Latest / The Speak Life Podcast / Easter Hope by Glen Scrivener || What is Life? Tragedy or Comedy? || SLP355

Transcript

Easter Hope by Glen Scrivener || What is Life? Tragedy or Comedy? || SLP355 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to the Speak Life Podcast.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Glenn Scrivener.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Today we've got a talk about resurrection for you.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: We've just had Easter Sunday, and I'm going to be playing for you a talk that I gave for Durham University Christian Union about the hope we have in the risen Jesus.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: I asked the question: what is life?
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: A comedy or a tragedy?
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: And at the end of my talk, I also answered questions from Durham University students, and you can hear some of the answers that I gave to those questions.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Are you subscribed to the Speak Life podcast?
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Do make sure you're subscribed.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are, and if you like us, please could you give us a five-star rating on your podcatcher of a choice that really helps us to get seen by more people?
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: So without further ado, here is my talk to Durham University Christian Union on the truth of hope.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Why should it matter to me if Jesus rose from the dead?
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello there, my name is Glenn Scrivener, and I want to talk to you today about this topic: The Truth of Hope.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Why should it matter to me if Jesus rose from the dead?
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: And let me show you where I want to go with you in this talk.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: I want to say that the fact that Jesus rose from the dead makes sense of everything in your life.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: It makes sense of history, humanism, hope, and him, that is, of Jesus himself.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: And in order to take you through this, I just want to ask you a question as we begin.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think life is?
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Is life a tragedy or is it a comedy?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Is life a tragedy or is it a comedy?
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now before you answer, um let me tell you what I'm not asking.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not asking you, is life a barrel of laughs?
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you have spent any time on planet Earth, then you realize that life is not a barrel of laughs.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um it is not laugh a minutes, and that's not what I mean by comedy.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Nor is life purely tragic.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um but let me give you a definition.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um let me give you Dante's definition of tragedy and comedy and see what you think about it.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Dante, the medieval poet, he said, a tragedy is a story that begins in joy and ends in pain.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: A comedy is a story that begins in pain and ends in joy.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: So uh if you like, it's the difference between a frown and a smile.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: What is a frown?
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: A frown, you go up, you uh get on top, and you tumble back down again.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's the shape of a frown, isn't it?
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And uh this is also the shape of a tragedy.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: You you have your heroic figure, um, and they might go through all sorts of escapades.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: It it might be an epic journey.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: There might be a quest, there might be heroism, there might be laughs along the way.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: But if the story ends on a downer, if it ends in death, let's say, then we we tend to call it a tragedy.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: On the other hand, a comedy is shaped like a smile.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Very easy to remember.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh comedy might plumb all sorts of depths.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Depths of sadness and struggle and pain and cries of anguish, but there is a kind of a what Tolkien called a U catastrophe.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um tragedies have a catastrophe, uh, a turn of events that makes things uh go down into the depths.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: A comedy has a U catastrophe, the Greek uh prefix EU meaning good.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: There's a there's such a thing as a good catastrophe where everything sad becomes untrue and you end on a high.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: That is Dante's uh definition of comedy and tragedy.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's also um Shakespeare's definition of comedy and tragedy.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know you might know that you know the the difference between a Shakespearean comedy and a Shakespearean tragedy is not how many times you've been slapping your thigh in in hilarious guffors, right?
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because, you know, probably if you were anything like me when you studied Shakespeare at school, um, your teacher would tell you something like, at this point, Hamlet is telling a joke.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: And you would just like write it in your exercise book.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: And like, at this point, Hamlet is telling a joke, apparently.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you you didn't laugh, your teacher didn't laugh, nobody laughs.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: But Hamlet can tell jokes, even though by the end of Hamlet, everybody's piled, you know, six deep on the stage in in the piles of dead, right?
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so you know it's a tragedy.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh think of Romeo and Juliet.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Romeo and Juliet's is an interesting case.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: You have this, what looks like a romantic comedy.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the whole thing could be a romantic comedy.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: You've got the Star-Crossed lovers.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Will they, won't they?
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Are they going to get together?
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Is it going to be a triumph of the guy and the girl, finally, and then final scene.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: No, everybody's dead.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Tragedy.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: I guess it's a tragedy.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it was one scene away from being a comedy.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: The difference between tragedy and comedy is not so much how much laughter there has been or how much pain there has been.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: The difference is the ending.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: The difference is the shape of the story.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: So let me ask you the question again.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: If a tragedy is a story that begins in joy and ends in pain, and if a comedy is a story that begins in pain and ends in joy, what is life?
