Truth in a World of Options

The gospel is truth for all people and all nations. It is a message which transcends the transient pains of this life. Amidst diverse religions, philosophies, and worldviews, Jesus makes an exclusive claim about the way to God.

This is part of a series on The Gospel Truth about Jesus.

Transcript

Part of what makes me so excited to do what I do is that I get to share hope with people. And the gospel is the message that transcends the transient pains of this life. And it's so powerful to me that we can not just share this hopeful message and this message that assuages the pain that we feel, but we can also assert that it is true with confidence. It's not just a fairy tale that we believe in order to make ourselves feel better, to deal with tragedy when it happens, like Boston, like Texas, or like here at the church. It's something that we can share with each other, knowing that it's true.

So given all these things, I want to go back to the Lord in prayer one more time before we talk this morning and ask Him to just heal hearts and also be with us as we learn from Him. Dear Lord, we come before you, holding your name aloft. Lord, you are absolutely amazing. Holy and majestic and worthy of all praise. You, Lord, have stepped into this world and offered us a way to you. You tore down the veil, God. You are on your throne surrounded by angels, hundreds of thousands of angels. Lord, if we were to see any one of them, we would be struck down in fear, yet they bowed down to you for eternity. That's how majestic you are and you entered into this world as a baby. How can we begin to thank you for what you have done, for who you are?

Lord, Lord, to the tragedies that just keep springing up. God, you've sent us into this world to be your hands and feet, to do the healing, Lord. And part of that is for us to lift our voices up to you in prayer. And that's what we're asking for right now, God, that you would come into this nation, the nation on whose behalf we intercede now. And that you forgive us our sins. You forgive us our pride and our self-reliance, Lord. As a nation, we intercede. God, that you would be here to heal. That your kingdom would come and your will would be done here on this nation. God, where hearts are hurting now because of the pain that's happened here in this church over the past few days, Lord, we just ask for you to heal hearts. And that you would transform these tragedies into your glory. Lord, you are the God of miracles and transformation.

And it's because of that, when we pray in your name, we can have confidence that you will do what we've asked you to do. And also because we have taken your son as our savior. And so, Lord, we pray all these things in the powerful name of Jesus. And we ask that today, as I speak, Lord, that you would just take me out of the equation, that you would speak through me as your vessel. And, Lord, that you'd prepare hearts to hear your word and that you'd speak into people's hearts here, that you would do a miraculous work here. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

So, as we said, the world today really needs the gospel. And one of the reasons why I particularly appreciate the title of this topic is that the gospel is truth. And it's truth for all nations. It's truth for all people. And what we're going to do in this first section is we're going to talk about how we can establish what the gospel is. The gospel as truth for all nations. The gospel as truth to every specific person in their circumstances. Whoever needs to hear the message, no matter where they are or what they're doing, it's true for all of them equally.

So, we have plenty of opinions that are floating around in the public forum. We have lots of ideas about how the world should be or ought to be or would feel good to me if the world were like this. But when it comes down to seeing how the world is and how it actually has transpired, the course of human history has transpired, there is a truth. And this is something that we challenge in our society today. And I'm not going to deal too much with postmodernism. I'm sure a lot of us in this room have understood the concepts and the challenges with the worldview as that there's truth.

We've kind of been involved in this postmodern mindset where truth is very relative, it's personalized, it's whatever we want it to be. And that's just false. I mean, we know that. The human psyche testifies to that. We simply being here is a truth. That we are in this room today is a truth. And if anyone argued it, we would be able to say through our own subjective experience and through whatever instrumentation that we can devise, that we are actually here. That is a truth. And that there is truth of that nature is the response to postmodernism. And it's fairly self-evident.

Now, if there is something that has happened in history, it is true that it has happened. What is it that has happened in this world? What is it that has happened historically? What is the truth that we can hold on to? And like I said, I'm not going to be dealing with postmodernism too much today. I'm going to assume that we understand that there is a truth. And we're going to move from there. How do we know that that truth is the gospel?

Now, Jesus has proclaimed in John chapter 14, verse 6, that he is the way, the truth, and the life. These are powerful claims. I would argue that these are claims to be divine, each and every single one of them. And in his day, he was recognized for that. We know that the Jews had already accused him in John chapter 10 of claiming to be God. So here we are with Jesus claiming to be the way, the truth, and the life. And I think that each and every single one of these three claims has been challenged by our society today.

Number one, that Jesus is the way. Even Christians are beginning to challenge that now. Is Jesus really the only way? Can't there be other ways? I mean, I know some really good people who are Buddhist, who are Muslim, who are agnostic and atheist. They do some very kind things. They reach out to people. And especially in my generation, if you talk to Christians from my generation, and I just turned 30, which is a very painful day. But my wife made a good birthday for me. Thank you for surprising me on my birthday. But it's painful because you see that three and you're like, okay, I'm not a kid anymore. But my generation really challenges this idea that there is a way.

Even the Christians in my generation. I've had to have plenty of conversations with church-going believers that Jesus is the way. What's going on? The idea that goodness is really just a matter of being the best person you can be has seeped into the mindset of Christians today. But far more than that, it is prevalent in our society. That all you have to do is be generally good and you will fulfill your calling in life. That's the truth that's being asserted by our society. I would say that challenge is what Jesus says, which is that he is the way. And he follows up this section of the verse by saying, no one comes to the Father but through me. It's a very powerful claim. It's a very exclusive claim. And if anyone were to make that claim, either they are having delusions of grandeur or they are immensely grand. And in this case, Jesus is saying that he is the way to God.

