Historical Evidence of Jesus' Resurrection: Was he really dead?

Greetings and welcome to the Faith Chapel Podcast. My name is Jason and I am

the pastor of Faith Chapel.

With this episode, we are starting a new series where we will be exploring the

historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus.

The specific subject for this episode is determining whether or not,

historically speaking, Jesus was dead when he was laid in the tomb.

If Jesus wasn't truly dead, then he could not have been truly resurrected.

Can we know for certain from history that Jesus' dead body was laid in the tomb?

Thanks for joining us today.

So the series that we are coming into tonight is a series that's going to be

based upon the historical evidences that we have for the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And the reason that we're studying this is because it's a very important facet of our faith.

The Apostle Paul makes it the preeminent factor in whether or not Christianity is true.

In 1 Corinthians 15, verses 12 through 20, he makes it very clear that this

1 Corinthians 15:12–20

is the resurrection of Jesus is the most important aspect of our faith.

Where he says, but tell me this, since we preach that Christ rose from the dead,

why are some of you saying there will be no resurrection of the dead?

For if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised either.

And if Christ has not been raised, then all our preaching is useless and your faith is useless.

And we apostles would all be

lying about God. For we have said that God raised Christ from the grave.

But that can be true if there is no resurrection of the dead.

And if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised.

And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless and you are still

guilty of your sins. In that case, all who have died believing in Christ are lost.

And if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world.

But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. He is the first of a great

harvest of all who have died.

So Paul here is stating the importance of the resurrection of Jesus.

It is the basis, the foundation of our faith.

If it is not true, then we should not be following Jesus because this is what

the apostles taught, that Jesus rose from the dead.

They would be misrepresenting God with all that they said, and it should just

not be followed. But if he is raised from the dead, then that this is the truth,

and this is what we should follow.

The author of the book, The Case for Christ, Lee Strobel, he writes this in

the Case for Christ's answer booklet.

The resurrection of Christ has been called the linchpin of the Christian faith.

If Jesus really did rise from the dead, then this provides powerful evidence

that his claims are true, including him being the Son of God,

the prophesied Messiah, and the Savior of the world.

But if Jesus did not rise from the dead, then as the Apostle Paul put it so

bluntly, your faith is futile, you are still in your sins.

In other words, this is a really big deal.

So what we have as followers of Jesus is a necessity to look at the validity

of the resurrection of Jesus.

We all know that it's not very likely that people are going to come back from

the dead, especially if they have been dead for three days, as was the case in Jesus's case.

And so this is something that we, as I prayed about earlier,

like God doesn't necessarily ask us to take blind steps of faith.

He wants us to take steps of faith, but they are based upon the evidence that God has.

And so tonight we're going to look at one theory that denies the resurrection

of Jesus and take a look at how that plays out with the message of the Bible.

So the theory is that Jesus didn't really die when he was on the cross, but he was near death.

And when he was laid in the tomb, Jesus was revived and he was able to come back alive.

So this is often called like the swoon theory.

Jesus swooned on the cross. He fainted on the cross. They perceived that he was dead.

They put him in a tomb, but he wasn't really dead.

So this is one of the theories that they have. And this is from the case for Christ.

It says, as the 19th century dawned, Karl Barth.

Karl Venturini, and others tried to explain away the resurrection by suggesting

that Jesus only fainted from exhaustion on the cross, or he had been given a

drug that made him appear to die,

and that he had later been revived by the cool,

damp air of the tomb.

So the evidences that they give for this, historically speaking,

are two passages from the gospel according to Mark.

So these are what the swoon theory people would say.

It says, one of them ran and filled a sponge with sour wine,

holding it up to him, Jesus, on a reed stick so he could drink.

Wait, he said, let's see whether Elijah comes down to take him.

And so the idea here is in this sponge, there was some sort of medicine or narcotic

even that he, when he was wetting his palate,

he took and it made him faint on the cross.

The other piece of evidence that they use is a little bit later in the gospel,

according to Mark in verse 44 of chapter 15, where it says, Pilate couldn't

believe that Jesus was already dead.

So he called for the Roman officer and asked if he had died yet.

And so they're taking this to mean that Pilate was not sure that he would have died already.

And so it surprised him. And so with this, whatever was in the sponge,

this magic herbal remedy or whatever it was that made him faint,

they took him down and they placed him in a tomb.

And he suddenly came back to, he didn't come back to life. He was never dead.

