Father Spitzer’s Universe - 2018-03-28 - New Evidence Of The Resurrection

[Music] [Music] hello and welcome once again to EWTN father Spitzer's universe where no man has gone before I'm Doug Keck your host coming to you live from our EWTN studios in Irondale Alabama the heart of the mothership where it all began with Mother Angelica back in 1981 of course we all remember that it was only two years ago believe it or not that mother left us and we keep her in our prayers and of course we asked her to keep us in her prayers as well just to remind you to send us an email check us out on Facebook send us a tweet on Twitter and for all things related to father Spitzer make sure you check out the magic centers website Maja's Center one word.com today we take a little bit of a right-hand turn in the universe moving away from talking about our 10 universal principles to new evidence of the resurrection you've heard it here first fathers got the latest information to tell us about obviously here in the middle of Holy Week just ready to get into the treasure room that's coming up and you know for all of our wonderful Easter programs and Holy Week programs one place to go picture on your screen Holy Thursday Good Friday everything's happening from Rome and from Washington and from here as well and go to ewtn.com for a full listing of all of that information and don't forget father Spitzer's book is also available through our ewtn religious catalogue and we'll continue with the ten universal principles pick that up next week and now we turn once again to the west coast to father Robert Spitzer out at our West Coast studios in Orange County California and coming into view and and a blessed holy week to you Father welcome o blessed holy week to all of you good folks there at EWTN and in Birmingham we're loving it here at the Christ Cathedral just the whole celebration is really fantastic so maybe a special prayer to start things off here as we head into Good Friday and Holy Thursday and then obviously Easter in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit amen Heavenly Father we give you thanks for the blessings you have given us especially the blessings of this holy week a week of special grace that comes to us the grace of our redemption the grace of the Holy Eucharist the grace of salvation manifest in the resurrection of Jesus all of which we celebrate through his unconditional loving self-sacrifice help us to appreciate and to just be able to more and more deeply observe and and and enter into this Paschal mystery this unconditional love that has saved the world so that as we do our trust in you our hope in our salvation and the love that comes from it might spring forward into ever new depths through Jesus Christ our Lord amen a Mary seat of wisdom pray for us name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit amen okay we're gonna be talking about the resurrection for some other questions from our prior shows that some of them touch on the resurrection and the shroud so we figured we could get a couple of those in first and then we'll get on to some new evidence for the resurrection okay this came to us from face book father there's no mention of the Shroud in the Bible if something that miraculous happened as to create an image of Christ on the shroud why wouldn't that miracle be mentioned in the Bible that miracle would be the most amazing of all the miracles in the Bible and it seems like it would be important to have it included and this is Mary asking about the shroud something you know a little bit about yeah Mary actually the shroud is mentioned in the Bible it's mentioned actually a couple of different times we know that Joseph of Arimathea procured a linen cloth in which to bury Jesus we know that the the early witnesses the women saw the burial cloth we know that the face cloth of Jesus now called the face cloth of Oviedo is mentioned in the Gospel of John side-by-side with the burial cloth but what you're probably thinking Mary is that it doesn't mention that his image was on the Shroud and and and point of fact that is true and it doesn't also mention that there are bloodstains on the shroud however obviously there were and so you know the shroud was of course taken by the early church and there is a substantial amount of evidence you know for the bloodstains being on there why that particular aspect of the shroud is not mentioned in my own opinion is because of course the event of the resurrection is so spectacular that you know that the shroud is a relic of that you know it's just you know in comparison to the spectacular glorious spiritual you know nature of Jesus's resurrection appearance probably seemed almost insignificant by comparison so not insignificant but just you know not relevant in comparison to this remarkable resurrection appearance that they had witnessed now of course from our perspective today to have and we'll be talking about that this more in the program but that image as you might have heard you know is a relic of the Resurrection itself and and the good part about it is we can judge from using scientific tests on the shroud itself to show that this kind of an image that's only on the very uppermost part of the surface of the fibrils never penetrating to the middle or the module of the fiber that this had to be produced by light it couldn't be produced by paint dyes vapors liquids scorching of any kind it has to be produced by light energy without the accompanying heat energy and we'll talk about how spectacular that is what a relic of the Resurrection so for us in the 21st century it's an incredibly important let me add an equation of the resident let me ask you a question so what is your fairness say that you know our appreciation of the shroud has come really that much more in the last hundred hundred fifty years let's say because of the discoveries