Ep. 60: Did Jesus ACTUALLY Come Back to Life? w/ George Sinclair

Andrew Marcus:

Hey there, hope you’re doing well wherever you are listening to this program. It’s Andrew from THE INDOUBT SHOW, and we are leading up to Easter weekend. And so we have a great conversation today with George Sinclair all the way in Ottawa. He’s a pastor and an amazing guy. 21 grandkids, okay, that is absolutely wild, you’ve got to hear some of his story when we talk. But we’re talking today about the evidence of the resurrection, so many passages of scripture from the beginning to the end point to the hope that we have in Christ and that he is alive sitting at the right hand of the Father. And so we’re going to unpack that as we lead into Holy Week and go through our Easter weekend. Because when we have this hope and this assurance, man, it changes everything. And so we hope you enjoy today’s episode, that you’re blessed, you’re encouraged, you’re reminded of this truth and that it is so foundational for our lives. God bless you. Happy Easter. All right, well, we have George St. Clair all the way in Ottawa. How are you doing today?

George Sinclair:

I’m fine. How are you?

Andrew Marcus:

I’m doing great. Thank you. We’re so honored to have you with us today. For those who are watching on video form or if you’re listening to audio world, those might not know you. Please tell us a little bit about who you are, ministry life, family life. We might hear some dogs in the background, as we were just starting to record we heard some, so tell us a little bit about all things George Sinclair.

George Sinclair:

I live in Ottawa. I am the pastor of an urban church called Church of the Messiah. We meet right in the heart of downtown Ottawa. We’re about 10 minute walk from Parliament buildings, five minute walk from sort of the main bar area in Ottawa, very close to the University of Ottawa. I’ve been redeemed for a hundred million years and served in suburban church and then I’ve served in a very, very, very rural church where I looked after for a little congregations. But I’ve been in the city since 1995 and I’m also the chair of an apologetics ministry in Ottawa that’s been going. It’ll be our 10th anniversary in the fall called Dig & Delve Apologetics. I don’t know. I’m married, I have nine kids.

Andrew Marcus:

Nine kids. Okay. So we have to stop you at ordained for a hundred million years. So tell us about the dinosaurs real quick. No, I’m just kidding. But nine kids.

George Sinclair:

Correct. Yes. Many of them are married and I also have grandchildren, and so God has been very kind to us.

Andrew Marcus:

How many grandkids do you have?

George Sinclair:

I have 21 grandchildren. By the way, I married when I was 14, which is how I’ve been able to do that.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, exactly, exactly. That is so funny. I was going to say you had to start young.

George Sinclair:

I did, yes.

Andrew Marcus:

Amazing. Praise God. What a blessing, man. 21 grandkids, that is so fun. And are a lot of them in your area? Do you get to see them often?

George Sinclair:

Yeah, most of them are in my area and we do get to see them often.

Andrew Marcus:

Praise God. That’s so fun. Awesome. Well, we’re going to be talking about something very important today as we’re airing this on Holy Week, leading up to Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Resurrection Sunday. So we wanted to talk about the evidence of the resurrection. A lot of people might not believe in the resurrection. And so you have some key evidences and you’ve released an article a few years ago with the Gospel Coalition about this. And I think you’ve actually been on the INDOUBT program talking through some of this, but we wanted to have you back in this format and I wanted to hear, because I didn’t get to chat with you, and everyone’s saying that you’re such an amazing guy. I’m like, “Well, let’s not fair. I want to talk to him.” So here we are and we get to talk about it together. You had 10 specific evidences that you wrote about in that article about the resurrection, and so maybe tell us those 10 and then maybe we can go through some questions together and dive deeper.

George Sinclair:

Okay. I have to look. By the way, there was more, I just wanted to try to keep it to 10. I need to check, I don’t remember them off by heart. I don’t know, getting old or something like that. The first is the fact that there are four ancient biographies of Jesus. One of the mistakes that people make is the Bible’s treated as a holy book. And by the way, I think it should be, but it’s treated as a holy book. You take the pages and the weird thin pages, you don’t get in any other book and maybe some gold leaf. But what people forget is that it didn’t start out like that. When you look at the New Testament, what you actually are looking at is four eyewitness based biographies. You’re looking at a one eyewitness based history, and all five of those books were written when many of the eyewitnesses would still have been alive.

