The Sean McDowell Show - Jesus Has Risen: The Evidence!

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

Did Jesus really rise from the dead? I recently gave a talk at a local church on how important the Resurrection of Jesus is IF IT IS TRUE. So what is the latest case for the Resurrection? Today, ahead of Easter, I go into where the research is for the most important event in human history. READ: More Than A Carpenter By Josh and Sean McDowell (https://store.josh.org/product/more-than-a-carpenter-revised/)*Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf)*USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM)*See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK)FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://x.com/Sean_McDowellTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sean_mcdowell?lang=enInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

The resurrection of Jesus is the single most important event in world history if it is true. If Jesus has risen from the grave, Paul tells us in Romans 1-4 that he was declared to be the son of God through his resurrection. If the resurrection is true, life continues after the grave. If the resurrection is true, life continues after the grave. This life is not all there is. There's a movie, some of you might remember 1991 called Flatliners, had Oliver Platt, Kiefer Sutherland, who is forever Jack Bauer to me, Julia Roberts and their medical students

trying to find out if there's life after death. So they flatline one another's hearts, resuscitate them back and ask them what they saw on the other side. Now that's a morbid experiment, but it actually makes sense. If you want to know what it's like in the afterlife, talk to someone who's been there and came back. Well, Jesus didn't die for three minutes or four minutes. He rose on the third day and said,

I'm going to prepare a place for you with my father. If the resurrection is true, life continues after the grave. If the resurrection is true, we have been forgiven for our sins. Eternal life is real. And we grieve differently because death has no power over us. But if it's not true, as Paul says, if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is

in vain and your faith is in vain, and we are found to be misrepresenting God. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless, and you're still in your sins. It's hard to think of an event in history with more at stake than the resurrection of Jesus. Notice I said an event in history. This isn't fiction. This isn't a fairy tale. The claims that actually happened in history. Now I'm going to show you a clip from the movie. This is from the early 2000s with Antonio Banderas. If you don't recognize him, he was the cat from Shrek. What's fascinating about this movie is it's called The Body, and Banderas plays a former green bray and he becomes a Catholic priest.

But they uncover a body in a tomb that they thought was empty that matches the biblical description of Jesus. So the Catholic Church goes into an uproar, again within the movie, to try to figure out, is this the body of Jesus? And if so, cover it up. What I like about this is it's a scene where he's with kind of this agnostic archaeologist and they first walk in the tomb and you see on his face, Banderas does a good job of acting like if this is the body of Jesus, the body of Jesus, quite literally everything changes. Take a look at this clip.

["The Body of Jesus"] They've only been told that we're protecting the body from religious extremists. Do you want him to stay? It's your call. Let me go. Let him go. Okay, now we have our first major archaeological decision. Who goes first, church or infidel? Yeah. Are you nervous? Yes. I think Banderas brilliantly captured the weight. If that's the body of Jesus, it's game over. But you realize you couldn't make a movie like this of any other Old Testament figure,

Abraham, Moses, Joshua. It doesn't matter if we have their bodies. No other religious figure, Mohammed, Krishna, Joseph Smith, but Christianity is tied to the body of Jesus and the resurrection. I was in the airport a few weeks ago talking with a friend who got invited on a huge podcast and we were talking through the evidence for the resurrection. And I said, you know, sometimes you got to make the point that if there was a camera there, and by the way, when I say camera, I'm still like back in the 80s doing this kind of thing. I get it. I'm like, if there was a camera there at the tomb, they would have recorded Jesus

leaving the tomb, hung up the phone, and this guy next to me, he goes, gosh, I'm a Christian. I never thought about they could actually record this. And I had two thoughts. I was like, if you're a Christian, how did you not tie that? This is real history and we could have video recorded it and second. I'm glad you enjoyed my private conversation Today is Palm Sunday one week from the death and resurrection of Jesus Which means roughly 2,000 years ago Jesus entered into Jerusalem being heralded as King it says in John 12 specifically even the king of Israel

Now they were expecting a king to free him from the oppression of Rome and to dominate Physically by force now if you've read the end of the book in Revelation God will do that of Rome and to dominate physically by force. Now, if you've read the end of the book in Revelation, God will do that. But he enters in and despite all expectations, is about to show that he's a king of a different kind. He's about to show the greatest act of love and show that he's the greatest hero who's ever lived. Now, humor me for a minute here, because I want to draw this to a Marvel movie, which if you know me, this is always going to come up. The movie infinity, where if you haven't seen it, don't get lost in the characters. Just listen to the underlying theme. This movie asks the question, when is it okay to sacrifice a human life?

So the movie starts off Thanos, the bad guy, has Thor in chains and Loki has the decision as brother. Will I allow Thanos to kill my brother or give up one of the stones, which makes him more powerful? Will I sacrifice my brother? This happens with other characters, with Star-Lord and Gamora.

