Frank Turek (23:36)
Yeah, he shot the guy. I saw that. You want these alleged contradictory details. You don't want to get their story straight. In fact, Jim says that any judge in his courtroom that hears two witnesses describe something in exactly the same words with all the details the same immediately assumes collusion. They got together to get their story straight. Eyewitnesses who are true eyewitnesses agree on the main things, disagree on details. This is always the case. And that's what you have in the New Testament. You know, the New Testament writers didn't get together to iron out details, did they? They just told it like they saw it. Jim also says that whenever he finds a body that he knows has been murdered, he says, I don't need to track down a thousand possible motivations for why that guy's dead. I know that guy was murdered for one or more of these three reasons. There was either a sex issue, a money issue, or a power issue. Sex, money or power. Those are the three things that can drive people to murder. In fact, they're the same three things that drive any of us to sin. Why? Because sex, money and power are good things. In fact, they're so good, we'll often take shortcuts to get them. That's why we sin. In fact, one, John. John says this. Don't love the world. Cause all that's in the world is the Lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life, money, sex and power. So Jim says, if you're going to say that these Jews, Jews wrote the New Testament, you realize that they already thought they were God's chosen people. They had their own religion already. If you think that these Jews invented the resurrection, you've got to find one or more of those three motivators, because they're not gonna get. They're not gonna make up a story that contradicts their belief system and then gets them beaten, tortured and killed. Getting beaten, tortured and killed is not a list of perks, last time I checked. Right. So Jim says, hey, if you're gonna say they made it up, it's gotta be a sex, money or power motivation. All right, let's take a look at it, ladies and gentlemen. Did the New Testament writers suddenly get real popular with the ladies for saying Jesus had risen from the dead? No, they didn't get sex. Did they get money? No, they weren't 21st century prosperity gospel preachers. Did they get power? No, they got the opposite of power. They got persecution. Paul had power when he was Saul. And persecuting the church, as soon as he becomes a believer, he's the one persecuted. They didn't get sex, they didn't get money, they didn't get power. There's no motive to make this up. In fact, there's every motive to say it wasn't true. Not every motive to say it was true. The bottom line is they're not making this up. It appears the resurrection really did take place. In fact, let's go back to the Titanic for just a second question. Which came first, the sinking or the reports of the sinking? This is not a trick question. Right? The sinking took place, then the reports came. Next question, which came first, the resurrection or the reports of the resurrection? The resurrection came first, then the reports came. In fact, I know this might sound like heresy for those of you who believe, like I do, that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, but it's not. Stick with me. Christianity is not true because a series of documents we put under one binding we call the Bible says it's true. In fact, Christianity would be true if the Bible never existed. You say, how can that be? Ladies and gentlemen, do you realize there were thousands of Christians before a line of the New Testament was ever written? Why? Because they didn't read about it in a book. They witnessed a resurrected Jesus themselves or they knew people who had. Christianity did not originate with a book Christianity originated with an event, the Resurrection. The stories of the Titanic did not originate with the Washington Post. They originated when the Titanic went down, then they told the story. In fact, we could put it this way. The New Testament writers did not create the resurrection. The Resurrection created the New Testament writers. You wouldn't have these documents written down by Jews in the first century claiming a man claimed to be God and wrote from the dead, unless a man really did claim to be God and really did rise from the dead. So the evidence appears to show us that Jesus really did rise from the dead. There's no motive to invent this. There's every motive to say it wasn't true, yet they said it was. Now, I haven't really given you a lot of evidence for this. If you want a lot of evidence for it, I brought the book. I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. I co wrote with Dr. Geiser a number of years ago. And I want to point out all the proceeds from the sale of the books are going to feed needy children. Mine. Okay, Just so you know, and I'm going to send you the entire PowerPoint presentation, if you follow that QR code. I'm going to send you this presentation and about a dozen others in a PDF format for free. And if that doesn't work, you can text the word evidence to that phone number, 855-909-0582 and you'll get the same presentations