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Mark Twain once said this.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Comedy is tragedy plus time.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's been attribu uh it's been attributed to Mark Twain anyway.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's you know, one of those things.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Mark Twain ends up uh with with a lot of quotes to his name that he might not have said.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Same same as Oscar Wilde, same as Winston Churchill.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: But um, comedy is tragedy plus time.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's the idea that when you go through something, sometimes there are sometimes I've gone through things in life and felt like this feels like hell, but one day I'm gonna laugh about it.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes I have been able to laugh about it, you look back on things that are tragic.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: And uh a friend of mine, Barry Cooper, he's an author, he's he says, Um, so often the difference between tragedy and comedy is when does the curtain fall?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, if the curtain falls at the end of Romeo and Juliet's and everybody's dead, then that's a tragedy.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: But but imagine that there was an encore.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine that the you know the poison somehow didn't work, and Romeo and Juliet kind of come back to life again, and the curtain rises, and the guy and the girls do get back together again, and there's a wedding and there's a feast that's a happily ever after.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: What would you call it then?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, tragedy plus time equals comedy.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Is that is that what life is?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: What what is life?
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Is life a tragedy or is it a comedy?
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um here's a quote by the author Robin Schneider in her book, The Beginning of Everything.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: One of her characters says, You know how they categorize Shakespeare's plays, right?
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: If it ends with a wedding, it's a comedy.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: And if it ends with a funeral, it's a tragedy.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: So we are all living tragedies because we all end the same way, and it isn't with a goddamn wedding.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um how do you feel about that?
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Brutal, isn't it?
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's absolutely brutal.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it's it's inescapable, really.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: If Shakespeare was to write the story of your life, your life does not end with a wedding, does it?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: All of Shakespeare's comedy, all 14 of Shakespeare's comedies end with weddings, sometimes with four weddings, okay?
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's when you realize that it was a comedy all along.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Not because you'd been laughing, because you hadn't.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Admit it.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Admit it, you had not been laughing at at the jokes.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: But you know it's a comedy, not because your hands and thighs are now leathery from being slapped together.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: No, you know it's a comedy because it ends with a wedding.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Does your does your life end with a wedding?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: No, it ends with a funeral.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: So if Shakespeare was writing the story of your life, what would they call it?
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: They would call it a tragedy.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's a confronting truth, isn't it?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: What is life?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Is it a tragedy or is it a comedy?
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: If we're being brutally realistic, if we're being honest, I think we have to conclude that life is utterly tragic.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's something that uh Joseph Campbell said.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um He said the happy ending is justly scorned as a misrepresentation for the world as we know it yields but one ending.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Death.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: If Shakespeare wrote your life, they would call it a tragedy, because the ending is not the marriage, the feast, and the happily ever after.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: The ending is death.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Your life is tragic.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: That is not to say that your life cannot be full of adventure and heroism and laughs along the way.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: But it is that the shape of your life is tragic, and and don't we know that the shape of our life is tragic?
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: And don't we live as though the shape of our life is tragic?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: We live as though everything in life is about getting and taking and ascending and climbing and being on top and enjoying our brief moment in the sun, and perhaps that that's what your university days are all about, right?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you've you've got you've got to university, right?
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: And you're gonna enjoy it because you know you've earned it and you've climbed and you've gotten on gotten on top, and this these are your green salad days, right?
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is your brief moment in the sun, and you want to suck the marrow out of life now because we all know that at some stage you'll get over the hill, like me.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: You'll get old, like me, right?
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: And you'll start to descend deeper and deeper into the depths.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, the the other the other day, I I I put my shoulder out the other day, just pushing my daughter in the swing.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's all that's all I did.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: I j I just pushed her in the swing, and I went to the doctor and I said, Doctor, is there anything you can do for my shoulder?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: I I seem to have he he he he just said, Have you tried paracetamol?
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: They don't try to fix you.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, once you get to the age of 40, they do not try to fix you anymore.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: I used to go to the doctor, I used to play a lot of cricket, I used to put my shoulder out.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: As soon as I said, you know, I've hurt my shoulder, the doctor would say, Oh, we must rush you to the local physio, and you'll get you know a course of treatments, and you're, you know, they try to fix you.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: When when you're your age, they try to fix you.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: When when you're my age, it's just about managing the decline.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's all it's about from here from here on in.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Seriously.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: A friend of mine, he's he's not too much older than me.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: He went to the doctor and he totally thrown out his back and and like he couldn't he couldn't sort of sit up straight, he couldn't stand up straight.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: And he just said, Doctor, is there anything you can do?
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Well, I guess you could stoop.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: He was like, I'm 45 years old.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's your advice, I can stoop.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, that's it.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because once you get to my age, it's just about managing the decline.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: You're on your way down, and this is this is life, right?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's tragic.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: You try to grab as much as you can, but at some stage you're over the hill, and the whole thing ends in death.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: What do you call that?
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: You call that a tragedy, right?
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: What is life?
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: Life is utterly tragic.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: But remember our title for today.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Our title for today is Why Should It Matter to Me If Jesus Rose From the Dead?