And so this is what their theory is.

But this theory, it does not hold up to the evidence that we have about the

resurrection, the death and resurrection of Jesus.

So I'm going to be reading multiple scripture passages here.

And there's a reason for that. The reason for that is to show that the Bible

is not just one source of information.

When we talk about the death and the resurrection of Jesus and the gospels,

They are four separate accounts.

And while they share the same characteristics on the main themes,

there are some nuances in each one that help us to understand that they are separate accounts.

And that's why I'm going to read three or four verses from each of these so

that we see the multiple witnesses that we have.

And the more witnesses we have, the better the historical evidence is.

There is very little evidence that can be corroborated by the fewer resources that you have,

the fewer sources that you have, the more likely it is that you don't know what actually happened.

But the more sources you have, the more likely it is that it is accurate and true.

And so we're going to take a look at what happened to Jesus before the crucifixion.

We're going to look at what some medical professionals have said about what

Jesus went through to try to test this swoon theory to see if it is a legitimate

thing to deny that Jesus rose from the dead because he never really died.

So before Jesus's crucifixion, he was before Pontius Pilate and Pontius Pilate

handed him over to be first flawed.

So this is found in Matthew chapter 27, verse 26, where it says,

Matthew 27:26

Then he, Pilate, released Barabbas to them, but had Jesus flogged and handed

him over to be crucified.

Mark 15, 15 testifies to this as well.

So to pacify the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. he ordered Jesus flogged

with a lead-tipped whip, then turned him over to the Roman soldiers to be crucified.

And we also have this in John. Then Pilate had Jesus flogged with a lead-tipped whip.

The soldiers wove a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and they put a purple robe on him.

Hail, King of the Jews, they mocked, as they slapped him across the face.

And so in these multiple witnesses, the same thing happens, that Jesus gets

flogged, that he is beaten up by Roman soldiers.

So what this looks like, and this comes from the Archaeological Study Bible,

is the Romans used one of these flogging wits, which was made of several strips

of leather, into which were embedded, near the ends, pieces of bone and lead.

The Jews limited the number of stripes to a maximum of 40, in practice 39 in

case a miscount, and that's based upon a Deuteronomy rule.

But no such limitation was recognized by the Romans, so we're not sure how many

times Jesus was flogged.

Roman floggings were so brutal that sometimes the victim died before the crucifixion.

So not only do the people who say that the swoon theory is plausible say that

Jesus has to get through the crucifixion,

but they also have to get him through the floggings, which were exceedingly brutal.

So this is what, according to a medical expert, this is Alexander Metherel,

what he says in a flogging would do to him.

So the back would be so shredded that part of the spine was sometimes exposed by the deep, deep cuts.

The whipping would have gone all the way from the shoulders down to the back,

the buttocks, and the back of the legs. It was terrible.

One physician who has studied Roman beating said, as the flogging continued,

the lacerations would tear into the underlying skeletal muscles and produce

quivering ribbons of bleeding flesh.

A 3rd century historian by the name of Euspius described a flogging by saying,

the sufferer's veins were laid bare and the very muscles,

sinews, and bowels of the victim were open to exposure.

So this all happened before Jesus went to the cross.

This flogging, this beating, this

lead-tipped whip was lacerating his body over and over and over again.

And again, the swoon theory people have to understand what he went through in

order to say that he didn't die on the cross and he was revived in the tomb.

And this is something that they have to get across. It's just not plausible for this.

Moving on from the flogging and the beating of Jesus,

there's this other incident that happens where Jesus is so weakened that he

cannot carry the cross beam that the soldiers had put on him.

And this is found in three of the gospels as well, starting in Matthew 27, 32.

Along the way, they came across a man named Simon who was from Cyrene,

and the soldiers forced him to carry Jesus's cross.

Mark 15 verse 21 says, a passerby named Simon, who was from Cyrene,

Mark 15:21

was coming in from the countryside just then, and the soldiers forced him to carry Jesus's cross.

Simon was the father of Alexander and Rufus.

And then finally in Luke 23, 26, as they led Jesus away, a man named Simon,

who was from Cyrene, happened to be coming in from the countryside.

The soldiers seized him and put the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus.

So the idea here is that the floggings that Jesus endured weakened his body

so much that he couldn't carry this crossbeam that they had other criminals carry.

And what this doctor said, this mitherelle, what he said was hypovolmic shock.

