Can a Scientist Believe in the Resurrection? // Veritas Forum

I'd like to welcome you so glad you're here um you may need a scooch your behinds in a little bit especially if there's wood to be seen there are some more folks coming in we'd love to get them seated on the floor here that'd be great there is some seating up the sides though folks coming in hey my name's Nick Gibson I'm the senior pastor here at High Point and I'm gonna introduce dr. Hardin who will then introduce dr. Lennox and the reason for that is is because dr. Lennox is gonna give an address and then afterwards dr. Hardin is gonna come up and be as interlocutor he'll ask him a bunch of questions hopefully that arise out of the talk now if you have questions that you would hope dr. Hardin might allude to there's two ways that you can get those questions to us so we can look through them either you can tweet them to our Twitter handle which is hpc Madison if you tweet them all I'll get them on my phone I can pass them off to dr. Hardin or one of my email addresses is Nick and I see at High Point Church set org and I'll keep looking at my phone and you send me a question I'll show to dr. Hart and we'll try to collate them and and try to make sure that dr. Lennox is at is answering the most difficult most prescient questions possible okay so that's what we're doing okay dr. Hardin lives here in Madison but in case you don't let me just give you the quick bio he received his undergraduate degrees in zoology and German and you can say boo after I read this text part from Michigan State University he's reformed hopefully he then pursued a master's of divinity at International School of Theology in Southern California after summer he did a PhD in biophysics at University of California Berkeley and did postdoc at Duke he's professor in the zoology department now integrative biology at UW since 1991 and is he's in his tenth year of chair of the department he also is part of the director of the Isthmus Society which Foster's dialogues between science and religion on the UW campus so dr. hard once you come in energy so our guest [Applause] [Applause] now I would like to point out that I turned down a job at the University of Michigan to take the one at Wisconsin thank you it is so great to see all of you here tonight Wow fantastic it's my job to introduce our speaker for this evening and as Nick said I will be back with dr. Lennox after his remarks are over but I'd like to provide a few words of introduction about our topic and then a few words of introduction of of John our topic for tonight is can a scientist believe in the resurrection now central to classical Orthodox Christian faith is the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth the Apostle Paul said it this way in first Corinthians chapter 15 Christ has not been raised your faith is worthless we're still in your sins if we have hoped in Christ in this life only we of all people are most to be pitied so the Apostle Paul makes a claim about the centrality of the Resurrection to Christian faith Oxford academic Oxford and Cambridge academic CS Lewis said it this way the first fact in the history of Christendom is a number of people who say they have seen the resurrection Presbyterian pastor from New York City Tim Keller said it this way quite famously we should be most sympathetic to our skeptical friends the resurrection makes Christianity the most irritating religion on the face of the earth the resurrection is a paradigm shattering historical event so Christians claim the centrality of the resurrection but can a scientist take the resurrection seriously many scientists would say not take for instance Richard Dawkins in his book The God Delusion the 19th century's the last time when it was possible for an educated person to admit to believing in miracles like the virgin birth without embarrassment impressed many educated Christians are too loyal to deny the virgin birth and the resurrection but it embarrasses them because they're rational minds know that it is absurd so that they would much rather not be asked so is that the case must one choose between science and the resurrection while our speaker tonight dr. John Lennox will address that very topic and then as pastor Nick said I hope you have some good questions and I'll certainly be developing my own let me introduce John and then we'll invite him up to the podium John Lennox is Professor of mathematics emeritus at the University of Oxford and emeritus Fellow and mathematics in the philosophy of science he's also an adjunct lecturer at Wickliffe Hall Oxford and the Oxford Centre for Christian apologetics as well as a senior fellow at the Trinity forum in addition he's an Associate Fellow of the Syed Business School Oxford University and teaches for the Oxford strategic leadership program professor Lennox did most of his post secondary education at Cambridge University where he received bachelor's master's and PhD degrees in mathematics he worked for many years in the mathematics Institute at the University of Wales in Cardiff which awarded him a DSC for his research professor Lennox was a senior Alexander from home bold fellow at the universities of its blog and Cyborg in Germany and in addition he has published over 70 mathematical papers he's the co-author of two research level texts in abstract algebra and group theory in the Oxford mathematical monograph series he's also interested in the interface between science philosophy and theology and he's written a number of books with titles like these God's Undertaker has science buried God God and Stephen Hawking and gunning for God his most recent title is against the flow the inspiration of Daniel in an age of relativism professor has lectured extensively in Europe both Eastern and Western in the UK and in North America and in the southern hemisphere we are delighted to have dr. John Lennox with us and please welcome him to the stage [Applause] ladies gentlemen are you sitting comfortably well so am i you may not be used to someone sitting and speaking but in Russia that is what they do all the time and that I got used to it that my many visits to that part of the world although there was a snag that when you gave a lecture in Russia they always had a little table in front and during the lecture people would come up and they'd respectfully bow to you then they'd leave a piece of paper on the table it was a question and of course the longer you spoke the higher the pile group it's a marvelous way of regulating the tightness speakers thief even today also for those of you familiar with that book the Bible which has have already been cited it was the custom of ancient rabbis to sit and speak but my real reason is I'm old and I'm discovering bones that I didn't even believe were there let me thank you so very warmly for inviting me and particularly to senior pastor Nate to this lovely Church it's always one of the special things for me when I'm lecturing in universities around the world the see living Christianity working out of the level of the church so I feel particularly honored to be here and to see that I'm not like the bishop who turned up at a little country church on Sunday if he got up into the pulpit and he saw there were three old ladies sitting in the darkness at the back and the local vicar was standing beside the bed he said did you tell them I was coming he said no but word seems to have got around now I've loved logic since childhood and the title I've been given tonight is can a scientist believe in the resurrection the answer is yes and you've just heard what dr. Hardin is a scientist who believes in the resurrection so my case is proved thank you very much ladies yes I think you may want me to say a little bit more than that because behind that there is the question why would a scientist and how can a scientist believe in the resurrection and as dr. Hardin very clearly said this is the central claim of the Christian faith around which everything else revolves and it is very clearly a claim that nature is not all that exists the resurrection introduces us to a clash of worldviews which you find in the first century and you find that my University in the 21st century the one worldview is what we call materialism or naturalism which says this world this universe made of physics and chemistry elementary particles and so on is all that exists there is no transcendence against that there is the worldview of theism Christian theism in my case that believes that this world exists but it is a creation it was created by God and it is upheld by God and because of that it is not a closed system of cause and effect and the real issue behind the resurrection of Jesus is it threatens the notion of this universe as a closed system of and effect and it is very interesting that it was objected to right at the very beginning Kanna scientists are high would have scientists believe in the resurrection but it started right at the very start how could anybody believe that a person could be raised from the dead that the greek word that describes that is Anastasis from which