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: Here's why it should matter to you.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Here is your one shot at the comedy, right?
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: Here is your one shot at the comedy.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because apart from Jesus, no one is promising to undo the ravages of time and to reverse the curse and to bring resurrection from the dead.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: No one is promising to turn your tragedy into a comedy.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: No one except Jesus.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Here's another quote.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's from the Apostle Paul in the New Testament, and very early, maybe maybe very early 50s AD, Paul is writing this to a Christian community in Corinth, and he says, As in Adam all die, so in Christ will all be made alive.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: He's referencing Adam.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Adam is this figure who in the Bible, his name just means humanity.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: His name means humanity.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: And and the the story that the Bible tells is that we are little Adams.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: We are we are humanity walking around like we own the place, but we are crumbling, we are dust, and to dust we will return.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the human story.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: The human story is that though we have a story that begins in joy, begins in Eden, begins in paradise, how did how did his story end?
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: His story ended with the Lord saying to him, Dust you are, and to dust you will return.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I I don't I don't really mind what you do with the Adam story right now.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um you are living it.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: You are living this story in which you you have a position on the mountaintop, um and yet you are dust and you are crumbling, and to dust you will return.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: You're living a tragedy.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Adam is the the tragic figure.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: He's the full guy, if you like, right?
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: But but that's you, that's me, right?
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: As in Adam, we're we're we're all little Adams, okay?
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we all might be enjoying paradise right now, we might be.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: But dust we are, and to dust we will return.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: As in Adam, all die, but then so in Christ will all be made alive.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: There is this there is this second Adam.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible calls Jesus a a second Adam.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: He's like a He's like a good Adam.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: He is He is the kind of person who does not live out the tragedy.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas you and I, we live a life where we climb and grab and scratch and take and get on top and enjoy our brief moment in the sun, and we're selfish as we do it, right?
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it's all about me, it's all about you know grabbing stuff for me.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus does the exact opposite.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: He is one who begins on high.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: He's he's the Son of God who is in who has always enjoyed God the Father's presence in the joy of God the Spirit, and yet what has he done?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the Christian story is that Jesus descends down to our level and he pours himself out.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: He stoops, he serves, he suffers, he bleeds, he dies on that cross.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: He does the opposite of Adam.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Adam grasps at life and then dies.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: The Jesus story is the reverse.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus pours himself out, even pours himself out to death, taking responsibility for all that sin and selfishness that you, me, and Adam have wrought on this world, he pours himself out even to death.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: But then here is the twist.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Here is the you catastrophe.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Easter Sunday, he rose again.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: The tragedy was turned to comedy.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: And just as we have been connected to Adam, living our tragic lives, here is a possibility.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: We can be connected to Christ.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: We can be in Christ, we can belong to Jesus, and we can take his path so that instead of the tragedy, we can live out the comedy.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: Does that mean that life will be a laugh a minute?
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: That would that does not mean that life will be a laugh a minute.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: It in fact it guarantees that we will tread Christ's path down into the valley, and we will go Jesus' way of self-giving service and sacrifice.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: But the shape of the story is different.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, at the end of the Bible, it says there's a wedding, right?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the Bible, like heaven and earth gets married, and and and we're kind of united to God's to have a happily ever after.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: In Christ, there is a comedy, a comedy to live out.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so as I as I finish, let me just take you through these four implications for how this makes sense of our lives.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think if Jesus rose from the dead, as the Bible proclaims, as I believe with all my heart, this makes sense of history.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: It it it makes sense of first century history, okay, it it makes sense of why it is we've even heard of Jesus of Nazareth, because if a man in his early thirties was executed by the Romans in the most ignominious way possible, well, this Jesus figure, you know, he did not have a penny to his name, he never entered religious orders, he never entered political office, he never entered the military, he didn't have a dynasty, he didn't even have a family, he had nobody, he just had a bunch of no-hopers around him who were total losers.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Just read the gospels and you'll see they're idiots, absolute idiots.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus is crucified in his early thirties.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: Why have we ever heard of Jesus of Nazareth?
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: If that was the end of the story, why have we heard of Jesus of Nazareth?
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think the resurrection makes sense of first century history.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think it also makes sense of twenty centuries of history since then.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: Think about it this way: the the Christian revolution that has been unleashed on this world began in the first century.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: And this Christian revolution is absolutely stunning.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: We now take it for granted that of course the heroic path is to pour yourself out in service and sacrifice.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the the heroes of old were selfish so-and-so's.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: They really were.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: They might have gone on some adventures.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: And very occasionally, they might have, you know, fought a battle for the sake of one other person.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: But our whole sense of heroism has been utterly shaped by Jesus.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: Our whole sense that victims should be honored has been utterly revolutionized by Jesus.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: Our whole sense of mercy, rather than insisting on our rights, our whole sense that forgiveness is a virtue, um, our our whole sense that the first should be last and the last should be first, our our whole sense that we should judge a society by how it um deals with its victims and with those at the margins and the poor and the weak and the oppressed.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: Our whole sense of that has come from Jesus.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: There has been a stunning revolution.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's the greatest sociological phenomenon the world has ever seen.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's called the Christian Church.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: It has been exploding in size since that first century.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, you get a sense of the Big Bang.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that a hundred years ago, people started to say, I think there was a big bang.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know why?