And it puts together three words here, and this is what it means.

So hypovolemic shock means the person is suffering the effects of losing a large

amount of blood. This does four things.

First, the... That's obviously... I did not put that one... Spell that one correctly, whatever that is.

First, the person... The heart. That's what it's supposed to be.

First, the heart races to try to pump blood that isn't there.

Second, the blood pressure drops, causing fainting or collapse.

And that's what's happening with Simon of Cyrene.

That's why he's the one that's having to carry this cross.

So then we have third, the kidneys stop producing urine to maintain what volume is left.

Fourth, the person becomes very thirsty as the body craves fluids to replace the lost blood volume.

And so the idea here is simply that Jesus's body was in a medical state of shock.

He was fainting. He was passing out. He had lost so much blood,

more than likely, that he couldn't carry it on.

Then he goes on and says, Jesus was in hypovolemic shock as he staggered up

the road to the execution site at Calvary, carrying the horizontal beam of the cross.

Finally, Jesus collapsed and the Roman soldier ordered Simon to carry the cross for him.

Later, we read that Jesus said, I thirst, at which point a sip of vinegar was

offered to him because of the terrible effects of this beating.

There's no question that Jesus was already in serious to critical condition,

even before the nails were driven through.

So to combat the swoon theory, the evidence that we have of these multiple witnesses

is that Jesus himself was fainting.

Jesus himself was thirsty. He was showing these signs of this hypovolemic shock

that would have resulted from the tremendous loss of blood that he endured.

And again, this story is attested to in multiple witnesses. Three of the gospels

are recording this exact event.

And so that is a need for, that is, sorry, not a need, that is a evidence for

us to trust that the Swim Theory is not correct.

And that to believe in the gospel accounts, we have more witnesses that say

Jesus did die on the cross.

And that's what we'll get to now.

So in Jesus's crucifixion, we had the same story being told in all four gospels.

After they had nailed him to the cross, the soldiers gambled for his close by

throwing dice. That is Matthew 27, 35.

Mark 15, 24 says, then the soldiers nailed him to the.

They divided his clothes and threw dice to decide who would get each piece. Luke 23, 33.

When they came to a place called the skull, they nailed him to the cross,

and the criminals were also crucified, one on his right and one on his left.

And then in John 19, 18, there they nailed him to the cross.

Two others were crucified with him, one on either side, with Jesus between them.

The common theme in all four of these is being nailed to the cross.

This is something that scholarship doubted really happened in Roman times until

they found evidence of this in 1968.

So this comes from The Stones Cry Out, that book.

And it says here, no material evidence of a crucified victim had ever been found

in the Holy Land until 1968.

The significant evidence of crucifixion was an ankle bone still pierced with

a 7-inch long crucifixion nail and attached to a piece of wood from a cross.

When the man was crucified, the nail had apparently hit a knot in the olive wood patibon,

the upright stake, and became so lodged that the victim could not be removed

without retaining both the nail and a fragment of the cross.

Rare find proved to be one of the most important archaeological witnesses to

Jesus's crucifixion as recorded in the Gospels.

So when they did these archaeological digs, what they found was this bone that

was still attached by a nail to a piece of the cross. And this is how they found it.

They found it exactly as the gospels say Jesus was crucified. It was in the Holy Land.

It was in the same century that Jesus lived.

They were doing these things. And so here we have a piece of evidence,

archaeological evidence, that's backing up what the gospels are declaring about

Jesus, that he was nailed to the cross.

Okay, so we have the historical evidence of what the gospels are saying and

how they are corroborating each other,

how they are saying the same things and becoming a multiple witness of what this event was.

Then we have archaeological evidence that's coming behind them and saying,

yes, what they described is actually plausible. It did happen in the first century in Israel.

And now we go to a piece of some information about the medical evidence that

we have to support that Jesus actually was,

he did die on the cross.

And this is what all of the gospels say.

So Matthew 27, 50, then Jesus shouted out again and he released his spirit.

Mark 15, 37. Then Jesus uttered another loud cry and breathed his last.

Luke 23, 46.

Then Jesus shouted, Father, I entrust my spirit into your hands.

And with those words, he breathed his last.

And then in John chapter 19, verses 30 and then 33 and 34, it says,

John 19:30

When Jesus had tasted it, he said, It is finished.

Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. But when they came to Jesus,

they saw that he was already dead, so they didn't break his legs.

