Speaker: Aaron Johnson, George Beals, David Stearsman
Automated Transcript:
And this series, as we mentioned a yesterday, but we’ll mention it every day, just to, in case people are new to this session in the lectureship that we have taken these back-to-back-to-back speech speakers, and they’ve been dealing with a particular topic. This afternoon’s topic are false views of the resurrection or false views of the empty tomb, depending on how you want to look at that.
And through these sessions, we thought what a great way. And of course, several years ago before my time, what a great opportunity for a Bible study to have questions asked about these lessons and the speakers would form a panel. And of course, we’ll reach back into this morning as well. So George is on that panel as well, brother George Beals,
who spoke this morning on the bottom up argument of the resurrection of Jesus. And I thought the way it worked out was pretty good because Aaron appealed to that as well. And he didn’t have to go through the whole thing he just mentioned as George mentioned earlier. And so that was very good. But anyway, these guys have studied these, these, these topics are fresh on their mind.
And so what better people to participate in the answering of the questions? And as I mentioned yesterday, I’ll mention again that, you know, we’re not here to determine what the brotherhood should think about things, or we don’t have the official quote church of Christ position unquote, but we’re here. We are here to study the Bible. In fact, all of us will hope all of us have someone like this.
And if you don’t really miss an out, but you know, preachers get together. Sometimes I know Wallace Maxwell and west Kannapolis, this type of person, some of us knew him, but you could get together and just think out loud with each other and just talk about scripture, talk about, you know, doctrine and maybe views or whatever. And we can agree and we can,
you know, refute each other and all that, but it’s not going to get written up or anything because we’re just trying to figure it out ourselves. It’s kind of like thinking out loud. And we are blessed here at the school of depression to have several people like that among whom is George among whom is Daniel and Chad tactile is not around it. And Johnny is right there.
We can do that. And so, so it’s, it’s good to have preachers get together like that and to think out loud and to kinda, you know, play devil’s advocate with each other and all that, but we’re all seeking and desiring to learn truth. And that’s what we’re all about. And that’s what we’re all about here. And so we’ll have these questions and we have a bit more questions than yesterday,
but that’s all right. We can handle it within this amount of time. All right. So I’ll read the question and I’ll leave it up here. And then any of these brethren that wanna, you know, have an opportunity at it, we’ll, we’ll come up here and then we can all add to it. But I’m gonna start with, there’s a very simple question here when I say simple,
but I’ll give an answer. And if these guys don’t agree with it, then they can, they can, they can add something to it. So I’m going to mention this question and then I will read the other question that we’ll look at. And if they want to say anything about the creedal statement and that’s what it is, what is a creedal statement mentioned by Aaron?
I’ll just mention something briefly here. A credo statement is statements throughout the new Testament and not to my knowledge, they have not been absolutely ascertain. This is a saying of the early church, you know, but it’s something like that. Like sometimes you’ll see in a new Testament, this was an early hymn of the church, you know, like Colossians one 15 through whatever,
or Philippians two, you know, six through 11 or whatever. And that could be very likely, but to my knowledge, I don’t know that there’s ever beyond a shadow of doubt. That’s what that was. Or if Paul actually made it, I mean, you know, I don’t know. So you can make a comment on that, but these are not,
you know, the reason why this question is probably here is because, you know, the restoration slogan, we have no creed, but the Bible, but yet what’s a creedal statement. So that’s the question. I’m going to leave that up here. Anybody can comment on that of the panel that they want to, but then the question we’re going to get into here first is what assurance do we have that Roman crucifixion resulted in death?
And then there’s a follow-up is there a book that discusses ancient crucifixion and then another one, similar, what are some books that summarize the minimal factor arguments. Okay. And so I’ll leave these questions right here and I don’t know. Let’s see. Oh yeah. I guess maybe Aaron could deal with that. Well, whoever wants to do first, I know that’s something he had mentioned,
but either way. Yeah. Rock paper scissors. Okay. In terms of what is a creedal statement? A creedal statement is something that looks highly structured. Something that is not just the normal cadence of speaking, but there’s going to be some parallelism. It’s going to be tight. It’s going to express a lot of information in a very efficient kind of way,
something that has developed over time. Right? So I use that illustration. We say Bible things in Bible, we do Bible things in Bible ways, we call Bible things by Bible names, right? That is obviously not a normal way that people speak, right? So it’s obviously some kind of formulation that has been developed over time. Now, brother Kenyon is correct that there are some question marks on just exactly where these are.
So Philippians chapter two, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ. Jesus, who being in the form of God did not consider equality. So that is something that we think is an early hint of the church. We’re not exactly sure. Colossians chapter one. However, the one that I mentioned before, and that was mentioned by,
by brother Biel in first Corinthians chapter 15, verses three through eight for I delivered to you what I also received. Well, there’s your first tip off. And then it’s highly structured that Jesus died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures. So that’s line one, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures and that he appeared.
So your, your first and third lines have three parts, right? The fact that theological commentary and according to the scriptures, and then your second and fourth line have just one part, just the fact so that there it’s highly structured, it’s parallel. So that is virtually certain that this is an early creed. Another example would be Romans chapter one, Romans chapter one.
And just like the first, like starting in verse three, Paul says concerning his son Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David, according to the flesh and declared to be the son of God, with power, according to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection, from the dead. So there you have that parallelism, right? He was declared X by this.
He was declared this by that. So there is another very plausible candidate for a, an early oral creed. But if you’re looking to identify them, it’s just these parallel structures, not the normal way that people speak, conveying a lot of information in a concise way. So that’s how you would identify them. Should we go through each question individually? Or how do you want to work?
Just go through all of these that are okay. So what insurance do we have that Roman crucifixion resulted in death? And are there any books that discuss the practice of ancient crucifixion? So the assurance that we have is coming from the primary sources that we have from the Roman empire. So for example, the great historian Livy describes in detail. The process of crucifixion,
one particularly gruesome example comes from Josephus in his book, Jewish wars book, six verse three or four there Josephus describes one person enduring the, just the flogging that preceded the crucifixion and that process stripped this guy’s body down to bone. You could see the bone just from the flogging process. So primarily what, where we get the assurance that crucifixion was so effective is the fact that it’s described in these primary sources for us.
And are there any books that discuss it? Yes. One that is a classic comes from Hengel hen, G a L, and it’s just entitled crucifixion from fortress press back in 1977, he goes through a lot of the primary literature. So that would be an excellent book. If you’re looking to get into that. And then what are some books that would summarize the minimal facts argument that we’ve been referring to?
If you, if you want to dive in head first, you could get Michael Laconas the resurrection of Jesus, a new Historia graphical approach. It’s like a thousand pages. So that wouldn’t be an introductory text, but you could get like Konos and Harbor mosses the case for the resurrection. That would be an introductory text. So like Kona and hopper Mohs the case for the resurrection there,
they introduced the minimal facts. It’s, you know, very readable for the motivated lay person that would be an excellent text to get started with. So I just want to add something to one of these questions. So what insurance do we have that Roman crucifixion resulted in death? That that’s a great question. And I would add to this question, that one thing that we should keep in mind is,
are we certain that this crucifixion led to Jesus’s death, right? Because you could establish the generality that crucifixion resulted in death. And that crucifixion was horrible and wretched and intense, but one of our concern is, did this Jesus, the Messiah die. And so again, we would go back and from the biblical record, we could establish that he did actually die.
You could look outside the Bible and, and see that Joe has Josephus would confirm that. And then in the text, you can see that there’s a variety of witnesses that could attest to the death of Jesus from this wretched way of dying. His mother was there, his mother’s sister was there. Mary, the wife of Clovis was there. Mary Magdalene was there.
The beloved disciple could attest to his death. The soldiers who cast a lot could attest to his death, the soldiers who broke the legs of the other two could attest to his death, the soldier who pierced his side and water and blood came forth, they could attest to his death. The Centurion that a watched over the crucifixion could attest to his death.
The Centurion who tells pilot that Jesus has already dead, could attest to his death. So lots of, of witness and solid evidence that could establish that among those among crucifixion in the first century that this Jesus did in fact die. So let’s see here. What, what books summarize the minimal factor argument that is the minimal facts argument, not the minimal factor,
the minimal facts argument, otherwise known as the bottom up argument. There are several that I would add. One in particular would be the, the, the doctoral dissertation that Gary R Habermas wrote in 1976. I think it was. And that’s what started this argument off his dissertation, about a 340 page dissertation at Michigan state university. And the title of that is the reader,
the, the resurrection of Jesus, a rational inquiry, again, that is available. And I have it as a PDF. For example, if you could just, just make a stud maybe Google that we’ll find it through certain academic databases. And again, that’s what got this whole argument started. And then from there that’s taken off and people have run with it,
Habermas himself, summarize. It has a lot of good information after he wrote that. And that is by Gary Habermas, the risen Jesus and future hope I would advise. In fact, I’m taking a course, as Brian had mentioned in the Florida school of preaching this semester on Christian apologetics. And this is one of the required texts because we’re going to be focusing on the resurrection of Jesus in that cost.
There are other things of course, to talk about in apologetics in central. I only have one course at FSAP on Christian apologetics. I have to be selective each semester. This time we were talking about the existence of God and the Bible is being the word of God, but we’ll be focusing later. They’ll have maybe for about five weeks at the end of the semester,
and this is what I’m going to have the folks read. So as to the books, number two, the what assurance do we have that Roman Christian Roman crucifixion resulted in death? Is there a book that discusses ancient crucifixion? I would add a, an article that was written by John Cook titled Roman crucifixion, Roman crucifixions, plural colon from the second Punic war to Constantine.
This is a, a publication that appeared in 2013 in a German academic journal that is abbreviated Z N w I won’t give you the German Z and w volume 104, number one pages, one to 32. And it’s title all written in English, Roman crucifixions from the second Punic war, which is dated for about a 17 year period, 2018 to 2001 in Roman ancient Roman history to Constantine.
And he was emperor of Rome in 3, 0 6 to 3, 3 7, a D. So that wide span and cook does an excellent job in documenting with primary sources, cruise affection that happened during that period. And if you analyze that, you’ll see that a, you have a lot of rich evidence giving you what has survived out of, out of the ancient Greek world as to a crucifixion.
And the Romans were proficient at it. And the purpose was to kill people. It wasn’t a, let them go after awhile. Maybe they didn’t do it perfectly in all cases, but it was so overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly perfected that I have no question that when Jesus Christ was crucified, he was killed. And let’s see, is there a book, a young,
so now on creed, where was this now? What is a creedal statement? Is that what you mentioned? What is a creedal statement? So Aaron gave a description of a credo station statement. And does that may give you some titles that deal with the creedal statements? I’ll just list these, if you want to make a study of these, these are from new Testament scholars having to do with creedal statements,
analyzing them, documenting them. One is by Paul W. Barnett titled Jesus and the logic of history. A second again is by Paul WBR Barnett titled the birth of Christianity subtitled. The first 20 years. Number three, you know, is by a, this is an older work by Oscar Coleman titled the earliest Christian confessions understand that the term confessions is used synonymously with creedal statements.
So traditions, and this was originally published in 1948, and then a recently reprinted by a riff and stock on Woodfin stock, 2018, number four by C H Dodd. And this is where recording this only. So a CA Dodd titled the app systolic preaching and its developments. That’s 1980, number five, Richard and long, and Necker new wine into fresh wineskins subtitled contextualizing the early Christian confessions.
Number six, Vernon H Newfield, N E U Neufeld. I beg your pardon, N E U F E L D titled the earliest Christian confessions in 1963. And then a seventh is by max Wilcox, w I L C O X titled the Semitism of acts. So those will give you a insight into a scholarship pertaining to these so-called confessional statements or cradle statements.
Now, a question that arises sometimes hear is, well, I thought the Bible, I thought we affirmed that the Bible is inspired in errand. So what are we talking about? These creedal statements is that these were things that were just traditionally caught on a F took on a definite shape and then repeated. Does that mean that they weren’t re inspired? Well,
of course not. If in fact you find these incorporated into the inspired text, then that’s an affirmation that they also were inspired and recognized as such in the scriptures. So now another thing on, on crucifixion, yeah. This an archeological find that took place in the first century in 1968, it was discovered in and dated in the first century a D in Jerusalem.
And this is the crucified man. His name is Joe Joe ho Hainan, and a, a, an also Arie was found that’s a box. They were, they were, people would die and then they’d be put into a tomb. And then they, the cost of the flesh would shrivel up and eventually all you’d have, would be the bones. And they would collect these bones in the ancient world and put them into a little box sometimes with pretty figures on top of the box.
These are called ossuarys sometimes I think they were made out of ivory. In fact, and one of these was discovered in 1968 in Jerusalem, dated first century a D showing a, a man whose ankle had a Roman nail painting, pedal penetrating through it. And as I recall, you have the ankle like this, and the nail went through on the side.
So apparently the, at least in this case, the legs were put down like this in a beam was in between. And they put an, put a nail in the side, hold him, held him, talk like that. He died with the nail still frozen in the ankle. So that has survived. You can find this in current publications on a biblical archeology.
So, and then one other thing I would mention another study that does, well, let me back up the creedal statements. Let me back up even further. If you look at, if you identify them, the minimal facts that are accepted across the conservative liberal scholarship, the, these, these six facts are number one. If I remember them in order,
Jesus died by Roman crucifixion. He appeared his disciples believed that he appeared to them post crucifixion in which means post death, frankly, thirdly, this transformed their lives next early proclamation. Next, the conversion of Paul or Saul, whose name was Roman name was Palm Paulus. And then sixth is the conversion of Jesus’ brother, James, who was a skeptic identified as such in the scripture,
in the gospel accounts, and then became a believer because he also believed that the risen Jesus appeared to him. So the creedal statements have to do with largely with the early proclamation. In other words, these provide evidence indicating that evidence, that counteracts the claim, that what we have in the gospel accounts and in reflected elsewhere, what we have in, in acts and first Grampians and so forth.
What we have here are what might be called creative exit Jesus ICIC, Jesus. In other words, where later out of wishful thinking, or maybe even, even some downright conniving later, people in the, maybe the second generation Christians wrote these books in the first century, a D and then retro rejected their, these make believe claims back into the text as if they really happened.
That would take time to do because you have the death of Christ usually dated at 33. Sometimes people dated at 30 as Aaron alluded to. And the so, and then you have these legends and wishful thinking happening over the decades. And then finally the gospel accounts are written late and so forth. And then these, this idea that he actually was raised from the dead is a retro rejected back is to try to trick us who have these books today,
that in thinking that he was actually raised from the dead, well, if you can demonstrate, or at least provide evidence that shows that, that the proclamation of his, of the resurrected Jesus, the actual resurrected Jesus was very close to 30, 38, 30 or 33, a D that’s not going to give enough time for these make believe alleged, make believe claims to develop.
So then they could retro exact back. So in the creedal statements, by giving these earlier and giving us evidence that the early proc that the proclamation that his resurrection was early counteracts, that particular fact that is the early proclamation thing. So I think that was about all we had. This next question goes right along well, we’re giving George exercise, you know,
he’s going to go down and come back and go down and come back, you know, but this next exercise, or the next question goes along with the crucifixion and the scourging. And as brother Aaron had mentioned the Livie, I guess it was whose testimony talked about the scourging and seeing the bare bones made me think of that Mel Gibson movie and the scourging there.
And of course it was a long time that came out, but that’s the first time I ever even came close to realizing the significance of scourging. Cause you know, the button, of course, I don’t know how much Hollywood that is, but I know it’s definitely much more than I thought. Now the challenge with some of this is, you know,
the Bible doesn’t go into any detail about all this stuff, you know, just simply said scourging and I don’t think it says a bit about the detail. It just says, he says he became obedient to death, even the death of the cross. And that’s all it says. And we do have, you know, the name being nailed to the cross and the gospel accounts and all that.
But the Bible doesn’t go into any of the gruesome details that some of these books and stuff go into. And so, you know, that’s another lesson why, you know, less than on that. Why not? You know, but anyway, but it was, was right there as, as these, these, you know, I witnessed or the testimony of people who had lived in the period who are describing it like Josephus and living all that,
it was gruesome. And all of that, well, the question here comes up and this is a good time to put it in right here. Is it possible for Jesus to have shed no blood until the soldiers pierced him? And as I was looking at that question and listen to these guys, speaking, I’m thinking maybe it should have been better written as you know,
what proof would you show that Jesus bled before the soldiers pierced him, but either way you want to look at it, is it possible for Jesus to have shed no blood until the soldiers pierced him? So I would say there are certainly good evidence that Jesus bled before, before he died. And I think this would come from a couple incidents and Brian just mentioned the scourging of Jesus and several of the counts.
John uses the word flogging John 19 one, Matthew and mark used the word scourging. But in, in that there’s a, certainly a bleeding could have occurred there. If you think about what scourging is, it would be a eight inch wooden handle, a Roman whip with leather straps led balls, metal glass, or bone on the tip of those. It would be known for ripping away flesh and cause bleeding.
Perhaps the spine could be exposed along with the ribs or the bowels. So to think that that could happen without blood being shed seems extraordinarily unlikely. The other thing that I would mention that could contribute to blood before, you know, before he died and then was pierced, would be the crown of thorns. And that could certainly make him bleed as well.
And of course the most obvious nails driven through flashes, I would think make somebody bleed, you know, but I think this, this argument is based on false hermeneutics people that hold this will usually say, there is no mention of blood. You look at your concordance and look at the word blood. You will not find it. And throughout the gospel,
throughout the crucifixion narrative, until the soldier Pierce decide well, that just assumes that, you know, truth is only found by explicit statements. But as we think about like, if we were to put the minimal facts, argument to that, and if Jesus had the same flesh we have, I would say it’s impossible for him to have not bled before the crucifixion,
before that, hold on, we got a microphone, Zack, now’s the time bring a microphone down for George. I guess he didn’t like my idea of exercising, but if you want to come up here, here, come here. It comes now. Yeah, here, come here. It comes right now. Of course, George should be used to this.
He’s here on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights. And this is what we do in Bible class. Since we’ve been doing the live streaming. What’s the motivation for denying the obvious about is. I mean, sometimes when people make a statement along these lines, they have some out-of-area doctrine that they’re trying to defend or something. Yeah. What, what’s the motivation behind this claim that Jesus did not,
did not bleed before crucifixion. I’m not sure I can answer that. I’m not sure I can answer that. No, no, no. Oh, go ahead, John. You want to say, okay. Al come get the mic. Anyway. I don’t know that. I, I know that. I don’t know that. I know that at all.
All right. But anyway, but, but you’re right. It does the question. The, well, anyone who would hold that just seems like an absurd position to hold. And so I don’t know if it’s like, I know something you don’t know or whatever, whatever. I don’t know. Anyway. Okay. All right. The next question, did Jesus strip off slash takeoff light clothing,
his human flesh when he ascended into heaven and acts one nine through 11 so that he became like he was before an eternal spirit or does he remain in human flesh with an incorruptible glorified human body passages to discuss in a, is that the Bible depicts Jesus as a man after his Ascension first Timothy two, five first Corinthians, 15 47, 48, Stephen seeing Jesus standing at 7 56 and Philippians 3 20 21.
And so the basic question is, did Jesus strip off human flesh when he ascended to become like he was before he descended? Or does he remain in human flesh with an incorruptible glorified body? I’ll leave it right there. So one passage that could be helpful in getting the picture of Jesus’s Ascension. If you look in acts chapter one, Luke will record for us.
And let me turn there acts chapter one And verse 10. And while they were gazing into heaven, as he went behold, two men stood by them in white robes and said, men of Galilee, why do you look? Why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.
So we’ve gotta be careful with the notion. Will we take that to the extent to which we would argue that there’s no, there’s no disputing the fact that his in the reservoir, in the resurrection, he was raised as flesh. You know, certainly Jesus was risen in the flesh when he ascended and as they’re watching him ascend as he goes, so he’ll return,
will we take that to the extent of which his body will return in a fleshly form? And maybe this is some aspect of this question. So here’s some passages that would qualify that in first Corinthians chapter 15 verse Corinthians, chapter 15 in verse 50, notice what it says. It says, I tell you this brothers, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,
nor does the perishable inherit ne nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. So what, what is he saying there? Flesh and blood. That is what is to come, is not flesh and blood. They, the, you know, after a person is dead, the, you know, flesh and blood doesn’t inherit the kingdom of God. And so to what is Jesus’ body like right now?
Well, I don’t know in all the details, right? I don’t know all the, the ins and outs of what his body is like, but I know it’s not like ours, right? It’s not flesh and blood. So whatever it is. And then another passage that could add some insight into these questions as Philippians, and actually the author of the question lists this passage.
If you look at Philippians 3 21, well, let’s look at 20 and 21, Philippians three, 20 and 21. But our citizenship is in heaven. And from it, we await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. So what is his glorious body like?
I don’t know. I know it’s different than ours. Why do I know that? Well, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of, of heaven and it’s so the new body is going to be transformed. It’s not going to be identical to this one. And so some of these, the question did Jesus strip off, take off like clothing, his human flesh when he ascended into heaven?
I can’t say that. I know that as they were watching him, his body was transforming before their very eyes. I can’t make that statement, but I do know that that the body is the body that is to come is not like the body we have now. So I think if we take the question at face value, the answer is obviously no.
So we could imagine Jesus ascending. And then the question here says, does he strip it off? Like clothing, his human flesh? Does he start that off? Well, what would that look like? Well, Jesus would be ascending. And then he would strip off his body and the corpse would fall to the ground. Right? So just taking at face value,
know that Jesus does not take off his flashlight clothing upon his Ascension. But I think that there is maybe some more interesting elements to probe out here. Daniel mentioned some good passages. One that I would like to call your attention to is second Corinthians, chapter five, starting in verse one second, Corinthians five one. It says for, we know that if our earthly house,
this tent is destroyed, we have a building from God and a house not made with hands eternal in the heavens. So what is this house? This tent that we have on earth, that seems to be the body. And he says that if this body is destroyed, then we have a heavenly one eternal, then verse two, for in this, that is in this body.
In this tent, we groan earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation, which is from heaven. That is the resurrection body. If indeed having been clothed, we shall not be found naked for we who are in this tent, groan being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed that mortality may be swallowed up by life. So Paul here is saying that our desire is not to be unclothed.
And if closed means this body, Paul is saying that the ideal outcome is not for us to be liberated from our body and to live in this blissful solace state without this flesh prison, right? That’s that’s not what Paul is saying. He says, we don’t want to be unclothed. We don’t want to be without a body. We want to be further clothed.
We want to have a powerful, resurrected, eternal body. So if that’s the case, then when Jesus resurrects, right, he is not leaving his body behind. Obviously the tomb was empty. So the resurrection in Jesus case included a body. Now the question asks, well, what does he do with his body after he ascends? Right? That’s really the sticking point here.
But as far as Paul is concerned, the resurrection life includes further clothing. So the resurrection life includes what Paul imagines to be this glorious, resurrected body. And if that’s the case, then Jesus still has his glorious, resurrected body, which is seen by Stephen in the vision is seen by Paul on the road to Damascus. It’s seen by John and his visions in revelation.
So as far as we know, Jesus still has his body. So where does it go? Right? When he ascends, is he like out in space, somewhere living on the alternate galaxy or some faraway galaxy? Maybe not a one way that I’ve heard it described is if you imagine a tuning fork for a piano. So if you smack that tuning fork,
what’s going to happen. You’re going to have that sound right. The reverberating. But then if you were to put that vibrating tuning fork into a vacuum chamber, what would happen? Well, the sound would go away. The vibration would continue, but the sound would go away. And so that’s intended as an illustration for maybe what happens is Jesus is translated into some kind of higher dimension,
some kind of spiritual dimension in which his body is not expressed as the vibrations of the tuning fork do not create sound. And then when he enters back into this physical dimension, then the body appears the vibrations. Cause the sound again, that’s one way that I’ve heard it described. I don’t think we really know, but I do think that we know with a fair bit of certainty that in the resurrection,
Paul anticipates a body, a transformed body. In fact, in Romans chapter eight, verse 11, similar to the passage that was read by Daniel Romans chapter eight, verse 11, he says, but if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies,
through his spirit who dwells in you. So there he’s talking about the resurrection and he says that Jesus will give life where to your mortal bodies, this thing that I’ve currently got, it will be transformed. I’m not going to get rid of it. It will be transformed. And I will take it into my resurrection existence. So we will have a body.
Jesus does have a body how that all works. We don’t know what he is like, but we do know that when we are with him, we will be like him. Okay. Oh yeah, wait. Oh yeah, yeah, he’s coming. He sits on the back row. So, So just a couple of questions if I may observations. So in Jesus is ascending and people who are in flesh and blood was seeing him ascending.
That is the detecting that by one or more of their senses. And, and then it says, when he returns, they will see him as he left. So question number one or observation, number one, does this mean, therefore that the, that the immortal body of Jesus would still be seeable by those still in flesh and blood? It seems the answer is that yes.
Number two, when it, when first Corinthian 15 talks about a change taking place from the flesh and blood slash mortal body to the body that is not fleshing blood, since it cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven, then it’s not as if that flesh and blood has to shad, like a, like a snake’s skin and exists someplace it’s gone, it’s been replaced.
Right? So that dissipates that problem. In other words, the problem is, oh, you know, where’s, where’s this physical body of Jesus. Then it’s been disrupted. It’s not like a snake skin is gone. It’s been replaced. It looks like. And then thirdly, since we, at least the saved, going to be taking on a similar body,
then doesn’t that mean? Therefore, that we all will have all of the saved will have a Mo an immortal body, a body, nonetheless, but not of the nature that is that, that we have right now. Yes. Okay. Right. Yes. And just a couple of thoughts in addition to that, and of course it was quoted loosely here,
but that’s a first John three and verse two, where it says beloved. Now, are we the children of God? And here’s the key right here, brothers, here’s the key. And it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when he is revealed, we shall be like him for, we shall see him as he is now.
You know, it hasn’t been revealed. That’s why we can’t point to versus this exactly how we’re going to be. But just some thoughts here. And by the way, we do have a whole lesson on Wednesday night about the resurrection body first Corinthians 15. And then we have a lesson on, I believe Wednesday, tomorrow, Steve is going to come talk about Romans 8, 10, 11.
And, and, and that right there. So we do have some whole lessons on that, but just some things, just some food for thought, of course, as he ascended in acts chapter nine, really the idea is when he ascended, he didn’t go into the cloud, but really the language says he ascended and the cloud covered him. So the cloud covered him.
So they did not see his full Ascension all the way. And so the possibility exists that all that transformation took place after that cloud covered him. And it just was not for us to see, but a couple of things I know. And so I’m, I don’t know if you call this a minimal facts argument here from scripture, this flesh cannot dwell in that realm.
Okay. And so even on Jesus, this flesh could not dwell in that realm. Now, if Jesus had some different flesh than this, then he wasn’t human. Like we are, but he was human. Like we are. So he has a same flesh and bones, profess flesh and blood. As we have several patches, you know, Hebrews two 14 and other places,
Jesus went, in fact, we maybe should back up when Jesus resurrected, that was his real body. That was that same body that was in that tune. You know, here’s the, here’s the S the nail prints in the side. As Aaron mentioned in one of his lessons, he actually ate twice. At least he ate on the seashore with those seven disciples who didn’t know him at first.
And then he ate with the mass road disciples later that night, that evening, same day. And it Luke, Luke 34 same day. And so he ate, you know, he had his same body and it was that same body that ascended up into heaven. But again, that cloud covered it, but it was the same body to say he had any different body.
It would be denied that he had the same flesh that we have, and I’m not going there. Okay. And so that’s that part of it. And of course, first Corinthians 15, is it possible that whatever transformation took place behind that cloud was a pre first Corinthians 15 just to him, because again, he has sent it to the right hand of God.
And, and so we have that. And then we have the first John three, two, and again, the key there, it has not yet been revealed. And so we don’t know for sure all this, I’m just putting some minimal facts here. We do know in first Corinthians, I would say for, if you look at first Corinthians 15 and the verses 24,
I believe are they’re right there in that section where it talks about Jesus. I mean, he, and this is the amazing one, just an, another amazing aspect of the gospel then comes in first Corinthians 1524, when he delivers the kingdom to God, the father, when he puts an end, all rule and all authority and power for, he must reign till he has put all enemies under his feet.
The last enemy that will be destroyed is death for, he has put all things under his feet, but when he says, all things are put under him, it is evident that he who put all things under him is accepted. Now, when all things are made subject to him, then the son himself will also be subject to him who put all things under him,
that God may be all in all. And that’s just a, we could have a whole lectureship just on that passage right there, but here’s what I’m getting out of this. There is a sense in which Jesus is for, from the moment he put on flesh forevermore, there’s a sense that he is subject to the father. And why is that? Because he became human and an inherent nature of humanity is that we are subject to the creator.
And so, and that’s, that’s, you know, that’s why first John three, two, we’re going to see him as he is because he’s one of us, a human. And again, all of the details of that, I don’t know that we can explain, but he is God. And he is man in one being, and he is just as much human as we are yet.
He is God, unlike us. And so, you know, this stuff has not been revealed. And George has a followup. You still got the mic. Okay. Oh yeah. You saying then that, that prior to the incarnation of Christ, the father, the son, the holy spirit, all, all spirit only. And then Prior to creation,
I would say, Yeah. Prior to the incarnation of Christ incarnation, before Christ was incarnate, he was spirit resonant. Yes. Okay. So prior to the incarnation of the cry of Christ, all three persons of the Godhead were in spirit, spirit by nature. But then for eternity in the future, the holy spirit and the father were remained by nature spirit.
Whereas the son will have an immortal body. Yes. So that makes a distinction in eternal distinction yeah. Of The sun. Yeah. Because he cannot quit being man. And part of being man is having flesh and blood part of being man is transformation of a body to dwell in that area in first Corinthians 15. And so, and I’ve, I’ve often mentioned this.
So you have, if we can imagine a timeline, you know, time has a beginning, Genesis one, one is going to have an end and I’m not going to throw in time. As we know it, we’ve had that discussion already. But anyway, Tom has the beginning, Genesis one, one time has an end judgment day. We’ll call that judgment day.
And so he turned he before creation. It was just, God, God is the only thing that was there in the beginning was the word. The word was with God. The word was God, that’s it. Okay. Then he created and then creation, you know, father, son, and spirit have different roles in salvation and all that. But then at the end of time,
you have, of course, all of this, of course, six days of creation and all that. But eternity on the other side of judgment day, you’re going to have good angels. You have bad angels. You know, some things were created to be eternal this way, or we might say immortal, whatever, eternal that way, but God is eternal this way.
And that way from beginning or from how’s it go, Hey from say it again? Yeah. If any, 2, 2 50, that aren’t God, what’s the exact wording of the flashing down. There you go. Thank you Al from everlasting to everlasting, you are God, but you know, humans were, were, were eternal. As soon as we’re created,
we have a part of us. It lives forever. Angels were created, were procreated. And you know, all that angels were created within those six days and they were created to live forever. And so, you know, so he turned, he at this side is going to, with God is going to be God, you know, the God had good angels and,
and human souls with transformed bodies that, you know, the blood of Christ covers. So it’s in fathomable. But again, the key key key to that is it has not yet been revealed exactly what we’re going to be, but Jesus did not cease being man, because he ascended into heaven. And I, I would appeal to the first Corinthians, 1528 on that one.
Yeah. On that one. And so he, he, when he, when he became flesh, he forever took on the nature of man. And that, that to me is just an awesome aspect of the gospel, any follow-up with that, we do have another question that came in through the website, but we don’t have to get to it, but we can get to it pretty quick.
I think. But if some, if somebody thinks of something to follow up on that, then that’d be good. All right. The question is where the sweat drops of blood real when Jesus prayed or the sweat drops of blood real when Jesus prayed okay. As bud, but real and sweat, We look at the passage and we’re almost out of time.
But if we look at those passages, I believe it does have language assembly in there, like, or as, and my guys down here with their Bibles computers, I don’t know, was Luke’s account. Where’s the passage. Yeah. And actually, while they’re looking at those passages, I mentioned Mel Gibson’s passion of Christ a moment ago. And of course,
you know, those movies can do good stuff, do some good things, but they’re not the gospel truth, you know, as you know, and I think in that movie, they did have him sitting there praying, I think, right before he stomped on the snake right after I can’t remember which, but they had him praying. And as he was praying,
it was like drops of blood splattering on the rock where he was praying. I don’t know if anybody caught that or not, but anyway, that that’s, that’s not scripture. Okay. But what’s that? Yeah. All right. But do you have pastors here? Okay. It was just the new king James I’d have to look at how the other,
but it just says that they were sweat drops of blood or like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. Yeah. Like, right, right. And so it’s just an expression assembly they’re comparing. And of course, you know, you know that, you know, we, we had the expression, blood, sweat, and tears and things like that.
It doesn’t always literally mean we bled doing the project, but it just means we put everything into it. And I think the figurative language there is, that’s what it’s about, but it’s not tear drops of blood. Although if you saw my eye last night, you would think I was bleeding, but it’s a little bit better today. And hopefully it’ll be all cleared up by tomorrow.
But anyway, he’s got something in mind. Can’t get rid of it anyway. All right. We thought we had a good productive session and maybe these questions and these answers may have sparked some or weighted the appetite or further study. I know they’d always do to me. And I make note of that. And when I get my spare time, which I don’t have a whole lot of it,
but I like to, you know, follow up on stuff like that and maybe bring it into sermons and such. But anyway, we appreciate the brethren. We appreciate, especially Aaron at such short notice.
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Speaker: Aaron Johnson, George Beals, David Stearsman
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And this series, as we mentioned a yesterday, but we’ll mention it every day, just to, in case people are new to this session in the lectureship that we have taken these back-to-back-to-back speech speakers, and they’ve been dealing with a particular topic. This afternoon’s topic are false views of the resurrection or false views of the empty tomb, depending on how you want to look at that.
And through these sessions, we thought what a great way. And of course, several years ago before my time, what a great opportunity for a Bible study to have questions asked about these lessons and the speakers would form a panel. And of course, we’ll reach back into this morning as well. So George is on that panel as well, brother George Beals,
who spoke this morning on the bottom up argument of the resurrection of Jesus. And I thought the way it worked out was pretty good because Aaron appealed to that as well. And he didn’t have to go through the whole thing he just mentioned as George mentioned earlier. And so that was very good. But anyway, these guys have studied these, these, these topics are fresh on their mind.
And so what better people to participate in the answering of the questions? And as I mentioned yesterday, I’ll mention again that, you know, we’re not here to determine what the brotherhood should think about things, or we don’t have the official quote church of Christ position unquote, but we’re here. We are here to study the Bible. In fact, all of us will hope all of us have someone like this.
And if you don’t really miss an out, but you know, preachers get together. Sometimes I know Wallace Maxwell and west Kannapolis, this type of person, some of us knew him, but you could get together and just think out loud with each other and just talk about scripture, talk about, you know, doctrine and maybe views or whatever. And we can agree and we can,
you know, refute each other and all that, but it’s not going to get written up or anything because we’re just trying to figure it out ourselves. It’s kind of like thinking out loud. And we are blessed here at the school of depression to have several people like that among whom is George among whom is Daniel and Chad tactile is not around it. And Johnny is right there.
We can do that. And so, so it’s, it’s good to have preachers get together like that and to think out loud and to kinda, you know, play devil’s advocate with each other and all that, but we’re all seeking and desiring to learn truth. And that’s what we’re all about. And that’s what we’re all about here. And so we’ll have these questions and we have a bit more questions than yesterday,
but that’s all right. We can handle it within this amount of time. All right. So I’ll read the question and I’ll leave it up here. And then any of these brethren that wanna, you know, have an opportunity at it, we’ll, we’ll come up here and then we can all add to it. But I’m gonna start with, there’s a very simple question here when I say simple,
but I’ll give an answer. And if these guys don’t agree with it, then they can, they can, they can add something to it. So I’m going to mention this question and then I will read the other question that we’ll look at. And if they want to say anything about the creedal statement and that’s what it is, what is a creedal statement mentioned by Aaron?
I’ll just mention something briefly here. A credo statement is statements throughout the new Testament and not to my knowledge, they have not been absolutely ascertain. This is a saying of the early church, you know, but it’s something like that. Like sometimes you’ll see in a new Testament, this was an early hymn of the church, you know, like Colossians one 15 through whatever,
or Philippians two, you know, six through 11 or whatever. And that could be very likely, but to my knowledge, I don’t know that there’s ever beyond a shadow of doubt. That’s what that was. Or if Paul actually made it, I mean, you know, I don’t know. So you can make a comment on that, but these are not,
you know, the reason why this question is probably here is because, you know, the restoration slogan, we have no creed, but the Bible, but yet what’s a creedal statement. So that’s the question. I’m going to leave that up here. Anybody can comment on that of the panel that they want to, but then the question we’re going to get into here first is what assurance do we have that Roman crucifixion resulted in death?
And then there’s a follow-up is there a book that discusses ancient crucifixion and then another one, similar, what are some books that summarize the minimal factor arguments. Okay. And so I’ll leave these questions right here and I don’t know. Let’s see. Oh yeah. I guess maybe Aaron could deal with that. Well, whoever wants to do first, I know that’s something he had mentioned,
but either way. Yeah. Rock paper scissors. Okay. In terms of what is a creedal statement? A creedal statement is something that looks highly structured. Something that is not just the normal cadence of speaking, but there’s going to be some parallelism. It’s going to be tight. It’s going to express a lot of information in a very efficient kind of way,
something that has developed over time. Right? So I use that illustration. We say Bible things in Bible, we do Bible things in Bible ways, we call Bible things by Bible names, right? That is obviously not a normal way that people speak, right? So it’s obviously some kind of formulation that has been developed over time. Now, brother Kenyon is correct that there are some question marks on just exactly where these are.
So Philippians chapter two, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ. Jesus, who being in the form of God did not consider equality. So that is something that we think is an early hint of the church. We’re not exactly sure. Colossians chapter one. However, the one that I mentioned before, and that was mentioned by,
by brother Biel in first Corinthians chapter 15, verses three through eight for I delivered to you what I also received. Well, there’s your first tip off. And then it’s highly structured that Jesus died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures. So that’s line one, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures and that he appeared.
So your, your first and third lines have three parts, right? The fact that theological commentary and according to the scriptures, and then your second and fourth line have just one part, just the fact so that there it’s highly structured, it’s parallel. So that is virtually certain that this is an early creed. Another example would be Romans chapter one, Romans chapter one.
And just like the first, like starting in verse three, Paul says concerning his son Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David, according to the flesh and declared to be the son of God, with power, according to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection, from the dead. So there you have that parallelism, right? He was declared X by this.
He was declared this by that. So there is another very plausible candidate for a, an early oral creed. But if you’re looking to identify them, it’s just these parallel structures, not the normal way that people speak, conveying a lot of information in a concise way. So that’s how you would identify them. Should we go through each question individually? Or how do you want to work?
Just go through all of these that are okay. So what insurance do we have that Roman crucifixion resulted in death? And are there any books that discuss the practice of ancient crucifixion? So the assurance that we have is coming from the primary sources that we have from the Roman empire. So for example, the great historian Livy describes in detail. The process of crucifixion,
one particularly gruesome example comes from Josephus in his book, Jewish wars book, six verse three or four there Josephus describes one person enduring the, just the flogging that preceded the crucifixion and that process stripped this guy’s body down to bone. You could see the bone just from the flogging process. So primarily what, where we get the assurance that crucifixion was so effective is the fact that it’s described in these primary sources for us.
And are there any books that discuss it? Yes. One that is a classic comes from Hengel hen, G a L, and it’s just entitled crucifixion from fortress press back in 1977, he goes through a lot of the primary literature. So that would be an excellent book. If you’re looking to get into that. And then what are some books that would summarize the minimal facts argument that we’ve been referring to?
If you, if you want to dive in head first, you could get Michael Laconas the resurrection of Jesus, a new Historia graphical approach. It’s like a thousand pages. So that wouldn’t be an introductory text, but you could get like Konos and Harbor mosses the case for the resurrection. That would be an introductory text. So like Kona and hopper Mohs the case for the resurrection there,
they introduced the minimal facts. It’s, you know, very readable for the motivated lay person that would be an excellent text to get started with. So I just want to add something to one of these questions. So what insurance do we have that Roman crucifixion resulted in death? That that’s a great question. And I would add to this question, that one thing that we should keep in mind is,
are we certain that this crucifixion led to Jesus’s death, right? Because you could establish the generality that crucifixion resulted in death. And that crucifixion was horrible and wretched and intense, but one of our concern is, did this Jesus, the Messiah die. And so again, we would go back and from the biblical record, we could establish that he did actually die.
You could look outside the Bible and, and see that Joe has Josephus would confirm that. And then in the text, you can see that there’s a variety of witnesses that could attest to the death of Jesus from this wretched way of dying. His mother was there, his mother’s sister was there. Mary, the wife of Clovis was there. Mary Magdalene was there.
The beloved disciple could attest to his death. The soldiers who cast a lot could attest to his death, the soldiers who broke the legs of the other two could attest to his death, the soldier who pierced his side and water and blood came forth, they could attest to his death. The Centurion that a watched over the crucifixion could attest to his death.
The Centurion who tells pilot that Jesus has already dead, could attest to his death. So lots of, of witness and solid evidence that could establish that among those among crucifixion in the first century that this Jesus did in fact die. So let’s see here. What, what books summarize the minimal factor argument that is the minimal facts argument, not the minimal factor,
the minimal facts argument, otherwise known as the bottom up argument. There are several that I would add. One in particular would be the, the, the doctoral dissertation that Gary R Habermas wrote in 1976. I think it was. And that’s what started this argument off his dissertation, about a 340 page dissertation at Michigan state university. And the title of that is the reader,
the, the resurrection of Jesus, a rational inquiry, again, that is available. And I have it as a PDF. For example, if you could just, just make a stud maybe Google that we’ll find it through certain academic databases. And again, that’s what got this whole argument started. And then from there that’s taken off and people have run with it,
Habermas himself, summarize. It has a lot of good information after he wrote that. And that is by Gary Habermas, the risen Jesus and future hope I would advise. In fact, I’m taking a course, as Brian had mentioned in the Florida school of preaching this semester on Christian apologetics. And this is one of the required texts because we’re going to be focusing on the resurrection of Jesus in that cost.
There are other things of course, to talk about in apologetics in central. I only have one course at FSAP on Christian apologetics. I have to be selective each semester. This time we were talking about the existence of God and the Bible is being the word of God, but we’ll be focusing later. They’ll have maybe for about five weeks at the end of the semester,
and this is what I’m going to have the folks read. So as to the books, number two, the what assurance do we have that Roman Christian Roman crucifixion resulted in death? Is there a book that discusses ancient crucifixion? I would add a, an article that was written by John Cook titled Roman crucifixion, Roman crucifixions, plural colon from the second Punic war to Constantine.
This is a, a publication that appeared in 2013 in a German academic journal that is abbreviated Z N w I won’t give you the German Z and w volume 104, number one pages, one to 32. And it’s title all written in English, Roman crucifixions from the second Punic war, which is dated for about a 17 year period, 2018 to 2001 in Roman ancient Roman history to Constantine.
And he was emperor of Rome in 3, 0 6 to 3, 3 7, a D. So that wide span and cook does an excellent job in documenting with primary sources, cruise affection that happened during that period. And if you analyze that, you’ll see that a, you have a lot of rich evidence giving you what has survived out of, out of the ancient Greek world as to a crucifixion.
And the Romans were proficient at it. And the purpose was to kill people. It wasn’t a, let them go after awhile. Maybe they didn’t do it perfectly in all cases, but it was so overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly perfected that I have no question that when Jesus Christ was crucified, he was killed. And let’s see, is there a book, a young,
so now on creed, where was this now? What is a creedal statement? Is that what you mentioned? What is a creedal statement? So Aaron gave a description of a credo station statement. And does that may give you some titles that deal with the creedal statements? I’ll just list these, if you want to make a study of these, these are from new Testament scholars having to do with creedal statements,
analyzing them, documenting them. One is by Paul W. Barnett titled Jesus and the logic of history. A second again is by Paul WBR Barnett titled the birth of Christianity subtitled. The first 20 years. Number three, you know, is by a, this is an older work by Oscar Coleman titled the earliest Christian confessions understand that the term confessions is used synonymously with creedal statements.
So traditions, and this was originally published in 1948, and then a recently reprinted by a riff and stock on Woodfin stock, 2018, number four by C H Dodd. And this is where recording this only. So a CA Dodd titled the app systolic preaching and its developments. That’s 1980, number five, Richard and long, and Necker new wine into fresh wineskins subtitled contextualizing the early Christian confessions.
Number six, Vernon H Newfield, N E U Neufeld. I beg your pardon, N E U F E L D titled the earliest Christian confessions in 1963. And then a seventh is by max Wilcox, w I L C O X titled the Semitism of acts. So those will give you a insight into a scholarship pertaining to these so-called confessional statements or cradle statements.
Now, a question that arises sometimes hear is, well, I thought the Bible, I thought we affirmed that the Bible is inspired in errand. So what are we talking about? These creedal statements is that these were things that were just traditionally caught on a F took on a definite shape and then repeated. Does that mean that they weren’t re inspired? Well,
of course not. If in fact you find these incorporated into the inspired text, then that’s an affirmation that they also were inspired and recognized as such in the scriptures. So now another thing on, on crucifixion, yeah. This an archeological find that took place in the first century in 1968, it was discovered in and dated in the first century a D in Jerusalem.
And this is the crucified man. His name is Joe Joe ho Hainan, and a, a, an also Arie was found that’s a box. They were, they were, people would die and then they’d be put into a tomb. And then they, the cost of the flesh would shrivel up and eventually all you’d have, would be the bones. And they would collect these bones in the ancient world and put them into a little box sometimes with pretty figures on top of the box.
These are called ossuarys sometimes I think they were made out of ivory. In fact, and one of these was discovered in 1968 in Jerusalem, dated first century a D showing a, a man whose ankle had a Roman nail painting, pedal penetrating through it. And as I recall, you have the ankle like this, and the nail went through on the side.
So apparently the, at least in this case, the legs were put down like this in a beam was in between. And they put an, put a nail in the side, hold him, held him, talk like that. He died with the nail still frozen in the ankle. So that has survived. You can find this in current publications on a biblical archeology.
So, and then one other thing I would mention another study that does, well, let me back up the creedal statements. Let me back up even further. If you look at, if you identify them, the minimal facts that are accepted across the conservative liberal scholarship, the, these, these six facts are number one. If I remember them in order,
Jesus died by Roman crucifixion. He appeared his disciples believed that he appeared to them post crucifixion in which means post death, frankly, thirdly, this transformed their lives next early proclamation. Next, the conversion of Paul or Saul, whose name was Roman name was Palm Paulus. And then sixth is the conversion of Jesus’ brother, James, who was a skeptic identified as such in the scripture,
in the gospel accounts, and then became a believer because he also believed that the risen Jesus appeared to him. So the creedal statements have to do with largely with the early proclamation. In other words, these provide evidence indicating that evidence, that counteracts the claim, that what we have in the gospel accounts and in reflected elsewhere, what we have in, in acts and first Grampians and so forth.
What we have here are what might be called creative exit Jesus ICIC, Jesus. In other words, where later out of wishful thinking, or maybe even, even some downright conniving later, people in the, maybe the second generation Christians wrote these books in the first century, a D and then retro rejected their, these make believe claims back into the text as if they really happened.
That would take time to do because you have the death of Christ usually dated at 33. Sometimes people dated at 30 as Aaron alluded to. And the so, and then you have these legends and wishful thinking happening over the decades. And then finally the gospel accounts are written late and so forth. And then these, this idea that he actually was raised from the dead is a retro rejected back is to try to trick us who have these books today,
that in thinking that he was actually raised from the dead, well, if you can demonstrate, or at least provide evidence that shows that, that the proclamation of his, of the resurrected Jesus, the actual resurrected Jesus was very close to 30, 38, 30 or 33, a D that’s not going to give enough time for these make believe alleged, make believe claims to develop.
So then they could retro exact back. So in the creedal statements, by giving these earlier and giving us evidence that the early proc that the proclamation that his resurrection was early counteracts, that particular fact that is the early proclamation thing. So I think that was about all we had. This next question goes right along well, we’re giving George exercise, you know,
he’s going to go down and come back and go down and come back, you know, but this next exercise, or the next question goes along with the crucifixion and the scourging. And as brother Aaron had mentioned the Livie, I guess it was whose testimony talked about the scourging and seeing the bare bones made me think of that Mel Gibson movie and the scourging there.
And of course it was a long time that came out, but that’s the first time I ever even came close to realizing the significance of scourging. Cause you know, the button, of course, I don’t know how much Hollywood that is, but I know it’s definitely much more than I thought. Now the challenge with some of this is, you know,
the Bible doesn’t go into any detail about all this stuff, you know, just simply said scourging and I don’t think it says a bit about the detail. It just says, he says he became obedient to death, even the death of the cross. And that’s all it says. And we do have, you know, the name being nailed to the cross and the gospel accounts and all that.
But the Bible doesn’t go into any of the gruesome details that some of these books and stuff go into. And so, you know, that’s another lesson why, you know, less than on that. Why not? You know, but anyway, but it was, was right there as, as these, these, you know, I witnessed or the testimony of people who had lived in the period who are describing it like Josephus and living all that,
it was gruesome. And all of that, well, the question here comes up and this is a good time to put it in right here. Is it possible for Jesus to have shed no blood until the soldiers pierced him? And as I was looking at that question and listen to these guys, speaking, I’m thinking maybe it should have been better written as you know,
what proof would you show that Jesus bled before the soldiers pierced him, but either way you want to look at it, is it possible for Jesus to have shed no blood until the soldiers pierced him? So I would say there are certainly good evidence that Jesus bled before, before he died. And I think this would come from a couple incidents and Brian just mentioned the scourging of Jesus and several of the counts.
John uses the word flogging John 19 one, Matthew and mark used the word scourging. But in, in that there’s a, certainly a bleeding could have occurred there. If you think about what scourging is, it would be a eight inch wooden handle, a Roman whip with leather straps led balls, metal glass, or bone on the tip of those. It would be known for ripping away flesh and cause bleeding.
Perhaps the spine could be exposed along with the ribs or the bowels. So to think that that could happen without blood being shed seems extraordinarily unlikely. The other thing that I would mention that could contribute to blood before, you know, before he died and then was pierced, would be the crown of thorns. And that could certainly make him bleed as well.
And of course the most obvious nails driven through flashes, I would think make somebody bleed, you know, but I think this, this argument is based on false hermeneutics people that hold this will usually say, there is no mention of blood. You look at your concordance and look at the word blood. You will not find it. And throughout the gospel,
throughout the crucifixion narrative, until the soldier Pierce decide well, that just assumes that, you know, truth is only found by explicit statements. But as we think about like, if we were to put the minimal facts, argument to that, and if Jesus had the same flesh we have, I would say it’s impossible for him to have not bled before the crucifixion,
before that, hold on, we got a microphone, Zack, now’s the time bring a microphone down for George. I guess he didn’t like my idea of exercising, but if you want to come up here, here, come here. It comes now. Yeah, here, come here. It comes right now. Of course, George should be used to this.
He’s here on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights. And this is what we do in Bible class. Since we’ve been doing the live streaming. What’s the motivation for denying the obvious about is. I mean, sometimes when people make a statement along these lines, they have some out-of-area doctrine that they’re trying to defend or something. Yeah. What, what’s the motivation behind this claim that Jesus did not,
did not bleed before crucifixion. I’m not sure I can answer that. I’m not sure I can answer that. No, no, no. Oh, go ahead, John. You want to say, okay. Al come get the mic. Anyway. I don’t know that. I, I know that. I don’t know that. I know that at all.
All right. But anyway, but, but you’re right. It does the question. The, well, anyone who would hold that just seems like an absurd position to hold. And so I don’t know if it’s like, I know something you don’t know or whatever, whatever. I don’t know. Anyway. Okay. All right. The next question, did Jesus strip off slash takeoff light clothing,
his human flesh when he ascended into heaven and acts one nine through 11 so that he became like he was before an eternal spirit or does he remain in human flesh with an incorruptible glorified human body passages to discuss in a, is that the Bible depicts Jesus as a man after his Ascension first Timothy two, five first Corinthians, 15 47, 48, Stephen seeing Jesus standing at 7 56 and Philippians 3 20 21.
And so the basic question is, did Jesus strip off human flesh when he ascended to become like he was before he descended? Or does he remain in human flesh with an incorruptible glorified body? I’ll leave it right there. So one passage that could be helpful in getting the picture of Jesus’s Ascension. If you look in acts chapter one, Luke will record for us.
And let me turn there acts chapter one And verse 10. And while they were gazing into heaven, as he went behold, two men stood by them in white robes and said, men of Galilee, why do you look? Why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.
So we’ve gotta be careful with the notion. Will we take that to the extent to which we would argue that there’s no, there’s no disputing the fact that his in the reservoir, in the resurrection, he was raised as flesh. You know, certainly Jesus was risen in the flesh when he ascended and as they’re watching him ascend as he goes, so he’ll return,
will we take that to the extent of which his body will return in a fleshly form? And maybe this is some aspect of this question. So here’s some passages that would qualify that in first Corinthians chapter 15 verse Corinthians, chapter 15 in verse 50, notice what it says. It says, I tell you this brothers, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,
nor does the perishable inherit ne nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. So what, what is he saying there? Flesh and blood. That is what is to come, is not flesh and blood. They, the, you know, after a person is dead, the, you know, flesh and blood doesn’t inherit the kingdom of God. And so to what is Jesus’ body like right now?
Well, I don’t know in all the details, right? I don’t know all the, the ins and outs of what his body is like, but I know it’s not like ours, right? It’s not flesh and blood. So whatever it is. And then another passage that could add some insight into these questions as Philippians, and actually the author of the question lists this passage.
If you look at Philippians 3 21, well, let’s look at 20 and 21, Philippians three, 20 and 21. But our citizenship is in heaven. And from it, we await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. So what is his glorious body like?
I don’t know. I know it’s different than ours. Why do I know that? Well, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of, of heaven and it’s so the new body is going to be transformed. It’s not going to be identical to this one. And so some of these, the question did Jesus strip off, take off like clothing, his human flesh when he ascended into heaven?
I can’t say that. I know that as they were watching him, his body was transforming before their very eyes. I can’t make that statement, but I do know that that the body is the body that is to come is not like the body we have now. So I think if we take the question at face value, the answer is obviously no.
So we could imagine Jesus ascending. And then the question here says, does he strip it off? Like clothing, his human flesh? Does he start that off? Well, what would that look like? Well, Jesus would be ascending. And then he would strip off his body and the corpse would fall to the ground. Right? So just taking at face value,
know that Jesus does not take off his flashlight clothing upon his Ascension. But I think that there is maybe some more interesting elements to probe out here. Daniel mentioned some good passages. One that I would like to call your attention to is second Corinthians, chapter five, starting in verse one second, Corinthians five one. It says for, we know that if our earthly house,
this tent is destroyed, we have a building from God and a house not made with hands eternal in the heavens. So what is this house? This tent that we have on earth, that seems to be the body. And he says that if this body is destroyed, then we have a heavenly one eternal, then verse two, for in this, that is in this body.
In this tent, we groan earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation, which is from heaven. That is the resurrection body. If indeed having been clothed, we shall not be found naked for we who are in this tent, groan being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed that mortality may be swallowed up by life. So Paul here is saying that our desire is not to be unclothed.
And if closed means this body, Paul is saying that the ideal outcome is not for us to be liberated from our body and to live in this blissful solace state without this flesh prison, right? That’s that’s not what Paul is saying. He says, we don’t want to be unclothed. We don’t want to be without a body. We want to be further clothed.
We want to have a powerful, resurrected, eternal body. So if that’s the case, then when Jesus resurrects, right, he is not leaving his body behind. Obviously the tomb was empty. So the resurrection in Jesus case included a body. Now the question asks, well, what does he do with his body after he ascends? Right? That’s really the sticking point here.
But as far as Paul is concerned, the resurrection life includes further clothing. So the resurrection life includes what Paul imagines to be this glorious, resurrected body. And if that’s the case, then Jesus still has his glorious, resurrected body, which is seen by Stephen in the vision is seen by Paul on the road to Damascus. It’s seen by John and his visions in revelation.
So as far as we know, Jesus still has his body. So where does it go? Right? When he ascends, is he like out in space, somewhere living on the alternate galaxy or some faraway galaxy? Maybe not a one way that I’ve heard it described is if you imagine a tuning fork for a piano. So if you smack that tuning fork,
what’s going to happen. You’re going to have that sound right. The reverberating. But then if you were to put that vibrating tuning fork into a vacuum chamber, what would happen? Well, the sound would go away. The vibration would continue, but the sound would go away. And so that’s intended as an illustration for maybe what happens is Jesus is translated into some kind of higher dimension,
some kind of spiritual dimension in which his body is not expressed as the vibrations of the tuning fork do not create sound. And then when he enters back into this physical dimension, then the body appears the vibrations. Cause the sound again, that’s one way that I’ve heard it described. I don’t think we really know, but I do think that we know with a fair bit of certainty that in the resurrection,
Paul anticipates a body, a transformed body. In fact, in Romans chapter eight, verse 11, similar to the passage that was read by Daniel Romans chapter eight, verse 11, he says, but if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies,
through his spirit who dwells in you. So there he’s talking about the resurrection and he says that Jesus will give life where to your mortal bodies, this thing that I’ve currently got, it will be transformed. I’m not going to get rid of it. It will be transformed. And I will take it into my resurrection existence. So we will have a body.
Jesus does have a body how that all works. We don’t know what he is like, but we do know that when we are with him, we will be like him. Okay. Oh yeah, wait. Oh yeah, yeah, he’s coming. He sits on the back row. So, So just a couple of questions if I may observations. So in Jesus is ascending and people who are in flesh and blood was seeing him ascending.
That is the detecting that by one or more of their senses. And, and then it says, when he returns, they will see him as he left. So question number one or observation, number one, does this mean, therefore that the, that the immortal body of Jesus would still be seeable by those still in flesh and blood? It seems the answer is that yes.
Number two, when it, when first Corinthian 15 talks about a change taking place from the flesh and blood slash mortal body to the body that is not fleshing blood, since it cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven, then it’s not as if that flesh and blood has to shad, like a, like a snake’s skin and exists someplace it’s gone, it’s been replaced.
Right? So that dissipates that problem. In other words, the problem is, oh, you know, where’s, where’s this physical body of Jesus. Then it’s been disrupted. It’s not like a snake skin is gone. It’s been replaced. It looks like. And then thirdly, since we, at least the saved, going to be taking on a similar body,
then doesn’t that mean? Therefore, that we all will have all of the saved will have a Mo an immortal body, a body, nonetheless, but not of the nature that is that, that we have right now. Yes. Okay. Right. Yes. And just a couple of thoughts in addition to that, and of course it was quoted loosely here,
but that’s a first John three and verse two, where it says beloved. Now, are we the children of God? And here’s the key right here, brothers, here’s the key. And it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when he is revealed, we shall be like him for, we shall see him as he is now.
You know, it hasn’t been revealed. That’s why we can’t point to versus this exactly how we’re going to be. But just some thoughts here. And by the way, we do have a whole lesson on Wednesday night about the resurrection body first Corinthians 15. And then we have a lesson on, I believe Wednesday, tomorrow, Steve is going to come talk about Romans 8, 10, 11.
And, and, and that right there. So we do have some whole lessons on that, but just some things, just some food for thought, of course, as he ascended in acts chapter nine, really the idea is when he ascended, he didn’t go into the cloud, but really the language says he ascended and the cloud covered him. So the cloud covered him.
So they did not see his full Ascension all the way. And so the possibility exists that all that transformation took place after that cloud covered him. And it just was not for us to see, but a couple of things I know. And so I’m, I don’t know if you call this a minimal facts argument here from scripture, this flesh cannot dwell in that realm.
Okay. And so even on Jesus, this flesh could not dwell in that realm. Now, if Jesus had some different flesh than this, then he wasn’t human. Like we are, but he was human. Like we are. So he has a same flesh and bones, profess flesh and blood. As we have several patches, you know, Hebrews two 14 and other places,
Jesus went, in fact, we maybe should back up when Jesus resurrected, that was his real body. That was that same body that was in that tune. You know, here’s the, here’s the S the nail prints in the side. As Aaron mentioned in one of his lessons, he actually ate twice. At least he ate on the seashore with those seven disciples who didn’t know him at first.
And then he ate with the mass road disciples later that night, that evening, same day. And it Luke, Luke 34 same day. And so he ate, you know, he had his same body and it was that same body that ascended up into heaven. But again, that cloud covered it, but it was the same body to say he had any different body.
It would be denied that he had the same flesh that we have, and I’m not going there. Okay. And so that’s that part of it. And of course, first Corinthians 15, is it possible that whatever transformation took place behind that cloud was a pre first Corinthians 15 just to him, because again, he has sent it to the right hand of God.
And, and so we have that. And then we have the first John three, two, and again, the key there, it has not yet been revealed. And so we don’t know for sure all this, I’m just putting some minimal facts here. We do know in first Corinthians, I would say for, if you look at first Corinthians 15 and the verses 24,
I believe are they’re right there in that section where it talks about Jesus. I mean, he, and this is the amazing one, just an, another amazing aspect of the gospel then comes in first Corinthians 1524, when he delivers the kingdom to God, the father, when he puts an end, all rule and all authority and power for, he must reign till he has put all enemies under his feet.
The last enemy that will be destroyed is death for, he has put all things under his feet, but when he says, all things are put under him, it is evident that he who put all things under him is accepted. Now, when all things are made subject to him, then the son himself will also be subject to him who put all things under him,
that God may be all in all. And that’s just a, we could have a whole lectureship just on that passage right there, but here’s what I’m getting out of this. There is a sense in which Jesus is for, from the moment he put on flesh forevermore, there’s a sense that he is subject to the father. And why is that? Because he became human and an inherent nature of humanity is that we are subject to the creator.
And so, and that’s, that’s, you know, that’s why first John three, two, we’re going to see him as he is because he’s one of us, a human. And again, all of the details of that, I don’t know that we can explain, but he is God. And he is man in one being, and he is just as much human as we are yet.
He is God, unlike us. And so, you know, this stuff has not been revealed. And George has a followup. You still got the mic. Okay. Oh yeah. You saying then that, that prior to the incarnation of Christ, the father, the son, the holy spirit, all, all spirit only. And then Prior to creation,
I would say, Yeah. Prior to the incarnation of Christ incarnation, before Christ was incarnate, he was spirit resonant. Yes. Okay. So prior to the incarnation of the cry of Christ, all three persons of the Godhead were in spirit, spirit by nature. But then for eternity in the future, the holy spirit and the father were remained by nature spirit.
Whereas the son will have an immortal body. Yes. So that makes a distinction in eternal distinction yeah. Of The sun. Yeah. Because he cannot quit being man. And part of being man is having flesh and blood part of being man is transformation of a body to dwell in that area in first Corinthians 15. And so, and I’ve, I’ve often mentioned this.
So you have, if we can imagine a timeline, you know, time has a beginning, Genesis one, one is going to have an end and I’m not going to throw in time. As we know it, we’ve had that discussion already. But anyway, Tom has the beginning, Genesis one, one time has an end judgment day. We’ll call that judgment day.
And so he turned he before creation. It was just, God, God is the only thing that was there in the beginning was the word. The word was with God. The word was God, that’s it. Okay. Then he created and then creation, you know, father, son, and spirit have different roles in salvation and all that. But then at the end of time,
you have, of course, all of this, of course, six days of creation and all that. But eternity on the other side of judgment day, you’re going to have good angels. You have bad angels. You know, some things were created to be eternal this way, or we might say immortal, whatever, eternal that way, but God is eternal this way.
And that way from beginning or from how’s it go, Hey from say it again? Yeah. If any, 2, 2 50, that aren’t God, what’s the exact wording of the flashing down. There you go. Thank you Al from everlasting to everlasting, you are God, but you know, humans were, were, were eternal. As soon as we’re created,
we have a part of us. It lives forever. Angels were created, were procreated. And you know, all that angels were created within those six days and they were created to live forever. And so, you know, so he turned, he at this side is going to, with God is going to be God, you know, the God had good angels and,
and human souls with transformed bodies that, you know, the blood of Christ covers. So it’s in fathomable. But again, the key key key to that is it has not yet been revealed exactly what we’re going to be, but Jesus did not cease being man, because he ascended into heaven. And I, I would appeal to the first Corinthians, 1528 on that one.
Yeah. On that one. And so he, he, when he, when he became flesh, he forever took on the nature of man. And that, that to me is just an awesome aspect of the gospel, any follow-up with that, we do have another question that came in through the website, but we don’t have to get to it, but we can get to it pretty quick.
I think. But if some, if somebody thinks of something to follow up on that, then that’d be good. All right. The question is where the sweat drops of blood real when Jesus prayed or the sweat drops of blood real when Jesus prayed okay. As bud, but real and sweat, We look at the passage and we’re almost out of time.
But if we look at those passages, I believe it does have language assembly in there, like, or as, and my guys down here with their Bibles computers, I don’t know, was Luke’s account. Where’s the passage. Yeah. And actually, while they’re looking at those passages, I mentioned Mel Gibson’s passion of Christ a moment ago. And of course,
you know, those movies can do good stuff, do some good things, but they’re not the gospel truth, you know, as you know, and I think in that movie, they did have him sitting there praying, I think, right before he stomped on the snake right after I can’t remember which, but they had him praying. And as he was praying,
it was like drops of blood splattering on the rock where he was praying. I don’t know if anybody caught that or not, but anyway, that that’s, that’s not scripture. Okay. But what’s that? Yeah. All right. But do you have pastors here? Okay. It was just the new king James I’d have to look at how the other,
but it just says that they were sweat drops of blood or like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. Yeah. Like, right, right. And so it’s just an expression assembly they’re comparing. And of course, you know, you know that, you know, we, we had the expression, blood, sweat, and tears and things like that.
It doesn’t always literally mean we bled doing the project, but it just means we put everything into it. And I think the figurative language there is, that’s what it’s about, but it’s not tear drops of blood. Although if you saw my eye last night, you would think I was bleeding, but it’s a little bit better today. And hopefully it’ll be all cleared up by tomorrow.
But anyway, he’s got something in mind. Can’t get rid of it anyway. All right. We thought we had a good productive session and maybe these questions and these answers may have sparked some or weighted the appetite or further study. I know they’d always do to me. And I make note of that. And when I get my spare time, which I don’t have a whole lot of it,
but I like to, you know, follow up on stuff like that and maybe bring it into sermons and such. But anyway, we appreciate the brethren. We appreciate, especially Aaron at such short notice.