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because they they saw an expanding universe and they just wound the clock back and they inferred um an explosion.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, at the zero point, there's this hyperinflation, bang, you know, out it comes, out it comes.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: How do you how do you look at an expanding universe of Christian values that are that are that have absolutely shaped you?
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: You might want to talk to me about this, but the the way in which Christianity has utterly shaped who you are, the way you think, even your objections to Christianity are founded on Christian values.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: I promise you they are.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: We live in an expanding universe that's been shaped by the Jesus Revolution.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: Something unleashed it.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: Wine back the clock.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: When was the Big Bang?
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the Big Bang happened in the first century AD.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: How did it happen?
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: How did it happen?
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: When you look at his followers, when you when you look at how powerless they were, and the the the powers of empire entirely arrayed against this tiny Christian movement.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: They snuffed out Jesus.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Why have we ever heard of Jesus of Nazareth?
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: This makes sense of history, it makes sense of humanism.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: As I've said, you know, all these values that we um what we prize are because the victim became victor.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: That is the Christian story.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: The victim on that cross, Jesus of Jesus Jesus of Nazareth, he became victorious over death and hell and Satan and the powers of empire.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: The little guy did it.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: David beat Goliath, right?
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: And and that has humanized the world in a way that's quite stunning.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it is the reason why we today value the weak and the poor and the marginalized and the oppressed and those who are at the margins.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because God descended to the margins, right?
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: And was vindicated in doing so.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: And and now in the resurrection of Jesus, it's it's like God sort of raising up the ultimate servant, the ultimate one who came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: Our our values, our human values, have really derived from the victory of the victim.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: Every other civilization thinks that the poor should rule over the weak.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it's dog eat dog, and and the strongest should survive, right?
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: We have a sense that actually the the weakest should be raised up.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: The weakest should be raised up.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: That is a resurrection shape.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um and our our humanism, again, you might want to ask me about this, but I think our our humanism derives from that Christian story.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I think to the degree that you walk away from that Christian story, you have to walk away from humanistic values as well.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: This makes sense of history, it makes sense of humanism, it makes sense of hope.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: If we are simply biological survival machines clinging to an insignificant rock, hurtling through a meaningless universe towards eternal extinction, why hope?
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: Where do we get hope from?
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, if the Jesus story is true, we have cause for all the hope in the world.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: The black shroud of death is coming, but Jesus is like the needle who pierced through the black shroud of death and came out the other side.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: And we, if we are in Christ, if we're connected to Jesus, then we are like the thread pulled through and coming out the other side.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: We have cause.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: For hope, and you cannot live without hope.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: It makes sense of history, humanism, hope, and it makes sense of him.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, ultimately the reason why I think Jesus beat death is because I think Jesus is Lord.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: I encountered Jesus in the scriptures and I looked at the Gospels and I saw his towering personality, I saw his stooping love, and I thought to myself, yeah, he's it, his ultimate reality.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: He he he must be God.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: And if he's God, it would be very surprising if he rotted in some first century tomb, wouldn't it?
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: It'd be very surprising.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: But the very fact that I encountered him as meeting me with living power is because he really did beat death.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I believe that you can encounter the living Christ today by opening up his word, shooting up a prayer, and saying, Jesus, meet me.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you can have an experience that I had, which was not of simply reading the wisdom of a dead teacher, but of encountering a living Lord.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because he did not rot in that Jerusalem tomb.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: He did indeed rise from the dead.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, the truth of hope.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: Why should it matter to me if Jesus rose from the dead?
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, history, humanism, hope, and him, I hope they give you reasons to believe in Jesus.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: So that was my talk on the truth of hope.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: Why does it matter if Jesus rose from the dead?
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: And in a second you'll hear the answers that I give to the Durham University students who ask me questions off the back of that talk.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: But can I just take a second a good time to ask the question?
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: Do you enjoy the Speak Life podcast?
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: Do you enjoy the output of Speak Life?