And then you’re looking at a series of letters, basically theological treaties or sermons, depending on how you want to understand the book of what we now call the book of Hebrews. And then this very odd apocryphal, people who really love fantasy and love abstract art, would love the book of Revelation. It’s this very odd type of book. But that’s how they all started out. They didn’t start out as the Bible, they started out as just four eyewitness based biographies written when people were still alive. They’re not written in once upon a time language. They’re not written in a timeless type of language. They’re written in a this happened and then this happened, and then this happened, he said this. And one of the astounding things about all five of those books in particular, the four biographies and the one history is that there’s constant historical references in them, which is not what you want to do.

If you wanted to create a fake news story today, you try to make it as generic as possible and not very specific about details. But these ancient biographies, they’re very, very clear in the details. There’s no particular reason to believe that any of them were written after the year 70, which means that most of them, they’re all written while there were so many eyewitnesses around. That’s sort of the first bit of evidence that you have letters from very close to the time of Jesus’ death and resurrection where they’re talking about the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Andrew Marcus:

So what do you say to some people who say, “Okay, well, how do you even tell that those letters are credible?”

George Sinclair:

I guess the first thing I’d say, well, okay, what exactly do you mean by credible? Basically, when you talk to some scholars and others with people with PhDs and they speak 53 languages and all that type of stuff. Generally speaking, when they say that the New Testament documents aren’t credible, they’re saying that because they contain miracles, and actually in many cases there’s a bit of a circular argument. These can’t be historical documents because they talk about the resurrection of Jesus or Jesus doing miracles, so therefore they have to have been written some longer time afterwards. But by the way, I studied in the liberal seminary, I didn’t go to any evangelical seminary. I have an undergraduate degree in sociology with a minor in philosophy. I did graduate work in sociology at a secular university.

I did a year of theology and then counseling all in a very, very, very, very ultra liberal school. The guy who taught me New Testament when I was at the Ultra Liberal School or in the Christology course, actually. He actually said to the whole class, “Nothing in the New Testament actually happened.”

Andrew Marcus:

What?

George Sinclair:

I’m not making that up by the way. But you see, the reason they say that, it’s not because they have good historical evidence or anything like that. They say that because there’s miracles in them. And they say, “Well, we know that miracles don’t happen.” And then if you go and push them and they’ll say, “Well, there’s no evidence for miracles.” They say, “Well, all of the evidence for miracles you say can’t count as evidence because they have a miracle.” That’s actually not a very intelligent argument. I’d probably be more polite if I was saying that to them. Well, maybe I wouldn’t be. But they say they’re not credible for that type of reason. I loved how Joe Rogan put it. “It’s a translation of a translation of a translation of a translation, so why on Earth would you trust it?” Not realizing it’s not a translation of a translation of a translation.

They copied the document from Greek into Greek, into Greek into Greek. Eventually they did translate into Latin, but then the Latin was translated into Latin, et cetera, et cetera. Syriac, the same type of thing. And it’s a matter of going back and finding the earliest documents. So it’s primarily because the text claims to be very authoritative and that the text does contain miracles, that people will say that it’s not credible. Well, let’s have a conversation about that. You can’t say something’s incredible just because it has miracles unless you know that miracles don’t happen. But at the heart of Christianity is the belief that miracles in fact happen, that God does those things.

Andrew Marcus:

So just unpack that a little bit. I’ve heard of the argument and the theology, okay, miracles happened back then, but they don’t happen anymore. But how could they say-

George Sinclair:

Well, that’s not true.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, I know that’s not true, but I’ve heard people say that. But how could this teacher say, “Well, miracles didn’t even happen back then.”

George Sinclair:

I would say that he had sort of a very left wing view of Christianity as a vehicle to affect social change and a bit of a mystical view. Therefore, none of those things depended upon the New Testament actually being true, or Jesus actually having risen from the dead. He actually said literally that if they found the bones of Jesus tomorrow and you could prove that these were the bones of Jesus, he would still believe in the resurrection. Now that came because I was pushing him and challenging him in class, by the way, which made me immensely popular. But generally speaking, the scholars that the average person who might say, “Well, this scholar says that, and that.” And they don’t push them to hear that there’s this very, very, very major difference in worldview, so to speak, and understanding, which is at the very heart of the difference between Christianity and those who are outside of the Christian faith. It’s at the very heart, but they don’t tell you that they have those assumptions.