with you know film and negative images so I mean for someone in the first century obviously if Christ had been crucified and obviously didn't have the ability to have all of the you know Aleutians done he would have obviously been wrapped up and there would have been blood that would have been expected to be seen right so they would not see the image necessarily that we're used to seeing on the shroud picking up the shroud at that time right yeah actually they might have even seen it too you know but if you look at the actual positive image of the shroud it just looks almost like a sort of a yellow sort of a you know maybe straw colored image on a white linen and you wouldn't know you'd say okay there's an outline there of the body but it's only with photography that it that we then begin to discover whoa that's a perfect negative image and then it's only with computerized and digital photography that we noticed oh my gosh it's a perfect three-dimensional photographic image and then we notice hey wait a minute it was scientific testing again it's only on the very uppermost surface of the of the fibrils you know and it never even gets to the middle of the you know the the fiber and it's only with scientific testing that we can tell that the three-dimensional parts of the image are in perfect proportion to the surface parts of the image etc etc all of which lead us to the fact that this had to be done by light energy and of course light energy which is not accompanied by the the heat energy which would have required six to eight billion watts of light energy which no you know dead body is ever going to produce under any circumstances through natural causation and they're in because of the scientific testing we know the relevance of the image but if you were to look at that image it looks like you know a straw sort of colored image you know and and you wouldn't of course you'd notice the bloodstains you say well that's the precious blood of my lord you know that would be important but I mean here is a church that has just seen the glorious risen presence of Christ and received the Holy Spirit nice to have the shroud it's a great relic of of his death but he is risen as he promised we have seen him and received of his holy spirit and now we are doing miracles in the name of Jesus it sort of is this this moment or you know you can see that it's just not going to bear special mention in the gospel text but of course for us in a scientific age right if this is incredibly important as a validation of the actual resurrection in the precise way that the gospel described it here's a question father just a quick one this is what I had when I was a kid myself my father Spitzer Kuhn explain why Easter is the most important holiday on the Catholic calendar even more important than Christmas is and this is from manual and I used to think well Candy's nice but I like the toys at Christmas so why wasn't Christmas more important so yeah well actually it's the whole Easter Triduum together we clump Easter Triduum which includes of course Holy Thursday and Good Friday and and and with these two dates we have basically the entire core of our salvation yes it's all dependent upon the Incarnation and birth of Jesus which is wonderful but it's Jesus actually at the Last Supper it's Jesus who voluntarily allows himself to be taken to the cross and tortured in an unconditional act of love that is going to redeem us and then of course the resurrection from the dead that validates that he did not die he sacrificed himself as the Son of God voluntarily reappearing in his glory his light his is his power at the resurrection in his appearance to give us the Holy Spirit so that we too might be able to go out and and do you know miracles and do you know a preach and be inspired through that spirit in his name so I mean in a way it's all three of these events that's the whole core of the mystery of salvation right there through Jesus Christ the Son of God so we always elevate Easter you know to this great significance because it's the culmination it's the moment at which Satan is definitively defeated it's the moment at which the unconditional love of God is assuring all of us into the kingdom it's the moment at which the resurrection that we're going to inherit is revealed it's like you know an atomic bomb worth of grace you know just coming right at us in in the best you know possible sense if we're if we're really looking for it and taking it in of course Christmas gets everything going and and and of course the Annunciation which I think we're gonna celebrate on April 8th or 9th you know really is the first part of getting it all going these are two extremely important dates in the church calendar the Annunciation being the actual moment of incarnation and of course the Nativity being the birth of Jesus Christmas and then of course the culmination of all grace coming right there Holy Thursday Good Friday and of course holy Saturday and Easter Sunday right and it's a Saint Paul said since we're talking about the resurrection basically if there's no resurrection of the dead then not even Christ has been raised and if Christ has not been raised our preaching is useless and so is your faith so that's why Easter important right that's right Paul put it smack dab in the center you know a crucifixion without a resurrection yike that is a bleak prospect indeed and of course Paul says but that isn't the reality it's a crucifixion with a glorious resurrection so we ought to have faith and for not a single moment you know doubt or undermine the historical veracity of the resurrection in glory by Jesus cry okay so now we got a question from I think somebody who does have some doubts dear father sherbet sir I consider you a very intelligent man I also think that anyone who takes any of the miracles in the Bible literally needs some help any man