurrection. But that, of course, is what they were saying. They were very adamant on that point.

We tried to point at them to Luke 24, beginning verse 36, where it says,. While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, Peace be with you. They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost or a spirit.

He said to them, Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself. Touch me and see. A ghost does not have flesh and bones. You see, I have. When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet.

And while they still did not believe it, because of joy and amazement, he asked them, Do you have anything here to eat? They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence.

Now, you can't get much more straightforward than what Jesus did for the disciples in this situation. They thought they had seen a spirit. They thought they had seen a ghost. Now, this is what Jehovah's Witnesses are actually saying that they saw, was that Jesus was raised as a spirit and not as a physical being.

But Jesus said, Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your mind? He thought of that as a doubt and not as a true faith at all. And the word actually is spirit in the Greek New Testament. The NIV translation is a little unfortunate there.

They thought they saw a spirit. And he says, No, you're confused. Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself. Touch me and see. A spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have. And so he has flesh and bones, and he's saying, Hey, a spirit does not have flesh and bones.

He shows them his hands and his feet. He invites them to examine him. And this, of course, is a classic refutation of what the Jehovah's Witnesses teach about Jesus actually being a spirit when he was raised from the dead.

Another passage that is very clear on this is John chapter 20, where we have an even fuller exposition of the resurrection and Jesus' interaction with the disciples, especially relevant to Thomas himself.

Thomas, who did not exercise faith in the resurrection when he was told by the others, himself said, Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were and put my hand to his side, I will not believe it.

In John chapter 20. So in verse 26, a week later on the next Sunday, his disciples were in the house again. Thomas was with them this time. And though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you.

Then he said to Thomas, Put your finger here, see my hands, reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe. Jesus knew exactly what Thomas had said, even though he was not there a week before him.

And Thomas says unto him, My Lord and my God. Obviously a passage that gives many Jehovah's Witnesses a lot of trouble because they deny the deity of Christ. And Jesus told him, Because you have seen me, you have believed.

Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. And Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. Jesus had many resurrection appearances where he interacted with the disciples.

We are not told a whole lot about exactly what was said during that time, but we know that Jesus opened their minds to the scriptures so they could understand that what happened to Jesus was what was necessary to fulfill the Old Testament scriptures themselves.