"The Zombie Gospel" (A Response To The First Church of Deerfield MA) Apologetics

Once again, thank you for joining us for this new series, the Faith Matters Discussion Group, where we take what is said in the name of God and compare it to the word of God. There's a quote from Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

He once said that discernment is not knowing the difference between right and wrong or what's true and what's not true. He said, discernment is knowing what's the difference between what's right and what's almost right.

So there's some articles that we will look at where discernment is necessary. Last week, the article we looked at was sort of a veiled critique of the scripture. And while the woman said that the scripture contained great wisdom, if you had a discerning ear, you would have also heard her undermining the Bible and its authority.

So in the first two sessions, we've had ministers who claim to be pastors of Christian churches, and you needed discernment maybe last week. This week, you're really not gonna need any discernment, I don't think, it's just pretty clear.

The first one that we looked at admitted that he rejected traditional Christianity. The second article was a little more subtle, and she described her church as an emerging church, but they both claim to be Christians.

This article or the woman this week that wrote the article about zombies, I'm not even sure that she identifies as a Christian, not only based on what she wrote, but based on the church that she leads.

The First Church of Deerfield and Its Openly Inclusive Identity

So this week, we're looking at an article by the Reverend Lisa Knapp of the First Church of Deerfield, and the article is titled Grave Robbers, Zombies, and Easter. And this is without question the most blasphemous article the Greenfield Recorder has ever put in the Faith Matters column.

And in fairness, they did offer some apologies since myself and a few others complained that they printed this. Basically, the idea that Jesus rose from the dead, she's, her idea, what is Jesus, a zombie?

Of course, that's a blasphemous statement. And to add insult to injury, this article ran the Saturday before Easter. So it made some people upset, needless to say. So in fairness, there were at least a couple private apologies from the Greenfield Recorder.

And just to make it clear, we're not about censorship. I don't support censorship. We do, it's not that at all. This is a secular newspaper. I don't know how much we should expect, but would they run an article like that about Islam on some Muslim holiday?

There's no way that would ever happen, and yet they would do it with Christianity. So that is gonna make some Christians upset. I think it should make you upset. If you read this and you say, oh, what's the big deal?

What's the problem? I would wonder if you're even saved, if that's your response. So going back to what I said a moment ago, this is, what's different about Reverend Knapp is I'm not even sure that she would identify as a Christian since she is leading a Unitarian Universalist church.

And people from that faith tradition do not, oftentimes, they do not even refer to themselves as Christians. So I like to start by, instead of reading the article first, I like to look at the factoid.

So the church factoid, it says about the First Church of Deerfield, should be on the second page, says the First Church of Deerfield is an inquisitive, inclusive, open, and affirming congregation. So there it is right out in front again.

Of the United Church of Christ, so that's one denomination that they're a part of, and the Unitarian Universalist Association. She says the church gathers for worship and song each Sunday at 10 a .m. in the Old Brick Church at 71 Main Street in Old Deerfield.

Children are welcome both in our worship and in our Sunday school. Whoever you are, wherever you may be on life's journey, you are invited. More information, look at us on Facebook, et cetera, et cetera.

So once again, you see this as a theme. Instead of Christ being the center, the gospel being at the center, or even good works being at the center, what is mentioned first is another, hey, up front, we're open and affirming, it's the LGBT agenda, or what the Bible calls sodomy.

So it's almost like that, it gives the impression that the ministry kind of revolves around that since that's mentioned first. So she writes, we are inclusive, open, and affirming. So here's the thing to know about the Unitarian Universalists, all right.

They used to be two separate denominations. Unitarianism is one thing, the Universalist Church is something different. Who knows what the churches believed historically? What's universalism?

Everyone's saved, everyone's going to heaven.

Right, everybody is going to heaven, no matter what, no matter what you believe, no matter what you do, everybody goes to heaven. That's universalism. Unitarianism, historically, it's called that because uni means one, or consisting of one.

So Unitarians reject the Trinity, and they believe that God is just one person, God the Father, and therefore Jesus is just a man. Jesus is not divine, he was a good man, a wise man, but Jesus, they believe, was just a man.

But now these two denominations are just kind of packed together in one. So these days, you know how it is. Theology, the traditional beliefs, that's all being left behind, and people are kind of making things up as they go.

So they probably don't even really believe in universalism. I would question whether some of them even believe in heaven and hell. But anyway, yeah, Larry.