the name anastasiya come it means honest asses to stand up again it implies a physical returning from death and of course the challenges materialism it raises the specter of supernaturalism and it was resisted from the very beginning the first objections to the Christian faith didn't come from atheists but it came from professional theologians called Sadducees who did not believe in spirit a resurrection and they objected to the early Christian Apostles preaching and noticed carefully what Luke tells us Luke is a brilliant historian and that has been proved again and again they preached in Jesus the resurrection from the dead you see they weren't simply objecting to a general concept that there would be a resurrection at the end of time the Pharisees believed that and they wouldn't have made a fuss about it it was a specific resurrection they were objecting to this claim that at a particular time there was an event that happened the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead now my experience has paid but although I believe there is powerful historical and indeed empirical evidence that Jesus rose from that many people particularly more vocal opponents of Christianity will not even consider it and may descend to ridicule and my first debate with Richard Dawkins at Birmingham Alabama we were suddenly told without warning that the debate had to end in something like two minutes each instead of what we'd been promised before and I decided to go for the central fact of the resurrection of Jesus and Dawkins reaction rings in my ears as I sit here talking to you so that's where we end we've been talking about great philosophical ideas we've been talking about wonderful things but now we come down to the resurrection of Jesus Christ I quote it's so petty it's so trivial it's so local it's so earthbound it's so unworthy of the universe well if Jesus rose from the dead the last thing is that it's unworthy of the universe the question is is the universe worthy of it but that's the reaction Riddick you and when I had the second debate with him in the Oxford Museum of Natural History he mocked my belief in the miracles of Jesus turning water into wine and so on but mockery of course is not an argument that's an attitude and it does no credit to the person who employs it for if there is a God as I pointed out to Dawkins who created the universe there's no difficulty in believing that he could've might do special things of course whether he has done so on a specific occasion is a different matter and that's why it's important that we realized through the outset that we're talking not about claims to miracle in general we're talking about something very specific on which Christianity is founded Francis Collins who's the director of the NIH here who believes in the resurrection of Jesus very wisely says it is crucial that a healthy skepticism be applied for an interpreting potentially miraculous events less the integrity and rationality of the religious perspective be brought into question the only thing that will kill the possibility of miracles more quickly than a committed materialism is the claiming of miraculous status for everyday events for which natural explanations are readily at hand and for that reason we're concentrating on the resurrection now I've used the word Medical I've used the word supernatural there is a distinction between the two that needs to be made miracles that is genuine miracles are supernatural events but not all supernatural events are miracles of the strict sense because miracles are usually thought to concern events that are exceptions are apparent exceptions to an already recognized normal course of things they presuppose a normal course of things dead bodies don't normally rise from the dead so the creation of the universe with its inbuilt normal course of things is utterly supernatural because God is behind it but it's not a miracle because the thing that sets up the normal course of things is of course not an apparent exception to them and I like the fact that dr. Hardin quoted CS Lewis as you see I'm very old I'm old enough actually to have heard CS Lewis I heard the very last lectures he gave and the quotation that Jeff gave us is a very important one he read the first fact of the history of Christendom is a number of people who say they have seen the resurrection if they had died without making anyone else believe this gospel no Gospels would ever been written according to the early Christians without the resurrection there simply is no Christian message and Paul writes if Christ has not been raised our preaching is useless and so is your faith I spent my life from boyhood convinced that this is the message that needs to be unpacked and explained to the world but I've noticed that people's reaction to explanations of that fact over time has changed now I do believe there is considerable evidence that establishes the credibility and believability of the resurrection of Jesus time is not going to permit a lot of delving into that tonight but that's why I'm going to do a bit of shameless advertising I've written this little book called gunning for God and the last two chapters of it are an analysis from a biblical perspective but with a particular angle which are like I'll explain later of the biblical evidence for the truth of that resurrection but where I find a problem not only in academic circles but for the general public is there's no point in looking at it don't talk to me about the resurrection of Jesus why because miracles cannot happen anyway Anna miracles cannot happen anyway there is no point in discussing the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus I understand that that's a perfectly logical stance the problem often is a direct refusal to look at evidence I each other to Richard Dawkins once and about the resurrection and he said I cannot even imagine anybody being interested in and the reason for that is contained in the other cocaine that Jeff gave us and that there is Dawkins thinks that the 18th or 19th century was the last time that anybody could credibly believe in such things the reason is of course the bottom line is science has rendered miracles impossible so there is simply no need to go there now a lot of that goes back to the Enlightenment philosopher The Scotsman David Hume and in my second debate with the late Christopher Hitchens again in Alabama I suddenly get involved with Alabama it's a very interesting thing but Alabama it was and it's a wonderful place in my experience for doing these things but Christopher Hitchens tried somewhat you will have seen up at YouTube to convince the audience that David Hume had said the last word of the issue of miracles ruling them out in the name of science and of course pitches was referring to a famous essay of Hume in which he said the following a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature and as a firm and unalterable experiences established these laws the proof against a miracle from the very nature of the fact is as entire as any argument from experience as can be imagined it is no miracle that a man seemingly and good health should die suddenly because such a kind of death though more unusual than any other has yet been frequently observed to happen but it is a miracle that a dead man should come to life notice the example that uses it is a miracle that the dead man should come to life because that has never been observed in any Ager country there must therefore be a uniform experience against every miraculous event otherwise the event would not merit that appellation the logic of those last two sentences is disastrous but we've come to it though the wily she wasn't the first to say things like that Spinoza in the 17th century said quotes nothing then happens in nature which is in contradiction with its universal laws she nature preserves a fixed and immutable course a miracle whether country to nature above nature is this year absurdity and therefore by a miracle in Holy Scripture we are to understand nothing more than the natural phenomenon which surpasses ours belief to surpass human powers of comprehension now that view has been powerfully influential not only in philosophy and in common understanding but also in theology Rudolf Bultmann very famously in 1933 wrote the idea of a miracle as a divine intervention has become impossible for us today and this year's been responsible for the fact that some scientists though they believed in God in some sense are very skeptical of the claim that the processes by which the universe of life came to be that they involved any divine intervention as the word that's often used Nancy Murphy says we object to intervention of secants of divine action because it seems unreasonable that God should violate the laws he has established so here's the argument firstly miracles are violations of the laws of nature secondly those laws have been established by Fermin on the alterable experience thirdly therefore the argument against miracle is as good as any argument from experience convey Hume has a second layer of arguments and