Nepaug Bible Church - http://www.nepaugchurch.org - Pastor's Adult Sunday School Notes - http://www.nepaugchurch.org/bb/bb20011118.htm

SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY (ORGANIZED BIBLE KNOWLEDGE)
Part X: Christology (Doctrine Of Jesus Christ)
D. The Validity Of Christ's Finished Works
  1. Introduction
    1. Some Liberal Theologians teach either Jesus died but did not bodily rise again or that He did not fully die, and was revived from a coma. They teach this because to admit to a resurrection is to admit to a miracle, and that would force one to take the New Testament at face value and believe Jesus is God Incarnate!
    2. However, our salvation and even the Gospel we proclaim for people to believe for eternal salvation depends upon trusting the miracle of Christ's resurrection from the dead, cf. 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, 12-19.
    3. We thus examine the validity of the New Testament claims of Christ's death, resurrection and ascension:
  2. The Validity Of Christ's Finished Works (I am heavily indebted to John F. Walvoord's, Jesus Christ Our Lord and Josh McDowell's, A Ready Defense)
    1. Christ fully died in view of the evidence.
      1. John 19:34 records John's eyewitness account that upon the piercing of Christ's side on the cross, blood and "water" (which John uses to describe a clear liquid) escaped the wound. Dr. C. Truman Davis, M. D., in Arizona Medicine, March, 1965, "The Crucifixion of Jesus," p. 186, as cited in McDowell, Op. cit., p. 222, said of the John 19:34 record: "We, therefore, have rather conclusive post-mortem evidence that [Christ] died, not the usual crucifixion death by suffocation, but of heart failure due to shock and constriction of the heart by fluid in the pericardium." There was "an escape of watery fluid from the sac surrounding the heart."
      2. John 19:32-34 records the Roman soldiers broke the leg bones of the two thieves crucified on either side of Jesus to hasten their deaths, but did nothing to Christ's legs as these experienced crucifixion executioners reckoned Him already to have died.
    2. Christ fully rose from the dead in view of the evidence.
      1. Georgia Tech engineers have calculated a stone reported to have shut a doorway of Christ's tomb, a doorway measuring 4 to 5 feet tall, would have weighed 1 to 2 tons (McDowell, Op. cit., p. 226).
      2. The Roman guard assigned to watch the tomb was a 4 to 16 man security force, each man having been trained so well to fight that four men on each side of a 16-square company of such guards could fight off an entire enemy battalion of 600 men and hold their ground, Ibid., p. 228.
      3. Yet, in spite of this guard and the stone's size, Jesus reportedly arose from the dead, and Jesus' enemies have never been able to produce the body either by examination or by torture of His disciples as is evident in the claim Matthew said was commonly reported by the opposing authorities that the disciples had (incredibly) stolen the body of Jesus, Matthew 28:15.
      4. Dr. Simon Greenleaf, Royall Professor of Law at Harvard University who succeeded Justice Joseph Story as the Dane Professor of Law there, these two men being the most responsible parties for the rise to fame of the Harvard Law School, examined the historical evidence for Christ's resurrection to find if it was true according to evidence supplied for a court of law. Greenleaf concluded that, using the laws of legal evidence in courts of law, there is "more evidence for the historical fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ than for just about any other event in history." (McDowell, Op. cit., p. 217 in citing Greenleaf, An Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists by the Rules of Evidence Administered in the Courts of Justice).
    3. In view of these evidences, and in light of prophecy, we also conclude Christ ascended to heaven:
      1. Acts 1 records the bodily ascension of Jesus Christ from the Mount of Olives.
      2. This event was prophetically anticipated hundreds of years before this time in Daniel 7:13-14.
      3. If we can conclude Jesus of Nazareth indeed fully died and bodily arose from the dead, we would have to believe He was sent from God, and that His claims to be God's Son are true, cf. Romans 1:3-4.
      4. If Jesus is thus the Son of God, His ascension to heaven as predicted in Daniel 7:13-14 and recorded historically as occurring in Acts 1 is to be believed as true.
Lesson Application: We believe Jesus accomplished a TRUE redemption, for His death was actual and His resurrection and ascension physical as REAL events that VERIFY His Person, claims and Work!