So would Jehovah's Witnesses be considered Unitarian? Because, I mean, yes, Jesus was a God. The Holy Spirit is a force. Yeah. And so therefore, Jehovah, the only God.

Well, they are not referred to as Unitarians, because the Jehovah's Witnesses do believe that Jesus is an exalted angel, basically. The Unitarians believe Jesus was just a human being. So the Jehovah's Witnesses at least believe that Jesus is, you know, he's way up there, but he's below Jehovah.

But they do share the rejection of the Trinity, yes.

Mark, please. Well, you said they believe that Jesus is a good man, but if they believe the Bible at all, Jesus certainly claimed to be God. Someone came to Jesus and said, called him good master, and Jesus said, well, why do you call me good?

But I mean, you've also, I don't know if it was C .S. Lewis or who it was that said, you have to believe that Jesus, well, these are a liar or a lunatic, or is, who he said he claimed to be, the Lord and the Lord God.

Can I just say, too, when they said, we meet for worship, I'm wondering what or who on earth are they worshiping?

Yeah, yeah, that's a good question. And I'm just going through this just so we know kind of where they're coming from. I think that's helpful. But to your point, I remember growing up, a friend of mine, he told me, hey, my mom and dad started going to church.

And I remember that surprised me because I knew his parents were atheists. So when he said they started going to church, I'm like, wow, that's surprising, yeah. So I asked him what church, and he said, they're going to Unitarian Universalist Church.

I said, well, what do they believe? And he said, well, you can, there you can believe whatever you want. God is whatever you want God to be, or you can believe in no God. And basically what it is, it's a social club for people who share left-wing politics into socialism.

I mean, that's what it is. It's not really a church, but that's where they're coming from. So any type of traditional Christian belief of what the Bible says, yeah, that's not really even in the conversation, I don't think.

Are they reading out of the Bible? And what Bible would they be looking at?

Yeah, I suspect they would read from the Bible. She is referencing things in the Bible. She starts out the column with a Bible verse, but it's sort of like a buffet. You can take and leave it. If you like it, yeah, we'll read that.

And if you don't, yes, yeah, right.

It's quite obvious though, she doesn't believe that the Bible is God's holy word. Right, right.

The Empty Tomb, the Women, and the Claim of the First Apostles

Yeah, all right. So let's get into the article. She begins with a verse of scripture, Luke 24, verse five, which says, why do you look for the living among the dead? So she writes, I'm not really a fan of scary movies, but I've seen enough B-grade horror films in my day to know that an empty grave means one of two things, either grave robbers or zombies.

Easter begins not with Jesus's reappearance, but with his disappearance. The women, the first apostles, come to the tomb and he's not there. What could this mean? It's like, okay, hold on, stop. What's the first issue?

The first apostles. Right, what? Yeah, she says the women were the first apostles. Well, let's turn to Luke chapter six. Maybe she doesn't believe the Bible, but we do. So we're gonna look at what the Bible says, okay?

But where do you think she gets this idea that the first apostles were actually the women?

I kind of read that as, instead of a dash, as a comma. So the women and the first apostles.

Okay, the women, the first apostles come to the tomb. Well, yeah, I mean, I don't know. What do you think? What does she mean? I guess it could mean the women and the apostles. That's not how it seems to me.

No, I think it's parenthetical.

Yeah. Women in parentheses, the first apostles.

Right, yeah, that's what it is. It's dashes instead of, yeah. Right, right. So look at Luke six, 12 through 16. Remember last week, she took a woman, this other lady, she took a woman who is not a prophet and turned her into a prophet.

So I would think that this is a theme. The Luke six, 12 through 16, it says, "'Now it came to pass in those days "'that when he, that is Jesus, "'went out to the mountain to pray "'and continued all night in prayer to God.

"'And when it was day, he called his disciples to himself, "'and from them he chose 12 whom he also named apostles, "'Simon, whom he also named Peter, "'and Andrew, his brother, "'James and John, Philip and Bartholomew, "'Matthew and Thomas, "'James, the son of Alphaeus, "'and Simon called the Zealot, "'Judas, the son of James, "'and Judas Iscariot, who also became a traitor.'".

And I don't see any women mentioned. So once again, like last week, the author tries, I think she's trying to weave in, this is what it looks like. She's trying to weave in kind of a feminist narrative into the Bible that the first apostles were actually women.