that's from the uniformity of experience and that goes like this unusual yet frequently observed events are not miracles like a healthy person dropping dead a resurrection would be a miracle because it is never observed there's uniform experience against every Buraq ulis event otherwise it would not be called miraculous now in light of the New Testament that is a very odd statement because of course the whole claim of the New Testament is a resurrection was observed and the uniformity of experience is not something that carries through so atheists and everybody else universally recognized with david hume that certainly the supernatural were standing up off a body again now humans are very interesting person in terms of his philosophy i just want to say one or two things about him because there are very deep self contradictions that take a lot of the apparent bite and it's only a parent of his argument he says miracles can't happen because they go against the laws of nature Hume believes that the laws of nature entail regularities of success of succession but unfortunately in other parts of his work he denies the uniformity of nature just because he says the Sun has been observed to rise in the morning for thousands of years that doesn't mean that we can be sure it will rise tomorrow and this is an example of what's called the problem of induction on the basis of past experience you kind of predict the future but then if humans write that no dead man has ever risen up from the grave through the whole of Earth's history so far then by his own argument he still couldn't be sure that the dead man will not rise up tomorrow that being so he cannot rewrite miracles there's a fundamental flaw in his argument and that same argument works backwards in time as well as forwards the fact that no one has been observed to rise from the dead say in the past thousand years is no guarantee there was no resurrection before that you see what at stake here is this uniformity is one thing absolute uniformity entirely another but it's worse still because if Huber's right and say we come out and fair regularities then you couldn't even speak of a law of nature and the nature laws don't make sense there's no uniformity of nature and therefore you can't use this as an argument against miracles and I find it simply astonishing that films argument has been enlarged responsible for the widespread contemporary view in my experience in the Western world that we have a straightforward choice between mutually exclusive alternatives either we believe in miracles or we believe in the scientific understanding of the laws of nature but not both and it was that that prompted Dawkins remark that Jeff told us the 19th century's the last time whether it was possible for an educated person to admit to believing in miracles like the virgin birth without embarrassment when pressed many educated Christians are too loyal to deny the virgin birth of the resurrection but it embarrasses them because they're rational minds know that it is absurd so that they would much rather not be asked but just a moment there are very eminent scientists light-years brighter than Richard Dawkins who do believe in the resurrection of Jesus think of your professor Bill Phillips us a physics Nobel Prize winner 1998 professor Sir John Polkinghorne who taught the quantum mechanics at Cambridge and is a member of our Academy Sir John Houghton also an academician formerly a head of the UK Meteorological Office and director of the intergovernmental climate panel that won the Nobel Prize all of these people assert their faith resurrection of Christ without embarrassment or any sense of a rationality or absurdity this shows very clearly ladies and get one that it is no necessary part of being a scientist that one should reject either the possibility or the actuality of the resurrection of Christ but to see why such scientists myself included do not feel remotely threatened by the accusations that miracles cannot happen because their violations of the laws of nature we must look just a little bit more carefully at that playing I pointed out that Hume didn't really believe in the laws of nature and therefore couldn't believe in it uniformity because he denied necessary causation I don't want to go into the philosophy of that except to tell you this one of Richard Dawkins forerunners as the world's most famous atheist was professor and to the flu of Reading University a famous philosopher who was Humes leading interpreter and before he died a few years ago I had the privilege of spending a couple of hours with him at his home and talking about these things and it's very humbling to listen to a world-class philosopher claim that for most of his life he'd been wrong he said to me directly he said I was wrong about you and all my books would have to be rewritten but I will never get round to that that's very humbling when you hear someone of that fast do that and I talked about great like that he wrote a book he wrote a very interesting book there is a God and it's in two halves he writes the as to how he came to believe in God very interestingly through his understanding of the nature of the complexity of DNA it's a linguistic complexity and he could say like most people can see when they think about it that the moment you see language the moment you see language up in the screen there you know that whatever physical chemical natural processes are involved in putting that up in the wall there's a mind involved in it because there is no adequate explanation of linguistic phenomena without postulating a mind and he extrapolated that not unreasonably as I would do to DNA and tabled to believe in a God he became a kind of dazed but then he invited his friend NT right to write the second half of the book because he said if I was going to go for any religion I would go for Christianity so I'll give my friend NT right to write about the resurrection of Jesus so you have this very interesting book with a scientist who's got so far being honest I haven't got quite that far so I get my friend to write the book I remember coming away from that thinking weird are the guts to admit that I've been wrong you know most of us find it very difficult to say sorry and to say we've been wrong but when your life's work is dedicated to expanding David Humes philosophy to say I was wrong so I have Anthony flues word for it you know simply wrong and his arguments do not have that power I'll quote Anthony flew generations of humans have in consequence been misled into offering analyses of causation and of natural law that have been far too weak because they had no basis for it thing the existence of either cause and effect or not your laws him skepticism about cause and effect and his agnosticism about the external world of course jettisoned the moment he leaves his study as frames at Christopher Hitchens thought that Hume wrote the last word of the subject but then Hitchens isn't the scientist and I said publicly if you can see it at the debate I said fume was wrong about this and I can explain it to you in several sentences and afterwards he came to me I got on very well with Christopher he said that was heavy stuff you know that was very heavy stuff I by Tim I said of course it was but he said but Richard Dawkins I said Richard Dawkins hasn't a clue about you and all you've done is follow it he says I suppose I have he was pretty honest about some things when you got close to him but not everybody who regards miracles as violations of the laws of nature would argue like human because many of my colleagues resent and it really is a resentment any idea that some God small G or big G could arbitary intervene and alter suspend reverse or otherwise violate the laws of nature because that would seem to contradict the immutability of the laws Stephen Hawking in his book the grand design goes along with this notion and to support it they come up with a number of arguments the first is which is this belief in miracles in general and in the New Testament miracles in particular rose in the primitive pre scientific culture where people were ignorant of the laws of nature and so readily accepted miracles stories now this is human in a different part of his book that's exactly what he says but that's a very curious thing that explanation that they didn't know the regularities of nature is actually logically observed because in order to recognize any event as a miracle there must be some perceived regularity that you know to which that event is in the parent exception you cannot spot an abnormality if you don't know what's normal and here is where the only scientifically trained person who writes the New Testament comes into his own dr. Luke he was a polymath a brilliant historian and a medical doctor and he begins his biography of Jesus the Gospel of Luke by raising this matter this is something that's weighed with me for years as being extremely important the very first issue he raises is the difficulty people of his day had in accepting anything supernatural he tells the story of Zechariah who was a priest