of science knows that these quote-unquote miracles did not actually occur how about you and this is Mike hey Mike I got to admit you know there are truly so many men of science or people of science who really do believe in the miracles in the Gospels I mean I'm not the only one there's a whole bunch of them in fact the last poll that was taken of the American Association for the Advancement of science Triple A as basically showed that 51% of bench scientists working scientists are theists and many many of those theists are Christians who do believe in the America I have so many friends at virtually every institution a University throughout the United States who are departments of physics or science who are true truly believers in the miracles in the New Testament to discount them completely without any evidence that you know that the Apostles witnessed what they thought they witnessed and you don't have that evidence right we we all have faith that the Apostle said this person was raised from the dead do I think the Apostles were completely ignorant about what death is do I really think that these people were just in a coma you know and and we're just not able dand then suddenly you know Lazarus several days later kind of pops out with bandages on after being in the tomb you know I think he was probably dead you know and I really do think you know that you know that the the Daughter of Jairus was really dead you know they had already prepared the widow of Nimes body for burial I think he was really dead for all intents and purposes I don't think they were in a coma I don't think that the exorcisms of Jesus are all just manifestations of grand mal seizures of epileptics or some other you know physically a determinable disease I really have to tell you Mike I think the Apostles were not that stupid because of course what are these people who are you know in you know need of an exorcism what are they doing what are they saying they have all of the evidence of somebody with prater natural or supernatural knowledge speaking through them so they are aware of who Jesus is they are a fearful of Jesus because of who he is they are people who also are really kind of blasphemous it's not you know epileptics don't become blasphemous prescient and praetor have prater natural knowledge etc etc right they you know and Jesus of course is you know speaking to them you know in a very spiritual way what is your name you know and of course they're not giving the name of the person they're giving the name of Legion or something now you say well gee you know these are just people who are not men of science who are making these reports nevertheless they're still accurate historical reports and given that fact we have no reason to say but science can discount them simply because we don't have a scientific test that could discount them just like the miracles of Lourdes and I must tell you if you haven't looked Mike at the at the Lourdes Medical Commission reports I mean the the miracles that are accepted by the Lourdes Medical Commission are so thoroughly examined not only by people they're all people of science and they're all people who are looking at this from a very objective point of view some of them with faith some of them you know really not with faith trying to understand but are all brought in to them to answer one question can these events be explained by any known means of natural cause Asian and if they cannot be so explained then for all intents and purposes and we can say it's reasonable and responsible to believe that some supernatural power or agency is responsible for them can I prove to you that it's a supernatural agency no because I don't have a scientific test for supernatural power because all scientific tests are predetermined to be fournette to test for natural powers so for all intents and purposes if you have a all the natural tests we can devise and we just cannot see any natural causation then as physicist John Jackson said these of either shroud well I'm a physicist I like natural causation I test for natural causation but if there is no natural cause for how a dead body can produce 6 to 8 million watts of light energy without the accompanying heat energy then fine you know I'm if there's none of it I'm gonna have to believe in a supernatural cause so Mike I gotta tell you I just think first of all your statement that all men of science don't believe it that's simply wrong frankly I know lots of them and triple AES knows lots of them that's simply wrong and the second thing you know that I would have to say is you cannot discount those miracles just you know scientifically just from the accounts that were given on the basis that the Apostles did not have any scientific or medical knowledge they gave accurate reports and I think you know if those people were dead who they said were dead and I have every reason to believe that they could tell what a dead person was and and I don't think there were all that many states of long-term comatose right but you know states that are going on that suddenly Jesus happens to be a part of right and realizes oh this is a long-term comatose state and I can awaken this person from that state you know by touching them or something of that nature I gotta believe they were dead and Jesus's power allowed them to rise from the dead and I can I'm gonna say that as a reasonable and responsible person of science who really does believe that those accounts or of a raising from their dad well the one thing I agree with Mike about you're a very intelligent man that that we all agree around this show and watch this show here's here's one more quick question before we start talking about new evidence for the resurrection do you follow the spitzer an email we know that the messiah was preordained so that mankind could be liberated from original sin likewise Judas played a