Ep. 288: Evidence for The Resurrection

*Below is an edited transcription of the audio conversation.

Daniel Markin:

Hey, welcome to Indoubt, my name’s Daniel Markin. On today’s episode, I have a chat with George Sinclair. He’s a pastor. He actually has a number of different titles, lives out in Ottawa. And we’re talking about the resurrection. An amazing episode for you to listen to, just to even get your feet wet. We’ve just come through the Easter season, he is risen. So, have a listen to this, it’ll give you more insights into the resurrection, into the day that has transformed history. Hope you enjoy it. Hey, welcome to Indoubt, my name’s Daniel Markin. And today, we’re joined by George Sinclair. George, how are you doing today, man?

George Sinclair:

I am doing fine. How are you doing?

Daniel Markin:

I’m doing well. It’s good to be with you, good to be chatting with you. We, off air here, have been going back and forth a little bit about college basketball. We’ve been going back and forth about Ottawa, what it’s like to live there. So, rather than me introducing you, why don’t we just have you introduce yourself a little bit. Why don’t you tell our audience who you are, what’s your deal, before we jump into talking a little bit about the resurrection?

George Sinclair:

Thanks. First thing people need to understand is, I never studied under any evangelical scholars, in my academic career before training for ministry and then when I trained for ministry. I have secular degrees and I studied towards ordination under an ultraliberal school. So, it’s not as if I studied at Regent or some evangelical conservative place. I was in the Anglican Church of Canada for quite a few years. Then over the issue of same-sex blessings, which is really over foundational issues around the scripture and the lordship of Christ, I left the Anglican Church of Canada in 2008. So I’m the pastor of an urban church in Ottawa. I’m also actually the principal of a small evangelical, cross-denominational seminary called Ryle Seminary in Ottawa. But also available maybe even for some of your listeners, if you’d like to take Zoom classes, that’s an option too. Little plug.

Daniel Markin:

Now, I assume that… Do you guys also operate in-person at the little seminary and stuff?

George Sinclair:

Yeah, we offer in-person classes, but actually we’ve realized the need for those training for ministry that there’s an increasing need for people to be able to do that remotely. Although we’re also developing a way to develop mentorship and build community, because what you don’t want is just somebody taking an online course, living in their basement and never interacting with human beings.

Daniel Markin:

We can talk about seminary for a while, I’d love to, but George, we have you on here because you wrote a piece for The Gospel Coalition Canada, 10 concise pieces of evidence for the resurrection. And I want to actually just begin to walk through that. We’ll go one through 10 and this will be super brief. So, tell us the 10 reasons.

George Sinclair:

The first piece of evidence for it is basically, when I talk to people, I always say that there are four ancient eyewitness biographies of Jesus. And they are four eyewitness biographies of Jesus that were written when eyewitnesses were still alive, who can comment on it, give it two thumbs up, two thumbs down. That’s a better way to understand on one level. Of course, there’s faith. I believe it’s inspired. But if people haven’t even reached that point from a purely intellectual point of view, what we call Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are four eyewitness biographies written either by eyewitnesses themselves, for all of it or part of it. But definitely, completely and utterly dependent upon eyewitness testimony. The literary genre is a genre of biography. The language, it doesn’t use once upon a time language. It doesn’t use make-believe language. These gospels intersect with secular history constantly and can be checked. In fact, one of the reasons that we know that the resurrection of Jesus either happened, I think it was April 3rd. I might get this slightly wrong. April 3rd, the year 30th or April 5th, the year 33 is precisely because there are so many cross references to history and historical figures. So they are ancient biographies, written while most of the eyewitnesses were still alive. And that’s where you begin. It’s doubted by a lot of scholars, but I can tell you, having studied at an ultraliberal seminary. When I asked the professors what evidence there was to have the gospels written very late. There is no evidence. They’ll talk a little bit about some changes in words and stuff like that. But about 150 years ago, a group of scholars began to just basically believe that the entire New Testament was written vastly later. Archeological discoveries and other The things have had to make them backtrack, but there’s still this preference for people to believe that lots of the gospels were written in the eighties or nineties, or something like that. But there’s actually no evidence for that at all. There’s actually zero evidence. And in fact, most of the evidence goes against it. Jerusalem was destroyed in the year 70. There’s no reference to the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70, and the destruction of the temple is absolutely huge. Not only because Jesus predicted it, but it completely and utterly transformed Judaism. And there’s no reference to the destruction of Jerusalem in any of the New Testament, the letters and none of the gospels. So the easiest way to understand these… I could say more about it. Jewish archeologists often will go to the New Testament and other ancient archeologists will go to the New Testament to locate things. There’s the accuracy of names and places, which would be very hard. And the more archeology and the knowledge of the pass grows, the more time and time they see that the New Testament got it right. Which is what happens when the texts are written early and it’s written by eyewitnesses in the context of eyewitnesses. And that’s what you have when you read the four ancient biographies, eyewitness, based on eyewitness testimony.