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: We try to keep busy on social media of all forms, whether that's Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube, we try to lift up the name of Jesus to bless the church and reach the world.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: And we're so grateful for those who support us financially in that way.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: If you have given to us, we couldn't be more grateful.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for standing with us in partnership in the gospel.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: And if you would like to give towards the ministry here at SpeakMan the ways of doing that, either as a one gift or as a monthly donation, you can go to speakline.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: And we would be so grateful for any gift towards the work of this ministry.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: But without further ado, here are my answers to the uh questions that our university students have asked me.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, does anyone have any questions to kick us off?
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_02: You talked about like um meeting Jesus and kind of then like living the kind of comedy-shaped life.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_02: Is it enough to just kind of think, oh yeah, that's probably true about Jesus, and then crack on, or is there kind of a difference, difference there once you've met him?
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: Like what might change?
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think everything changes at that point.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um for a start, for you to be able to look at a crucified man and say, that's the living God, well, that's quite a miraculous um turnaround, because normally and naturally, you don't look at a crucified man and call them Lord.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: Normally and naturally, you look at a crucified man and call him a loser.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so so for a start, there there has to be an extraordinary upending of your perceptions.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible calls it repentance, right?
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, which is a Greek word called metanoia, which is change of mind.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: So in order to have faith, there is a change of mind that you need to have, which is quite extraordinary.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: You look, you look at a victim on the cross and you declare him to be to be the victor.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: You look at um, you look at that that sacrificial victim and you say he's not a loser, he's Lord.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so already that is repentance, that's a change of mind.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: But that repentance works itself out in an upside-down kind of life.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: If prior to encountering Jesus, you thought that life was this thing, where you climb and grab and scratch and ascend and get on top, then that that's just the natural way of the flesh.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's the kind of phrase that the Bible uses.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: The way of all flesh is kind of self-interest.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna love you, but I'm gonna love you to the degree that it it helps me and it serves me.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of the natural way of humanity.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so we we live the tragic life to try to get on top.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, when you encounter Christ, you look down into the pit and you see that this is where the Lord of life descended to, and you you conclude, okay, he is Lord, and he is inviting me now into his comedy.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: What is the comedy?
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: The comedy is the exact opposite of the tragedy that you've just been living.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because now, with Jesus and in Jesus, and through Jesus, I am to walk his path.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: And what is his path?
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: His path is not climb, grab, scratch, take, ascend, get on top.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly, with Jesus, I discover ah, not only is this the way of the Lord, this is the way of the good life.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: The good life is actually to pour myself out and to descend to the needy and to sacrifice and to serve and to suffer.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus said, He said, if you want to save your life, you'll lose it.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's the tragic shape.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to save your life, you'll lose it.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: But if you lose your life for me and for the gospel, you'll save it.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: So actually, it's a transformational view of Christ that enables you to say he's Lord, and it's a transformation that works itself out in the rest of your life, so that now you live the comedy.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I have to emphasize when I say the comedy, I don't mean it's a laugh a minute.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: By the comedy, I mean that actually with Jesus, you embrace the way of service and sacrifice and going into the darkness for the sake of others.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so you don't just merrily go on your way once you uh once you say that Jesus is Lord.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: You are the you are the recipient of a massive miracle in order to say that Jesus is Lord, and then that miracle works itself out in a life of Christ-like service.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's what the comedy means, not the laugh a minute thing, but actually a life, a life of service.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: Does that does that help?
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_03: Um, when we talk about like you kind of gave the um the picture that like dust we want to start with into dust we will return.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of religions um kind of offer the idea that when you die, you will like you won't just return to dust if you follow like that kind of religion.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_03: How do we know that the Christian, like what view on kind of what happens after death is is distinct and is the right one?
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, so I I think there are lots of different um religions that have different views on what happens after you die, but um, I would say that the Christian view is is unique in a number of different senses.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, um it's important to point out that um in other religions, in many other religions, the afterlife is just not a big deal.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a big part of things.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like you think of um so many Eastern religions, you think of something like Confucianism or something.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and actually the idea of God and the idea of an afterlife is just is just not front and center.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, most of the Buddhist schools uh are atheistic.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, certainly they have a vision of life beyond death.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it's just important to say that we in the West tend to view world religions as though they're pretty much basically like Christianity.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: We kind of we we just kind of assume that because we grew up under church spires, that most people around the world and down through history have kind of roughly had a Christian-ish kind of religion.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: And they probably, they probably have some kind of afterlife idea and that sort of thing.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I I don't think it respects those other religions um properly if we don't actually interrogate and and figure out, okay, what is the Buddhist saying, what is the Confucianist saying, what is the Muslim saying?