necessary part in salvation history if it wasn't Judas someone else would have had to perform the deed was Judas a villain or was his role also preordained well of course his role is not preordained to betray the Son of God right so Jesus Judas pre-ordained would mean Judas came into the world to betray Jesus no that cannot possibly be the case Judas came into the world to be a disciple of Jesus but Judas chose to betray Jesus now we don't know why he did it but we do know one thing he freely did it when Jesus tells him in yesterday's Gospel what you are about to do do quickly you know he's talking to Judas as if he's a free person go ahead and I you know do what you're gonna do he's you know Judas is free to do it you know is it just for money no I don't think it was just for money do I think that that Judas had maybe some other agenda maybe forcing a battle between the Jewish authorities and the Roman you know occupiers of Jerusalem and and sort of forcing this battle and Jesus is going to come out and top maybe maybe he thought that something like that was possible I do think he's a man of very complex and mixed motives I do think he's probably it's for some reason exceedingly frustrated by Jesus or angry at Jesus for something or resentful toward Jesus for something it's hard to say but I mean betrayal is betrayal and there's people who betrayed countries and they do it you know for whatever motives you know most of them for greed but I think in this case there are other motives mixed in with Judas but was he free absolutely he was free he was brought into the world to be free he was brought into the world to freely choose to be a loyal disciple of Jesus but Judas decided to betray him and of course did the betrayal was that necessary as a part of the whole plan no I do not think it was a necessary part of the plan a condition without which Jesus would not have been able to sacrifice himself believe me the chief priests and the religious authorities were very very bent on trying to get you know some excuse to bring him before Pilate to have him persecuted and get him out of the way and when Jesus goes up to Jerusalem and he does it willingly he knows he's putting himself right into their clutches and he knows that they're gonna think to himself you gotta be kidding me he's coming here and the Feast of the Passover this is too good right before why we can get some false charges all trumped up and bring him before Pilate ourselves as a troublemaker this kind must be stupider than we ever really thought what an opportunity to seize upon do I believe that that's one went through yes do I believe that would have gone through their mind without the cooperation help of Judas yes of course I do and do I believe that all those the people who were plotting against Jesus were preordained to do so no I think they were brought into the world to freely look at Jesus as well and to make a decision whether they wanted to believe him and to follow his way or to reject him and to persecute him and they freely chose to do the latter so that the point again you know that I would make there is you don't have to worry truly about you know Judas you private let me let me ask you what it's it strikes me in kind of odd in our own in our own world and you get it from having been a teacher and young people in some ways we're all about the fact that I have the freedom to do everything and anything and it's really up to me but then error seems to be this flip side when something goes wrong or someone's in trouble and then suddenly it becomes well really I really didn't have any choice I was basically you know conditioned by the culture my upbringing how I was treated so that I really am not quote-unquote responsible for the fact that I made those particular decisions that turned out wrong oh yeah no I mean it's what we call the grand equivocation of freedom an equivocation means you use the same term in two completely different ways in the same breath basically and so you you're gonna come out with a false conclusion and the first notion of you know it is you know I am free almost absolutely free you know to do as I wish and then the next thing is well I'm not free because I can't do as I wish all the time because I've got these conditions in me but the truth of course lies in the middle we're not always absolutely free we just aren't there are all kinds of things that condition and limit our freedom and those conditions and limits to our freedom could be from our background they could be from some physical disorder they could be from some genetic disorder you know but a lot of the time we are free and of course we make morally bad choices knowingly and and that would of course be an abuse of the freedom that we do have so you know that the truth lies in the middle we're not you know there's a wonderful book by philosopher by the name of paul ricoeur called the freedom and nature are the voluntary and the involuntary freedom in nature it's it's a good book I mean it's highly technical but it kind of gets you right didn't you know to tell you what what's the nature of human freedom well it's partially voluntary it's partially involuntary you know it's it's partial freedom essentially and of course he really makes the case in a very detailed and definitive way and that might be a place if he if you have the if you like the technical stuff that might be a place to start okay technically we got to take a break and we'll be back with much more when we talk about of course new evidence for the resurrection would father Spitzer right after this short break you're watching father Spitzer's universe more to come stay with us [Music] in the midst of this universe 2,000 years ago the resurrection we're honoring it this weekend of course as we roll into the tritium let into of course then Easter Sunday and there's new evidence of the resurrection