Latest / Brandon Fogal Evolution / #60 - My Response to Alex O’Connor on the Resurrection | Breaking Down the Evidence!

Transcript

#60 - My Response to Alex O’Connor on the Resurrection | Breaking Down the Evidence! · Brandon Fogal Evolution

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  Alex O'Connor goes on to Rainn Wilson's show, Soul Boom, his podcast a few weeks
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  ago, and it was really good. You should check it out.
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  He said a couple things in there that I disagree with, specifically regarding
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  the resurrection appearances of Jesus and the different accounts of it from
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  Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Acts, the book of Acts. And he said,
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  we're going to dive into all that.
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  We're going to just dive right into it today because this is one I'm really
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  excited about, the resurrection appearances of Jesus.
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  And if you listen to this podcast, and I'm going to put the link as well to
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  that podcast in this video so
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  you can go check it out, but we're going to see a clip of it right here.
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  And I'm going to let Alex O'Connor speak and just what he has to say about it.
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  And because this is, whenever I watch the podcast, this is a remark that really
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  stood out to me and I kind of wanted to address it and give my point of view what I think of it.
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  So let's just take a quick look at what he, what Alex said.
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  Jesus narrated. It ends with the man at the tomb saying, go to Galilee.
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  That's where you'll meet Jesus.
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  In Matthew's gospel, we go to Galilee and we meet Jesus with the 11 disciples.
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  In Luke's gospel, the location is changed to Jerusalem.
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  Jesus appears to them in Jerusalem, tells them explicitly not to leave Jerusalem.
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  You also have the road to Emmaus, another story, which gets sort of thrown in the gospels.
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  John's gospel, the latest gospel is where you get Jesus supposedly sort
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  of like walking through walls and and appearing to the people
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  and also doubting thomas and these much more potentially
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  theologically motivated stories so as time goes on
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  here are my so here are the two theses either all of these events actually happened
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  and it's just coincidentally the earlier the source the less is reported sure
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  or another hypothesis is that it's something to do with the distance of the
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  text from the source material that explains these these appearances the.
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  All right, so I wanted to talk about this.
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  So this really stood out to me when Alex said this because he gives his –
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  rendition of how he how he receives the accounts
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  and he says like the earliest gospels what they say you
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  know because maybe they're closer to it it doesn't say as much about
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  they're not as like in tune with the the details and is in tune with the description
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  of events and it seems like more the later we go on the more embellished the
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  accounts get you know so because he says in mark's gospel it doesn't say it
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  doesn't really talk about anything about the resurrection and appearances.
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  It just ends with Jesus is gone. The angel says, go to Galilee and you meet him there.
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  You know, go, go look and see, go seek for yourself, go find.
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  And I think that's the, the author's intention in that, in that book,
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  the gospel of Mark, he, he wants people to go out and find for themselves,
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  go look at the evidence yourselves.
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  And he ends it there, you know, other gospels, Matthew, and then Matthew and
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  Luke, they give their kind of, they give a little bit more detail in their own.
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  And I would say if, if they all said the exact same thing and that's all they
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  talked about, it would be, it would be more like they were colluding together
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  that they were saying, all right, we got to get our facts straight.
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  We only were going to report this. That's all we get our evidence.
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  You know, we're going like it's in a courtroom setting. If everybody says the
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  exact same thing, that's why people, when you're wanting to get what actually
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  happened, you want to separate people, put people in different rooms,
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  we'll get their perspective.
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  And if they say the exact same thing, then you kind of it raises some suspicion of what's going on.
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  I think the differences in the accounts and more details in one as opposed to
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  the other is just a clear picture of what actually happened and that they aren't
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  just getting it together and just trying to promote an agenda, a story,
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  a fabrication of what really happened, of what they're making up.
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  I think that is what's going on. And I think that it really,
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  it points to the trueness of the authors, Matthew, Mark, Luke,
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  and then John, you know, later on, you know, that is like, we see a lot more
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  details in John of what happened.
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  But I wanted to read this to you. This is from the actual, so Luke says.
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  He's the physician, you know, he wrote the gospel of Luke and he also wrote the book of Acts.
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  The book of Acts is his second, it's kind of like the sequel, the sequel.
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  You know, he gives his gospel of Jesus, his life in the gospel of Luke,
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  but in Acts, it's kind of like he didn't have enough scroll.
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  He doesn't have enough papyrus to get it all on one whole account.
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  So he has to, he writes another sequel.
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  He writes another account and it's the, what happened after Jesus was resurrected
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  and after his life, and it's the beginning of the church. That's the book of Acts.
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  So the book of Acts starts with Jesus has been raised from the dead,
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  and he appears to his apostles.
