The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the most important event in the history of the world. I don’t believe that it can be stressed enough how central to our faith that this one event is.

Jesus’ death atoned for our sins, so that is important to remember always (Rom 5:8). But it is by the Resurrection that we are assured final victory over death: “For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him” (Rom 6:9). The same is true of us, who are in Christ (Rom 6:11). This passage bears repeating in full:

Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. [Rom 6:8-11]

Most people perceive, due to a very secularized culture, that it is Christmas–the birth of Jesus–that is the center of Christian celebration. In fact, Christmas is not–nor ever should be–the center of our celebration. It was not with His birth that He saved us, but with His death. His Resurrection achieved final victory over death, and confirmed His promise to us that He was indeed who He said He was.

In Genesis, after Adam and Eve sin, God punishes them with many afflictions. The most severe is death: “for dust you are and to dust you will return” (Gen 3:19). This is the beginning of the Hebrew belief in nihilism. God is not promising eternal life and fellowship, but is declaring that the man will return to the dust from which he was formed. There is no look at death, heaven, or hell in the Old Testament, it is all nihilistic. After death comes oblivion.

Twelve men in Galilee were raised with this belief. This is unshakable, unavoidable. They were raised with this nihilistic viewpoint, they believed that death was God’s decree, the wages for sin (Rom 6:23). But something happened overnight to change their minds. Something took these twelve men and changed them from cowards and deserters into martyrs for their faith.

Something also worked on Paul, one of the leaders of the effort to quash this new faith. He turned from a murderer and torturer into the most vocal proponent of this new faith. Not only was Paul a Jew, but a Pharisee: one of the higher-ups of the Sanhedrin. He would have been keenly aware of Genesis 3:19: “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”

What changed the minds of these men? Why did they suddenly turn from a nihilistic view of death to preaching the bodily resurrection of all the dead in Christ, even willing to march to their own deaths for doing so?

I submit that only one event could have changed these guys’ minds. The physical, bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Without Christ, there is no Christianity. This is surface-level thinking. Let’s go deeper than that: Without Christ’s resurrection, our faith is in vain and we are trapped in our sins (1 Cor 15:17). The dead are lost; they have returned to dust (1 Cor 15:18). And it gets even worse: If there is no life after death, and all we have to hope for is this life only, then we Christians are the most pathetic of all people (1 Cor 15:19).

I promised a piece on the Resurrection, an answer to Rook Hawkins’s Problems With the Resurrection blog entry from January. I found the piece itself laden with problems of its own, not worth a serious apologetic response. Instead of that essay, I instead submit two articles, one from William Lane Craig, and one from Edwin Yamauchi. These eminiant Christian scholars have both spent many years successfully defending the core of the faith we share, and I am happy to present two articles on the historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, for those who want to examine the evidence and not just blindly believe what the church teaches us.

God bless, and Happy Easter!

Easter: Myth, Hallucination, or History? by Edwin Yamauci

The Historicity of the Empty Tomb by William Lane Craig

When I first started blogging on WP, I noticed that all of the comments blocked by Akismet were advertising porn. Then, it went to about 60% porn, 40% prescription drugs. Now, I have almost no porn advertisements whatsoever and almost all of them are for prescription drugs. And the number has jumped from around 20 per day to almost 100 per day.

Does this mean I graduated to the next level of achievement in blogging, or just that I should spend more time writing interesting blogs and articles and less time checking the spam queue?

Speaking of articles: I’m not going to spend any more time with Rook Hawkins’s Problems With the Resurrection piece posted on his blog a few months back. It seems as though 90% of the information is quote-mining from Richard Carrier, and the rest is viewing the historical evidence for the Resurrection with the presupposition that no supernaturalism can ever occur, anywhere, ever.

I still plan to do a piece on the Resurrection, but it will likely be a general apologetic. This will probably take me a while onger than I had originally planned. and I will start on it after I look at some atheist material in-depth. For a preview of how it will likely take shape, check out this apologetic. I want to read Morality Without God from RRS’s deludedgod, and an atheist reader gave me two good articles to look at for general guidelines to arguing with an atheist. I’ve always thought that Pascal’s wager was a terrible way to look at faith, so I’m going to take a look at the wager for myself and likely I’ll publish something on that in the near future.

The King James Only articles are on the brink of finished. The first is the response to that terrible quiz I keep seeing. I only need to locate textual criticism on one more stinking verse, but I can’t seem to find any balanced commentary on 1 Peter 4:14. All I can find is the typical KJV Only rhetoric. The second article I planned on doing was a balanced introduction to the whole KJV Only position, which of course will require more research.