Daniel Markin:

That to me is one of the linchpin arguments for it too, is the eyewitnesses.

George Sinclair:

Here’s another thing about the gospels, because people sometimes wonder why they’re all different. So let’s say, God forbid, my wife was to die in an accident very soon. I’d be too broken up, I couldn’t say anything at the funeral. But my kids decided to get together there to say something about Louise. So, they team up with some of the grandkids and all like that. And I could easily see, some of the grandkids would say, “I’d like to just talk about some of the main things about what happened with Louise in her life.” So they’ll get up and they’ll do a talk like that. Then maybe another couple of the kids would say, “I’d really like to talk a little bit about how she had such a great heart for people. She served coffee at church, she looked after the child on the autism spectrum. She’d notice the poor and all of that.” And we want to really talk about that. Then maybe another one of the group of the kids would say, “She was also very deeply Christian and I’d like to talk, obviously about things that she did, but also really bring that aspect of her in.” Then maybe my son Jacob and my son Jesse would say, “Mom used to have these late night conversations with us. We really had these long, in-depth conversations and we’d like to talk about that.” And if you heard all four of those things at the funeral, you’d really get a sense of my wife. And some of the events might intermingle with each other, but they’d all be very different. And that’s what you actually see when you have the gospels. That’s why, when you see tiny little differences in it… Well, first of all, Jesus might have said the same thing 150 times over three years in lots of different locations. We all repeat ourselves and use good stories, use good lines. But that’s what you really see, the diversity of it, combined with the accuracy of names, the accuracy of getting dates right, locations right, travel details right. All help to give you a far better sense of who Jesus is. And none of them are contradictions, they’re all just… Once you use this funeral analogy, they’re just trying to bring up… If after the funeral, somebody say, “No, you’re contradicting yourselves.” They’d go, no. Even the order, they might not say things in the same order in each case. But the order doesn’t matter, they’re trying to communicate Louise. The language in the gospels is just like that. It’s true language, it’s capturing different things. They have loose time markers, usually. Often the connectors within it, if you know the original language, are idea connections or like connections, not this happened and this happened. The more you go into it, you just see, this really is eyewitness testimony and it’s completely and utterly trustworthy. And just as an aside, it’s not in this, one of the things that just really struck me lately is, if people say they believe that they can trust Josephus, this goes in your next point. Josephus, who gives evidence about what Christians believe, an ancient Jewish historian. And if they use some of the other ancient Greek and Roman writers who refer to the early Christians, and if people say, “Well, you can believe them and you can believe… Then also they might say, “We have Plato’s writings and Aristotle’s writings, but we can’t trust the New Testament.” That’s completely and utterly inconsistent. How do we have any ancient copies of Josephus and these other people, Plato or Aristotle? It’s the same monks who translated copies of the Bible. And the same monks and Christians who are making copies of Mark, and then a new copy of Mark, are the same ones who are also doing it for Plato or Aristotle or Josephus. So, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can’t say, “Well, they got all these things all wrong in the gospels, but they’re right about all this other stuff.” No. If they’re wrong, they’re wrong. If they’re right, they’re right. Sorry, anyway. I’m not… That’s just a fact.

Daniel Markin:

That is a fact. You don’t need to apologize for that. You don’t need to apologize for the facts. The part with Josephus too, that’s super interesting. Or even with the writings of Plato is, because of the Dead Sea scrolls, we actually have, I want to say the earliest manuscripts. There’s only about a 30 or 40 year gap. People will be like, well, a lot could have been changed in those 30 years. And then you say, “Wait a minute. You’re talking about Plato, you’re talking about the story of Alexander The Great, you’re talking about Homer’s Odyssey and all these other pieces of literature that you trust.” Some of the time gaps in there are like a thousand years from when it was written, to the earliest copy they have. And you’re like, you’re going to trust that but not trust one that was 30 years. Because the eyewitnesses still exist. They’re probably still alive after 30 years, you can go ask them. So, that piece of it is super big for me. Okay. We jumped in, you kind of touched on this. Pagan and Jewish writers reported that Christians believe that Jesus rose from the dead. And that was your second point there.