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  And I'm going to read this for you just so you have an idea,
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  a quick reading of this from Acts 1, 1 through 5.
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  It says, The first account I composed, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began
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  to do and teach until the day when he was taken up to heaven,
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  after he had been, by the Holy Spirit, given orders to the apostles whom he had chosen.
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  To these he also presented himself alive after his suffering,
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  by many convincing proofs appearing to them over a period of forty days in speaking
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  of the things concerning the kingdom of God.
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  Gathering them together, he commanded them not to leave Jerusalem,
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  but to wait for what the Father had promised, which he said,
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  You heard from me, for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with
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  the Holy Spirit not many days from now.
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  So that's how Luke's gospel starts out.
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  And Jesus is telling his apostles this. And I really wanted to point this out
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  because he makes it clear.
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  This isn't like just a day that Jesus, after he's raised from the dead,
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  he appears to somebody and then he goes off, you know, he goes to heaven or something like that.
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  This is a stretch of 40 days, 40 days from Passover and then until the next
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  festival, which would have been what we call Pentecost.
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  And so it's 40 days, and it's actually literally 50 days from Passover to Pentecost.
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  So the apostles, and I wanted to point this out, because Alex says,
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  well, in one account, he's in Jerusalem, in another account,
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  he's in Galilee, in another account, you know,
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  there's Jerusalem, and I had, I looked this up, I went to Old Faithful Google,
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  and I looked this up, I'm like, how far is Jerusalem from, how far is Jerusalem from.
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  Where he would have been in Galilee, where would he have been appearing?
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  And I'm going to pull this up as well. So you can see this.
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  So it's about basically a walk and it's about 60 to 70 miles, 60 to 70 miles.
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  So can you picture this where you are at 60 to 70 miles from that?
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  How long would it take you? And according to Google, it would take about 37
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  hours a walk, almost two days journey.
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  It would really take about two to three days of how they would travel.
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  So they got 40 days, 40 days it
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  doesn't mean that like he because he appears to him in galilee in
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  one one time and then he appears to him in jerusalem another
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  like why is that a contradiction like why would that be a contradiction that
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  doesn't make sense to me like he had time to do it so it's like it makes it
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  clear like like if you just throw that out there and say well he's appearing
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  him over here one place and over here another that that really doesn't hold
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  water it doesn't hold like what the facts show.
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  So, and there's reason, like, so they go to Jerusalem for a festival,
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  for a specific festival, and then they go home because their home,
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  where they live and they, you know, they have their lives at is in Galilee, that area.
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  So they go there to go back to life, go back to the regular nine to five.
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  And then, but then they come back for another religious festival 40 days later to Pentecost.
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  And then when they're there, before Jesus ascends into heaven.
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  He tells his apostles, do not leave Jerusalem, do not leave Jerusalem,
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  but wait for the Holy Spirit.
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  So there's no contradiction. And to say that one place says one thing and one
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  place says another, that just shows me that you're really not taking the text seriously.
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  And like, because each author has a purpose, you know, you could say agenda,
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  they have why they're writing this, this gospel, why they're writing this,
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  you know, and a lot of Matthew, Mark and Luke, there is a lot of similarities.
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  That's why they're called the synoptic gospels.
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  So they might be taking from sources and seeing what happened because Luke starts
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  off his gospel by saying, everybody's writing about this man, Jesus, about his life.
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  I took it upon myself to write to you an orderly account of what happened so that you have this.
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  And Luke's purpose is he's a historian.
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  He's laying out the facts and he's putting what he interprets from it.
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  But really, he doesn't even give much interpretation.
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  He gives, sometimes he gives his interpretation, but a lot of times he's given
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  cold, hard facts of what just took place.
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  So that's something that kind of, it stood out to me. It made me think when
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  Alex is saying that, because I know he knows so much about the text,
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  we can become overly skeptical sometimes when we don't need to be.
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  When we, if, because a lot of times we are just set in our position,
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  this is what I think, This is what it has to be.
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  And we don't take the possibility that our viewpoints could be challenged, you know?
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  So this was a weak argument. Alex doesn't give too many weak arguments,
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  but this one was a weak argument that I saw from him about this because it's
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  not taking the whole text at face value and the time period and the context
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  of that time frame that the apostles were living in and them going to Jerusalem
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  in one point and then Galilee another,
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  that doesn't, it doesn't hold water at all.
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  But what do you think? Do you think that, do you think his argument is solid? Do you think it's solid?
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  Do you think that diving into this, you know, like what, what are your viewpoints in this?
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  Because this is, there's something's got to be happening back then,
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  you know, like this man, Jesus, like he didn't write, he didn't write a single word.