at his wife Elizabeth and they prayed for a child for many years and they had no child and then they got very old and in his old age he was leading the worship at the Temple of Jerusalem and an angel appears Luke tells us and says your prayers are answered and your wife is going to have a son and he said absolutely not he said were too old you see heat years where there's any gynecologist today that you get to a state where you cannot bear children I wasn't that atheist he was a priest he was proved so he believed God he believed in prayer and he appeared to believe in angels because he spoke to one but answering is a prayer involved a reversal of nature's powers a regeneration and he couldn't believe that you see this is the problem he knew the course of nature that's why he said this is absolutely ridiculous and by the way this is just an aside he was struck dumb for being silly he had no message when he went out to the people then neither do you if you profess to be Christian and that your heart there Nestle's on belief in the miracles of Jesus of the supernatural but I'd be in danger of preaching a sermon and I mustn't do that because this isn't some day so we'd better get back to this central thing it was sheer power of evidence that convinced that arise to get this these New Testament writers who were not primitive they faced the 21st century problem it's exactly the same problem but the second argument is our knowledge of the laws of nature makes belief in miracles impossible now here we come to this word violation of the laws of nature and when I'm in America I see these notices all over the place violators will be told have you ever noticed that we don't use the word violated that circumstance but it it's talking about there's a law of the state and if you violate it it'll be towed the confusion here is because we don't know the difference between the law of nature and a law of the state let me try and explain that now here I'm going back to CS Lewis it was a genius at thinking of analogies to educate our thinking I gotta translate it into American if this week I put $1,000 there's the American in the drawer of my desk add up mm X tweak and another first the week thereafter the laws of arithmetic allow me to predict that the next time I come to my drawer I will find $4,000 but suppose the next time I open the drawer I find only $1000 what should I conclude that the laws of arithmetic have been broken or that the laws of the state have been broken now think about it what should I conclude well clearly that the laws of the state have been broken somebody has put their hand into the drawer and taken $3,000 out how do I know that because the laws of arithmetic have not been broken you get that it's your knowledge of the laws of arithmetic that tells you that someone has put their hand in you see the laws of nature the laws of science are not like the laws of the state they are simply distribute 'less one is four but they do not prevent summary putting their hand into the system I'm taking the $3,000 art and that is extremely important because it illustrates all aspects of this you see in order to recognize that Jesus resurrection is a genuine supernatural event you have to know the dead bodies regularly stay dead if they popped up all over the place you wouldn't think it was anything special but Jesus rose you have to know that regularity now did Jesus resurrection break the law of nature that people normally they dead no you see if I was craving to you that Jesus rose from the dead by natural processes going on in the tomb before it happened then it would be breaking the laws of nature but I'm clearly no such thing what the New Testament things is God raised him from the dead that is there was an injection of power and energy from outside the system it didn't happen by any natural means it happened by supernatural intervention or input of power from outside and we recognize that by all the tests of investigating the evidence that's given to us in the New Testament and elsewhere you see saying that God can't intervene in nature would be like claiming that the moment you understood the laws of internal combustion that that made it impossible to believe that the designer of a motor car could or would intervene and remove the cylinder head of course they could intervene morover the intervention wouldn't destroy the laws of internal combustion there are any same laws that explained why the engine worked with the cylinder head on weird I explained why it doesn't work but this isn't very at all so we need to clear this up the laws of nature are not like the laws of a country that you violate they are descriptions of what normally happens but God who is the creator and stands above its creation and outside it is perfectly free to input events into the system and that is exactly what the miracles of Jesus are and what the resurrection is so Christians far from denying the laws of nature have got to believe in the laws of nature in order to either to talk rationally about the resurrection of Jesus Christ now we could go into some detail in demonstrating that Hume simply assumes what he's got to prove when he talks about experience showing that miracles never happened he simply assumes what he wants to prove and his argument runs into trouble how does he know you see in order to know that experience against miracles is absolutely uniform he would need to have total access to every event of the history of the universe at all times in places which is impossible he seems to have forgotten that human beings have only observed a tiny fraction of the sum total of events which have occurred in the universe therefore Hume cannot know that miracles have never occurred he simply assumes what he wants to prove the only alternative to that is to be open to the possibility that they do occur but he denies our possibility he says experience against miracles is firm and unalterable but that is no substance unless he did shows that all reports of miracles are false particularly the ones that you Testament that describe the resurrection of Jesus now humans very interesting because he goes on to talk about why should we believe testimony and that's very interesting he lays down criteria for testimony and some of them are very sensible a wise man proportions his belief to the evidence the strength of his belief depends upon the strength of the evidence that supports the belief now that's enormous ly important because there's a widespread impression these days that faith is believing where you know there's no evidence that's what Dawkins things ladies and gentlemen faith in the New Testament is never that it's believing where there is evidence the word faith in English comes from the latin word fides which means trust we get fidelity from it and the normal use of the word is trust based on evidence and you'll discover that Meir that what that means the next time you go to get a loan from your bank manager you want evidence before he gives you the loan one thing his trust in you has got to be evidence based but unfortunately in the world of the Academy that I inhabit there's a widespread impression that faith is a religious word and it means believing where there's no evidence that is completely wrong and John the writer in the New Testament who gives us a lot of evidence on the resurrection of Jesus he sums up what he's doing by saying this Jesus did many other signs of the presence of his disciples which are not written in this book but these are written in order that you might believe that Jesus is the Messiah the Son of God and that believing you might have life in his name here's the evidence upon which faith can be based if Christianity wasn't evidence-based you wouldn't have the New Testament because it claims to be evidence it's a completely false idea and humans right and he's saying a big claim requires big evidence of course it does and therefore we need to investigate those things that will lead us to a recent assessment of why we should believe that Jesus raised from the dead and one of the things he says is if the falsehood of the testimony to an event like the resurrection would be more miraculous than the event itself then I would have to believe the testimony but not until then you see if someone claims something like Jesus rose from the dead I have to decide whether it's true or false if the character of the witness is dubious then you might dismiss the story I'd have had but then you investigate the moral integrity of the witness what about the people that wrote the New Testament were they morally compromised no they went out into the world of the name of truth and purity and morality they stuck to this story that's powerful evidence that they themselves actually believed it how otherwise would you explain their stance were they fraudsters well I shall never forget sitting in Trinity College Cambridge let's think - one of the brightest legal scholars in the world of his time professor Sir Norman Anderson and he's written a lovely little book which I recommend to you even today evidence for the