in a PDF format. By the way, this book argues from the ground up, does truth exist? You know, hear people saying there's no truth. That kind of stuff. We deal with that. We deal with evidence for God. We deal with evidence for miracles, evidence for the resurrection, and evidence that the Bible's the word of God. So it argues from the ground up that Christianity is indeed true. But in our last few minutes together, I want to go back to the Titanic. You know, we discovered the Titanic in 1985. Robert Ballard discovered where it went down. And it's down under 12,500ft of water. That's over two miles down. This is, of course, the bow of the ship. And we also discovered that the people, the eyewitnesses who said it broke in two were correct because the bow of the ship was discovered in one part and the stern about 2,000 yards away. It broke in two and went down like this and separated. So they're almost, they're a little over a mile away, the front of the ship and the back of the ship. And we sent submersibles down there These are unopened champagne bottles. You can see this crab here. These are shoes. There's all sorts of personal effects down there. And they've taken over 700,000 pictures. It's hard to. You can't, the thing's so big you can't get it really in one picture because there's not enough light down there. And so they took a bunch, they took 700,000 close up pictures, put them in a computer and developed a composite. Here's what it looks like. That's the front and the mid. The stern is a mile away. And in fact the staircase you probably saw in the movie, if you saw the movie, right, the grand staircase that went six levels up, they found out where that is. It's a hole. Right now. Here are the shoes, here are the champagne bottles. Now these people were living in luxury. They didn't know they were going down. Obviously they had no idea. They thought this was the unsinkable ship. But we're kind of living in luxury here, aren't we? I mean, Sarasota is a beautiful area. We've got everything that we think we need temporally. But we know we're going down. We're all going down at some point. We're not going to be here anymore. We deny that. We make believe like, no, we're not going to die, but we're going down. Do you know one metaphor the Bible uses for hell is outer darkness. Outer darkness. I can't think of a place on earth that's more dark, more remote and has more pressure than where the Titanic is right now. It's more than two miles under the ocean. We have sent some submersibles down there. In fact, was it a year or two when they tried to put one down? The whole thing imploded on itself. We have gotten some video. I'm going to show you about a minute worth of video of outer darkness. This is the deck of the Titanic today. Here it is. Frank, you're just trying to scare me with hell. Hell? Yes, I am. Why? Because hell is real. It has to be real. Why is it real? Because God is an infinitely just being. If he's an infinitely just being, he has to punish sin. Is anyone in here sinless? Which means he has to punish you because he's infinitely just. I mean, when we say we're saved, what does that mean? Means we're saved from the wrath of God. None of us in here are good. Oh, you may be better than your neighbor, but you're still evil. Jesus said there's only One that's good and that's God. So if you think you're gonna skip through life enjoying yourself and it's all gonna work out in the end, there's no lifeboat for you unless you accept Jesus. But he doesn't just take you to shore. He just doesn't take you to safety. He takes you to heaven. That's why he came. If he didn't come to do that, if he didn't come to rise from the dead, take our punishment upon Himself, then our faith is useless and you are still guilty in your sins. But he did come to do that. He went down on the cross and took our punishment upon Himself. And by trusting in him, you're not only forgiven, you're given his righteousness. If Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless and you are still guilty in your sins. You're still guilty. Thankfully, he has been raised. But God is not going to force you into heaven against your will. If you don't want him now, you're not going to want him in eternity. If you're still on the run, trying to do it your own way, trying to save yourself, and it's not going to work. It's like trying to swim to shore from where the Titanic went down. Not going to work. The question is, what are you going to do with it? Are you going to accept the only solution that can save you, the only lifeboat that can save you? Or are you just going to keep doing things your own way? You know what question I ask a lot of students on college campuses? Who are skeptics going to ask to you right now? If you're not a Christian, if Christianity were true, would you become a Christian? If the answer is no, Jesus could appear to you and you would still say no because you want to go your own way, Fine, you can go your own way. You're going to go down because you deserve to go down, just like I deserve to go down. There's only one Savior, and thankfully he rose from the dead. And. And Pastor Chip's going to give you an opportunity to accept Him. Pastor Chip.