Now that's under fire, but so is the fact that he is the truth. And not just in a post-modern sense. Even when you have people like scholars who I studied under, Bart Ehrman, challenging that Jesus would actually have claimed these things. You have scholars who study the New Testament, making it their stated objective to challenge the foundations of Christian history. These are people who spent their whole lives studying the Bible, only to drive Christians away from Christ. The Christ of faith, anyway. They argue that perhaps Jesus didn't actually claim these things for himself. Perhaps the early church ascribed to Jesus these motives of being the way, the truth, and the life. Perhaps they ascribed to Jesus after he was gone, they retrojected onto his lips that he claimed these things for himself, that he claimed to be God, that he claimed to be the path to salvation. A lot of these people are saying Jesus was actually just a rabbi. He was just a teacher who taught good things. Oh, look at the lilies of the field. Look at the birds of the air. You know, they want to take Jesus and turn him into a hippie. There was more to Jesus than that. But that's what they're challenging too, that Jesus is the truth, and that what we find in the Bible is the truth about Jesus.

But they also are challenging now that Jesus is the life. The life. What does that even mean, that Jesus is the life? What Jesus was saying is that whoever believes in him shall have eternal life. Whoever drinks of that spring, of that living water, will have eternal life. But there's something more to this world, to our 70-year time span here on this earth. There's something more to it than that. This is not life. This is an illusion of life. This is a veiled form of life. The true life is the one that you can have in Christ. It's something that transcends this earthly body. It's something that lasts into eternity. Jesus claimed that. And guess what? That is also coming under fire.

Of course, we know it was under fire at the time of Jesus too. The Sadducees didn't believe in an afterlife. And that's why they were sad, you see? Sorry. See if you guys were awake. They didn't think that there was an afterlife. So Jesus challenged them in his time. No, there is an afterlife. There is something that happens after I go. And after you go. And even today, we have that mentality, that there is no afterlife seeping into our mindsets. And why do we think it is that most people live life as if it's a race to the grave to grab as many things as they can on the way? People see life that way. That all that they have in this period of time is that experience of having however much food and listening to as much music and doing as much drugs and having as much sex as possible because experience is the only thing that's real. They don't believe that there's something that transcends the five senses that we can perceive in this body. Jesus challenged that. He said, I am the life. There's something more.

All three of these truths are coming under fire today. And I think it's the gospel message that gives us something more.

Now, when I was a Muslim, I had a hard time teasing out exactly what the gospel was because often Christians couldn't explain it to me in a succinct way that I could grasp and kind of chew over in my mind. And so, as I was looking for the truth, looking for whether or not Christianity was the truth, I had to kind of distill the gospel for myself. What is it these Christians are saying? What is it that needs to be true in order for the Christian faith to be true? In other words, what's testable here? Because Jesus was a real man who came in history. There is a truth. Muslims understand that just as much as Christians do. That there is a truth. And for me, I said, what are those truths that we can test to see if Christianity is, in fact, the faith that ought to be followed?

And I found it in Romans chapter 10, verse 9. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Here in this verse, Paul gives us a succinct message of what we ought to believe in order to have salvation. And it's three things. And I have them in bold for you here. That he is Lord. That his resurrection actually happened. That he was raised from the dead on the third day as the firstborn of the resurrection. And number three, that he died on the cross. And why he died on the cross for our sins so that we could be with him forever.

So packed into these concepts are the idea of there being one God, Yahweh, and Jesus being that one God. Packed into this is the idea that we have sinned. And that he needs to die on the cross for our sins in order for us to be free from the shackles of a destroyed image. But these three truths, I found, are something that are more than just asserted. They're actually historically grounded.

Let's think about this for a second. If this man Jesus actually lived on this earth, as a given, he either claimed to be God or he did not. That's something that would have happened in history. That's not a faith statement. That's a historical statement. This man claimed to be God. That he died on the cross. That is also a historical statement. That's not a faith statement. That's a historical statement. Did he die on the cross or not? And that he then rose from the dead. Historically speaking, it either happened or it didn't happen. So when I say this isn't a faith statement, what I'm saying is this isn't something that we just say totally unbased on the evidence itself.

We're taking it on some other reason. No, this is something that's found in the historical evidence. Or at least could be found, theoretically speaking. Did this man rise from the dead? And to me it was fascinating. Even as a Muslim it was fascinating that his Christianity's truth was grounded in things that I could investigate. It was grounded in things that I could look into. This isn't like Buddhism or Hinduism. Which is a worldview, a perspective that, yeah, it gives you a way to guide your life. It gives you a moral framework through which to live. But it's not testable in any sense. You can't test Hinduism or Buddhism. It's a way to see things. But you can't test it. Christianity, you can test. And as Paul said, for example, in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 14, if Jesus is not risen, our faith is in vain. This is a real thing that must have happened. And in fact, we see that these are the things that are proclaimed early on in Christian history.

Now when I became a Christian, I first read the Bible. I didn't have any Christians around me. The person who shared the gospel with me, he moved right when I became a believer. So I was all by myself. And the Lord. It was the two of us versus the world. And I just started reading the Bible. Day in and day out, I started reading the Bible. Just reading the Bible. And I came to have a perspective of the church and of evangelism that was grounded in Acts. I just read Acts over and over and over again. And then finally, someone convinced me to start going to a church regularly. Up until then, I wasn't sure about how that worked. Basically, what happened was I was 20 years old. I had just realized that my whole life I lived according to Islamic precepts and tenets.