resurrection and he says as Easter is not primarily a comfort but a challenge its message as either the supreme in fact of the history or else a gigantic hoax if it is true that it is a supreme fact of history and to fail to just one's life to its implications beings irreparable loss but if it is not true if Christ be not risen then the whole of Christianity is a fraud hoisted in the world by a company of consummate liars or at best deluded simpletons some Paul himself realized this when he wrote if Christ be not risen then our preaching is meaningless and your faith worthless and centuries before human Paul saw the issue clearly either Christ is risen for the dead or he and the others are deliberate perpetrators of fraud but then the question cannot be avoided is it possible to believe that Christ's disciples were the kind of people who not only would concoct lie but foisted with other people and watch them go to their destro vit and themselves go to their own deaths for the whole thing I find that very difficult to believe but that has been investigated by many forensic scientists and I leave you to them to investigate that the other thing I want to mention is the historical fact of the meteoric rise of the Christian Church from a norm proselytizing religion Judaism what is adequate to explain the transformation of the early disciples from a frightened group of men and women who were utterly depressed and disillusioned at what to them was the calamity that had befallen their movement when Jesus died there suddenly explodes this powerful international movement which rapidly established itself all over the Roman Empire the early disciples were old Jews their religion not noted for its enthusiasm and making converts and if you ask the early church they will tell you immediately that what started it was the resurrection of Jesus and their very existence the meaning of their existence as its purpose was to bear with this to this fact professor CFD mol of Cambridge wrote if they're coming into existence of the Nazarenes a phenomenon undeniably attested by the New Testament rips a great hole in history a hole the size and shape of the resurrection what does the secular historian propose to stop it up with the birth of rapid rise of the Christian Church remain an unsolved enigma for any historian who refuses to think seriously the only explanation offered by the church itself now I'm coming towards the end of the section of the lecture there are many many more things that could be said and I would encourage you if you're beginning an interest here to begin yourself to interact I just want to mention one thing that many years ago I was perhaps about seventeen when I first listened to a very bright academic classicist by training talk about the resurrection and he said there are innocent things that you'd hardly notice in the Gospels that are pointers that would never been invented never been thought up in a fake story and one of them is recorded in John's Gospel in chapter 20 where the women came and they said that the tomb was empty now that's very striking because Judaism did not regard the testimony of women very highly and nobody faking a story would have ever claimed that women were the main bearers of the testimony it's there because it's highly likely to be true and they came and they said the tomb was empty and Peter John ran to the tomb and they went into the tomb and when they went into the tomb John saw something that utterly intrigued him it was a Jewish tomb and the body would have been wrapped in grave cloths and heavy spices put on them and he saw it says the grave those rolled up and the head cloth by itself and then it says this he saw and believed believe what and he left the term there's nothing more to be seen because what he had seen convinced him of the resurrection what was it it was like a detective what he saw according to the text was the grave toast were rolled up exactly as they had been on the body how could that be possible because you see if somebody had removed the body they would have have to unwind them and then wind them up again that would have been practically impossible would have taken hours but if nobody had removed the body John it was like lightning going through his head he saw um he believed and that sticks in my mind over all those years and there are many such things that bring your step by step it's cumulative evidence but you know there's more to it than that and I want to read to you just a few words off if I can find them and I may not be able to find them Ellen doesn't matter if I can't but I wanted to find just a statement 20 centuries ago and the dawn of an oriental day a woman distraught of finding an empty tomb in a garden near the place of crucifixion saw a man standing in the shadows thinking that it was the gardener she asked him if he'd removed the body of Jesus he spoke her name Mary and in a moment of overwhelming understanding she realized that this was not the gardener but the owner the Lord of creation the one who was ultimately responsible not only for all the beauty of flowers and trees but for the whole universe in all of its prodigious glory Jesus had risen from the dead death itself had been overcome atheism has no answer to death ladies and gentlemen though ultimate hope together it's an empty and sterile worldview which leaves us at a closed universe that will ultimately incinerate any last trace that we ever existed it is quite literally a hope less philosophy its story ends in the grave but the resurrection of Jesus opens the door and a bigger story it's for each one of us to decide whether it's true or not now my final point is this I'm a scientist of sorts and people say to be come on you can't believe this stuff because in science and practical science you do experiments you test your hypothesis Christianity is not testable isn't it isn't it you see the difference between the two last things I read where the difference between seeing something those grave false and worthy guard an intellectual conclusion that something utterly remarkable has happened that's not quite the same thing as mating there isn't Jesus and you see ladies and gentlemen if it is true that Jesus rose from the dead they still have eyes and it's possible to meet him now you can do an experiment and it's this this Jesus who claims to be risen tells us that if we're prepared to trust him repent of the mess we've made of her own lives that the lives of other people and we're prepared to receive him as Lord and controller of life as the risen son of God then he will give us forgiveness there's the word forgiveness mean anything to you he's give us new life and a new power and you know I meet many people in life and I'll tell you just one story to illustrate this I was speaking to a huge crowd at Harvard University and when I'd finished the young Chinese students stood up at the balcony and he shouted to the whole pride he said look at me and of course we all looked and I said why should we look at you he said listen his face was radiant with joy he said six months ago my life was in a mess as a student and I don't know all the things he mentioned that were wrong with his life and so on he was in total despair and he said someone brought me to a lecture that you gave at one of the Ivy League universities but not Harvard and he said just look at being I he said I found peace with God my life has been completely transformed I discovered mainly now ladies and gentlemen this is the test when you see that in life again and again and again and again when you see people with narcotic or alcohol dependence and they've no food to put on the table in front of their children and you meet them then a year later and something has happened you say what's happened to you and they say something like well I met Jesus or I became a Christian or they're put in different ways when you see that again and again you had to and who'd he get for I wouldn't sit here for a nanosecond if I didn't believe that not only as a resurrection of Jesus intellectually credible but I believe it's existentially credible because the center part of my life and that of my wife and family is to walk with him from day to day now that means it's signed absolute jargon and mumbo jumbo to you but we're living in a universe where we discover that we are persons and every analogy we know tells us that our origin cannot be some personal it's Supra personal and if we enjoy human friendship what a magnificent thing it is if God makes a way where we can through faith in Christ become his sons and daughters and enjoy the biggest friendship of the most exciting friendship at the universe and that is friendship with the risen Christ thank you ladies and gentlemen thanks John thanks for coming and now we're going to open it up for some questions so you mentioned discovering bones you haven't discovered I'm getting to that point of living experience where my eyes are beginning to make it difficult to read small text messages on phones but we'll have an iPad have one yeah thank you so several people have asked kind of an