One of the soldiers, however, pierced his side with a spear,

and immediately blood and water flowed out.

So all four Gospels are saying he really did die.

He was crucified, and he lived no more. He gave up his breath.

He released his spirits.

He said, it is finished. And then even the Roman soldiers were there to witness

this and they were like, all right, we need to make sure he's dead.

And so they poked his side and it went into his side and probably pierced a

part of his heart by the way it is described in this.

And all of this leads medical experts to say that Jesus really did die.

So here's another quote from that Alexander Mithuro.

Remember that he, Jesus, was already in hypovolemic shock from a massive loss,

blood loss, even before the crucifixion started.

He couldn't possibly have faked his death because you can't fake the inability to breathe for long.

Besides, the spear thrust into his heart would have settled this issue once and for all.

And the Romans weren't about to risk their own death by allowing him to walk away alive.

So the Romans were very, very good at what they were doing.

They were good at executing people. They knew how to make it be suffering so

that it's dissuading other people from doing criminal things.

They're looking at that. They're hearing everything that's going on and being

said that they're seeing how painful it is.

And it's dissuading people from committing capital punishments or capital crimes

that will lead to capital punishments.

And so this is what they do. The Romans also had this rule that if your victim

survived, you would take their place in death.

Like, they're not going to waste their breath on Jesus, whether he was,

they weren't going to keep him alive.

They were going to make sure he was dead.

And this is what we read in the gospel stories.

Then we have evidence from the Journal of American Medical Association.

This was done 40 years or so ago. And it says their concluding thoughts were

clearly the weight of the evidence indicates that Jesus was dead even before

the wound to his side was inflicted.

And then we have atheist New Testament scholar, Gerd Ludman,

who said, historically, it's indisputable that Jesus was dead.

So the evidence is clear.

Jesus did die on the cross, and therefore,

the swoon theory that people said he just fainted on the cross,

it just seemed like he was dead, or he had an herb or something given to him

on that sponge that made him pass out, and people just thought he was dead, and he just revived,

not didn't resurrect, he just revived when he was placed in the tomb.

A couple of other things that go against this theory are the fact that Jesus

wouldn't have been able to roll the stone away if he had just survived a Roman crucifixion.

And so the stories of the women getting to the tomb and the stone already being

rolled away would have been not that not believable at all.

And if you have seen some depictions of the crucifixion of Jesus,

even if he was swooned and he did revive in the tomb, he would not have been.

He would have been in a really bad state.

Even if, even on Sunday morning, if somehow he made it, Like he wouldn't have

been someone who could, he would have needed help, lots and lots of help,

tending to his wounds and that sort of thing.

And so that is the swoon theory and why the evidence behind why it's not believable.

The ideas that are purported through this are, again, that they tied Jesus's

arms, they didn't drive nails through it. That has been debunked by archeology.

The multiple witnesses of Matthew, Mark,

Luke, and John who are sharing the same story and giving the same details that

adds weight to the historical evidence that is the historical evidence and adds

weight to the archaeological evidence.

And that's why this theory is something that is not believable and something

that we can say we've studied it and it's not what is happening.

It's not what happened to Jesus.

The medical examinations don't back it up.

The eyewitness testimony doesn't back it up. And the archaeological evidence

that we have does not back it up as well.

So that's what I have prepared for tonight about the evidence of the resurrection

of Jesus is that he was clearly dead.

He did die on the cross and that it wasn't just him being revived in the tomb.

It was him being resurrected from the tomb. So I just wanted to open it up for

any questions, any comments that you may have or anything in here that you want

to interact with could be outside of this.

Any questions that you have, though, please feel free to ask away.

Wasn't it Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus that took the body and they would

have known too whether or not Jesus was dead? Yeah.

Because they wrapped the body.

Yeah. They would have spoken up if Jesus wasn't dead. So Nicodemus and Joseph

of Arimathea are, we're going to talk about the tomb next week and what evidence we have from that.

But yeah, so it wasn't just the Roman guard.

The Roman guards, after the earthquake that happened there and the events surrounding

Jesus's death, the Roman guard was someone who said, surely this must be the son of God.

And so he was a witness to that death as well. And then you have the women that were around him.

In Luke's gospel, it says that when Jesus started carrying the cross,

the women were behind him crying and he talked to them, but they saw every aspect of it.

In one of the gospels, I don't remember which one it is, but Jesus from the

cross talks down to John and says, John, Mary is your mother,

take her into your house.