And that everyone I ever trusted was wrong. It just kind of hit me. My parents were wrong. My family was wrong. My imams were wrong. All that was false. And so I was walking towards Christianity. And I was thinking, I'm not going to become someone's idiot again. I'm not going to trust anyone until I see it in the Word of God. In fact, I also said, I'm not going to trust that this is the Word of God until I have a good reason to do that. So for a good long while, I read the Bible just to read it. Not sure if it was the Word of God until I was able to build a case for myself. The Bible is actually the Word of God. And I was pretty nitpicky, too. I argued with myself. I wouldn't like myself. If there was two of me, I wouldn't like me. Because I just argued with everything. And then finally, I came up to the conclusion that, yes, the Bible is the Word of God. And I can share some of that with you in the Q&A if you'd like. And I came up with the idea that, yeah, I do need to start going to churches and getting involved in the Christian community. That's what the Bible clearly says. And so I started going to the church. And when I started talking to people and seeing how they evangelize, the question that they used to ask one another was, do you know where you're going after you die? Do you want to go to heaven? Do you want to live a better life than accept Christ? That's not what the Bible says. That's not what Acts says. That's not how the disciples evangelized. If that is how the disciples evangelized, do you want something for yourself if you do? Here you go. Consumer mentality. Here, just like you want to buy an iPad, buy Christianity. It'll give you what you want, heaven.

That is not what the disciples said. The disciples said, you have sinned, and Jesus Christ has come into this world to take that, and he has risen from the dead. We have testified to seeing the resurrection. That is why you ought to be saved, because this man, Jesus, rose from the dead. Repent and be baptized in forgiveness of your sins. That was the Christian message. You see it in Acts chapter 2 from the first sermon that was ever preached. It's that Jesus rose from the dead, and that he is Lord. Acts chapter 2, Acts chapter 3, Acts chapter 4, Acts chapter 5, Jesus is risen from the dead. The resurrection was the central proclamation of the disciples. And what does that mean for us today? It means if you come up to a Muslim and say, would you like to go to heaven? They will say, no, I'm fine. I got this covered. Thank you very much. I already have a way to get there. But if you say to that Muslim, Jesus is risen from the dead. Now you've got something to talk about. Because now he's either right or wrong, and the Christian message is either right or wrong. It is grounded historically, and that's how the earliest disciples proclaimed the faith. Through the resurrection.

Now, what I have found is probably the most interesting tactic to subvert the gospel is to say that it is actually a later creation. That Jesus didn't actually say these things. That Christianity didn't actually teach these things. When I was studying under Bart Ehrman at Duke, he made it a point to teach his graduate students. So his graduate students, there was a class. I was one of six people in this class. We were studying under him. And he was teaching us how to teach undergraduates in introduction to the New Testament. So he's training us to teach undergraduates in introduction to the New Testament. And part of his training to us was to assert to our undergraduates that none of the gospels show Jesus claiming to be God, except for the gospel of John. Here's a man who's teaching hundreds of undergraduates himself, and he's training his graduate students to teach thousands of undergraduates that Jesus never claimed to be God. That this is something that came about later in Christian history.

Now, which of the four gospels is the last gospel to have been written? Gospel of John. You can just throw it out. There's no judgment in this room. That's fine. It's a safe haven here. So the gospel of John, the last of the four gospels to have been written. Which gospel do we often turn to in order to proclaim the deity of Christ? Gospel of John. So scholars are arguing that Jesus never actually claimed to be God. Some scholars are. And that's a very interesting challenge. You also have a challenge as far as Jesus' death and resurrection. This is something that scholars don't espouse as much. It's usually people on the internet or people who debate in the public forum. They'll say that a dying and rising God is a concept from pagan Roman mythology. And that it slowly seeped into Christian history as the Jews, because Jesus was a Jew, and the church initially was a Jewish church. As the Jews encountered the Greeks, their mythology seeped into Jewish thought. And that's how you got a dying and rising God in a Jewish milieu. Did you follow that? You see that? So that's what they're claiming. That Jesus' death and resurrection is actually a late event. And that his claim to be God is something that didn't happen until much later.

Now, something that I decided to do while I was studying at the graduate level was to determine which aspects of the Christian message can we find earliest in Christian history. In other words, what is the solid foundation of the Christian faith? Let's think about this for just one moment. Jesus died approximately what year? 30 or 33 AD. Scholars have said it's either 30 or 33 AD. The New Testament, as we have it today, canonically speaking, was first compiled in 367 AD. Athanasius, the bishop, wrote out a list in 367 AD, saying these are the books of the New Testament. And he listed all 27 books and only those books of the New Testament. So you have 300-plus years, potentially, between Jesus' death and the canonization of the New Testament, theoretically speaking. Just work with me for a moment. The argument then becomes, how do we know what was the real foundation of the Christian faith?

So I started to ask myself this question. What can we have that predates the New Testament? What do we have that predates the New Testament? What do we have about Jesus that predates the New Testament? What do we have about Christians proclaiming the gospel that predates the New Testament? Now, this is a tough question to consider. Now, the first answer to that question, historically speaking, is, of course, even though there wasn't a list given of the New Testament until 367 AD, the books were around. The books were around far before. The earliest gospel, the Gospel of Mark, according to critical scholarship now, according to critical scholars, the Gospel of Mark was written around 70 AD. I think there's evidence, plenty of good evidence, to see that it was written probably in the 60s, maybe as late as the 70s. But even critical scholarship says 70 AD. So we have no longer than 40 years to wait between Jesus' death and the first gospel. But what about before that? Because something can happen in those years. What do we have? I think it's fascinating that God has preserved for us today those things that floated around the church before the New Testament. And that's what we're about to talk about briefly here.