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: And let's um let's drill down into that.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: So that that's sort of a um a preface.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um on resurrection beyond um the dead, I would actually say that no other worldview, let alone religion, has hope for these bodies and this world.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: Resurrection is quite a stunning claim.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: And um it's the nuts idea that this body has uh an eternal, immortal future on this planet.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there are there are certainly religions that have an idea of an afterlife, and certainly in um in a lot of um mythology um down through history, there has been an underworld and there has been an afterlife.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: The idea of an afterlife is not a Christian view at all.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm I'm totally with arcade fire when um when they sing you know the the line that is you know semi-blasphemous, but they say um afterlife, oh my god, what an awful word.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh apart from the oh my god, but I am totally with them when they when they say that the afterlife, the idea of an afterlife, it's an awful word.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because Jesus said, I've I've come that you might have life and have it in all its fullness.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: And he didn't, he didn't say, Oh yeah, and after you have life, I want to give you some kind of bliss in the ninth dimension later on, somewhere, somewhere else.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: What Jesus has come to offer is is really this world raised up on the pattern of his own resurrection.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I I gave the example of the the needle that pierces through the shroud of death and comes out the other side.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: Just as Jesus bodily rose into physical immortality, and just as he had meals with people, he went for long country walks with people, he went fishing with his mates afterwards, he had the most embodied earthly feasting joy to invite people into.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: And as I said, you know, if we're connected to him like the thread, we get pulled through that, and the whole the whole world is to be pulled through that trajectory through death and resurrection, so that there will be a resurrected Dharam, there'll be a resurrected Eastbourne where I live, there'll be there'll be a resurrected world that is not, it's not that God throws this world in the bin and we go off somewhere else.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: And even even in a religion that talks about resurrection like Islam, paradise is emphatically not on earth.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the the the destination of um of the successful Muslim is not this world renewed and restored.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it is a quite unearthly place.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I I would say there's something very unique about the Christian claim.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: You might think that makes the Christian claim far harder to believe.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: And we can we can talk about that.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because can you really believe that this has an immortal future?
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: Can you really believe that planet Earth has an immortal future?
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: That it it that might set Christianity apart for you as the least believable option.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, we can we can if that's if that's another question, let's let's deal with that question.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: But I I guess I would just challenge the premise of whether what Christianity is offering is roughly the same as what other religions are offering.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because I I think it's really quite different.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so maybe it's different to other religions then, but does that make it better?
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um I you know, like better by what standard?
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't know.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um But for me, let I mean let me let me just, you know, from from my point of view, um there's there's this great part of the the book of Job in the Old Testament.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's this epic poem about suffering, and it's it's a heavy read.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um don't don't read it last thing at night.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's like this guy, Job, goes through the most intense hell on earth kind of suffering.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: And right right in the middle of this book, in chapter 19, um, Handel's Messiah uh has makes makes a huge deal out of this, and and and it might be familiar to you from from Handel's Messiah, but um he says, I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end I will stand upon the earth, and I myself will see the Lord.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: I with my own eyes will see him.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: In my flesh I will see God, how my spirit yearns within me.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so let me give you a subjective answer.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because you like uh ask ask the Buddhist how comforting their vision of the afterlife is, ask the Muslim how comforting their vision of the afterlife is.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: But Job is a guy who's gone through the most profound suffering, and he doesn't he doesn't just believe in you know, I I know that my replacer lives, as though, as though God will come and replace all the nastiness.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: Let's forget the nastiness, we'll shove all that in the bin, and we'll do this different thing over here.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, no, it's it's redemption, like like the Bible is massive on redemption, that that which has gotten twisted kind of gets integrated into uh a redeemed, uh, a recycled, uh an enhanced glory that is all the better for having included those dark elements, right?
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's not that God will replace, you know, he doesn't he doesn't just sort of wipe the memory banks and say, forget all the darkness, here, have the light.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: It is that he weaves those dark, twisted, painful elements into something greater.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: I know that my redeemer lives and that in the end I will stand upon the earth.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: So there is there is not only a continuous hope for me, there's a continuous hope for this world that we fight for and that we love.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that what he is wanting to do is to take the pains and the wrongs and the suffering and to include it in a story that brings us to a happily ever after.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I think certainly as as a storyteller, you know, I'm I'm I'm a I'm a writer as well, some of the things that I that I do, and filmmaker, and I'm always trying to tell stories.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: And the stories that I end up telling, and the stories that everybody ever ends up telling, are stories in which everything's going along fine, and then something happens and there's a challenge, and you step into the void, and and somehow, usually through sacrificial love, um, there is uh there is that good catastrophe, and there is that that sense of a happily ever after, and you're wiser for the journey.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: You've returned to the Shire, but you're a cleverer hobbit than you were.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: You're a wiser hobbit than you were because you went through all that.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I I I offer to you the Christian story as as something that I think resonates with the human heart at a at a very profound level.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: Feel free to ask the the Muslim um how their vision of of the future helps them.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: Feel free to ask the the Hindu how their vision of the future helps them.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: But for me, this idea of this life, these bodies, this world, and this suffering not simply being cast off, but actually being woven into a into a greater story.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: That that is a satisfying story that sustained Job, that has sustained millions of of Christians down through the years, and it certainly sustains me.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um we've we've worked quite a lot off the assumption today that um Jesus did raise from the dead.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um how can we read that in the practical evidence of the Bible?