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  You could say the only word he ever wrote was when he wrote on the ground with
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  the, when, you know, the woman caught in adultery and she was brought to him. And she said, he said.
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  He said, whoever's without stone, or I'm butchering it.
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  Whoever's without sin cast the first stone and him, him writing on the ground,
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  what Jesus wrote on the ground.
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  But this is a man, he didn't write a word that we have recorded in history, you know?
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  And like, no, I mean, who out there, I'll see out there is like that.
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  You know, there's a lot, there's people out there, Socrates,
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  you know, I, I think there are people that wrote about his life,
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  you know, but we don't just, it's when we come to Jesus, it's different because
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  Jesus can be the most powerful word on the planet.
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  You say Jesus in some context and people, it goes silent, silent,
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  you know, like, because that name is so powerful and it's polarizing.
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  It's definitely polarizing. And I know people like it's, and it's supposed to
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  be, it's supposed to be because Jesus said, I did not come to bring peace to the earth, but a sword.
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  He brought, he brought a sword and it's to point out the division that his name causes.
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  You got to choose, you got to choose what side are you on, you know?
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  And I mean, I mean, I wasn't always like this.
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  I wasn't always like this. And if I, like 20 years ago, listening to myself,
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  I would have tuned myself out. I would have been like, I ain't listening to that guy.
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  Cause I, I went to college. I went to college and I see people on campus,
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  you know, arguing about, about Jesus, you know, or just kind of debating with
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  people out in the masses, just talking out there and just giving their point.
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  And I just, I thought they were Looney Tunes. I thought they were Looney Tunes,
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  you know, like, okay, they must really believe something, but I got things to do.
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  I don't need to worry about that stuff. I would have been the same way,
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  but Jesus's name, it does, it, it, it's powerful, you know, and it's like,
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  you got to choose, you got to choose at some point, you know, and how all that works.
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  But I think if you're open, if you're really, if you're, open and you're hearing
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  this and you're hearing about the resurrection appearances of Jesus and that
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  it changes the world and you're like wanting to lean a little bit more in,
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  then I think God, the Holy Spirit is working on you.
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  And you might have no idea. You might have no idea what's going on.
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  If it puts a fire in you one way or the other, even if it's anger or if it's,
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  you know, I want to hear more.
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  Either way, I mean, God might be softening your heart just that you might be
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  interested in the name of Jesus.
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  That's why, like, Alex O'Connor, who spends his life, I mean,
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  he spends his life talking about the Bible.
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  He spends his life talking about
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  Jesus, the New Testament. He really specializes in the New Testament.
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  But he comes at it like I would come to the Quran.
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  I could read the Quran, and I have read the Quran, but I'm not open to, like.
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  I mean, if it is what it is, you know, I definitely, I want,
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  I'm always wanting truth, but like, I do come with kind of my guards up, like,
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  and this is just a man-made book, which can be highly controversial to some
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  people, but I look at it as a man-made book and I'm not going to easily just
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  buy into every single word.
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  I will come at it from a skeptical standpoint and read it.
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  And I think, so that is, that is something that has always puzzled me.
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  Like something has to do something in your heart to make you want to,
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  something's got to work in your heart before you actually even want to open
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  your heart to the text to receive it as God's word.
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  I mean, I think before I became a Christian, I was, I wanted it to be true in
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  a sense, but I just couldn't get on board with it.
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  I mean, I think I wanted it to be true and I had to be convinced of it intellectually
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  first, because there is that something where we cannot just check our mind at
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  the door and say, all right, I'm diving in. I'm going in.
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  When you really think it's preposterous. And I had to be convinced,
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  you know, and I think that if God is working on us, and I think he is,
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  if you are interested in hearing about the resurrection,
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  if something about that intrigues you and you want to, that's why the gospel
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  of Mark, the author. He wants people.
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  He doesn't give every appearance of Jesus after the resurrection.
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  He ends it with that Jesus is gone. The tomb is empty.
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  The women come to the tomb, and the angel says, go look and see. Go find him. Go find him.
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  And it ends with that abruptly. That's his purpose and his reason that he gives that.
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  The other apostles, they have a different purpose, and they want to give different
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  accounts of what happened, and it's over a span of 40 days.
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  So we got to look at all that into account. And it makes sense when you give
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  it a chance to make sense because it does. The text is what it is, you know?
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  So I had to give my response to Alex on that because that really stood out to
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  me, him saying that the text of Scripture, they contradict.
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  And one says one thing, one says another, where there's no contradiction whatsoever.
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  It is what it is. it demonstrates how accurate those authors were,
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  and they were not colluding whatsoever, and it's made clear.
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  All right, we'll end it at that. Peace.