George Sinclair:

It’s my briefest of all of the points. It’s in fact, just a simple sentence. I would just recommend you go read something like Peter William’s book about the gospels, Eric Metaxas wrote a very good book lately on, Is Atheism Dead? That looks at creation, arguments for design and creation. He looks at some of the archeological stuff and then some of the philosophical problems with atheists. They’ll give you a wealth of information from the different pagan historians and writers who mention Christians and their belief. And these are all written by critics hostile to the Christian faith. In fact, some of the times when they’re talking about Christianity, it’s obviously that they’re saying, “This is the stupid and dumb thing and maybe even immoral thing they believe.” It’s not as if… It’s not as if it’s a US president who, when he is in trouble, back in the day, would want to go to church to make himself look like he was a good guy. These were people in positions of power who despised Christians, who gave records of what Christians believe. And in every case, it’s very clear that Christian faith is based on the belief that this man, by the name of Jesus, died on a across and rose from the dead. It’s just a constant thing in Jewish and pagan historians writing within the first couple of centuries.

Daniel Markin:

Speaking of dying, your third point here is, many of the principle eyewitnesses is to the resurrection died because of that claim. And we know this. We know that, I think all but John, of the disciples, all of them die and are martyred for the belief of the resurrection, and many Christians for years afterwards. And that’s a really big one in there too.

George Sinclair:

The thing which is big about this is, when I used to tell people about that, they’d shrug and say, “Well, you look at it. There’s people dying for Hinduism, there’s people dying for Islam. There’s people dying for Marxism and communism and democracy.” The thing is, people do die for ideologies, they do die for nations. But what the Christians are dying for is a fact. And there’s not many people who die for a fact, especially if they could just basically say they made it up. So, it’s not as if you have this Christian movement, they’re all deeply invested in it and all of that type of stuff. And it’s not as if in the ancient world becoming a Christian gave you any extra status. To become a Christian was to lose legal protection in Roman society. To become a Christian was to lose status in the Jewish society. So, to become a Christian was to, in a sense, from a worldly point of view, remove value from your life, not add value to your life. If you wanted to add value to your life, you could stop being a Christian. But at the heart of the thing that these guys died for is the fact that Jesus rose from the dead. Nobody denies that he died by crucifixion. Although, once again, if they wanted to make Christianity attractive to pagans and to Jews, they would’ve had him die some other way. They wouldn’t have had him die by crucifixion, which was something that only… Roman citizens couldn’t be crucified, because it was viewed to be too horrific, to shameful. And as we all know, for Jewish people, they took a part of the Old Testament law, what our Jewish friends call the Tanakh. And they said that to hang on a cross is to mean that you’re cursed. So, they would’ve picked a different way for him to die. But they died, these are the writers, the witnesses. They die because they say that on the third day, the tomb was empty and Jesus’s body was gone. They never found the body and they saw Jesus alive, and they died for a set of facts. And not many people will die for a set of facts, if they’re just made up.

Daniel Markin:

Another way I’ve heard of put is, who would die for a lie. When you mentioned communism, Marxism, people die for those things because they believe in them. They actually are convinced by it, therefore they’re willing to die for it. But if you knew that it was made up and then it comes to it, it’s like the gig is up. Why would you die for something fake. Very seldom that happen. These people died because they believed it was true. So, that’s a really serious thing. When we talk about the resurrection, is your fifth one here, the grave was empty. The tomb was empty. Talk to us about that.