It’s obvious to me that theists make no attempt to find out where atheists are coming from. And that saddens me. And then they try to argue with an atheist as if that person accepted the same presuppositions that we take for granted. I’m here to tell you something, every Christian that attempts to argue with an atheist:

1. They don’t accept a created world.  They won’t even listen if you try to argue for one.
2. They don’t accept the Bible as the only infallible source for faith and morals.  At best, they think that it’s an intriguing book filled with myths same as Bullfinch’s Mythology.  At worst, they think that it is a pack of lies concocted for the sole purpose of controlling unwary humans so that the priests would have all the power.  Repudiating them with the Bible has no effect.
3. They don’t believe that world we live in or the stars in the heavens points to any sort of supernatural Creator. Those who at least allow the possiblity to stay on the table only allow for a deist worldview.  This plays back to point #1, and is part and parcel why it is so difficult to argue for creation with these people.

The approach to evangelizing an atheist should start with a challenge to the presuppositions. But only through studying the atheist worldview (or lack thereof) and actually understanding the presuppositions underlying it (as well as the apologetic typically used to defend it) will someone like me be able to have a meaningful dialog with atheists about any sort of possibility of belief in (or re-dedication to) the God I hold so dear and serve with enthusiasm.

I’ve decided to be more organized about how I spend my ministry time. A lengthy essay on why I feel I need to do this located here. In summary, it will help me move this ministry forward, and help me spend better quality time with my wife.

I will make the details of my schedule available to interested parties here. This will give you a rough idea of when I may be on message boards if you want to catch me in person.

This week will be extremely light on blogging and message boards, because I’m going to be devoting most of my time to writing a response to Rook Hawkins’s Problems with the Resurrection essay that he posted on his blog in January. I figured that it would be the perfect addition to my website for Easter.

After that, I will begin work on some atheist topics. Morality in the absence of God and Pascal’s wager will be early topics, and then I hope to try to write something on how to argue with an atheist, as that is something that I have noticed that almost no theist has managed to do effectively. The problem lies in worldviews, and the theist’s fear of studying his opposition’s worldview. That is a fear that the theist who wishes to convert atheists must get over, for they all know our worldview inside and out, as most of them were once Christians. Studying their worldview will at least put us on common ground. And, one thing I’ve noticed since posting on the Rational Response Squad boards: atheists are insanely intelligent. This makes them difficult and dangerous opponents in a debate.

Oh, and one more thing: if you debate an atheist and lose, get back on the horse and try again! Making a website like this is not the way to go. It just makes Christians look like we’re scared of them. Christians: love your neighbor and pray for those who persecute you. That type of a website is not being salt and light to the world, it is caving to the world’s values. The maker of that website, when giving a defense to the Lord’s truth, apparently forgot to give it with gentleness and reverence. Sad.

I’m no fan of Brian Sapient or the RRS. But I condemn websites like that. That is not what Christianity is about, and it only gives them more bullets to try to shoot Christianity down.

I’m trying to understand the atheist mindset where morals are concerned. To me, morals are sound and unchangeable standards by which to live. If morals change with the changing time, then they cease to be morals and now become simple behaviors that are acceptable within the right context. Morals should not be relative to society, society should be built relative to morals.

To wit, here is one atheist’s thoughts on morals:

But I’m thinking that he [another atheist] can get his morals from the bible. Because, if the evolutionary theory is right (and I firmly believe that it is) then the bible formalises [sic] those morals already present in human behaviour for tens of thousands of years. Along with other sad departures from human morals which paint an artificially negative picture of human nature. Like selling your daughter or smashing your boy’s head in with a rock for getting a little bit drunk.

     So the bible is actually ripping off the evolutionary moral standards which have existed for orders of magnitude longer.

And this response:

I agree with [the above comment] that the bible is based on the morals that were developed by evolution. But the thing is that morals evolve over time, there is a outstanding difference between the morals of now and just 100 years ago, and the difference between morals now and morals in biblical times is unimaginable.

     While I do agree that the bible is based on morals, so people can get morals out of it. The problem I see is that there morals are 2,000-3,000 years out of date! And therefore TERRIBLE by modern day standards!

So morals do change? Well, that would make them relative to society, which means that we didn’t build society on them. So, the atheist still seems to lack a solid foundation upon which to base any sort of moral code.

I’ll take Christianity every time, thank you very much! I like not only having a solid foundation for moral codes, but also a solution to all of man’s lapses of morality: Jesus!