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South Bay SDA Church

Alan Parker

Myth or Miracle?

Today we're going to be taking a look at a fascinating subject.

We're going to be taking a look at the resurrection.

And I want to begin by describing a bit of my journey.

I did not come from a Christian home, and I remember when I decided to become a theology student, my stepfather, his name was Johnno, he took me aside and he said, by the way, you know it's not true.

You know there was no such person named Jesus.

But fortunately I had taken a class called Life and Teachings.

And in that class, we had discovered some evidence for why Jesus existed.

And so I started sharing some evidence with him.

He had never heard of these things before.

And so he was looking at this and saying, could this really be true?

And so he said, well, I'm going to have to think about that.

And I wanted to let him know that most skeptics today acknowledge that Jesus was a real person.

I mean, this whole idea of God entering into human history, dying, and then being raised back to life.

I mean, you can explain that there was some carpenter guy in Nazareth that everybody started following and turned him into a hero.

But for him to come back from the dead, that was more difficult.

And that's something that my stepfather, John O., struggled with.

And I'm going to be telling you more about his story later, but in typical Chris Anderson fashion, I have another story to tell that I'm not gonna finish right now But I will finish later and it occurred in 1991 it was February 28 and it was a mother's worst nightmare 2 men in army uniform standing outside her work.

They had come to tell her that her son, Clayton, had been killed in a blast in the Gulf War just 2 hours before the ceasefire.

That night, she went to her room and she just cried, and she kept looking at his picture and saying, it can't be true.

Her ex-husband, who lived in a town just 8 miles away, when he got the same message delivered by 2 gentlemen, he started letting the town know and the word quickly spread.

By the next day, they had, he was getting flowers, and he was getting casseroles, and the people were coming to give their sympathy.

In fact, at the general store, Johnson's General Store, they had set up a little memorial there, and people were writing notes and bringing things that were a memory of their mischievous and fun-loving son.

You know, we think it's incredible now, but even in the first century, it was considered to be pretty incredible.

The only people who came back from the dead were mythical heroes like Dionysus.

And Dionysus was supposed to be 1 of those people who was born between a union of Zeus and a human mother, and out of that union came out this mythical hero who ended up fighting many wars, and then he came back from the dead.

He had supposedly killed by the Titans, depending on which story you read, and then his heart was still beating, and somehow they resurrected him from his beating heart.

Is Jesus just a mythical hero like Dionysus, or did he really come back from the dead?

Even back then, people thought of this story and they realized it was just a legend.

Is that all that the resurrection story is?

Or perhaps even if Jesus somehow came back from the dead, maybe He just fainted, or maybe the disciples stole the body.

And today what we want to do is we want to find answers to these questions as conclusively as possible because I believe that our faith depends on it.

In fact, about 8 years ago I had a student who wrote an article for our magazine at Southern University, Adventist University, and the school newspaper.

And in there he basically wrote, Jesus is dead.

Well, here's what Paul has to say in our Scripture reading that we read today.

And he says this, "'Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the' what?

The gospel.'" what is another word for gospel?

And he uses this term 46 times in the New Testament to declare the good news, which I preach to you, which you also received and which you stand by, which you are saved.

I mean, there's a lot of things that this gospel does for you.

He says, if you hold fast that word which I preach to you, unless you believed in vain, he says, this is so important, this gospel that I'm going to tell you about, that if you don't hold fast to it, your whole faith is in vain.

And this word, hold fast, really means something that you hold on to with certainty.

And then he says, look, this is so important, I want to tell you that this is something which I have received.

I received it, and then I delivered it to you.

I received it and delivered it." And he says, this is the gospel.

I want you to notice these 3 facts, because these 3 facts are incredible.

Died for our sins according to Scriptures.

These 3 facts are unlike other religions, Because these 3 facts are historical.

When you go to Buddhism, what they have are teachings, interesting teachings.

But people become Buddhists because of the teachings.

When you go to Islam, people become Muslims because they believe in the teachings of the prophet.

But when you come to Christianity, we not only have teachings, we have historical events that are miraculous.

And here we have these events that Christ died, He was buried, and He rose again.

And each 1 of these events is according to the what?

The Scriptures, according to the Scriptures.

So these are events foretold in advance by Scripture.

You take out the prophetic word, you no longer have the gospel.

The prophetic word fulfilled in Jesus Christ, pointed back to by the apostles, is what the gospel is.

And there are a number of Christians today who have forgotten the prophetic word, but you take out the prophetic word and you have lost the gospel.

You have to say amen because the prophetic word is what leads us to an understanding that God foretold it in advance and then it came to pass.

The gospel is founded on the prophetic word.

And Paul says, look, these are historical events.

He says, I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel that I preached is not something that man made up.

So today we want to take a look at, can we really believe this story about a resurrection, is Paul right or wrong?

And I believe the answer is critical for us as we consider the resurrection story, Because this is a highly unexpected event.

If it is true, it completely changes our lives.

And so today we want to have a look at, is Paul right in proclaiming this gospel?

Myth or Miracle?

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