and we turn to father Spitzer our expert on the shroud and also related to the resurrection so father two thousand years later how could there be new evidence of the resurrection what do we mean when we say that well I think there's really three we could apportion it into three different areas the first of course is the scientific evidence and that actually comes through the Shroud of Turin and I'll explain that in a moment but there's really some scientifically accessible evidence to the resurrection on the Shroud as I was just mentioning before the break the the second area comes from what we call historical or historiographical analysis and and there's kind of criteria for historicity that have been you know outlined by historians throughout the last 50 years and there is a remarkable fellow NT right who's a very fine historical exegete who wrote a book called the resurrection of the Son of God and I do want to talk about two of his arguments in particular for the history and these are historical or historiographical arguments for the resurrection not scientific like the Shroud that there's a third area you know that's really quite important as well and that's really in the analysis of the of the Gospel accounts you know and we can apply you know historical analysis to the Gospel accounts and and and look at them from a vantage point of you know other historical documents that you know and archaeology and and just to see if there is you know that that a bunch of arias criteria that are in place that would suggest that the Apostles are not apologetically minded nearly as much as they are conversion minded they want people to come you know to follow the way of the Lord not just simply to become Christians quote/unquote in in name so I might just start with the Shroud because I think it's the kind of evidence certainly that that people are looking for that's scientifically testable just to begin with you know that 1988 carbon dating I know that a lot of people believe that the Shroud was discredited in 1988 by the carbon dating that was done but that carbon dating has been discredited itself the sample that came that was used that was taken by the three individuals there to be sent to the labs that sample that was taken it was a single sample that was split into three parts and then sent to three different labs for carbon dating now that particular sample that was taken came from a very controversial corner of the shroud originally the protocol asked for seven different places to be tested but it came from this very controversial corner why controversial because that corner was caught in a fire in other words there was a fire of chambre in 1458 and and the shroud was in that fire and it was damaged and these sisters after the fire came and sewed up those places that had been damaged by the fire and so then they put a backing cloth on it and sewed used material from the 15th century obviously to to sew that up now it's strange that of all the places you've got taken samples or fibrils from the shroud for carbon dating that that corner should be the one where the sample was taken from I mean it's beyond my capacity to understand why they would do it secondly that sample was taken without any you know chemical pyrolysis without any thermo chemical testing right it was it was literally all the materials tests were ignored completely and the sample was taken without the prior materials test the third probably ask you questions let me just says yeah let's in G but what would the prior materials test proven or shown oh it would have shown whether this was truly linen from the rest of the shroud okay and here's what here's the finding I'll just answer the question with the finding that happened in 1998 several of these fibrils from the precise spot or the thread sample had been taken so we can tell by digital overlay where the samples had been taken from the sticky tapes during the 1970s derp investigation well when those samples were taken from that spot where the thread was taken for carbon dating we find that in those fibrils there are cotton fibers the rest of the shroud has no cotton in it okay it's a pure linen shroud but this patch has cotton in it because that patch was sewn up by those sisters after the fire chambray in 1458 and it so happens by the way that there isn't any cotton in jerusalem at that time cotton you know comes into europe much later and of course we also know that in those fibrils there is not just cotton but a gum die mordant so a Morgan adheres to the dye to the thread right that that mordant actually was unavailable in Europe prior to the 13th century so we you know the nuns dyed the thread so it would look the same color as the linen but in point of fact it's not linen there's cotton throughout so it's not surprising if you have cotton fibers mixed in with linen in the damaged part of the shroud and and it was woven in there in 1458 what a shock that it's dated to the 15th century however since that time well first of all so that you know as dr. ray Rogers who you know as it was the the editor for the peer-reviewed journal the thermochemical just said these samples could not have been typical of the rest of the lemon shroud you know the the rest of the Shroud of Turin which is made of linen so that's the first thing but then of course you have for other tests that were performed since that time of vanillin tests a Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy test a Raman laser spectroscopy test and a mechanical tension and compressibility test all of which pretty much put the shroud to the first-century plus or minus a hundred and fifty years well that smack dab with a ninety six percent confidence level which is really pretty much right within the range of when Jesus was crucified and when that Shroud probably was made that linen shroud was made and furthermore as