Who Moved the Stone? - Examines the Evidence of the Resurrection

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Eliot’s report, dated 18 December 1929, in The Letters of T. S. Eliot: Volume 5: 1930–1931, Ed. Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden (London: Faber, 2014/New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), 38. ISBN 9780300218053 According to this theory, the women were so distraught that, in the dimness of early morning, they went to the wrong tomb. The seal and the guard, one imagines, would have made the right tomb conspicuous even in the first light of dawn. Nevertheless, this theory falls because had the women gone to the wrong tomb, the high priests and the other enemies of the faith would rapidly have gone to the right tomb and produced the body. The swoon theory argues that Jesus swooned and revived in the tomb. This theory teaches that despite the flagellation and blood loss, the spikes in the ankles and the wrists, the hours of exposure on the cross, and the spear in His side, Jesus somehow survived. This theory first appeared 18 centuries after the Resurrection when, apparently, it was possible to believe that a man could survive burial in a damp tomb without food or water or attention of any kind; that He could survive being wrapped in heavy, spice-laden grave-clothes; and that He could then summon up the strength to extricate Himself from the grave-clothes, push away a heavy stone from the mouth of a tomb, overcome the guards—and walk miles on pierced feet to be hailed as Conqueror of Death and Prince of Life.

Who Moved the Stone? - socalsem.edu Who Moved the Stone? - socalsem.edu

The Christian has already reproduced the Bible in over a thousand languages and broadcasts it to the four corners of the globe, terrifying the nations of the world to accept the “BLOOD OF THE LAMB”, that Christ died for the sins of mankind, that he (Jesus) is the only savior. All this is against the clear evidence of his own Holy Book. The Resurrection is a fact of history. And Christian belief is invalid I without it. As the first great front-runner of Christianity contended, "If Christ was not raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your trust in God is useless" (1 Cor. 15:14, NLT). Why is it that three of the Gospel accounts have all Apostles departing from the Last Supper to the Garden when Judas departs independently (and thence arrives with the arrest squad)?

The idea that God LOST whole portions of His Book is something only a modern Laodicean would be spiritually dumbed-down enough to believe. And don't even attempt to correct me by saying He simply "allowed" it to be lost. It's His word. God PROMISED to keep it. See Psalm 12:6-7, Matthew 24:35, etc. I remember this aspect of the question coming home to me one morning with new and unexpected force. I tried to picture to myself what would happen if some two thousand years hence a great controversy should arise about one who was the center of a criminal trial, say in 1922. By that time most of the essential documents would have passed into oblivion. An old faded cutting of The Times or Telegraph, or perhaps some tattered fragment of a legal book describing the case, might have survived to reach the collection of an antiquary. From these and other fragments the necessary conclusions would have to be drawn. Is it not certain that people living in that far-off day, and desiring to get at the real truth about the man concerned, would go first to the crucial question of the charge on which arraigned? They would say: "What was all the trouble about? What did his accusers say and bring against him?" If, as in the present instance, several charges appear to have been preferred, they would ask what was the real case against the prisoner.Strongly influenced by late 19th century skeptics, Frank Morison decided to discover Jesus' true nature by looking critically at the facts surrounding his death and resurrection. He wound up being convinced of Jesus' divinity but it is a fascinating read even if you had no doubt of that fact. I have never read anything quite like this book which still holds up even though it is over 70 years old. Morison evaluates things that I never thought to question such as why Judas chose that particular night to turn Jesus over to the Pharisees, whether the Pharisees and Pontius Pilate worked hand in hand in Jesus' case, and where the apostles hid out (and why) during the trial and subsequent events. In some ways this reads like a "true life" murder mystery as the author reconstructs events and traces people's actions. Did the disciples steal the body of Jesus? No. They were cringing and hiding from the Jewish leaders and the Romans. They did not become emboldened in their faith until after Easter. Besides, they would have had to overcome the trained Roman soldiers, and the tomb was sealed with a Roman seal. Breaking that seal was punishable by death. So, it wasn’t the disciples. Less helpful is the cultural absorption of critical theories about the Bible's veracity. Markan priority means supernatural events in later gospels are discounted and the angel at the tomb becomes Mark himself. This is based on the incorrect assumption that meeting angels does not generate fear. Further Bible study would have cured this error. Death from the Air". The Glasgow Herald. Glasgow, Scotland. 13 May 1937. pg. 3; col. F . Retrieved 27 July 2012.

Who Moved the Stone by Frank Morison - Tim Chaffey Who Moved the Stone by Frank Morison - Tim Chaffey

I love apologetics. This book started good, offering solid proof and plausible explanations for events surrounding the Crucifixion. And from angles I'd never heard of before. I even enjoyed the flowery and antiquated language (it's fun once in a while!) Who Moved the Stone is a classic attempt to get behind the scenes of the Crucifixion story, beginning with evidence of what must have been happening among the people who decided late Thursday evening that Jesus would have to be arrested and executed before sundown the next day, and continuing in the same manner through all the subsequent events, with special emphasis on the arrival at the tomb of the women on Sunday morning. Did all of it occur as reported, especially the Resurrection? Morison says his original purpose in scrutinizing the details was to show that part at least did not occur, but the cumulative effect of all those details convinced him otherwise. See book review Edwin Colston Shepherd, “The Terror from the Air,” Times Literary Supplement, February 13, 1937, 101. R. T. France, after an examination of Robinson's redating of the New Testament books, wrote that he believed it probable that some, and perhaps all, of the Gospels were written in close to their present form, within 30 years of the events.

While the Bible records many instances of miracles, in most cases Christian faith doesn't depend for its existence on belief in, or literal interpretation of any one of them, and they don't play a significant role in Christian consciousness; for instance, whether or not Jonah endured three days in the belly of a whale makes no difference in how I live my life. Christianity stands or falls, however, on the claim of one central miracle: that the crucified Jesus of Nazareth literally rose from the dead by the act of God, attesting to the truth of his message and the meaning of his death as a sacrifice for human sin, and inaugurating an ultimate redemption of the world from sin and death. If that can be successfully dismissed as a fraud or a mistake on the part of the disciples, then we're free to dismiss Jesus as a lunatic (as one of my college teachers maintained) or a charlatan in the mold of Jim Jones. But if it can't successfully be dismissed....? Ans: She wants to put it under her bed? Absurd! She wants to embalm him? Nonsense! She wants to bury him? If so, who dug the grave? No! No! ‘she wants to take him away’. This is a curious work. On one level it is encouraging. A barrister (apparently) in the midst of the liberal decline of the 1930s, in reading the Bible was forced to conclude Christ rose from the dead. Ultimately, two facts narrow down the options. First, there was no body and no occupied grave that anyone could point to in rebutting the claim that he had risen. Surely, a lot of people would have had motivation to do so if they could. "Think of the highly placed Sadducees who were prepared to go to almost any length to discredit and overthrow the cause." Secondly, there is no likely scenario in which anyone removed the body and kept quiet about having done so. Finally, there is the utter transformation in the behavior of the disciples. At the time of the Crucifixion they were scattered, frightened, disillusioned. Shortly thereafter they were loudly and fearlessly proclaiming the Resurrection.