interesting question if you if you look at the New Testament and whether you believe the New Testament to be true or not if one thing that you do notice in the Gospels is that there are other resurrection stories in the Gospels gyruss daughter the raising of Lazarus eyes are so much focus on the particular resurrection event of Jesus of Nazareth well I think first of all that they are not resurrections at the technical sense they are raisings and we presume that the people have both died again Christ the claim is rose to an indissoluble life this was an undoing of death and the particular focus is of course this is the biggest thing in the universe I think the Bible is absolutely right saying that behind all of our lives there's a subliminal fear of death none of us want to be extinguished because we recognize instinctively it's the image of God in us I believe but we recognize instinctively that death is an alien of the universe and so the biggest issue is is there an answer to death or is that going to as my atheist friends claim is going to claim us all in the end so that everything is in terms of ultimate hope hope less and that's why I find that the focus is there because remember we're dealing not with a girl like Jairus daughter or a person like Lazarus we're dealing with the grand claim that Jesus is God incarnate or in contemporary language God coated into humanity the word became human this is a colossal claim and therefore it means very substantial evidence to believe it and I believe that here we have in John's Gospel which is one of the Gospels that's helped me most it starts with a statement in the beginning was the word the Word was with God the Word was God the same was in the beginning with God and then the word becomes flesh and we discover that the word is the one we call Jesus and John ends his gospel with the vindication of that wave at the highest level that I raised Jesus from the dead no there's an additional thing there because this is a moral universe as well and one of the big questions that bothers people and rightly so is the question of justice and ultimate justice atheist has no hope of ultimate justice when the early apostles preached the resurrection if you look through the basic history that Luke gives us at the book of Acts you'll see they often connected with a final judgment and they were saying to people something wonderful that their sense of morality is not an illusion it's going to be backed up because there is going to be a final assessment and the resurrection of Jesus proves that he is the son of God and he is the final judge who's going to execute the judgment these are spectacular things and CS Lewis I think was dead right they're saying they're either true or they're absolutely crazy and we need to fight against them to the nail okay thank you um let's turn to this whole idea of evidence mm-hmm so you said we could read some books but maybe we can just talk for a little bit about this because it's a key point absolutely and David Hume in fact makes the argument well I mean people I guess debate what Hume was actually trying to say some people they yeah some people would say he's making a probability argument you know that we don't see miraculous events in our own experience and so the the bar for personal testimony sorts of evidence has to be unbelievably high for us to make it sufficiently probable to buy into it that's one way to think about it and so so that places a very large burden on the personal testimony so I wonder if you could talk about that and then I have a couple follow-ups well I think actually he's wrong and saying we don't see miracles because every conversion that changes a person's life dramatically is in that sense of supernatural event and I think it's important to recognize that this is being born from above for there's one of the most powerful evidences of the fruit of Christianity so I do think there's quite a lot of evidence now of course you could approach it from all kinds of view and cycle I say college as a doubt of existence and say well they came across a new idea etcetera but if you're going to make it an argument from probability the overwhelming constancy of the this kind of thing happening and being connected with Jesus seems to me to be a powerful argument now I want to interject something here I'm a math official and the word proof is used far too easily in these contexts I don't think you can prove that Jesus rose from dead in the mathematical sense because in the rigorous mathematical sense the only things you can prove her Malick's I can't prove to you mathematically that my wife term I've been married for nearly 50 years loves me can't do it but I've risked my life for her because you see just because we can't prove it in that axiomatic rigorous way doesn't mean there's formidable evidence and I don't usually use the word proof I suspect I didn't use it at all tonight for that very reason we have evidence but it's strong enough to base a commitment that is life-changing and therefore probabilistic arguments are important but there are other kinds of arguments we need to bring into play so let's turn to the kind of a credibility of some of the testimony that we have several people we're asking a similar question and that is that why is the evidence presented for the resurrection somehow superior to other reports of amazing things such as the raising of Pythagoras or the Mohammed's vision of the splitting of the moon or the Mormon witnesses to golden plates with spiritual eyes or things like that but what sets this apart especially for someone who's kind of coming from a posture of overall skepticism about these kinds of events what would you say to them well I would say please be skeptical Sceptile in greek means to check out from a distance and it's a very important thing to do to check things out from a distance and and for me it rests on evidence I mean let me take something that goes to the heart of this for instance my Jewish friends believe that Jesus died and didn't rise my Muslim friends believe he didn't die I believe he both died and rose those three accounts are mutually exclusive obviously how do you decide I don't know any other way of deciding ladies and gentlemen but by actually investigating the evidence there is no shortcut there's no generic answer to this kind of question why do you take the New Testament more seriously than the Book of Mormon because I've read The Book of Mormon I've looked at this and I have inserted the convincing in the least I don't know other way but you see when it comes to Christianity it's the final bit of my talk that weighs the most heavily with me that if the resurrection is true Jesus is still alive and you can get to know him this is something that just doesn't occur in any of these other spheres and of course the issues at stake aren't as big the question of Pythagoras our protagonist I wasn't quite sure right here it's not making any big demands we're not making a claim that this person is going to operate the final judgment but in Christianity we are and therefore you're dead right and saying that big claims need big evidence but I think the big evidence is there but we have to do the investigation and why I emphasize is this that it's very easy to put up a smoke screen what about this what about that event and so on if you are serious about that you will study every one of those events and come to your own conclusions you won't rest content with a generic solution oh the old things impossible the other way n is to say what is the most serious of these questions what is at stake where are the biggest things that stay and it's very obvious to me that the question of forgiveness of sin new life are they under the eternal relationship of God and my own personal resurrection are far bigger things then a lot of the other things that are raised but I still compacted this we have to make up our own minds I can't make up your mind for you and I wouldn't dare try all I can do is share my own response to it have commanded to you and say you go away and think about it and come to your own decision now that may not answer your question and if you be that doesn't head me on I like you John want to avoid bodily injury here alright so this questions very well status I'm just gonna read it in the 2000 plus years since Jesus of Nazareth alleged resurrection nothing like it's been able to be reproduced and tested if we ask the question can a scientist believe in the resurrection this lack of reproducibility and testability leaves in my opinion any resurrection hypothesis indeterminate unscientific can you comment on this sorry I missed that messed in but say it again the lack of reproducibility and testability of the Resurrection leaves it any resurrection hypothesis indeterminate really scientific well those two not not necessarily need to be tied to guess whether lack of reproducibility of the origin of the universe and of life leaves a very indefinite doesn't you see what this is hitting out is very important we use the word science but we need to distinguish various kinds