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um so how can we be sure that Jesus in reality did?
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um Yeah, I I think I I majored on that because in in one sense, um convincing you of of something is much more difficult if you don't want it to be true.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it's it's just the nature of confirmation bias, isn't it?
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's um if you don't want something to be true, then you set the evidence for counter, you know, you set the bar for countervailing evidence really, really high.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, only if someone jumps through all those hoops we are you going to believe something.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas if you want something to be true, the bar, the bar shifts downwards and and you start to ask, can I believe this?
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: rather than asking, must I believe this?
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: So so part of what I've done is is just paint a picture of this is what Christians believe about about resurrection.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: But what would be the evidence that would convince you?
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes um I speak about three H's.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: I've you know, in the talk I spoke about four H's.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: Here are three different H's.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: I talk about uh the heavens, I talk about history, and I talk about Him.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, the the heavens, I I discuss the fact that we already live in a life from the Dead universe.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um I happen to believe that this is Jesus' universe, and therefore it operates according to his kind of Easter y life from the dead kind of personality.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, just just look at these four miracles that that everybody agrees to, whether you're Christian or not, you know, you we already believe that there's everything has come from nothing, that order in this universe has come from chaos, that life has come from non-life, and that minds have emerged from mindless matter.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: And those are all life from the dead miracles.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: And some of these miracles are orders of magnitude more improbable than Jesus of Nazareth stepping out of a Jerusalem tomb.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I would I would start to ask questions about this this universe is not the closed system that post-Enlightenment minds are tempted to think of it as.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: We we think of the world as like a giant machine and cogs just but even to get to the stage of thinking of the universe as a closed system, we're already relying on four incredibly improbable miracles, and they're all life from the dead miracles.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe there's a life from the dead God.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's not it's not a silly thought.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then you come to history, and part of the history that you come to is the Old Testament is constantly pointing out, it begins on this cosmic scale.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: In the beginning, God created the heavens, the earth, and it keeps proclaiming this cosmic hope.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's gotta be a new heavens and a new earth.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: By the time you get to the end of the Old Testament, actually, all you have is a bedraggled mob of two of the 12 tribes of Israel, and they've kind of cobbled together an old temple that's a little bit like the first temple, but it's not very impressive.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's like the end.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of ending is that?
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then Jesus comes along and he says, I'm fulfilling these Old Testament prophecies, because in these old testament prophecies, that there are things like the Messiah will come, and he uh he will be, in the words of Daniel, he'll be like this tiny stone that crashes against the empires of the Babylonians and the Assyrians and the Persians and the and the and the Romans.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: And this tiny stone will smash those four empires and then will grow to become a mountain that fills the whole earth and has dominion over everything.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then Daniel um expands on that and he says, Yes, this stone is actually, he's the son of man.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: He's this incredibly human figure who's not like the monstrous empires.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_00: And those monstrous empires, they they live or die by the sword, but this incredibly human figure will come and he will be given the throne of his father, the ancient of days, and he will rule over the earth and have dominion.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: Or you get Isaiah saying that, you know, um, there will be this child who will be called a wonderful counselor, a mighty God, everlasting father, a prince of peace, and he will reign on David's throne, and of the increase of his government there will be no end.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's an extraordinary prophecy from from hundreds of years BC.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus comes and he says, I am that son of man, I am that Messiah.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, I'm gonna have a kingdom that's that's like yeast that works its way through a batch of dough, or it's like a mustard seed that grows and becomes the biggest plant on earth.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: My kingdom, my movement will overcome the gates of hell, which is an extraordinary prophecy.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, gates don't advance.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: He says, My kingdom will advance.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: And he's this 30-something year old, like penniless preacher shooting his mouth off in some northern backwater of a long-dead empire.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, Yeah, I'm gonna rule the world.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: My my movement's gonna absolutely overturn everything.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: Turns out he was right on the money.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: And none of that's contentious.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like Daniel wrote this hundreds of years before these happen, these things happen.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: Isaiah wrote this hundreds of years before these things happen.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus wrote this 2,000 years ago, and he was just about to be, you know, executed in the in the most ignominious way.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_00: And he's surrounded by idiots.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, his followers are just idiots.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like he doesn't have he doesn't have hope that beyond him there'll be a great spokesman like Peter, who's gonna like.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um so here are the here are these predictions, and and they have come true.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: There has been this person from outside the system who's been incredibly humane, who is the son of man, who has grown this kingdom.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: And undeniably, from history, this this guy was snuffed out in his early 30s.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Executed under the Roman Empire, he did die on that cross.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know that that is one of the most assured findings of of first century history.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: And there has been an explosion since him.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: So there is some evidence.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then then you look at the the evidence of the apostles.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: The disciples, they certainly thought that Jesus had risen from the dead.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: The body was never found.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, these disciples had experiences of the risen Jesus, which went on for 40 days and then stopped when they said that he that he went to heaven.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um and they they never reneged on it under pain of torture, under the pain of death in some instances.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_00: And they had very little to gain from shooting their mouth off about this this first century preacher.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: And they have absolutely turned the world upside down.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: And they they have planted they planted churches around the Mediterranean and further afield and gave rise to the most extraordinary sociological phenomena the world has ever seen.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: That there has been a there has been a resurrection, it's happened in history.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um how do we account from that?