Andrew Marcus:

Wow, that’s really fascinating. I didn’t realize there’s camps like that that would go so far that direction. But I guess that makes sense.

George Sinclair:

And if you look at it very carefully, the arguments for the late dates, and I know that very many Evangelical scholars will accept some of the later dates that a lot of evangelical scholars wouldn’t accept my belief that for instance, the four eyewitness biographies and acts were written before the year 70. But there’s really no evidence for it. And I can tell you that having studied under liberals. In fact, that’s really funny because if you said, “Well, what’s your evidence for it being late? Do you have some letters of somebody saying that when it was written or something like that?” And the fact is, they don’t have any letters. They don’t have any journal entries. And the only letters that they do have are letters like from Paul, which would support the resurrection of Jesus.

In fact, it’s obvious that Paul knew some of what Jesus was talking about as well as the other letter writers in the New Testament. So they actually don’t have what we would call evidence. They have different maybe theories of how organizations or religious beliefs develop, but frankly, that’s just an academic version of fantasy football leagues. There’s actually not what anybody would really call evidence in a real world type of way. And the reason I say they’re all written before 70 is as maybe people don’t know this, but Jerusalem was destroyed, the temple was destroyed in the year 70. And there’s no reference to this at all in the New Testament, like zero reference to it. And given that Christians could easily maybe think that it would be judged because of it, or Jesus’ teachings about being the new way to God. You’d really think they’d say, “Look at this. You Jewish people, Jesus loves you, he wants you to come to him and you don’t even have a temple to go to.” And there’s nothing like that. And that’s a huge disruption in Jewish life. Anyway.

Andrew Marcus:

That’s fascinating.

George Sinclair:

We could keep talking about it if you want.

Andrew Marcus:

That’s very, very fascinating. Clearly the credibility of the resurrection, seeing the four Gospel accounts, these eyewitness accounts and the Book of Acts. You also mentioned the significance of the empty tomb and the neatly folded grave clothes.

George Sinclair:

Yeah.

Andrew Marcus:

How are those significant pieces of evidence, specifically in the historical context with the grave clothes all folded up and everything all neat and tidy? What’s the significance in that?

George Sinclair:

Yeah, okay. The significance of this is really gross and gag inducing, okay.

Andrew Marcus:

Oh boy.

George Sinclair:

They didn’t worry about germs and stuff like that back then like we would. So the fact is the record is that the people who in a sense embalmed or covered… Basically what they do is to help cover the stench, if you’re well off, they cover the body in spices and then they’re putting their spices in and wrapping and spices and wrapping it in, and that gives the body the shroud. And then they have a separate piece for the headpiece because just the way they did it, and once again, spices all there. It was a very rich man who buried Jesus, he was buried in a rich man’s tomb. And those spices would’ve been worth in our day, tens and tens of thousands of dollars.

It was a very, very outrageously generous thing. And so it was a problem in the ancient world, they would see that guy buying tens and tens of thousands of dollars of spices. They would see where the person is buried, and then they would come and they would steal the body, and you’d just take the whole body. I feel like you and me deciding we’re going to rob one of those cash machines. We don’t want to try to disentangle it right there while the police come, you just rip the whole thing out of the building, we go to your garage and in the comfort of your garage, you get all the cash out of it. Well, they’re going to do the same thing with the body. They don’t care about the body, they’re just looking for the spices. And so they would take it away as quickly as they could, and then they would take away the spices and then just whatever, throw the body away. They don’t care about the body.

So the fact that the body, the grave clothes were left behind means that it’s not a grave robber. The other thing is a bit technical, but some of the language implies that it wasn’t as if the body was unwrapped. The way, let’s say if, I don’t know how old your kids are, maybe in a couple of years God blesses you with seven little rugrats and they get old enough that they decide to wrap you up in a shroud. And the way you would get out of it is eventually by rolling around and getting out of it and then chasing them if they haven’t become way bigger than you and they can throw you in the pool or whatever. But once again, that’s not what’s described. It’s as if the body merely, Star Trek, it just got beamed out of it and left the clothes behind and they settled.

So those are important little details that are all very… You see, one of the things about all of these documents is they’re not once upon a time language. They’re not just in an empire long ago, far away, but with even then no details. Everything is very concrete. There is the claim of the resurrection, and these small little details are all completely consistent with the idea that… Nobody doubts that Jesus died by crucifixion. Really it’s Muslims primarily, but they only do that because of the Quran written 600 years later. Everybody acknowledges that Jesus died. There’s Jewish and other pagan philosophers and historians that acknowledge that that was the claim. There’s no real denying of it. And so in all of these cases, it’s not just a matter of the evidence for it, it’s what better explanations are there for a whole range of facts.