So when the church gathered before the New Testament had been written, before Paul had written any of his letters, before any gospels had been written, what the church used to do was they would gather and they would share with one another oral teaching. They would codify their most important beliefs in psalms and hymns and in creeds. And they would teach that to one another. When Paul says in Ephesians, speak to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. He's not just saying, hey, sing and be happy. He's saying, teach each other the doctrine of the church. And yeah, in a joyful singing, teach one another the doctrine of the church. Because no letter had been written. No book had been written yet. They taught each other through psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, and creeds. That's how they learned the doctrine of the church.

Now, I would believe that the things that they taught one another, the things that they spoke to one another, are those very things that were the foundation of the church. Do you see what I'm saying? Do you see what I'm saying? If they teach each other peripheral doctrine, why would they do that? Why would they focus on peripheral doctrine before codifying the most important beliefs of the church? So, before Paul ever taught in a letter that we have today, they spoke with one another. And it was through that oral teaching that we have the foundation of the church. And some of those oral teachings are recorded even today in our New Testament. For example, in Philippians chapter 2, verses 5 through 11. Philippians chapter 2, verses 5 through 11.

We see Paul quoting an early Christian song. It's called the Carmen Christi, the Song of Christ. And what he's doing is he's talking to the church at Philippi, and he's saying, love one another. Start being more humble. Understand that your God is like this. So he says, understand that Jesus was like this. Try to have the same attitude that Jesus has. And then he quotes something that they have heard many times before. That Christ Jesus, although he was in very nature God, did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped. And so he emptied himself, taking the form of man. And being found in human likeness, he humbled himself to the point of death, even death on a cross. And because of this, God exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, that the name of Jesus, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Amen.

I love that verse because it does so much, and I'm about to unpack it for you. What he's doing here is, and by the way, right after that, he goes back to saying what he was saying. So he talks about being humble, then he quotes something, and then he goes on and continues about humility. He's quoting something. And the scholars of early Christian history can see he's quoting something. What he's quoting is a song that contained in it the most important Christian doctrine before Philippians was written. Keep that in mind. If he's quoting it, that means the church knew it before Philippians was written. Are you following? And if he knew that they knew it, that means he must have taught it to them or heard them recite it while he was in Philippi. You following?

So not just was Philippians 2:5-11 written before Philippians, it must have been codified before Paul visited Philippi because that's when he taught it to them or that's when they already knew it. So they must have gotten it from before that. Do you see how far back this is going? Philippians is one of the first letters in the New Testament to be written. Some people put it at around 62 AD. That's less than 30 years after Jesus' death. Philippians is written and we know that this section comes from way before that. And what does it have in it? What are the three things that we find in this section of Philippians? Jesus Christ is in very nature God. His deity is powerfully propounded right here in pre-New Testament theology. And that he lowered himself to the point of death on the cross. His death on the cross is also found here.

And because of this, God raised him. He exalted him. The resurrection. The resurrection. All three things that you need to believe in order to be saved, according to Romans chapter 10, verse 9, that Jesus is Lord, that he died on the cross for our sins, and that he rose from the dead. All three things are identifiable in Philippians 2:5-11, pre-New Testament theology. This is the earliest evidence we have of what Christians believed. And it has death, deity, and resurrection. There is no way that we had to wait until much later, until the church had encountered Greco-Roman thoughts, until we see the gospel. No, the gospel is the core of the Christian faith, and we can prove that from this pre-New Testament snippet of Christian church teaching. It's powerful. And by the way, one reason that I absolutely love it is because it ends up by saying Jesus Christ is, that every knee shall bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. What's that a reference to? The other pre-New Testament theology, it's the Old Testament. It's a reference to the Old Testament, Isaiah chapter 45. When it is to Yahweh, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess. And here, the church has taken Jesus' name and put it in the exact same place as Yahweh. Jesus isn't someone who later becomes God to the Christians. No, the Christians knew Jesus was Yahweh himself in the earliest church teaching.

And when I encountered this as a Muslim, this blew my mind away. Because I had always thought what the Quran teaches, that Jesus never claimed to be God, and this is something that much later people had invented. But here, just 20-30 years, maybe even less, after Jesus' death, we see it quoted in a book, which means it existed much before that.

You know, scholars have taken that section of the New Testament and they have retroverted it into Aramaic. And they have found that it is five verses, I'm sorry, five stanzas of three lines each in Aramaic, which have meter and rhyme. So some scholars, anyway, believe that this is Aramaic teaching, which is the very earliest level. It can't get any earlier than that. But we see something similar in 1 Corinthians 15. This is something that's extremely powerful as well. In 1 Corinthians 15, we see the proclamation that Jesus appeared. After having been killed on the cross, Jesus appeared to Peter and the disciples and the 500, and to Paul as well.

This creed of the New Testament, scholars have studied it, and in fact, it was skeptical scholars who identified that this section of the New Testament that proclaims Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead, 1 Corinthians 15, verses 3 through 8, that this section actually came about within a few years of the crucifixion. So I don't know if you guys have heard of the Jesus Seminar. How many of you have heard of the Jesus Seminar? A lot of you. Yeah, these folk, not too kind towards Christian theology, they came together and they said that the evidence for this section being tremendously early is very strong. And they're the ones who said two to five years. One scholar, not in the Jesus Seminar, his name is James D.G. Dunn, very well-respected scholar, even amongst Christian theologians, the right and the left, everyone respects Dr. Dunn out of Durham in the UK. He said that this section of the New Testament, this creed anyway, was codified within months after Jesus' death. Within months. That is as early as you can get. And what does it proclaim? That Jesus died on the cross and that he rose from the dead. His death and resurrection is found. Once again, this is the earliest level of Christian history.

