The Chairman, Mr. C. C. Walker, called for the reading of Acts 26 (Paul’s defence before Agrippa), down to the words, “For this thing was not done in a corner.” . . .
The speaker said :
“For this thing was not done in a corner.” . . . My dear friends : there is in the New Testament an expression with which all English people are familiar. It is reproduced in the English Church Service for the Burial of the Dead. It reads : ” If Christ he not raised, our preaching to you is vain, and your faith is also vain.”
That is the matter to which we have to address ourselves, the miracle of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from among dead ones.
Now, I do not propose to define a miracle, I am not going to discuss miracles, nor will I argue with you as to what a miracle may be.
I propose to concede to you any definition you like for a miracle, and to say that what we are interested in is the fact of Christ having been raised from the dead. The premier miracle; to which all others are subordinate. Very well.
“Is Disbelief Justifiable?
“Why should it he thought a thing incredible that God should raise the dead ? “
Does lack of experience justify disbelief?
The judgment of every generation negatives the idea. Look at the record in John 9. 32, and while you are turning to it I would like to say that it is the only expression in the Scripture to which I shall refer by chapter and verse. I propose to make about sixty-five quotations from the Bible; but to save your time I have them all written out in full, and will read them to you as occasion requires.
Now, the record in John 9. 32 reads : “Since the world began was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind.”
That was lack of experience. Christ gave the speaker sight. You may not believe this! You may reiterate the man’s expression. But look what I have in my hand. The Daily TelegraPh for the 2nd of February, 1934. What does it say on the middle page, the really important page of a newspaper ? At the top of the last column, on page 13,in large capitals, we read ” A man looks at the world for the first time. — Sight after 27 blind years.—Seeing his mother and his home.—The trees and the flowers.” The letterpress tells us that new corneas from the eyes of a blind man and woman were grafted on his eyes to replace the diseased corneas which had caused his own blindness.
Now, how many people are there who would believe what they read in a newspaper rather than what they read in the Bible ? A great many !
Again, fifty years ago you might have said : “Since the world began was it not heard that any man flew to Paris and back in a day, and thought nothing of it.” But look at this Time Table of the Imperial Airways, which shows it to be a daily occurrence.
Again, twenty-five years ago you might have said : “Since the world began was it not heard that any man sat in his house in Birmingham and heard the bells of Bethlehem ringing.” But this is a thing that you have yourselves experienced.
The corner of the veil of the knowledge of the universe is lifted a little by clever studious men, and they achieve wonders, but the miracles of one generation become with experience the commonplaces of the next.
Why should it be thought a thing incredible that God should raise the dead ?
“The Disciples”
Now I propose to submit to you the evidence for belief in the resurrection, and first of all I want you to think about Christ’s disciples and their outlook.
They followed him because they thought they had found the Messiah. Their nationalist hopes were centred in him. They looked for him to enter Jerusalem in triumph and overthrow the Roman.” Because he was nigh unto Jerusalem, and because they thought that the Kingdom of God would immediately appear.”
I want you to observe the effect upon them of his apprehension by the state. Depression ! Disillusionment ! Gloom !
Christ prepared them for it with his words, “All ye shall be offended this night because of me.”
What does the record say?
“They all forsook him and fled,”
“Peter followed afar off,”
“They were sad when they walked,”
“Peter began to swear, I know not the man,”
“We trusted it had been he that would have redeemed Israel.”
It is possible that Judas Iscariot was a disappointed nationalist.
Let us proceed : “When they heard he was alive they believed not,” ” They went and told the residue; neither believed they them,” ” Their words seemed to them as idle tales.”
And, finally, the depth of disappointment : “I go a-fishing . . . We also go with thee.”
But something happened ! Some tremendous event forced itself upon their mentality ! As we all know, we require very substantial evidence of a matter before we completely change our attitude with regard to it. What do we find with the disciples ?
For depression Exaltation ! In place of gloom Joy ! Instead of being disappointed and disgruntled Full of Zeal !
What was the tremendous event that occasioned this change ?
The resurrection of Jesus Christ !
“And they went and preached everywhere,” “and the disciples were filled with joy,” ” witness of his resurrection,” ” whereof we all are witnesses,” “we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard,” “that which we have seen and heard and our hands have handled declare we unto you,” “with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of Jesus Christ,” “so mightily grew the word of God and prevailed.”
Look at this testimony : ” Hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”
“Rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name,” “men that have hazarded their lives for the name of the Lord Jesus,” “for the work of Christ he was nigh unto death,” “I am ready to die for the name of the Lord Jesus.”
Well might the great Frenchman Pascal say : “I readily believe those stories whose witnesses get their throats cut ! “
“The Apostle Paul”
Now I want you to think about Paul of Tarsus. A real conservative. A real orthodox die-hard !
Look at his social position : He tells us he was “a Hebrew,” “a Roman,” “a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee,” “a citizen of no mean city,” ” free born,” “brought up at the feet of Gamaliel.” “All the Jews knew his manner of life from his youth in Jerusalem.” We are told that “the chief of the people in Ephesus were his friends.”