What else accounts for the growth of the Christian movement where all of the historical evidence is right from the get-go as we now say, that this man Jesus died, you all saw him die. In fact, it’s really interesting because even the way he dies is very public. It’s not that he went up in a mountain and he died and he was buried and then we saw him three days later and they go, “Really? Who saw that?” No. Romans picked public spots for crucifixion because it was meant to be a message to others. They didn’t do it quietly and are just surrounded by the soldiers. They picked the most public places they possibly could to crucify criminals. And in the history of the Roman Empire, there’s only one alleged time that maybe somebody survived a crucifixion. And the Romans were experts at crucifixion and so it was a very, very public death.

Not only that, it wasn’t even done when there’s a huge deep freeze or when everybody’s left because there’s sickness. It’s done at one of the high holy times when the city’s 15 times bigger than its usual population, and there’s more soldiers on duty to make sure that there’s not going to be any type of rebellion. And so his death is extremely public. Everybody in town would’ve known where the grave was and the grave is empty. They never found the body. And how do you account for the fact then that they’re proclaiming that he’d actually physically raised from the dead? And despite the fact that Jewish people at that time had two reasons why they didn’t believe resurrections would happen, one was just the same one that we have, dead people don’t rise. And once again, the historic evidence shows that nobody, not a single one of Jesus’s followers or his family thought he was going to rise from the dead. They all believed he was dead.

And the other thing is that the Jewish people, some of them did, believe that there’d be a resurrection, but when there was a resurrection, everybody would be resurrected. So if you went to a devout Jew and said, “By the way, Jesus just rose from the dead, people saw him alive. The resurrection of Jesus just happened. It happened like three weeks ago.” And that devout Jew would say, “First of all, we know that dead people don’t become alive again. And second then, if that’s the case, why did my beloved Sarah just died yesterday and she’s not back to life.” So they actually have a double reason to disbelieve it. Yet right where this happened, there is an explosion. Thousands and thousands of people become Christians. So what’s a better explanation of that? Other people have to give a good explanation of that.

Andrew Marcus:

Yep. And even if you think going on to this big explosion of Christianity and all the persecution that a lot of believers were going through, obviously they wouldn’t go through that persecution if they didn’t believe. Why would you put yourself through that? So that must be another evidence.

George Sinclair:

Yes. In fact, that’s actually one of the things I think I said one of my points is we all know that people die from movements. Right now the Hamas war is going on and people are dying for a movement. But they don’t die from movement, they die for a fact. Another thing which I didn’t mention in that is how do you explain Paul? And even the story of Paul is a very significant one. If you go to a Jewish rabbi today, he will know who Gamaliel is. Gamaliel is a well-known, historic famous rabbi. And Paul isn’t just a student of some nameless rabbi, he’s a student of a famous rabbi. And he persecutes and is responsible for the death of the first Christian martyr, and he is on his way to Damascus. One of the things as well, which is really interesting when you look at all of these books as a whole, is that Luke understands the difference between a vision and a resurrection and he understands the difference between a resuscitation and a resurrection. just like we do. And he shows it in his literature.

He has people having visions, but he says, what happens to Paul isn’t a vision that Jesus was there. He has somebody be what we would now call resuscitated miraculously. So he understands these very, very basic decisions that we understand. Just because they didn’t have flush toilets and iPhones doesn’t mean they’re stupid. That’s a cultural prejudice that we have. So he understands the difference and what explains Paul completely turning around in his entire life. And once again, there’s lots of good historical evidence that a guy like Paul existed. There’s good historical evidence that he died by crucifixion, and he could have saved his death by merely saying, “Sorry, guys, jokes on you. I didn’t see him alive.” He could have just stuck all of that. And it wasn’t as if, I don’t know, some modern part of the Bible belt that he could pretend this and become the pastor of a mega church and become very, very rich or anything like that. All he’s going to get is beaten. He loses his status and that was all over a fact.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, he actually gets demoted. So it’s like you have to have-

George Sinclair:

He gets way demoted.

Andrew Marcus:

You got to have good=

George Sinclair:

He gets canceled.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, he gets canceled. There was cancel culture back then.

