PT-2 "Intro to Matthew 28:11-15"

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/11/2024 8:17 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                       Focus:  PT-2 “Intro to Matthew 28:11-15”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                               Reference: Matthew 28:11-15

 

            Message of the verses:  “11Now while they were on their way, some of the guard came into the city and reported to the chief priests all that had happened. 12 And when they had assembled with the elders and consulted together, they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers, 13 and said, "You are to say, ‘His disciples came by night and stole Him away while we were asleep.’ 14 "And if this should come to the governor’s ears, we will win him over and keep you out of trouble." 15 And they took the money and did as they had been instructed; and this story was widely spread among the Jews, and is to this day.”

            I want to continue to quote from John MacArthur’s commentary on the “swoon theory.” 

 

            “That theory was not dreamed up until around 1600, by a man named Venturini. But the idea flies in the face of many eyewitness reports, not only by Jesus’ followers but also by His enemies.  The Roman soldiers standing guard over Jesus at the cross were the first to report His death.  They were experts at execution and would stand to forfeit their own lives if they allowed a condemned man to escape death.  They were so certain He was dead that they did not bother to break His legs, and when the spear thrust brought forth blood and water, they had final proof of His death.  Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, with many women as witnesses and perhaps as helpers, worked with Jesus’ body for an hour or so as they wrapped it in the linen and spices.  They would easily have sensed any spark of life still remaining.

 

            For that theory to be true, Jesus would have had to survive the massive loss of blood from the scourging, the nail wounds, and the spear thrust.  He would also have had to survive being wrapped tightly in the linen cloths that were filled with a hundred pounds of spices. Besides all of that, in His extremely weakened condition He would have had to endure more than forty hours without food or drink, manage to unwrap Himself, singlehandedly roll the stone away from the inside of the tomb, walk out unchallenged by the guards, and then convince His followers He had actually been dead and miraculously raised.  He would have had to have developed the strength to travel countless miles in that condition to make the many appearances to His disciples over a period of forty days.  Finally, He would have had to delude the apostles into thinking He entered a closed room without opening the door and ascended to heaven before their eyes.  The absurdity of that theory is too obvious to be accepted by any clear-thinking person, believer or not.”

 

            He then goes on to talk about the “no-burial” theory which “contends that there was actually no interment, that Jesus was never placed in the tomb and therefore would no have been in it on Sunday morning.  His body was instead thrown into a mass grave for criminals, according to Roman custom.  But neither the Jewish leaders nor the Roman guards would have bothered to secure and seal the tomb if they knew Jesus’ body was not inside.  Not only that, but to disprove Jesus’ resurrection they would only have had to retrieve His body and pit it on display.”

 

            Next “The ‘hallucination theory’ maintains that everyone who claimed to have seen the risen Jesus simply experienced a hallucination, induced by an ardent expectation of His resurrection.  But Thomas was not the only believer who was slow to believe the Lord was alive again.  Every gospel account makes clear that most of His followers, including the apostles, did not believe, either before or after the crucifixion, that He would be raised.  Besides that, how could more than 500 people hallucinate in exactly the same way?

 

            There are more of these false theories that I will go over in the next SD, Lord willing, but my thought on all of these theories is that they perhaps came about by Satanic influence, and also there are many people who do not want to believe the Biblical account of Jesus’ resurrection because by believing that then they could possibly be saved, but it seems to me than many of them do not and so they can’t stand the truth so they make up false stories to taint their conscience. 

 

10/11/2024 8:02 AM