And something that I think is very interesting is Mark chapter 14. Now many scholars believe that the end of Mark was written before the rest of Mark. They believe that Mark's passion narrative was something that predated the rest of Mark's gospel. I'm not sure how accurate that conclusion is. I think all of it is very early. But they're trying to say, no, we can see that the last part is early. Maybe the first part came later. But let's look at this for just one moment. There are things we find in Mark's gospel that we don't find in other gospels. Things that I think are very interesting. For example, Simon of Cyrene. We all know who Simon of Cyrene is, right? Right? Simon of Cyrene carried Jesus' cross for him on the way to Calvary. Simon of Cyrene had two sons. Do we know who they are? Rufus and Alexander. They are only found in Mark's gospel. Why are those names only found in Mark's gospel? Mark says, Simon of Cyrene, the father of Rufus and Alexander, and he keeps going on talking about Simon of Cyrene. Why did he bother to mention Rufus and Alexander? Well, as scholar Richard Bauckham has put it, he's a German scholar of the New Testament, as he has put it, they're referring early on to people that the church still knew. Rufus and Alexander were still in their presence. And so when Mark's writing this gospel and he says, Simon of Cyrene carried the cross, by the way, he's the father of Rufus and Alexander, he's saying, you want to verify my story? Go talk to Rufus and Alexander. That's how early Mark's gospel's, at least, his passion narrative is.

We have other indications of something similar in the Garden of Gethsemane. Mark's gospel says, someone struck the ear of the servant of the high priest. The other gospels say, who was it? Peter struck the ear. Now, why does Mark's gospel leave out the name Peter? Mark will add it. Well, let's follow that train of thought. Peter was still present at the time. And so if Mark were to say, Peter was the one who struck the ear of the servant of the high priest, then he's giving away the name of the person who did it. And no longer will his anonymity be protected. So for the sake of preserving the safety of Peter, he didn't say whose name it was. But by the time Matthew and Luke are being written, it didn't matter who did it. No one was looking for Peter anymore.

So for protective anonymity, there was somebody else in the Garden of Gethsemane whose name wasn't mentioned. And it was the boy. It was the boy who ran away. Who was it? Some people say Mark. Some people say the demon-possessed boy from the Gadarene scene of the gospel. We don't know exactly who it was. But whoever it was, Mark didn't give his name because what? He evaded police arrest. They probably wanted him too. And so Mark isn't sharing certain names because this story, this passion narrative, is being written so early and it's being passed on so early that the people are still wanted by the police. That's Richard Bauckham. And the first part I said was Gert Theissen. I'm sorry, that was Richard Bauckham. I accidentally twisted the two around. So Richard Bauckham and Gert Theissen are giving this argument.

Now Richard Bauckham says one final thing about the gospel of Mark that I think is very interesting. Where do we find out who the high priest is? What's the high priest's name? Caiaphas. Caiaphas is the high priest. Where is his name mentioned? It's in Matthew. It's not in Mark. In Mark, Caiaphas is the high priest. It's just the high priest. The high priest said this, the high priest did that. His name isn't mentioned. Now why wouldn't the high priest's name be mentioned? Because he was still the high priest when Mark was writing. That's a theory. But if that is true, and I'm not saying necessarily it is, but if that theory is true, Caiaphas stopped being the high priest at 36 AD.

If Mark didn't mention Caiaphas' name because Caiaphas was still high priest, that means the passion narrative was compiled before 36 AD. That's early. And what do we have in the passion narrative? Jesus' death, his resurrection, and in Mark 14:61-62, we have his deity. Death, resurrection, and deity of Jesus Christ. The three things that we need to believe in order to be saved, the three fundamentals of the gospel, the three historically grounded precepts of the gospel are found at the earliest level of Christian history. Everywhere you look when it comes to the earliest level of Christian history, there we find the three components of the gospel.

Now, I've mentioned already that these three things are historically investigable, but let's take a quick look into them as far as how we can defend that these things actually happen. Apart from being found early on in Christian history, I had to know whether or not there was good reason, when I was a Muslim, I had to know whether there was good reason to believe that these things were actually true. How do we know that Jesus actually did claim to be God? Apart from that it's found early on in Christian history, how do we know that it's the truth? Well, for me, I had to ask the question from a historical sense. I wanted to see what was the best explanation of the data. So, generally speaking, when you look into history, you can put historical events in certain lights in order to see what the best explanation is, and that's what history is. It's a recreation of the best explanation of the data. And I wanted to see what was the best explanation of the Christian foundations for Jesus' claim to be God.

And I found in Mark's gospel, Mark chapter 14, verses 61-62, as we have just said, encapsulate multiple claims that Jesus made, which I think are so thoroughly ingrained at the earliest level of Christian history that you can't extricate them without totally eviscerating the Christian faith. What do I mean? In Mark chapter 14, verse 61, the high priest asks Jesus, he charges him, who are you? By the living God, are you the Christ, the son of the blessed one? Now, up until this point in the gospel, Jesus hasn't had to clearly say who he is. He hasn't. And in fact, he has avoided doing just that from the very beginning. We kind of have an over-the-shoulder view of things that are happening in Jesus' life in Mark's gospel because we're seeing things no one else sees. For example, in Mark chapter 1, verse 11, we see God say that Jesus is his beloved son. And later, we see a demon that Jesus exercises say that you are the son of God. But no one catches that conversation between Jesus and the demon.