I think the implication there would be that the church should be run by women. I mentioned that book, The Da Vinci Code, which was the top seller, whatever, 15 years ago. That was the premise of the book, that Mary Magdalene should have been leading the church.

So this is a very common theme among liberals and progressives. And if you look at the liberal churches throughout New England, most of them are run by women. All right, so referring to the empty tomb, she continues, and by the way, this is new for somebody.

Why is that a problem? 1 Timothy 2 .12, the apostle Paul clearly says, I do not permit a woman to teach nor to have authority over a man, but to remain in silence. That's a pastoral epistle. Paul's point is that women are not to be the shepherds of the church.

A person cannot like that, but that's what the scripture teaches. So referring to the empty tomb, she continues, I'm guessing the women's initial hypothesis would have been grave robbery. It was that their initial response?

No. Okay. He said he is a resident. Yeah. Okay, so she says zombies weren't really part of the cultural imagination of first century Israel. Grave robbers, however, were not unheard of, especially when there was political significance attached to a corpse.

The disappearance of the body from the tomb could easily have been a statement by his adversaries, a final desecration and annihilation of Jesus in all that he stood for. All right, now let's turn to Matthew 28 because grave robbery does come up in the biblical text.

That's what the Jews said, that his apostles have come and his disciples have come and stolen the body. But Reverend Knapp seems to be floating the theory that the Jews might have actually stolen the body, which is kind of an interesting thought, that they stole the body in a way to desecrate or annihilate the memory of Jesus.

That's just not anywhere in the Bible at all, but here's Matthew's account of the resurrection, Matthew 28, starting in verse five, "'But the angel answered and said to the women, "'Do not be afraid, "'for I know that you seek Jesus who is crucified.

"'He is not here for he has risen.'. "'As he said, come and see the place where the Lord lay "'and go quickly and tell his disciples "'that he has risen from the dead "'and indeed he is going before you into Galilee.

"'There you will see him. "'Behold, I have told you.'. So they went out quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy and ran to bring his disciples' word. And as they went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them saying, "'Rejoice!'.

So they came and held him by the feet and worshiped him. "'Then Jesus said to them, "'Do not be afraid, go and tell my brethren "'to go to Galilee and there they will see me.'. "'Now while they were going, "'behold, some of the guard came into the city "'and reported to the chief priests "'all the things that had happened.

"'And when they had assembled with the elders "'and consulted together, "'they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers saying, "'Tell them,' what? "'That his disciples came at night "'and stole him away while we slept.

"'And if this comes to the governor's ears, "'we will appease him and make you secure.'. "'So they took the money and did as they were instructed. "'And this saying is commonly reported among the Jews "'until this day.'".

So the body's gone, they have to have an explanation. The people who hated Jesus and his message and his followers said, all right, just here's some money. Just spread the rumor around that his disciples stole the body.

And there's nothing about the Jews, Jesus's enemies stealing the body. So I don't know where she gets that. Any questions so far? Yes, Linda.

Well, in the chapter before, the chief priests and Pharisees discussed this and they remembered that Jesus said he would come back in the next few days. So they went back when they had guards there. Right.

Yeah. In anticipation that maybe it would happen and then they would be Right.

Yes, so you had Roman soldiers guarding the tomb. There's no way the disciples could have snuck in and stolen the body. And the reason why this all happened is because if the body disappeared, which it did, the Roman soldiers could have, I believe they could have been charged, if not executed for sleeping on duty.

Larry. If they were sleeping, how did they know it was the disciples? Right. So, I mean, there's all sorts of problems. Right. Yup. All right, she continues. No wonder the women were afraid. When two men suddenly appeared beside the tomb, who knew who these strangers, or who knew who these strangers might be.

But the men speak to the women gently saying, if you're looking for Jesus, he is not here. He has risen. Which brings me to my second hypothesis, zombies. Okay. So I don't know if she's trolling. Who knows what trolling is?

It's when you say something outrageous just to get a response. You're saying it for the purpose of upsetting people so that they'll react. So obviously bringing the whole subject of zombies into it is ridiculous.

Of course, zombies are actually very popular. The whole zombie apocalypse. Maybe you aren't into that. Maybe you don't read and watch those movies, but it's a pretty popular thing in the culture. So it could get a few extra readers.

And she sort of alludes to that.