George Sinclair:

Sorry. Actually, I want to go back to the fourth one. One of the things that people often say is that, you’re reading the gospels. It’s really just a metaphor. It’s symbolic, it’s poetic. One of the things that people don’t often realize is, that the… John is a very important witness here, because it’s very obvious that John understands the distinction between writing in a symbolic, metaphorical way and writing history. Because he’s both the author of the book of Revelation and he’s the author of the gospel of John. So, in one case you have constant use of historical language, which is the gospel of John. And lots of details, which are very important, showing that he believes he’s writing history. And then you have the book of Revelation, which is filled with symbolism, with seven candlesticks, with angels, with trumpets… You can’t read the book of Revelation and not see that it’s just a complete… It’s a Niagara Falls of symbolism and metaphor in the Bible and ancient world, that we then try to figure out in terms of what it means. That’s a very important thing. It’s also really interesting, because one of the things which is at the base of people denying the eyewitness nature of them is the miracles. If you go back and you take a look at something like the gospel of Mark, it’s very interesting. In Mark, he has the story of Herod beheading John the Baptist. Now, almost all of the details that Mark mentions about the beheading of John the Baptist is the same as what Josephus says. John the Baptist, who was beheaded by Herod, Josephus says it, Mark says it. And the very next story is the feeding of the 5,000. And there’s no change in language. It isn’t as if, now I’m going to tell you a once-upon-a-time story to give you some hope. It’s the same type of historical language. So to claim that somehow this is metaphorical or poetic, or anything like that is a claim made in defiance of the evidence. It’s not a sign of deep scholarship, it’s a sign of refusing to actually just read and understand. Now, in terms of the historical evidence that the grave was empty, if you want me to jump in.

Daniel Markin:

Let’s see how far we can get. Let’s see how far we can get through these. And the readers can… They can go find the article later on if they want to jump in a little bit more.

George Sinclair:

I give a range of things of what the New Testament writers say. One of the things, which I don’t mention, which is really important is that the writers all make it very clear that nobody expected Jesus to rise from the dead. None of them expected it. And in a sense, it puts the early Christians in a bad light. Not as people of unbelievable faith or vision or insight, or anything like that, it shows them constantly just being like you and I, if not wanting to believe, just not believing that somebody would rise from the dead. Then when they give all of the details about the resurrection, it’s very well-known that they wouldn’t have picked a woman to be the first person to see Jesus. But the grave clothes and the spices are very important, because if there had been a grave robber, the body is of zero value. This isn’t like in the 19th century when grave robbers would steal bodies and they would sell them to medical schools, so that the medical schools would have cadavers to practice on there. In that case, the cadavers or the value of the clothes are worthless. The spices that would’ve been used on Jesus, that was what was of great value to people. The body is just going to get in the way. In fact, the quicker you can steal the body before it starts to do all the things that bodies do, the spices are going to be the best. They can resell them and reuse them. So, the fact that all of the spices are still there but the body is gone, is a very important piece of detail that the resurrection actually happened. The body is gone.

Daniel Markin:

With that, to even get into that tomb, you’ve got to roll that stone away, which that’s not easy. Those aren’t meant to be really reopened. It’s like you close it, it stays closed. Had the Roman seal on it and had Roman guards around it. And it’s not like these were your new recruit Roman guards. My understanding of how it worked is, you had guys who basically had served all their tours of duty, had survived every battle, and now were granted the ability to… Okay, well, for the rest of your service as a Roman soldier, you’ll just be guarding tombs. You’ve already fought and helped us conquer half the world, so just go home and take it a little bit easier. These guys were legit fighters, so good luck trying to be a grave robber. Running at a guy with a little knife when you’re fighting a Roman soldier.

George Sinclair:

The Bible doesn’t give any direct evidence to this, but given how the historical record show that neither the Romans nor the Jews wanted a resurrected Jesus, there must have been a search for the body. That would just be common sense. And if any of you have been to Jerusalem, in April it’s pretty dry and hard… Not that you can’t dig something, but it wasn’t huge. People would notice bodies being carried around. Anyway, the body’s gone, and there’s a whole range of things about the details of the story to help. It’s like a lot of things. If you go back and look at it, when I preach on a miracle story, like when I preach on… I just recently talked about the feeding of the 5,000. If you look at the text very carefully, it sets the story up in such a way to make it very clear there’s a miracle.

George Sinclair:

Such small details as the fact that Jesus has everybody sit down. But having everybody sit down, it means that if he’s going to do a magic trick, it’s harder. If there’s a huge crowd, they might not see some wagon being rolled up with lots of food. But the fact that they sit down and there’s all these extra details… And it’s the same thing, if you go back and you look at the different accounts of the death and resurrection of Jesus, they make it very clear that a miracle is about to happen. They show pieces of evidence in their telling, which means that the only explanation is the resurrection, the stone, the guards, the seal. The way the stone is blown out, the grave clothes. The fact that he was pierced in his side. The fact that lots of people saw him die.