of science the Natural Sciences and generally speaking we think of inductive science that is doing experiments in getting results and that's a very important aspect of science but you see we can't repeat everything in laboratory we can't repeat the history of the universe we can't repeat the history of life we can't repeat many many things so what do we have to do we have to play Sherlock Holmes we have to do what's technically called AB production inference to the best explanation so here's the body of John that's lying on the floor of the church with a dagger in his heart how are you going to account for that well you can't say let's do it again and see what happened and that's exactly what's a back of this you see no but you make an inference to the best explanation that one of the people in the church was disgruntled seeing seen coming in or they were holding a knife and it looked suspiciously like the life had there and you say well if that's the case that makes it plausible that that person was responsible but then somebody else says there are two knives like that in this building and there was a chap up who's a knife through a work oh well that might explain that better which of the two explains it better and we do that all the time now to say that nothing like the resurrection of Jesus has occurred since that is to be expected but there will be something like it you see we've got to take it within its contextual historical claim what happened Christ came he died he rose again but he did something else he ascended it and I believe that too and when he ascended the beginning of acts tells us that the disciples were all looking up into heaven as he went up literally and physically by the way and then disappeared into the other world and the disciples were told well why are you gazing up into heaven this same Jesus will so come in the same way as you saw him go you see just as the Incarnation the life death resurrection ascension of Christ broke the apparent uniformity they don't fit into the uniformity of history or nature but we're not finished ladies and gentlemen Christ has promised to come back again and then that argument will cease to be used but it'll be too late since my initial approach by the way they didn't gentleman you know this is a Q&A you see not desperately inadequately renée's because all I can do is off the top of my head respond as to how I begin to think about them that is not to say that there are more nuances and things that need to be thought about that of course there are but that's all I can do so I try to keep doing it let me turn to a question actually came up at dinner I thought it was a great question I'm a scientist and the let me just preface this by a story we've mentioned Christopher Hitchens a couple of times and he was very fond of asking people Christians particularly questions things like do you really believe that Jesus was born of a virgin did you really believe in the resurrection and if the person said well yes I I do then he would kind of turn to the audience sort of like you're doing in some ways John and he would say ladies and gentlemen my opponent has just demonstrated that science has done nothing for his worldview and this is a way of making the person seemed like they lack imagination yes it's very good at this and but the underlying implication is that somehow if you believe that supernatural events have occurred that you are less imaginative as a scientist I just wonder what you think about that not much thank you for that lengthy I understand it of course but it's an insult really because if this story is true then it is the story that fires the imagination beyond any other story think of CS Lewis and the legacy of imagination he left what is behind this is the kind of thing that if you believe this stuff it dumbs you dime it makes you seem of lower value than your peers I think the opposite is true it actually smart UNS you up because you're in touch with real reality instead of a tiny fraction of it that's given to you by materialism materialism is the most unimaginative stuff I mean think of Dawkins conclusion about the universe this universe is just like you'd expected to be if at bottom there's no gird no evil or no justice DNA just as are we dance to its music as powerful imagination isn't it that will inspire you at night now as our corrective to that I do all about this because I experienced that I'm going to tell you a story if I may I was 19 at Cambridge and we have nice dinners than the colleagues and I find myself to by amazement seated beside a Nobel Prize winner never met one before terrified and of course I do what I always do that I started asking questions and slowly but surely I moved towards the God question and he didn't like it so I'm a very kind Irishman I backed off and I thought that was the end of it but at the end of dinner he said Lennox please come to my room and I could sense there was something so I went to his room and he invited two or three other professors those students set me on a chair they stood right he said do you want a career in science I said yes sir right he said I want you tonight right now in front of witnesses to give up these naive and infantile ideas of God they will your intellectually you'll never make it you will suffer by comparison with your peers and you'll end up an intellectual nonentity that was pressure I remember looking at him and I said sir what have you got to offer be that's better than what I've already got and he said there's a philosophy of aiming Bergson I happen to know what it was because I bred CS Lewis you see and I said sir if that's all you've got with great respect I was thinking what I've got I take a risk and I got up and walked out and I tell you that put steel into my heart and it's never left it it was wonderful preparation to make the Hitchens and Dawkins of this world and you see it's odd because if you take all Nobel Prize winners between 1900 and 2000 over 60% of them belief in God did you know that this idea that science and God are incompatible that belief in God removes your imagination goodness me who invented the colors who invented the universe I discovered you know it doesn't take long to discover it if you approach it from the right perspective that scientists did not invent the universe nor did they invent the human mind you see we ought to be very humble people we study a given with a given and to think of the God who invented the whole thing is boring now there is a legitimacy behind your question Jeff and that is the tragedy of evangelical rejection of an intellectual and cultural dimension to life the attitude that we don't need to think about the glorious wonders that God has done in the universe now that I'm not accusing you of that of course I'm not but I discover it where people of mostly of a previous generation have been afraid of science and things like that that is an absolute tragedy to paint a picture that God who invented the human mind is anti-intellectual I mean that is just utterly absurd the first commandment is what love the Lord your God with what your mind and if more of us did it we'd make more impact in their culture because they see some of us and our knowledge of our profession as a way up there were brilliant engineering or whatever it is our knowledge of the Bible of God and scripture remains a second form level and people our colleagues see it they're not interested in what we have to say simply because it lacks that imagination so I think there is a subtext here that's very important to listen to I was told long ago if you want people to find you interesting you be interested and don't be a monomaniac who can only talk about one topic you'll soon find you very few people to talk to these are very important things actually that we really take seriously our Christianity and the creation dimension of it and when we do that people will be far more interested in the redemption dimension of it sorry to go on about that but there we are we ask one more question so you mentioned Bill Phillips I'm actually on a committee through the American Association for the Advancement of science with Bill with a great guy really delightful Christian and I look at someone like Bill Phillips and then I look at some of the other people that you've mentioned and there seems there seem to be differences in openness yes or epistemic so this is the idea of knowledge what we can know this epistemic openness like some people seem inherently unwilling or even angry at the suggestion that the resurrection might actually have happened I think you mentioned Spinoza and even Hawking and that that's sort of an idea that there's sort of a since there's an anger there and let me just read you something from Thomas and philosopher who I know you're kind of interested in some of the things that he's written lately it's just from a book called the last word here's what he said I speak from the experience this is talking about religious people and he himself as an atheist I speak from experience being strongly subject to this fear myself I want a theism to be