But yeah, you had something. Well, I mean, it says who knew who these strangers might be. I really think the women knew who those strangers were as they were standing there. Yeah. Dazzling, bright, white.

Right. You know, pretty obvious they were angels. Right, yeah. We all agree, right?

The men there were angels. So she says, zombies loom large in the cultural imagination of 21st century America. Well, that's true. Alongside the Walking Dead, was that a TV show? I'm not sure. Okay. Alongside the Walking Dead, there has been an explosion of zombie literature.

For example, Shakespeare Undead, Alice in Zombieland, and of course, the best-selling Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I don't know what any of this is, but she says, for those of you who are familiar, unfamiliar with the zombie genre, no, I'm not making this up.

So with all of these zombies roaming our imaginations, it was only a matter of time until someone came up with the zombie gospel. And so it wasn't really that much of a surprise when my young godson came home from Sunday school one day and announced his great revelation of the morning, that Jesus was a zombie.

I think someone needs to talk to the Sunday school teacher, make sure this kid's straightened out. But I read that and just, if that's something a kid might come up with, if he's familiar with the stuff out there and he hears someone, I don't know how much you can blame a little kid for coming up with that, but I don't know what she responded with, but she says, with all due respect to my godson, the zombie gospel has in fact existed for decades, maybe centuries.

Well, it's existed for 2000 years, but don't tell her. It is the belief that, so where is she coming up with this idea, the zombie gospel, what is that? It is the belief that when Jesus returns, he will bring suffering and retribution as if somehow death and resurrection will transform our merciful healer into something else altogether.

Okay. So this is what she's calling the zombie gospel, that Jesus died, rose again, and he's coming back to be the judge of humanity. Now is, what? Which is what the Bible teaches, right? So this isn't something that somebody came up with a few centuries ago.

It's been in the Bible from the beginning. There's a line from the Apostles' Creed, which says that Jesus is coming back to judge the living and the dead. Now, some of you probably don't care what the Apostles' Creed said, but I think it's based on 2 Timothy 4, verse one, where the Apostle Paul says to Timothy, he says, I charge you, therefore, before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at his appearing.

So this is just straight Christian doctrine that Jesus died, rose again, is coming back, and he's going to judge. This is all pretty standard, right? Okay, Brad.

It's a little older than that, isn't it? One of the reasons they didn't believe he was God was because he was supposed to come as the conquering, not the savior, he was supposed to come as a conqueror.

Yeah, so older than 2 ,000 years, you're saying? Right, I mean, you could argue that it goes back to the first promise of the savior, but it's not really, the fullness of it isn't really conveyed until the pages of the New Testament.

But the idea that there's a resurrection is in the Old Testament, or that God, there's going to be a judgment, that, yes, that was understood certainly in Old Testament times. So what she's calling the zombie gospel, I would just call the gospel.

But of course, the word gospel means good news. So the judgment isn't the gospel, right? The good news is that if you repent and place your faith in Jesus Christ, then you escape the judgment, right? I mean, that's the gospel.

But apparently in her eyes, there is no judgment. That's what I would take away from this, that she does not believe there is a judgment, or that Jesus would never do such a thing. So what she's saying is that the church essentially, or what churches have done, they've turned Jesus into a monster, right?

People who believe this, we have turned Jesus into a monster. But again, it's in the scripture. So it's not something that Jonathan Edwards came up with in the 1800s or whatever. All right, any questions or comments?

Yes, dad. Yeah, I'd like to know, I mean, most of us in here are around a certain age. When I grew up, I never heard of zombies. Never heard of them. Now, my question is to this group, how many of you growing up heard of zombies growing up?

Not growing up, no. Vampires. Now, this little kid heard it in Sunday school. Yeah. So that tells me that this particular church is zombie-orientated. Well, yeah. We never heard of it anywhere from Herman.

Yeah, so if, because sometimes we have to read into, like, what exactly is she telling us here? I hope that his Sunday school teacher didn't tell him that, yeah, that makes Jesus out to be a zombie. Obviously, it's possible that a Sunday school teacher could do that because the pastor's talking about it, right?

Or a so-called pastor. I would like to think the kid was watching some junk on TV and kind of made a connection himself. We don't know. But yeah, I think zombies, it's a newer phenomenon.

Yes, Marcus. Well, in Haiti, in the evil practice of voodoo, there are people that do appear to be deceased and then revived somehow. So that's probably been going on for a long time. Yeah, some version of it.