George Sinclair:

The fact that there’s all these people who were mocking Jesus beforehand, they all know that he dies. They set the story up in such a way to emphasize the death, they set the story up in such a way to emphasize that the tomb is empty. And they set the story up in such a way to emphasize that he was seen alive. Often when I talk to people about the resurrection appearances, they don’t realize that they want their cake and they want to be able to eat it too. So, they’ll say something like, “Well, you can’t trust the resurrection appearances because they knew Jesus.” Well, let’s say they didn’t know Jesus. Then the thing they would say is, “How did they know it was Jesus? They didn’t know him.” Knowing him means they can recognize him. But knowing him somehow… You can’t have the argument both ways, you have to pick one or the other. And people read back into the ancient world the fact that we’re just so used to being able to see you. Your listeners might not know, but when we’re doing this interview, we’re actually doing it on Zoom. I’ve never met Daniel before, but I can see it right now. But that wouldn’t have been true in the ancient world. That’s one of the reasons why Judas had to give Jesus a kiss to identify clearly who Jesus was. There was no photography. So, they wouldn’t… A lot of people wouldn’t know who Jesus was. The soldiers might not know who Jesus was. Judas was needed to make sure it was Jesus. So the resurrection accounts are making it very clear that the people who see Jesus are the people who knew him. They can say whether it was a fake. Things like the fact that he was seen by so many different people in such odd configurations and different geographical things, the fact that they could touch him, they could eat food. All of these things are things which emphasize the reality. And they also emphasize that it’s not a resuscitation, that it’s a resurrection, that it’s happened. That Jesus, it’s not that he has the same type of human body as he had when he was hanging on the cross. It’s clearly a body… The dead body is gone, the new body is there. It’s a different body, but it’s still clearly a body. It’s still clearly recognizably Jesus.

Daniel Markin:

We are coming to the end of our time here. We’ve run out of time, but I feel like I could just keep going, unfortunately we can’t. George, as you think about this, maybe there is one thing that we didn’t quite cover. Or think about our audience. What is one more piece of advice that you would just give to a young believer, maybe someone who’s a new Christian just maybe checking out Christianity for the first time. It’s Easter, he has risen. What would you tell our audience, just as a closing word here?

George Sinclair:

The resurrection of Jesus is in the context of not only centuries of prophecy, which… I’ve had friends who can tell you all sorts of different prophecies. And most prophecies of different religions just don’t come to pass. But there were centuries of prophecies promising something like this. And what we now call the Old Testament, our Jewish friends the Tanakh, it is the basis upon which we believe in human rights. It is the basis of which we view justice. It was the foundation for science. Books like job and Genesis, even if you’re unbelievers, are viewed by many people, psychologists and others, as having profound psychological insight. And it is in the context… Things like Psalm 23 are used by alcoholics anonymous and others. They have profound emotional power. And it’s in the context of this overarching body of literature and story of profound explanatory power, the basis for so many things in this world, which is very good. It’s in that context that Jesus comes and lives and dies and rises from the dead. And his resurrection from the dead vindicates who he is, vindicates that literature. So it’s not just this weird and crazy and evil stuff that he vindicates. It is in the context of this vindication of something with profound emotional, intellectual, social, cultural wisdom that Jesus lives, dies and rises from the dead. When you come to accept this and accept him as your savior and your Lord, it’s an entering into this story and this wisdom. Which is deep and beautiful and transformative for your own life and for culture.

Daniel Markin:

I couldn’t have said it better. George, thank you for that. The gospel’s amazing, Jesus is amazing and the resurrection is incredible. And it’s just amazing. So, thank you for your time. Take care.

George Sinclair:

Okay. God bless. Thanks.

Daniel Markin:

Hey, thanks again, George, for being on the program. In particular, the point about people recognizing Jesus and the fact that Judas had to kiss Jesus on the cheek to signify who that was. That to me, an angle and a small detail I’d never considered before. If you want to listen or connect with us on Indoubt, you can go to our website and you can find us on social media as well. We’d love to connect with you and help resource you in any way we can. Till next time, all the best.