Jesus says, don't tell anyone. You see again in chapter 3, verse 11, a demon coming out. Jesus says, don't tell anyone who I am. And in sections like chapter 2, verse 10, Jesus begins to start using terms for himself that no one has heard before or at least not used in this sense. In Mark chapter 2, the beginning, Jesus is going through a home and he's in a home preaching and people have brought him a paralytic. And he says to the paralytic, take heart, son, your sins have been forgiven. And the priests who are listening to Jesus at this time, they say, how can he say that? Who is he to say that his sins are forgiven? He is committing blasphemy. Jesus' response is, so that you may know the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins, I say to you, arise. So he says to the paralytic, arise. And he says that in the name of being the son of man.

Now they have no idea what's going on here. What is he talking about, son of man? Because in the Old Testament, there was a son of man, his name was Ezekiel. And God spoke to Ezekiel, called him the son of man each time he spoke to him. And the point that God was making each time he was speaking to Ezekiel as the son of man was that Ezekiel was very low and that he had to remember his lowness before God. Yet Jesus is saying, so that you may know that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins. That's a very different son of man. It's entirely different. In chapter 2, verse 28, just later on in the same chapter, Jesus is being accused of doing things, of breaking the Sabbath by walking through a field and working by picking grain, which by the way wasn't working on the Sabbath. You were allowed to do that according to the Old Testament. But he responds to the people who accuse him of doing things he isn't supposed to do by saying that the son of man is lord of the Sabbath. The son of man is lord of the Sabbath. He's calling himself the son of man again, but they don't really know what he's saying. And constantly, he makes it very clear that he is a son of man and he gives this powerful connotation to it, but he doesn't exactly clarify what he means. Not until Mark 14:61-62, do we see him clarify what he means. And I argue that this is the culmination, the climax of Mark's gospel.

This is what Mark has been pointing forward to this whole time when Jesus would finally reveal who his identity is. And when the priest asks him, who are you? Are you the Christ, the son of the blessed one? Jesus responds by saying, I am. And you will see the son of man coming on the clouds of heaven and sitting at the right hand of the power. So he starts off by saying, I am. Where have we seen the I am phrase before? We see it in Exodus. We see it throughout the gospel of John. God uses the term I am to propound his sovereignty repeatedly throughout the Old Testament ever since he introduces himself to Moses as the I am. We see it very clearly in John chapter 8, verse 58 as well when Jesus is asked, you are not yet even 50 years old, yet you claim to have seen Abraham. Jesus responds, I tell you the truth, before Abraham was born, I am.

So people will say, oh yeah, the I am is clearly present in the gospel of John. I think it very well may be present in Mark 14. We see it in and some people would say, hey, that's just a response. He's just answering the question, are you the Christ? I am. I don't know because there's something else in the gospel of Mark. Chapter 6, verse 50. You look at Mark chapter 6, verse 50, and I think this is the part of the gospel that makes it abundantly clear Jesus has a hilarious sense of humor. Here he is, he's just sent the disciples out way ahead of him. He says, go out there and go across the sea, I'll meet you on the other side. It's now the fourth watch of the night. They've only gotten half the way because the winds are against them. So they're rowing as hard as they can against the winds. It's 3 a.m. They're going and here's Jesus just walking along, hey, right along the water. That to me is absolutely hilarious. And so Jesus is passing by, they're scared, and he says, take courage, ego eimi. Take courage, I am. Now, the English Bibles often translate that, take courage, it's me. But I don't think that's what he's saying.

He's saying, take courage, I am. Because you look, for example, in Job chapter 9, verse 8. There's only one who can walk on the water. And it's Yahweh. You look in Isaiah and in the Psalms where Yahweh passes over the water and tells Israel to take courage. That's what Mark is showing Jesus doing. There's only one who can control the waves and the winds and can walk on water. That's Yahweh. And in that context, in Mark chapter 6, verse 50, when Jesus is controlling the winds and the waves and walking on the water, he says, the I am. And then he responds to the high priest again in 14 by saying, I am. But even if we credit that maybe Jesus isn't saying, I am here, well, the next section makes it pretty clear what he's saying. When he finally identifies for the first time very clearly who he's been claiming to be throughout the Gospels when he claims to be the Son of Man over 80 times, now is when he clarifies which Son of Man it is.

Because he quotes the book of Daniel, chapter 7, verse 13. And in the book of Daniel, Daniel's having a vision. He sees God in the night sky. Calls him the Ancient of Days. And then he says, one like a Son of Man approached the Ancient of Days. And to him, to that Son of Man was given glory, kingdom, and power. And his dominion is one which will not pass away. And people of every nation and language will serve the Son of Man. Wait a minute. I thought in the Old Testament God was alone on the throne. No. We have a Son of Man who approaches God. And to him is given glory and kingdom and dominion. People of every nation and language serve him. And what does that word serve? The word serve there in the Greek is latreuō. In the Aramaic, because this section of the Old Testament is in Aramaic, it's the word pelach.