And so the witnesses just grow and grow and grow More and more And so,

yeah, to your point, I would agree with that.

Joseph and Nicodemus would have been able to tell if his body was breathing

For sure They were both in the Sanhedrin So yes, they were educated men.

And it is very shocking that they would even touch the body because it would

have disqualified them from taking part in the Passover celebration that next day.

So he meant a lot to them for sure. And if he was still alive,

they would be rejoicing.

It wouldn't be something because they didn't understand what was really going on.

They didn't understand why Jesus had to die and then rise from the dead yet. So yeah.

Is the swoon theory an implication that there was some kind of conspiracy involved

to make it look like Jesus was dead,

but he wasn't really of sending him up to look like he died, but not died?

From what I've read, I could not tell if

they were accusing people of not doing their duty or if they were trying to

appease the religious leaders and it was some sort of bait and switch that they

were trying to get the religious leaders pacified but still keep them alive.

I don't know, based upon what I read, which one that would be,

but it seems like it would be either one of those two that they would have to logically rely on.

You know, just a brief observation here. I mean, God was, I mean,

Jesus was full of God, fully man.

So if you just read it as a book, the swoon theory, some people could buy into that.

But if he was fully human, and he was beat to that degree, with his heart pierced,

with all the blood drained out, the water coming out, they say the water is the last that comes out.

It only makes sense, like you said, that there's no way that person could survive.

And in three days, especially, he probably had all types of infections.

There would have been all types of issues.

So, you know, I think, again, when you read the Bible, you have to look at all

the different aspects, all the different authors to really get a true perspective on what's happened.

Absolutely. And that's a good point. You can take a verse out of the Bible and

you can make it say whatever it is you want it to say.

And reading it in context and in entirety, that is something that is important

for us as students of Scripture to be able to do.

Another medical piece of evidence that I've read, one doctor said,

you know, when the heart can physically break, and when that happens,

the sac around the heart fills with blood and water.

So, when they stopped the spear in them, it was to this physician evidence that

Jesus died of a broken heart. Hmm.

Okay. Which is very impactful for me.

So, and just from my own perspective, a broken heart is in the emotional sense or?

In the physical sense. In a physical sense. Because a muscle then can break.

Okay. And stress can cause that.

He was certainly under a great deal of stress. Yes. That was fine.

Plus, when he was on the cross, then the weight of sin of humanity,

past, current, and future, was placed on him.

That stress, in addition, it makes sense to me that his human heart would break.

And when they pierced it, the water and the blood came out.

Okay. Well, I did not come across that. So thank you.

And the stress that you were talking about was definitely evident even the night

before when sweat was like drops of blood coming out of him. Mm-hmm.

This is such as a brutal fall of execution.

But it was hanging by his hands, basically.

And if you're hung by your hands, the entire weight of your body is pulling

down on your shoulders and your chest, and you can't breathe.

Many crucifixion victims die from suffocation since you can't breathe.

That's why they break their legs.

Those crucifixion victims try to stand up to take the weight off their chest

so they can breathe, so they can't stand up, so they suck pain.

It's impossible for me to believe that anybody that was nailed to the cross

like that could have survived, especially if they were in that kind of condition,

when they were nailed to the cross. Yeah.

And sometimes it took days from where that somebody had died.

That's probably what's his name, what was the puzzle that Jesus had died so soon. Yeah.

But they, you know, killed him before they put him on, so. Yeah. For sure.

They also needed him, certain people needed him to die soon so they could take

care of him before the Sabbath.

Because they couldn't do any work on the Sabbath.

They needed to be able to take care of Wadi before that because even if they

didn't like it, he was a Newt citizen.

And if the person was found gilding, they weren't supposed to be flogged more than 40 times.

But sometimes I just wonder if she was that flogged already more than that.

I think the 40 times was a Jewish rule. And so with him being beaten by the

Romans here, it could have been, yeah, twice that.

The verse in New York that talks about the not more than 40 times,

when I went and looked at it, And says that any more than 40 would be a humiliation on the person,

which I think in this case is very fitting because that's part of what they were trying to do,

make him lose credibility in everyone's eyes.

So even if it was the Romans doing it, so they weren't paying attention to Jewish law anyways.

What he endured for us, and he knew at Gethsemane what he was going to go through.

And I don't pretend to know the mind of God,

but part of me believes that the physical wasn't as frightening for him as the

realization of what it would do to have all the sin of the world placed upon here.