Look at his orthodoxy : He says, “I profited in the Jews religion above many mine equals, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers,” “touching the righteousness that was in the law, blameless,” ” living after the most straitest sect of our religion.”
Look at his attitude to the Christians :
“A persecutor and injurious,” “persecuting the church,” “beyond measure persecuted and wasted them,” “being exceedingly mad against them,” “made havock of the church,” “committed them to prison,” “imprisoned and beat in every synagogue,” “breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples,” ” persecuting this way unto the death.”
Then suddenly something happened in his life ! Resulting in a complete reversal of his policy ! What was it ? An hallucination ? A dream ? You have heard his own explanation read to you to-night. He gave it before an historical personage, King Agrippa.
As Festus said to Agrippa : “Of one Jesus, who was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive.”
As Paul says, and again I am quoting from a New Testament expression reproduced in the English Church Burial Service, ” Last of all he was seen of me also.”
“Whereupon, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision,” “straightway he preached Christ,” “increased the more in strength and confounded the Jews,” ” spake boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus,” “my bonds in Christ are manifest in all the palace,” ” Paul was pressed in the Spirit and testified,” “Paul a prisoner of Jesus Christ,” ” I have suffered the loss of all things that I may win Christ,” “I am ready to die for the name of the Lord Jesus.”
“Paul and His Detractors”
Now he had his opponents in the community, as have all outstanding personalities.
He engages in controversy with them in his writings.
When you enter into a discussion with an opponent, do you expose your weaknesses? No ! Do you present him with openings for attack ? By no means !
If Paul was the victim of hallucination, or was lying, would he have dared to say, M y answer to them that do examine me is this : Have I not seen the Lord Jesus?”
Would he have dared to broadcast the fact throughout the churches ? Would he have dared to circulate his pamphlets containing an item of unsound doctrine to be criticised in all the ecclesias ? Yet he reiterates this fundamental belief to Rome, to Corinth, to Ephesus, to Colosse, to Philippi, to Thessaly, in authentic letters, that critical scholarship of the present day accepts as genuine !
“The Affidavits Of The Witnesses”
And arising out of these challenging statements by Paul, I want you to think about the affidavits of the actual witnesses of the resurrection of Christ.
I am not talking of the Apostolic Fathers. I do not propose to submit to you the testimony of Origen, or of Augustine, or of Tertullian, or of Justin Martyr, or of Clement, or of Irenus, or of Tatian, or of Ignatius, or of Papias, or of Polycarp, although all these perfectly historical characters were completely convinced of the truth of these things, and lived 1500, 1600, 1700 years nearer to those events than did Voltaire or Thomas Paine, and 1800 years nearer to them than the Rationalist Press Association or Mr. C. E. M. Joad !
But I submit to you (and I am holding in my hand the document of each successive witness as I call him), Peter, James, John, Matthew, Mark, Luke ; Paul at Athens, at Antioch, at Jerusalem, at Ccesarea (in the Acts of the Apostles); Paul’s letters, to Rome, to Corinth, to Ephesus, to Colosse, to Philippi, to Thessaly, to his son Timothy !
Now the unbeliever says : “I do not accept your witnesses! They are all in the Bible! Give me some evidence from other sources !
That is a thoroughly fatuous demand !
I am counsel, briefed to present a case to the High Court. I collect my evidence, I put my witnesses one after the other into the witness box, and the Court hears what they have to say. Then, for my own convenience and that of the Court, I bind together the affidavits of all my witnesses into one volume and call it the New Testament !
You have the audacity to say that just because I have done this you will ask the Court to ignore my witnesses?
You have the impertinence to require me to produce other witnesses ?
If there were any other witnesses I should have called them, and they would have been incorporated in my volume !
But let me ask you. Can you produce a volume of contrary evidence, of the same antiquity as my documents ?
AND COULD YOU GET THE BRITISH MUSEUM TO OFFER YOU $100,000 FOR IT?
“Conclusion”
Let us hear the conclusion of the matter. An obscure man, operating in obscure villages in the Roman Empire during a ministry of not more than three and a half years, succeeded in impressing his personality, his manner of thinking, and his code of life upon subsequent generations of the intellectual world, of which our Easter Holy-day is one of a thousand examples. That is, to my mind, the most powerful collateral testimony to the truth of these things.
We are entitled to say, as Paul said in the course of his first recorded public address as a Christian : “Behold, ye despisers, for I work a work in your day, which ye shall in no wise believe, though a man declare it unto you!”
The risen Christ is the basis of our Faith ! Another Scripture says that to those that look for him shall he appear the second time,” and that reminds us that wherever the English language is spoken the Lord’s Prayer is known.
“Thy kingdom come.”
“Because God hath appointed a day, in the which he will rule the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained, whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised up Christ from the dead.”
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One