Every single time that word is used in the Bible, so it's used about 10 times, every single time it's used to denote a service due only to God. Due only to God. And yet here, we see it being given to a Son of Man. Jesus claims to be that Son of Man. And he clarifies what Son of Man he's been talking about this whole time. And he follows it up with another statement. He says, you'll see me sitting at the right hand of the power. Well, that's a reference to the Old Testament too. So we've got the I Am from Exodus 3:14. You've got the Son of Man from Daniel 7:13 and 14. And now you've got sitting at the right hand of the power from Psalm 110, verse 1. Now in that context of Second Temple Judaic history, what did it mean to sit at the right hand of God? No one ever was shown sitting next to the right hand of God. Not even in a letter, in a poem, in anything, in any literature. No one sat at the right hand of God because to the Jews what that meant was someone was ruling or had the right to rule next to God.

That they were of the same essence, that they were an heir to God's throne. That's what it would mean. And also we have an image of God sitting on His throne. What is that? We're talking to the high priest. Keep in mind that this high priest is the guy who was chosen to once a year go into the Holy of Holies. Are we familiar with the Holy of Holies? This is the inner sanctum of the temple. And no one could enter in there at all because it was a reflection of heaven, of God's throne in heaven. Except the high priest who once a year would walk in on the Day of Atonement and atone for the sins of Israel. And as he was walking in he would tie a rope around his leg because if he did anything incorrectly in there or if he touched anything he would be knocked dead immediately. People would have to drag him out. Only one day of the year could that man go in there and he couldn't sit because the only place to sit in the Holy of Holies is the mercy seat. And yet Jesus says by claiming to be the one who's sitting at the right hand of the power basically He's saying to the high priest hey you know that room you can only go into one day a year? I can walk right in there and sit down.

That's what He's claiming for Himself. And that was such a powerful claim that it was found over 20 times in the New Testament. And I want to take a step back on that point. That's the major point I want you to leave with right now. Is that if Jesus used any titles for Himself it certainly was the Son of Man because that is the most strongly historically testifiable according to the criteria of historical investigation. It's found in all four Gospels. It's found in multiple types of teaching. And we don't see any reason for people to have invented it. There's no reason why the early church would have invented the term Son of Man for Jesus because they never used it themselves. So they wouldn't have invented it later and no one was expecting Jesus to be the Son of Man so He wasn't fulfilling a prophecy by calling Himself the Son of Man. He just called Himself the Son of Man. It's the strongest kind of historical testimony there is. It's called the criterion of dissimilarity and it fulfills the fact that Jesus called Himself the Son of Man.

It's very strong. And similarly sitting at the right hand of the power is quoted so frequently in the New Testament over 20 times as I said it's the most commonly quoted section of the Old Testament found in the New Testament that you can't just pull it out. You can't say it's not historical because if you did that crushes the foundation of the New Testament of all of the history that we find there. And you wouldn't be able to know anything if you took that out. So Jesus claimed to be the Son of Man and Jesus claimed to be sitting at the right hand of the power is thoroughly ingrained in the earliest Christian sources. You can't pull it out. And they both point to Him being divine. It's the strongest kind of evidence there is.

When it comes to Jesus' death on the cross we know through historical investigation that if we can be certain of anything about Jesus' life it's that He died on the cross. Historians who study His life from a skeptical viewpoint ones who are agnostics or atheists not Christians at all they will say that we can be certain about Jesus' death on the cross under Pontius Pilate. I'm quoting people like Marcus Borg, Paula Fredrickson, Bart Ehrman, John Dominic Crossan, all of these guys they all agree that Jesus must have died on the cross. So we can go into that and it was especially relevant for me as a Muslim because in the Quran it says that Jesus did not die on the cross. And so for me it was kind of a litmus test. What does history say about Jesus' death on the cross? And when I found out that it was categorically uniformly pointing to the fact that Jesus died on the cross there was no other way around it then I as a Muslim had to force myself to say that Christianity had the weight of evidence behind it at least on this issue and that in Islam I had to be accepting the Islamic doctrine by blind faith alone. Christians didn't have to do that.

And that he rose from the dead is an extremely powerful argument as well. In fact, Michael Martin who is an atheist has commented on today's argument for the resurrection specifically the minimal facts formulation that it is the most strong argument for the resurrection ever provided in all of history. You have atheists saying that the argument is strong. And what is the argument? The argument for the resurrection is that the facts surrounding the Easter events are best explained by the resurrection hypothesis. This one we just talked about that Jesus died on the cross combined with some other facts that we see that the disciples for example were thoroughly changed because of what they saw and that enemies of Christ like Paul and perhaps his brother James who were not following him before the resurrection appearances and all of a sudden are now willing to live their lives and die for the sake of Jesus' resurrection.

You combine these factors and maybe some other factors if you like like the tomb being empty the third day. These factors that historians the majority of historians agree to are best explained by one hypothesis and one hypothesis alone that Jesus actually rose from the dead. No other theory that historians come up with can really account for the facts. For example historians who try to come up with an alternate explanation now the vast majority of them say we don't know what happened like Bart Ehrman he'd say I don't know what happened something happened I don't know what but the people who try to come up with an explanation other than the resurrection say perhaps the disciples hallucinated Jesus' return and that's how they started the Christian church. Wait let's take a look at that hypothesis for just one moment. You told me not too long ago that 1 Corinthians 15 is a very accurate early statement that reflects the earliest church. You're telling me 500 people hallucinated the risen Jesus at the same time? You're trying to invent a miracle to circumvent a miracle. It doesn't work. Not only that but let's just say all of them did hallucinate the risen Jesus. Why would Paul hallucinate the risen Jesus? Their argument for the disciples hallucinating is oh they followed him for all these years they really wanted to see him they couldn't believe that the Messiah was gone so they hallucinated his return. Not Paul. Paul had to give up everything in order to follow the risen Jesus and yet he did and same with James. The explanation doesn't work it doesn't fit the facts the best explanation for the facts is that Jesus actually rose from the dead.