true and I made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers it isn't just that I don't believe in God and naturally hope that I'm right in my belief it's that I hope there is no God I don't want there to be a God I don't want the universe to be like that so I just wonder how what would you recommend for everyone no matter which side of the equation they're on at this moment how would you encourage them to inculcate a sense of openness to evidence to consider all of the evidence to think about these things deeply rather than I mean nagels very honest which I appreciate very much but I think a lot of us kind of react in this way I was actually deeply moved when I read that by Nagel because for a philosopher of his eminence to say something like that is very costly and he's in huge criticism especially from people like Dawkins and so on so I have great respect for that he is really beginning to see some of the implications of naturalism and he doesn't like them intellectually because they seem to undermine rationality and so on well I what can I say I encouraged people I tried to befriend people first of all because you can't get very far these discussions if they're hostile and all the people I debate in public I try to go out for a meal with them another drink with them and have a good conversation with them so that I get to know them on other levels than on these spikey points among these difficult points I find the really great scientists are much more open than the lesser people much more open much more honest with what they don't know a Richard Fineman was a brilliant example of this I just don't know he'd say all the time I respect me develop I tested he was really the towering genius of 20th century American physics world physics of date and to get alongside people and share what I find is very important is to listen now that's difficult for some of us to listen to people what moves them and what motivates them now when I detect anger and there is real anger and some people I will say so if I feel that the atmosphere is right I'll say look I'm sorry I may be wrong but tell me I get the impression that it's not that you just don't believe in God you're angry about it what makes you I remember once I was NACA didn't go to Vulcan Novosibirsk in Siberia and a huge big meeting and I I was asked to speak and I was attacked viciously attacked by a very bright chopping Reed I rude into me and this anger came I very clear so after I'd finished and ain't finished today he interrupted grab the microphone disrupted the whole program to rant and rail against Nathanson so afterwards I came and sat down and I said why don't we go for a drink you said you wanted I said sure I'd love to I'd love to talk to you said you're angry aren't you he said I am Isis got nothing to do with logic or intellect how's it he said how do you know simple as you've talked nonsense and I said when I hear somebody talk nonsense I know that they're hurting and I said you're hurting aren't you they said I'm hurting he said I had a such a negative experience of what seemed to be Christianity in a seminar as a boy that had poisoned my whole system and I said you're being honest I understand that we talked for hours and we ended threatens because he came out with a heart and even at the student level was one of the first lessons I learned at Cambridge is sitting at dinner and I was talking about the resurrection and I was surrounded by big rugby types they're like big American football types you know the size of vows and weighing about 500 pounds each and they they terrify you so this student opposite me was saying why do you believe the resurrection I try to keep my voice down so these big guys wouldn't hear but of course everybody got quieter it's quieter until and then about the man about 3.9 lost his temper and he stunned the table of all the glasses of me the silver jumped on the table and he said for goodness sake stop talking about that absolute rubbish you see that was a challenge of course and I turned him and I said gosh you feel strongly about that he said I certainly do you must have talked like that because it's absolute nonsense so I learnt that ever said tell me what did you make of the evidence given by the Apostle Paul when you read it he said what I said you heard me said I've never read it I said well where does the strength of your feeling why don't you come back for a cup of coffee so he did 20 minutes later he said you know what he said my parents run this stuff tonight I just don't want it I said that's the first honest thing you've said to me tonight he became a Christian ten minutes later and he's a minister somewhere in the world and I today it just shows that sometimes the anger is the thing that needs to be focused on but you need to earn the right to do it of course Christians sometimes come from a posture of anger as well so they do and this is a tragedy and you see I come from Northern Ireland and I was expecting this question all the time how can you possibly believe any other stuff when you come from a country that's ridden by sectarian terrorism but since nobody asks that they won't answer it you can see but you can see my answer to it in this way great well we're out of time thanks John thanks so much for joining us and thanks to all of you for listening we want to thank you for being here tonight just a couple of comments and then we'll close is this a type of event that you would like to see in Madison on an annual event okay one of the I would too and that's why when it had the opportunity to meet Andrew human you know stand up and so we can say thank you to you the reason we're saying thank you to Andrew is because he represents the Veritas forum out of Cambridge Massachusetts and puts these kinds of events typically on university campuses around our nation together and we first talked tomorrow night you may not know there's an event on campus for students and as we began to talk what seven eight months ago that was at that initial meeting I said you know I don't want to take up students seats with adults from the community and so would it be okay if we hosted one a High Point Church because we have an auditorium that can handle that and he was like I think so and I'll talk to the person that we bring in we didn't I know it would be dr. Lennox at that point in time and so in working with Andrew and in Veritas we've talked about the opportunity to regardless of what the campus ministry is want to do this next year of continuing this and making it an annual event here in Madison there's really two reasons that we want to do this one Jesus in Matthew 22 said what dr. Lennox quoted is the first commandment that we are to know God to love him with our body soul in mind and there's no excuse for a Christian to leave their mind at the door and we want to educate the Christian community we also want to give opportunity for those of you that were invited tonight to come in to hear a lecture from somebody other than the local preacher because even though things may be said the same there's credibility when you look across the aisle at somebody that has an academic stature greater than yours and so we are thankful that you're here if you want to continue this conversation I just invite you to continue it with the person that brought you and that may have just put the God the fear of God in some of you but we need to struggle we need to look we need to study from afar as was suggested if you are a skeptic I just challenge you to be an honest skeptic and then when you see truth that you test it and you step in towards the relationship with Jesus Christ and see what happens in your life there will be transformation as has been talked about this evening one other just housekeeping thing events like this cost and I want to thank door creeks and Blackhawk in High Point Church for their financial contributions if you would like to participate in that contribution there's a donation box between the doors on the way out and we gladly receive that both to help cover some things for tonight but also to ensure that we'll be in contact with Andrew this year to do this again this next fall would it be okay if I close this in prayer thank you Father that you created us to be inquisitive so that we would find you you created us with a need to find you you gave us great minds help us to use them wisely in search of you to understand your word as Paul said to Timothy study show yourself approved to handle God's Word well you haven't called us to follow you blindly you've given us evidence you've given us experience you've given us the ability to test and then you've continued to walk with us as we understand you more and more in our daily lives thank you for the opportunity to listen to dr. Lennox tonight dr. Harden we want to ultimately give you thanks for the truth belongs to you in Jesus name

Channel: High Point Church

Views: 61,702

Rating: 4.7916193 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: 0jAlsaj16KQ

Length: 98min 30sec (5910 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 11 2017