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then so there's the heavens, there's history, and there's and there's him.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: And and I do think fundamentally you you need to do business with Jesus and figure out okay, is is he who he says he is?
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_00: He says he's Lord, he says he's it, right?
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: And you have to do that thing that kids do with uh superheroes.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they talk about, you know, would Spider-Man beat Batman in a fight, and and you know, and and you weigh up like whether these superheroes would beat the other guy.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: And you've got to do that with death and Jesus.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to look at death and you and you think, okay, death has never lost a battle.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_00: Death is the undefeated heavyweight champion of the world.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: And you look at Jesus, and he looks really weak.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: And there he is on the cross, bleeding his own heart's blood, and you think, and this is why I say it's a miracle.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's a miracle when you look at Jesus and you think, I actually think he's it.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_00: I actually think he is who he says he is.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think he is the God who brought about all these miracles.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think he is the life from the dead kind of Lord.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_00: And if he is Lord, it would be extraordinary if if he stayed dead.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: It would be extraordinary if he rotted in some Jerusalem tomb.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I think those are some of the bits of evidence that I'd I'd point people to.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_04: Glenn, in your talk, you said that humanism depends on Christianity and the resurrection, kind of this idea of a hero who sacrifices.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but I guess what basis is there to say that that idea comes from Christianity and rather rather than I guess Christianity following the pattern of the world in that respect?
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oh gosh, yeah, huge, huge issue to deal with in a couple of minutes.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, and I and I and I I I threw it in there as uh as a big point to make.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: But I I I agree with Nietzsche.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: I I think that I think humanism is basically Christianity light.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I think it is a secularized version of Christian values because what do you have to believe to believe in human dignity, in human rights and human equality?
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you have to have some quite theological beliefs about who human beings are.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I think I think they are ultimately dependent on on Christ.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I think secondarily, this this idea that we we tend to all have, whether we're Christians or not, that um a society should be judged by how it treats the weakest among us, and that power is to be used to serve um in biblical terms that the first should become last so that the last might become first.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: I I think that is a profoundly Christian idea as well.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um and what is extraordinary is that an empire that um is absolutely founded on brutality crushed Jesus, and within a few centuries that empire worshipped Jesus and and that Jesus revolution has swept the globe ever since then.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I I I just do think it is here's another miracle, you know.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_00: I I mentioned those four kind of cosmic miracles.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a here's a fifth historical miracle.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: How do you how do you go from execution to world domination?
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_00: How do you how do you go from this penniless preacher to the entire world believing that self-giving love um and that kind of sacrifice is ultimate, that the the victim is victor.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um again, I would I would point you to the the revolution of Jesus, I would point you to this this massive expanding universe of Christian civilization and and thought and value, and I would say wind it back, and I I think you will find that there was a big bang in the first century, and I think that big bang was Jesus rising again from the dead, just as was predicted all throughout the Old Testament, just as Jesus continued to say.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_00: And if you if you believe that, then you start to live into his revolution, and it turns your tragedy into a comedy, and it gives you a hope in the midst of this world that whatever suffering comes your way, you know that your Redeemer lives, and in the end, you will stand upon the earth and you will see your Lord, and he will weave together the pain and the suffering of your life and the pain of and suffering of this whole world, weave it together into a redemptive tale and a happily ever after.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I happen to think that is the greatest story ever told, and I happen to think it's 100% true.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_00: And if if if that's right, um, then it it absolutely changes everything.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I just I just urge you to look into it.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for joining us on the Speak Life podcast.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that you've uh learnt a lot about the resurrection of Jesus and how it gives us hope, how it gives us healing, how it gives us even humanism.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um love to hear your thoughts about any of that.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_00: You can always get in touch with us by emailing info at speaklife.uk at info and speaklife.uk, or perhaps join the lively conversation that's always had on Facebook.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: When you follow us there, speak lifeuk is the name of that page there, so that'll be Facebook.com slash speaklifeuk.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, we'd love to see you there.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks so much for joining us on the podcast, and we'll look forward to your company next week.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: Good bless.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: Goodbye.