So to conclude the gospel has remained unaltered since the foundations of the Christian faith. It hasn't changed it's always been the same that's been the proclamation of the church from the very beginning and its truth is strongly attested by history. If you look at the three factors the death the deity of Christ and his resurrection those three are strongly attested to by historical investigation. You don't have to believe the foundations of the Christian faith on blind faith alone. That's never the faith we've been called to have. 1 Peter 3:15 tells us that we should have a reason for the hope that lies within us to share with whomsoever asks. That assumes a few things. That assumes number one that people are asking us about our faith. So we ought to live the Christian life in such a way that people ask us about our faith. And then number two when they ask us we should be able to give them the reason that we have. This faith isn't supposed to be blind. It's founded on the person of God and what he has done in history.

Now there are aspects of faith that we have that we don't have evidence for yet. For example that God will be faithful to us specifically and that in the blood of Christ we will be with him forever in heaven. We don't have evidence for that yet. We have faith based on the person of God and who we know him to be and that we've seen him come into this world and die on the cross and rise from the dead. We can have faith on that person of God that he will hold true to his promises. That's the faith we're supposed to have and we can have that faith an unshakable faith if we look into the evidence and understand that God has given us great reason to believe the core of the Christian faith.

Questions? I so thoroughly answered every question they've ever had.

Question: I wanted to get your thoughts on the criterion of embarrassment which is something I found is probably my most favorite argument for the historicity.

Okay, so the criterion of embarrassment. That's very interesting. It's interesting that you bring that one up out of all of them. I had the good privilege of being in the same when I was a Muslim of being in the same neighborhood as Michael Acona who was a Christian who shared the criterion of embarrassment with me as he was developing a case for the resurrection. So he actually became one of my mentors and he very strongly believes in the criterion of embarrassment. Then when I went to Duke and I studied under Mark Goodacre he was my advisor at Duke he is kind of opposed to this idea of criteria for historical investigation. So I got both sides of the spectrum two advisors or a mentor and advisor both feeding in. The idea of the criterion of embarrassment is that no one would record in their sources that which would make them look bad unless it actually happened. Unless it actually happened and they're just trying to be truthful people. In other words if I were in the middle of an accident and I went to the policeman and I said you know what this was totally my fault. I ran the red light it was my fault blame the ticket on me. Why in the world would I do that? Because Christ tells me to tell the truth. I wouldn't do that on my own accord. Okay fine Lord I'll tell the truth here.

That's why I would do it and that's the reason alone. I wouldn't make that up. So the idea for the criterion of embarrassment is if you find a truth that goes against the message or the reputation of the people who are delivering it it must be true. The opposing view the argument against that from someone like Mark Goodacre would be we don't really know what was embarrassing and what wasn't. So let's look at it in the context of the gospels. The classical example in the gospels of the criterion of embarrassment is Jesus' baptism under John the Baptist. Why did Jesus need to be baptized? And it doesn't really make any sense because baptism is for the forgiveness of sins and repentance and Jesus hadn't sinned and he didn't need to repent of anything so why was he baptized in the first place?

Since he was baptized under John we can know this actually happened otherwise the gospels wouldn't have made it up essentially is the argument. The response to that from someone like Mark Goodacre would be how do we know that was embarrassing to Mark? How do we know it was embarrassing? Maybe he just maybe for some reason it wasn't embarrassing to him at all and maybe it was a way for Jesus to have been accorded some kind of credibility because he was following in John's line. How do we know it was embarrassing? I think we have to temper our view of the historical criteria. I don't think it's good to run you know slip shod into the public forum and not be careful about what we say. We should temper it but I do think at the end of the day it's one that we can rely upon. I think that there is good reason to say we would include certain things in the gospel were they not true. So that was a good question. Did that answer your question? Good. Yeah.

Question: Okay we hear that Jesus is the son of God and the son of man and I get confused even when you were talking about Jesus being the son of man. I still find that a confusing thing.

Yeah that's a great question. Okay. So when I was Muslim I was often told that you know Jesus claims to be the son of man that shows that he's human. He's a human nature and then he claims to be the son of God and that shows his divine nature. I think that's how we in the 21st century have begun to interpret it. That's not how it was early on. To Jews they had seen the son of man in Daniel and he was kind of an interesting phenomenon in the first century. You have him quoted in for example 4th Ezra and 1st Enoch. You see the son of man figure and he is accorded grandeur and power. That is what the Jews were expecting as kind of a divine person as the son of man. It wasn't really the son of God claim in the gospels that would get the Jewish audience to say wow Jesus is divine. All kinds of people in the Old Testament were sons of God.

Adam was a son of God. David was a son of God. Solomon was a son of God. That didn't affect the Jewish heart in the same way that the term the son of man specifically referring to Daniel would affect the Jewish heart. Because here you have someone who is very clearly being accorded divine prerogatives of worship. Of authority and sovereignty over heaven for eternity. So if you want to really get a good grasp on what's going on with the son of man you have to read Daniel 7:13 and 14. Read it in context. You will see why it meant so much to the Jews of the time. And the term son of God was kind of picked up more so later on in Christian history not in the first century as a powerful claim to Jesus' deity.

Thanks for that.