So

Africa to begin with, I'm sure. Right. So her premise seems to be that there is no judgment. Jesus, if Jesus is just a man, obviously, she doesn't think he rose from the dead or that he's ever coming back.

I suspect that's what she believes, and that there is no wrath, there is no judgment. This is something that we've talked about a lot recently, this new idea that God has no wrath. Well, again, the issue with this article is the same as the last two weeks.

You have a supposed Christian minister teaching the exact opposite of what the Bible says. And I think we're gonna see this in article after article after article. They teach the opposite of what scripture says.

Nobody turned the message of Christianity into this. This is what Jesus taught. This is what the Old Testament prophets alluded to. And it's clearly what the apostles taught. So if we truly believe this, and why are we even doing this faith matters discussion?

Why even bother with this? Because if we really believe that this is true and that there's going to be a judgment and that people need to be saved, if we truly love people, we need to warn them. We have to address this kind of a thing.

So that's my prayer through this whole series, however long we do it, that somebody or multiple people would hear this and it would cause them to think, it would drive them to the scriptures themselves, and they would realize the truth.

Because millions and millions of people are being deceived in houses of worship all over the United States. This kind of thing is extremely common as we're seeing. Yeah.

Faith, Doctrine, and the Loss of Biblical Authority

Okay. All right. So, yeah, faith. I like the title of the column anyways, faith matters. We've heard it said, keep the faith, or we'll say, yes, it is really important to have faith, but what is most important is what or whom is the object of your faith?

Right.

Yeah, somewhere along the line, churches stopped preaching doctrine and it became about numbers. Say, what do we have to do to bring people through the front door? So let's stop teaching doctrine. Let's just do what we can to get along and just have a good time and make people feel good.

And then the truth, well, that became secondary and eventually it's just not even.

In the conversation anymore. It's careful to stop singing those old hymns. Right, well, that's a given.

You know, it's funny though, some of these churches, these liberal churches, congregational churches with the women pastors, actually these churches are more likely to sing the hymns than a lot of evangelical churches.

A lot of evangelical churches have gone totally contemporary. If you go to some of these liberal churches, just the structure of the service is actually, not always, but usually more like ours. So I don't know what to make of that necessarily, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did sing the hymns in her church, but do they believe the words?

I guess that's the issue. All right, any other comments? All right, let's continue. She says, after all, what is the scariest thing about zombies? It's that the very people who loved us most may come back to destroy us.

So when someone tells you that Jesus is coming not to save sinners, but to smite them, when someone tells you that Jesus is coming not to seek the lost, but to abandon them, that, my friends, is the zombie gospel.

Okay, what reactions to this?

So are there people who are...

Yeah, well, she's giving it like an either or. Either you're saying this or this. So do evangelicals say that Jesus isn't trying to save sinners? Oh, of course, that is the message. Jesus is seeking the lost.

He does want to save sinners. I mean, that's the whole purpose of the church, is to proclaim the gospel and see that people are saved. So it's not a matter of this is true or this is true. No, Jesus came to seek and to save that which is lost.

That's true. But he's also coming back as the judge. Both are true. It's not either or. She's setting up a false dichotomy here. She says, it turns out that the zombie hypothesis is really just another form of grave robbery.

Either way, the Jesus who loved us is gone and we can no longer find him. Wow, wow, that's just a sad statement. But remember, that's a hypothesis. She's saying, well, that's one possibility. Wait, there's a third hypothesis she writes.

So remember, this article is written for Easter. She has three theories. None of them include Jesus actually rising from the dead in his glorified body. Like, that's not even a possibility in her mind.

So the first theory is grave robbery. Her second theory was zombies, which she's obviously not serious about. I see it as an opportunity to kind of take a swipe at Bible believers. But now the third theory, she says, it is the possibility that Jesus is not dead, but living.

Okay, well, now that sounds promising, doesn't it? The third possibility is that Jesus is not dead, but living. So while that sounds promising, she does not mean that literally. She already scoffed at the idea that Jesus could have actually risen from the dead.

So she means something else, living in a different sense. So when she talks about Jesus, the possibility of him being alive or living on, what she's saying, it seems, is that Jesus lives on in the lives of his followers.

She gives a loose quotation of Rome, which is true in a sense. There's a song, he lives, he lives, Christ Jesus lives today.