I've said on a previous show there are actually coins on the man's eyes right and these coins can be shown to be an exotic coins with a special digital overlay we can tell that they come from a special minting of Roman leptons in 29 ad by Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem hello where did a medieval forger get those particular coins to put on the man's eyes which are an integral part of the image and the Shroud that happened to resemble these enigmatic coins hey Joey come from you know those coins we've been saving for the last 1,500 years pull them out well yeah we need them now with the right and precise enigmatic dimensions from the Pontius Pilate minting right rose right right yeah so and then of course the resemblance to the face cloth of OVA dough you know that was used to transport Jesus from the cross to the to the tomb pretty much you know all of these things show that the the shroud has a very good provenance that goes way back before 14:58 so the carbon dating has been invalidated new carbon dating simply has to be done according to the original protocols and of course we have to have materials testing done from each of the samples before they're sent to the lab make sure they're from you know the linen and not a repeat of this you know performance which was just seriously unscientific right and and seriously biased so for all intents and purposes I think there is a very good deal of evidence to suggest strongly and probabilistically that the Shroud is originating from the time of Jesus it has all the imprints of his unique crucifixion crowned with thorns you know with you know the spear hole right between the fourth and fifth of ribs going up through the pericardial sac into the heart it also has you know the the imprints of nail prints exactly where they would have had to have been in the wrists and in the ankles in order to hold the feet in the hands to the cross during time of crucifixion without being tied to it and of course it has the lashings from you know a Roman whip we know that the spear that was used resembled a Roman Legionnaire spear which was a Roman pilum you know these are things that honestly medieval forgery have dreamt up you know and I don't know they probably wouldn't have the technical ability to make that replica that close based on what you're saying even today I mean - oh yeah try make everything like that work it's interesting too because I can tell you one thing oh sure go ahead no on the 3d carbon copy of Jesus was created using the Shroud of Turin as an article just out about that and they they they talk about that and you mentioned that on it they count three hundred and seventy wounds from the flagellation so they hypothesized a total of six hundred blows yeah yeah no that's that's correct and and you know there are so there's a hundred and twenty-four on the head and face alone you know that includes on the nape of the neck you know but on the top of the head the around the head the nape of the neck and in the face I mean there's a hundred and twenty four wounds I mean this guy was tormented without any question in the most horrific way so let's talk about since we talked about the shroud and and that physical evidence like what NT right talks about in your book as well the kind of evidence where you talk about two of the things arguments for the historicity of Jesus's resurrection one is the growth of the Christian messianic movement after the public persecution of its Messiah and then also the Christian mutations of the second temple of Judaism let's talk about those two things one thing let me just ask you I thought it was interesting because you have in the book we reference the idea Judas the Galilean Simon le a czar and some others and the whole idea that even to some degree John the Baptist that in the demise of that leader their movements go away yeah and or the other thing was that the movements if they did continue replaced the leader with a new leader and neither one of those things occurred why is that important yeah well first you know this is one of anti rights arguments and and what right did was kind of a comprehensive study of all the Messianic movements at the time around the time of Jesus so about 70 BC all the way through about seventy eighty looked at all these Messianic movements and including John the Baptist by the way because there was a messianic movement around John the Baptist as well and what he noticed is that every single one of those movements even the ones that had replaced their leader with a so called you know new leader after the death and execution of their Messiah every one of them died away with really within a few months to a year at the very most a year that movement was dead I mean there was really nothing left including the the movement of John the Baptist which was a very big movement now of course you start looking at Jesus and it's the opposite and in write rise story and it's looking at this and he's going wait a minute is leading Jesus is executed publicly humiliated and the Christian Church as a Messianic movement is now growing exponentially with each passing month skip the years I mean with each passing month this movement is growing exponentially okay this demands some kind of an historical cause you just can't say oh it just happened since right things like that just don't happen there has to be a reason why people are flooding toward this religion about a publicly humiliated executed and supposedly dead Messiah and that is because there really is a belief first of all on the part of those apostles right there is the belief that they have seen the Risen Jesus that's the first thing but Wright says that's not even enough because they could be really convincing apostles and they could really give a convincing story that you know they have seen the Risen Jesus but though really that the key point for Wright is they are performing the same miracle right that Jesus did through the power of the Holy Spirit in his name and says right hey this is the deal if God were not behind you if the apostles were telling a lie about Jesus and Jesus wasn't the Son of God as they were claiming then how in the world would God be allowing not just one apostle two apostles but a whole bunch of apostles to be performing miracles I mean some really spectacular miracles from raising of the Dead to the healing of people through his name why would that happen and this becomes the key turning point for right the only plausible explanation it's the testimony of the Apostles to the resurrection in glory that they've seen which is backed up by the power of the Holy Spirit to do these miracles these charismatic acts through the name of Jesus and it's those two things that are causing this messianic movement really to get going yes there are other dimensions that that as it were you know collateralize on it so for example you can see the Christian Church is very open to you know poor people and to slaves and and are trying to remedy the condition of these people so people say yes we would expect that some of them would come but poor people and slaves are not naive they're not going to come to a religion they're not going to come to believe in the name of Jesus and the resurrection of Jesus the sonship of Jesus unless there's something extenuating something that really convinces them that these apostles these survivors of the executed Messiah are truly telling them Jesus has risen and they've got the power to prove it in his name and that says right that becomes a real consulate so I mean it's it's it's that which really does that trick and of course we know that this kind of really high level miraculous and charismatic activity goes right on into the second century but you know eventually it once the church is established it's not as necessary on the same level but do miracles continue to happen sure they do do miracles happen today absolutely they do right I mean there's there's no question that there are miracles as I was just telling Mike in the last segment you know look at the Lord's medical Commission if you don't believe in miracles if you just please take a look at the last 30 or so miracle sanctioned by the Lord's medical Commission or you see absolutely you know tissue immediately growing back that was not there before completely documented you know in in these Lourdes Medical Commission files and attested to by scientists the some of whom are are simply not believers I'm telling you that there's real convincing evidence here you know that that something is is really let me ask you also about this then but since you were talking about right the second one yeah which is a little more I think obscure for the average person having to do with the Christian mutations of the Jewish doctrine of resurrection prevalent by the time of Jesus what is that yeah what right that did in this book again the resurrection of the Son of God was you know the first the whole you got to look at the historical setting right and the historical setting is that the Christian Church did not want to separate from the synagogue they wanted the RET risen son of God Jesus to be accepted within the synagogue the Christian Church remained very close doctrinally to the Jewish roots from which it came because Jesus affirmed so much of those Jewish roots of what a second temple Judaism by the way just refers to the the kind of implicit doctrines of Judaism that developed and congealed between the start of the Second Temple in in in sixth century all the way until the present moment until seven actually until 70 AD when of course you know the temple was it was destroyed the Romans took over in 70 AD but the main thing though is during those years there's kind of this series of doctrines that developed and the Christian Church really wanted to stay close to them because Jesus stayed close to them except there's two huge exceptions to that rule the first is of course the Messiahship of Jesus enough said but the second one is very unusual it's with respect to the resurrection the Christian Church changes everything what does it do the first thing that it does is it makes the resurrection central the very passage you quoted from Paul Jesus is not risen from the dead then our faith is in vain and your preaching is worthless and all those who have died in Christ have died in their sins and there's no cause for hope now that means resurrection is pretty central the resurrection not just because Saint Paul the resurrection because the whole doctrine of the early church that's in every primitive charisma right his resurrection front-and-center it is there as kind of the founding stone of Christian doctrine now this is an in view of this that is certainly was certainly not the case in second temple Judaism the resurrection doctrine was a peripheral doctrine in second temple Judaism there were divisions in Judaism the Sadducees didn't even believe in the resurrection gate restricted themselves to Torah and there were of course disputes about whether there was a resurrection or not but it certainly was not a central doctrine Christianity shifts it right into the center and makes it the most important doctor upon which all the other doctrines hang but that's just the beginning of the mutations of Christian of the Christian doctrine on the resurrection the second area is that the Jew second temple Judaism for the Pharisees who did believe in the resurrection right they believed that that resurrection was going to occur in like a resuscitated fleshly form right so essentially you know that we would all come back and have the bodies that we pretty much have now but those bodies just wouldn't decay anymore and of course Paul says no no no I'm setting the record