A perfect human being.

I think that caused the great drops of blood even more than the fear of the physical.

Jason, just one thought. They say God knows your life from the beginning to

the end. And when Jesus was born, did you think at a young age,

he knew what was going to happen to him when he became 33 years old?

Because when he said, you know, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

You know, it's almost like he didn't know this was going to happen.

Do you think he actually knew?

I do. I don't know when it would have come across him, but I do believe.

He knew why he was born, but did he know everything that was going to happen at that time?

Because there are prophecies from Isaiah that say.

And so, if he knew that prophets, which he surely, I'm sure he did,

would have known the prophecies that were going to happen to him.

Yeah. I don't remember where, but I do know in the Old Testament that someone

prophesied that the Son of Man,

no, not the Son of Man, but those varian words, he had to say those.

It was prophesied that he would. The place that Polly is talking about is Psalm 22. It's in verse 1.

And what I believe Jesus is doing with those words is that he is redirecting us back to this psalm.

So he wants people to hear him.

I don't think he's surprised at that moment. And like I said, I don't know when.

It might have been when the Holy Spirit came upon him. I don't know when,

but I fully believe that he knew what was coming.

But what I think he was doing with those words on the cross was pointing us

back to this psalm and giving us clues as to who he is.

So I'm just going to read through this, at least the first part of it.

My God, my God, why have you abandoned me or forsaken me? Why are you so far

away when I groan for help?

Every day I call to you, my God, but you do not answer. Every night I lift my

voice, but I find no relief.

Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.

Our ancestors trusted in you and you rescued them.

They cried out to you and were saved. They trusted in you and were never disgraced.

But I am a worm and not a man. I am scorned and despised by all.

Everyone who sees me mocks me. They sneer and shake their heads saying,

is this the one who relies on the Lord? then let the Lord save him.

And again, that's a quote from Jesus's death where other people were saying that about him.

Is this the one who relies on the Lord? Let the Lord save him.

If the Lord loves him so much, let the Lord rescue him.

Yet you brought me safely from my mother's womb and led me to trust you at my mother's breast.

I was thrust into your arms at my birth. You have been my God from the moment I was born.

Do not stay so far from me, for trouble is near and no one else can help me.

My enemies surround me like a herd of bulls. Fierce bulls of Bashan have hemmed

me in like lions. They open their jaws against me, roaring and tearing into their prey.

My life is poured out like water and all my bones are out of joint.

My heart is like wax melting within me

My strength has dried up like sun-baked clay My

tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth You have

laid me in the dust and left me for

dead My enemies surround me like a pack of dogs

An evil gang closes in on me They have pierced my hands and feet I can count

all my bones And that just sounds like what happened with the flogging My enemies

stare at me and gloat They divide my garments among themselves and throw dice for my clothing.

O Lord, do not stay far away. You are my strength. Come quickly to my aid. Save me from the sword.

Spare my precious life from these dogs.

Snatch me from the lion's jaw and from the horns of these wild dogs.

I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters. I will praise you among

your assembled people. Praise the Lord, all you who fear him.

Honor him, all you descendants of Jacob. Show him reverence,

all you descendants of Israel.

For he has not ignored or belittled the suffering of the needy.

He has not turned his back on them, but he has listened to their cries for help.

I will praise you in the great assembly. I will fulfill my vows in the presence

of those who worship you. The poor will eat and be satisfied,

and all who seek the Lord will praise Him.

Their hearts will rejoice with everlasting joy.

The whole earth will acknowledge the Lord and return to Him.

All the families of the nations will bow down before Him. For royal power belongs

to the Lord. He rules all the nations.

Let the rich of the earth feast and worship, bow before Him.

All who are mortal, all whose lives will end as dust, our children will also

serve Him. future generations will hear about the wonders of the Lord.

His righteous acts will be told to those not yet born. They will hear about everything he has done.

And so that psalm was prophesying what was going to happen to him.

And Jesus was pointing us back to see that and to come to the end of it and

to see that people will praise him.

Especially the one that It goes back and forth between first person and talking

to God, but it seems from that reading that he's the one that descends, that he dies,

that people are mocking and laughing him, but people will, because of that,

come to praise God for it.

And so, yeah, that's how I would answer that.

Thank you again for joining us in our discussion on the knowability of Jesus' death.

This is just the first stop on our search for the historical evidence of Jesus' resurrection.