George Sinclair:

There was cancel culture back then.

Andrew Marcus:

Yep. And so it wasn’t worth it if this was all a sham to be canceled and to lose your status.

George Sinclair:

Christianity was an illegal religion. People don’t realize that there’s no social benefit to becoming a Christian until many centuries later.

Andrew Marcus:

Fascinating. So we have obviously these gospel eyewitness accounts. We have the grave clothes neatly folded, which is a fascinating thought just to think about that. And this idea that if it was grave robbers, they would’ve just taken the body and everything, but everything being folded and neatly, clearly was not. And my kids have not wrapped me up yet, but I know that it would not be as gracious in coming out of it. So that’s a very interesting point. Obviously the eyewitnesses and the fact that many people were persecuted and demoted and lost their status. You wouldn’t just do that for a story that’s made up. These are actually seeing things happen in the moment, which is amazing. And so what about Jesus? Jesus predicts his own death and shares it with his disciples, and there’s so many prophecies throughout the Old Testament. That has to obviously be another big point that maybe you talk about.

George Sinclair:

Yeah. So once again, you look at the historical evidence, which is those ancient letters written when eyewitnesses were still alive, and there’s other, what we now call these four ancient biographies in the ancient history of the first 30 ish years of the Jesus movement. That’s probably how I would describe what the Book of Acts was intended to be. So you look at all of those types of things and you’ll see that the evidence is, and by the way, it’s recorded in other historians, that Jesus died of crucifixion. Dying of crucifixion is not an obvious thing that you would want to do since it was viewed as extremely shameful in Roman culture, it was the death of slaves. So it wasn’t something that would endear the Christian movement to the Roman pagan world. It would be a sign of defeat and of deep shame. And of course, interestingly enough, long before crucifixion had even been invented as a punishment, the Jewish law basically describes that anybody who’s crucified, who dies by hanging on a tree is cursed.

And the Jewish authorities can’t have somebody crucified. It’s sort of very interesting. There’s sort of an extra legal killing or passionate killing of Stephen that happens early on in the book of Acts, and that would be probably one of those things where they could say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. We didn’t mean it.” Well, that was sort of with a wig. But he’s stoned for crucifixion, that requires Rome to do it. And Jesus predicted that he would die by crucifixion and he dies by crucifixion. Once again, that’s a very, very hard thing to organize yourself. And that’s a thing that you wouldn’t want to organize yourself actually if you want to endear yourself to Jewish or Roman culture, maybe being stoned could have been seen as something tragic or something like that, or dying rescuing somebody or something like that. Not so completely and utterly helpless as he appears to be in the crucifixion.

Andrew Marcus:

It’s fascinating how everything is just so backwards.

George Sinclair:

Yeah. If you think about how Islam spread. Islam spread because Muhammad was a very successful warrior. He was a successful robber of caravans, and then he was a successful warrior and he launched a successful warrior movement. Islam enters Europe on with armed forces. Acts 16 requires Christianity entering Europe, and it says two or three dudes met at a dock. That’s when Paul arrives in Philippi. And then Buddha is teaching a way towards some type of enlightenment or therapy, and you can see how something like that would grow. Jesus is teaching something very, very different, and it’s all based on historical things actually having happened, but within a wider context. So it’s not merely historical curiosity, but it’s history grounding our deepest longings and yearnings, history in the context of great wisdom and insight.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah. Thank you so much. We really appreciate your time. Thank you for your wisdom and all the best to you. 21 grandkids, nine kids. Thank you for taking time to be with us today as we unpack this evidence of the resurrection. It’s just such a message filled with hope and just blesses my heart to unpack this. So thank you so much for your time today.

George Sinclair:

God bless.

Andrew Marcus:

Hey, thanks so much for joining us today. For more great content, check out THE NIDOUBT SHOW on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, or wherever you stream your podcasts. We hope you enjoyed it today. Feel free to check out indoubt.ca. We have some great resources available to you. Have an awesome day. Hey, thank you so much for tuning into today’s program. I just want to personally say, Happy Easter. We pray that you are blessed this season with your family, with your friends. And again, as we just walk through the evidence of the resurrection, what a beautiful hope and assurance that we have. And so we pray that you are blessed, that you are reminded of these truths and that you live it out every day. God bless you. Happy Easter from all of us at INDOUBT.

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