How does it go? He lives with me and talks with me.

Salvation to impart. You asked me how I know he lives. He lives within my heart. He lives more than just in your heart. I mean, that hymn, I don't think that hymn is trying to say what she's saying, but it's more than just his memory lives on, or he lives in our heart.

No, like Jesus is actually alive in person, in heaven at the right hand of God, the father. Like he's actually alive, Marcus.

Well, as long as we're talking about faith and that matters, and we're talking about hymns, there's another one. My faith is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. And boy, I bet she'd go crazy over this.

You never know, you never know. So she quotes Romans 8, the possibility that neither death, nor life, nor things present, or things to come, nor anything in all of creation can separate us from the love of God.

Of course, she doesn't really define what the love of God is. And I think that's the Achilles heel of all these liberal ministries. They have no ultimate source of authority to give definitions. It's just kind of what they think at any given time.

In the Bible, loving God is defined as keeping his commandments. Again, even within evangelicalism, that's not a popular thing to say. Jesus said, if you love me, do what? Keep my commandments. Jesus says, you are my friends if you do whatever I command you.

So according to scripture, loving God is keeping his commandments. God loving us is defined as Christ dying for our sins when we didn't deserve it. Romans 5, 8 says that God demonstrates his own love toward us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

So that is the gospel, but the liberals and progressives have rejected all of that. So all they really have left is good works. And I don't deny that they do some good works, but the point I think that she's making is that Jesus remains alive so long as people are doing good deeds in his name.

So she says, let's call it, this third theory, she said, let's call it the Easter hypothesis. So now we have, I'm reading from the article, so now we have multiple hypotheses, is that how you say it? Before us, which are we to believe?

How shall we put them to the test? I can offer you no definitive proof, so that's for sure, but I can offer you an invitation, an experiment, if you will, to test the Easter hypothesis. Here it is. If you would find Jesus, okay?

If you would find Jesus, look for him among the living. Look for him among those you love, but don't stop there. Look for him among your coworkers. Look for him among your neighbors. Look for him behind the counter at CVS or the RMV.

Look for him at the bus stop, but don't stop there either. Look for Christ in the headlines. Look for Christ in the bread lines. We might have bread lines in this country pretty soon if we do get socialism, but I could, sorry, forgive me, I couldn't help myself, but it's true.

Look for Christ in homeless shelters and hospitals. Look for Christ in the refugee camps and in the rubble of a suicide bombing. What is she saying? Or look for Christ in all these different areas, all these different places.

What's she saying? But don't look for him in church. Well, don't look for him in church. Not in her church. Well, I think what she's saying is, yeah, be kind to people, do good deeds. If you love Christ, look for him in other people.

And then perform acts of charity. I would argue, again, it's the opposite. We don't look for Christ in other people. We show Christ to other people. Through our good deeds, we are to display Christ to the lost through our preaching and good works.

Now, her final comments. To test the Easter hypothesis, ask yourself, if Jesus were alive today, where would he be? And then go there. That's the one that really got me. Yeah, yeah. And you may be surprised what you find.

Yeah, you did notice, you did pick up on it. If, this is the hypothesis she has settled on. If Jesus were alive. So she's saying on Easter, Jesus did not rise from the dead. Jesus is not alive. So that statement before that, he's gone.

Is that a message of hope?

No. It's not. But how can you be a teacher, a religious leader, read the Bible and not know where Jesus is? Right.

Well, I think she knows what the scripture says. She has just rejected it. And God has given her over to what the Bible calls to a reprobate mind. And she's deceived. I don't think, you know, we read this and we're kind of horrified by it.

I don't think that really occurs to her. So she's deceived and she's deceiving, deceiving others. First Corinthians 15, 14 says that Christ is not risen, that our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty.

In other words, you have no hope. If Christ is not risen, then all you have in this life is to eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow you die, which is about the most depressing message you could ever hear.

Larry. I saw, you know, a few paragraphs that are right in the middle of the page. I can offer you no definite proofs. Yeah. Right there, she's saying, I have no hope to offer you. Right.

It's a sad, sad message. She's talking about grave robbers. She's robbing people of hope. That's what she's doing. And she's doing it in the name of Jesus. But we do have a message of hope because Jesus did rise from the dead.

He is coming back. And the good news of the gospel is found in Romans 10, 9, which says, if you confess with your mouth, the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved.