This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to Day 3 of our look together through Mark, Chapter 16 in
Daily Drive Time Devotions, the resurrection chapter. We've been looking at the
resurrection from some different chairs, the women who were first there on Day 1
of this week. Yesterday the historian and how historically reliable the truth of
Jesus' life and death and resurrection are.

Today I want to look from the chair of the skeptic. As you look at the truth of
the resurrection, you accept that truth. It does begin to change everything.

And so the truth of the resurrection is a truth that you and I want to hold onto
in our lives if our lives are going to be changed, but it's a truth that I want
to push away from my life if I don't want the influence of that truth on my
life. And that sometimes makes me a skeptic. Other times I'm a skeptic just
because people have told me things and I really wonder is this truth?

Could this have happened? So we're going to take a look today at what the
skeptic might have to say about the resurrection. Some different theories over
the years that have arisen of how you could explain the fact that the tomb was
empty because historically it was empty.

As we look through those theories, I think you'll find some assurance in your
own life and maybe some assurance to give somebody else. Before we go to that,
though, I also want to talk, when we talk about the skeptic and some doubt, I
want to talk about verses 9 to 20 of Mark chapter 16. Those verses, most of you,
as you open up your Bible, you read a note down at the bottom that says that
these verses were not in the first manuscripts of Mark, that they were added
maybe 100, maybe 200 years later.

That King James Version put these verses in, but that they weren't in the
original. Some people will try to use even that to say, "Oh, he should be a
skeptic. " You can't trust any of the Bible.

Nothing is more ridiculous. The truth is, this just shows how honest we are
about getting the New Testament that was written and making sure that there's no
lie, there's no cover. There's only a couple of passages that we know King James
put in that were not in the original writings.

And then there's a couple of words that King James put in that weren't in the
original either. But none of those call any doctrine into doubt. For instance,
this passage, verses 9 to 19, they don't say that the resurrection didn't really
happen.

They just confirm what was already there. Most of these passages are just trying
to further explain what was already there instead of just allowing the scripture
to speak for itself. What I want to do is let the scripture speak for itself.

So the fact that there are some verses in Mark chapter 16 at the very end that
came from later don't create any doubt in my mind at all. Instead, they let me
know how accurate we are about having the New Testament that was written in the
days of the apostles. As you and I look at these verses today and think about
the truth of the resurrection, I want to let you know that there are some
theories that have come up over the years that say, "Well, maybe this didn't
really happen.

Maybe something different happened instead. " In fact, there are five specific
theories I want to look at. The number one theory, first theory I would call the
"soldiers fell asleep" theory.

This theory is not a new theory. In fact, it's very old. It has existed since
the day of the resurrection.

Matthew 28, verses 12 and 13 talks about this position. When the chief priests
had met with the elders, they devised a plan. Then they gave the soldiers a
large sum of money telling them, "You are to say his disciples came during the
night and stole him away while we were asleep.

" So you see, there was a plot for this to be the theory from the very
beginning. Now, there's just a few problems with this theory. First, the obvious
one is, if the soldiers were sleeping, how did they know that it was the
disciples who came and stole the body away?

They wouldn't have known who did it. So it's ridiculous from the very beginning,
even if it had happened. And second, as you go through this, it seems physically
impossible, in fact, it is physically For the disciples to sneak past these
crack Roman troops, the Roman guard, and to move a two-ton stone up an incline
in absolute silence and steal the body out, the guards would certainly have
heard something.

And so this idea, this theory that this happened is ridiculous from the very
beginning. There's another reason it's ridiculous. In the Gospel of John, we
read that the grave clothes were found lying there in their place and the burial
cloth had been folded by itself and was separate from the linen.

If the disciples had broken in and stolen the body, they wouldn't have carefully
unwrapped Jesus' body, taking many hours to do that or many, many minutes, and
then folded the grave cloth. They would have gotten the grave cloth off as quick
as possible and gotten him out of there as quick as possible. There's another
reason this is ridiculous.

The tomb was secured, it was sealed, we know, with a Roman seal. Anyone who
moved that stone, who broke that seal, they did so at the threat of their own
death. These disciples were frightened men.

They were frightened even when Jesus appeared to them as a resurrected Lord. And
they were not the kind of men who were going to take that kind of risk in that
day. And as you look to this theory, there's another reason it's ridiculous.

The Roman guards, they were not going to fall asleep with an important duty like
this. That carried severe penalties, sometimes even the penalty of death. In
fact, the only reason they would agree to say this is they were paid a large
enough sum of money and they were given a free pass by the Romans.

That theory just doesn't hold any water. Another theory that people have come up
with to explain the resurrection is the stolen body theory, sort of a form of
the first one. This argument holds that the Jewish and the Roman authorities
stole the body or they moved it for safekeeping.

They stole it so that the disciples couldn't steal it. That doesn't make any
sense at all if you think about it. If they had the body and the disciples
started preaching about the resurrected Christ, and it began to sweep through
Jerusalem like you see it doing in the book of Acts, they would have just
presented the body of Jesus and said, "This just isn't true.

" Throughout the preaching of the apostles of Christ, all through the New
Testament, the authorities never attempted to refute the resurrection by
producing a body. It's another silly theory. Another theory that's come out is
what I would call the wrong tomb theory.

And that's the idea that the women did visit a grave early in the morning while
it was still dark, but it was the wrong grave. They accidentally went to the
wrong place, a tomb that was prepared for somebody else. And due to their
emotional condition and the darkness, they just missed it.

Now, think about this with me for a minute. That would have meant that when they
went back and told the disciples eventually and Peter and John ran to the tomb,
that Peter and John also went to the wrong grave. It would have also meant that
the Romans and the Jewish leaders who went and saw this and concocted this lie
went to the wrong grave.

And again, as we said in the earlier theory, if they went to the wrong tomb,
they would have shown the world the right tomb and that Jesus' body was still
there. Some of these theories, they make some sense when you first hear them,
but you have to suspend belief to really believe them as you begin to walk down
the road of what this would mean. There's another theory out there called the
hallucination theory.

This theory is, well, these people, these women, these disciples, they just
wanted it to be true. They wanted it to be true so much that they hallucinated.
They saw Jesus in front of them.

Well, that means they would have also hallucinated in an empty tomb. But the
idea of hallucination also is discounted by the fact that many, many different
people saw Jesus. Hallucinations are subjective.

They're individual. No two people have the same experience. You had many people
in a room having the same experience at the same time.

In fact, in one case, 1 Corinthians 15 tells us over 500 people saw Jesus at the
same time. You can't hallucinate something with 500 people at the same time. It
happens with different people.

It happens at different times. It even happens with doubtful people. People that
hallucinate something are people who want it to happen.

Thomas, the disciple, didn't believe it. He didn't want it to happen. He wanted
to prove himself right and all the rest of the disciples wrong.

But he saw Jesus. He saw Jesus saying, "Here, touch my hands. Touch my side.

See that it's real. " And, oh, by the way, one more time with this hallucination
theory, you still have an empty tomb. You can't hallucinate that.

Well, there's one more theory, a fifth theory. And I find, as I talk to people
today, when they first hear it and they're looking for a reason to doubt the
historicity of what happened with the resurrection, this is the one they tend to
latch onto until they begin to think about it for a minute. And it's called the
swoon theory.

This is the theory that Jesus never really died on the cross. He was merely so
weakened from the loss of blood that he passed out. And so he was mistakenly
considered dead.

He was put in this cool tomb. After three days, he revived, he exited the tomb,
and he appeared to his disciples. And then the disciples believed that he had
risen from the dead.

This is popular for a while, maybe for a moment even when you think about it.
But it's pretty much given up today as a theory because as you look at it, well,
look at this. First, Jesus was proclaimed dead by Roman experts, by men who put
people on the cross as a daily experience of their lives.

And they looked at him and said, this man is dead. An expert said he's dead. And
on top of that, not only did they say he was dead, they took a spear and they
stuck it into his side, up into his heart, just to make doubly sure that he was
dead.

Now, let's just suppose, let's just suspend belief and for a moment think, well,
maybe he survived all of that. That would have meant that he would have been in
that tomb for three days without food or water. He would have had to somehow
unwrap the cloth that was around him.

After doing that, he would have had to unroll a two-ton stone. He would have had
to somehow overpower the guards that were outside of that stone. He would have
had to walk to get to be where the disciples were.

He would have had to somehow appear in the room without opening the door, which
is what happened. And then convince those disciples that he'd been resurrected.
Now, think about this.

This is the Jesus who's been without food or water for three days. He'd been
flogged. He'd been crucified.

He's so weakened, at least one of the disciples would have looked at him and
said, Jesus, you don't look alive to me. You look half dead. No, they saw a
resurrected Lord.

They saw a resurrected body. And in the 19th century, David F. Strauss, who was
an opponent to Christianity, put an end to any hope in this theory, even though
he didn't believe in the resurrection.

He concluded that this was a very weird outlandish theory. He said, it is
impossible that a being who had stolen half dead out of the sepulcher, who crept
about weak and ill, wanting medical treatment, who required bandaging,
strengthening, and indulgence, and who still at least yielded to his sufferings,
would have given the disciples the impression that he was a conqueror over death
in the grave, the prince of life, an impression that would lay at the bottom of
their future ministry. You see, these disciples saw a resurrected Lord.

We've talked about some theories of skepticism and the historicity of Jesus's
life the last couple of days. I've met and I've talked to many people who are
skeptics. And I respect those deeply who will talk about their doubts honestly.

It is very clear that the accounts of the resurrection hold up to any historical
or theological scrutiny. And if I want to be really honest about my doubts, I'd
better start with an honest look at myself. We're not computers, we are people.

And oftentimes our doubts grow not out of the facts, but they grow out of our
fears. They grow out of a fear of change. And so I try to find some fact that
will help me to not believe, to not face that fear of change.

Doubts, doubts that I have towards others, often come from the strong feeling
that I can trust only myself. There comes a point in all of our lives where we
have to look at our lives and think, how is that going? How is trusting and only
myself working out?

What loneliness am I facing? What fears am I facing? What lack of hope in the
future am I facing?

You see, God made you, he made me to live in a relationship of trust with him.
And the reason Jesus came and lived and died and was resurrected is so that I
could enjoy this relationship of trust. And when I honestly look at myself, I
see that many times the doubts that I have about faith are really doubts that I
have about change.

There are doubts that I have about me. There are doubts that I have about what
God could really do in my life. Could God really save me?

Could God really make me a new person? Absolutely yes. The power, the history of
the resurrection says absolutely yes.

Let's take a moment to talk to him. Jesus, we pray about our doubts today. I
pray for my doubts.

I pray for the doubts of others. Just like that man by the name of Thomas who
faced doubts on the first Easter. I pray we'd bring those doubts to you and we'd
find the truth.

And I pray that as we find the truth, we would find in you the hope and the life
that we need. Jesus, when we have fears, I pray that you'd comfort us. You'd
help us to set aside those fears and see you.

See the new life that you want to give. And I ask this in your name. Amen.

I'll see you back tomorrow. We're going to look at the resurrection from the
theologian's chair.