straight here you're gonna have a new mati console ma you're gonna have a spiritual body and of course that means you know a spiritual body is is is clearly a you know a glorified spiritual body and by the way you know I didn't mention this when I was talking about the Shroud but there is very good evidence from the Shroud of Turin that Jesus's body became spiritual it became mechanically transparent it didn't have any solidity because in order to get the images of all the bones inside the body of the man in the shroud that shroud would have had to have penetrated the body and the light would have had to come from every three-dimensional point on those interior parts of the body which the shroud was exposed to so the light is not just coming that six to eight billion watts of ladies not just coming from the surface of the body it's coming from every three-dimensional part of the body and the shroud actually had to penetrate that body meaning it was no longer you know a mechanically solid it was mechanically transparent which you know indicate little indication of the spiritual nature of the body itself along with its power emanating that light and so this idea you know it's a complete mutation there's there's nothing you know about a spiritual you know powerful resurrection transformation in Jewish doctrine at all so it's a complete you know transformation the third area that that Jewish doctrine believed in was that the the resurrection was going to be a group resurrection at the parousia at the end of time whereas of course now Jesus is an individual he is risen from the dead st. Stephen of course is implied to have been risen with Christ right and so forth so we see all of a sudden we've got this transition that's taking place another mutant Christian mutation of Jewish doctrine from Second Temple Judaism it's not going to be a group resurrection there's going to be individual resurrections and those individual resurrections are going to take place before the actual end of the world of parousia so of course we see other mutations that I could go into but the point is in this one area and the area of the Messiahship of Jesus are these two areas we see that the Christians died departed completely from the Jewish doctrine not only in the importance of the doctrine but also at the same time with respect to the doctrine themselves the content of the doctrine itself and so we add again right has to say look I'm a historian I gotta ask the question why did the Christians do this when they were so careful not to do it with any other doctrine that sort of you know was it was an important doctrine we're not talking about dietary prescriptions and and those kinds of things which Jesus released us from but we're talking really about you know the the doctrines about God and so forth why in the world did that occur and then of course you know based on that why did the Christians you know then of course preach the Trinity but the point is all you know from Wright's point of view is you've got to have a historical reason and that is because they saw the Risen Jesus you can't just look at an empty tomb and go up the Jewish doctrine of of the resurrection is wrong we have to believe in the spiritual doctor in the resurrection the empty tomb and gonna tell you that it's got to be based on something else well what is it based on he when he came was risen in glory he was risen in power and as Paul says we shall experience the resurrection as he experienced the resurrection in the twinkling of an eye we're gonna be transformed to into glory and light and power and spirit we're not going to just be physically resuscitated corpse and this is going to happen when God says it's gonna happen right it's it's it's not necessarily gonna wait until the entire group you know at the end of time it's going to experience this resurrection so essentially we see a real real transformation which is explicable only says right in terms of the gospel accounts and the palinka account of the Risen Jesus appearance itself all right I think this study is really excellent I know it's it's it's a thousand-page book with 5,000 footnotes but I got a summary of it on magis center.com and and and I can you can always download go on our mat Center one word.com and then get all the information from you father Spitzer as we just touch the surface obviously so much more in this beautiful Holy Week going in Easter you've given us a lot to think about and to be confident about if you'd like to give us a blessing for Easter oh absolutely and please bow your heads and pray for God's blessing and may Almighty God send His Holy Spirit down upon you to inspire you to allow you to know the resurrection for which you are destined precisely because of the unconditional love that Jesus Christ has given to the world through his passion and death the self sacrificial act that led to the love which is going to save the world so that you might hope and spread that hope in Jesus Christ to all who would follow his way in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit amen thank you Father I have a blessed holy week and a Happy Easter and we shall see you next week thank you very much you too god bless you and of course father Spitzer we'll be back next week but don't forget about father Mitch's new Bible study scripture and tradition it's really popular check it out on Tuesdays check out our web site ewtn.com it's our other brilliant jazz you would at work and next week the principle of the limits to freedom there are some and we'll talk about them I'm Doug Keck thank you for joining us right here at the very busy intersection of faith and reason stop by next time next week and have a happy Easter god bless [Music] you

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Length: 56min 36sec (3396 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 28 2018