This happens with Scar characters with Star-Lord and Gamora. This happens with Scarlet Witch and Vision. Will I destroy the stone in Vision's forehead to protect Thanos from getting the stone and getting more powerful, but it will end Vision's life. There's an iconic scene in the movie where Iron Man is battling Thanos and Dr. Strange is watching, knowing Iron Man's about to die. He has the decision to make. Am I gonna allow him to sacrifice Iron Man or give him the time stone and become more powerful? The movie asks the question, when can we sacrifice a human life? Well Captain America iconically says to vision, he says, we don't trade lives until the only way to stop evil and win

is for Iron Man to willingly lay down his life as a hero and save half the universe. I'm watching this in the theater with my sons when it came out Thursday night at midnight going, this is the gospel. Am I the only one? There's a scene in the movie where Gamorra, this character finds out that Thanos is about to sacrifice her to get the soul stone. And she turns to this character, Red Skull, and she says, this is not love. That's interesting, isn't it? Love doesn't sacrifice another. Love sacrifices oneself. Jesus said what in John chapter 16, greater love had no one than this, that a man lay down his life for a friend. Of course, Infinity War is fiction, but nobody had to tell us when

we're watching this that that's what real love is and that's what a real hero does. That's the real King. And that's what Jesus is about to do one week from right now. Now the question is, how do we know this really happened? I mean, we're talking about an event 2000 years ago. We get fake news today. How can we trust something from 2000 years ago? Well, there's different ways to defend the historicity of the resurrection. But one way comes from a scholar at Liberty University, friend of mine, his name is Gary Habermas.

And I would argue he's probably studied the historicity of the resurrection more than anybody who's ever lived. He first started to study the resurrection as a high school kid in a Christian home in like the sixties. He'd take out these note cards and write notes like, how do we know the body wasn't stolen? How do we know we can trust the witnesses? He was just obsessed with this. He ended up defending the resurrection in 1976 at Michigan State. And by the way, if you're going to defend the resurrection at the university's prominence, Michigan State, with non-Christians on your committee, you're going to have to at least reasonably show that you can make a case, historically speaking. Falls into a period of doubt for about a decade,

almost becomes a Buddhist, interestingly for about a decade, almost becomes a Buddhist, interestingly enough. Right now he's in the process of releasing a four volume defense of the resurrection. Volume one, which you can see is 1,100 pages. It weighs over five pounds. I bought two of them just to work out with them. I had a chance to interview him when this came out and I said, Gary, if you had not gone through that season of doubt, which is painful, would you have been motivated to write this? And it kind of paused. He's like, I don't think I would have.

God can use our weaknesses for his good. By the way, a typical PhD is about 2,000 hours. He said this took him about 32,000 hours Now my point is not that he's right because he spent time on this and written a big book My point is we're in a position in history where I think we have better access to and More data pointing towards the resurrection than we've ever had before Which is ironic the further we get away had before. Which is ironic. The further we get away from this, we think we have less confidence.

I think the further we get away, we have more confidence. Now what he did in his research is he studied over 4,500 academic sources since 1975 in at least three languages. Chronically how the majority of scholars, and by the way, the majority of scholars are not conservative evangelicals. New Testament historians who study this. Looking at what facts that they would agree with, so what are basic facts that are strongly attested historically, and the majority of scholars embrace them.

He has a list of 12 and he kind of nares it down to a list of four. And his point is any explanation for the origin of Christianity has to account for all these facts. So, for example, one of his, what he calls minimal facts is that Jesus died by crucifixion. Friends, as an academic, I'm told not to overstate stuff. And that's true. In academia, if anything, understate stuff. But the evidence that Jesus died by crucifixion is overwhelming.

There's no good reason to doubt this. Unless to be honest, you're already committed to the Quran being the word of God, which denies in surah four the crucifixion of Jesus. That alone is enough for me to not take it seriously as a historical record. The evidence for the crucifixion is just compelling. So for example, we have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. We have the writings of Paul. We have the other New Testament books.

We have early church fathers attesting this. We have a Jewish writer, Josephus in the nineties and tacit is probably one 15 AD, a Roman writer, all affirming the crucifixion of Jesus. By the way, if you say, well, maybe they invented it. Look, if you're trying to invent a story and get followers, you're likely going to invent an honorable death for your founder so we find him somebody to emulate. The crucifixion was the opposite. It was designed to torture and humiliate and shame somebody publicly. If you're making up a movement, you don't base it on a founder who was crucified as a criminal.

Jesus was crucified. By the way, we call it Good Friday. Isn't that bizarre that we call it Good Friday the day our founder was brutally crucified? We don't call it Good Friday the day that Abraham Lincoln or JFK were assassinated. But for Jesus, that's not the end of the story. The second fact that Haramah points towards is the tomb of Jesus was found empty. Now he says slightly less scholars, somewhere around 80% will affirm that this is true. But the evidence, he gives almost two dozen different historical arguments for the empty tomb, some stronger and better than others. We won't walk through all of them, but one that I find most

compelling. In fact, many skeptics will say that's a pretty good point. Is it according to the gospels, all four, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, who first discovers the empty tomb? The what? Mark, Luke, and John, who first discovers the empty tomb? The what? The women do. You've probably read this a hundred plus times, but has it ever occurred to you why that's so significant? In that patriarchal culture, a woman's testimony was not considered as significant as a man's. Men were typically more educated. And in fact, the principle was the more significant event, the more likely you would rely upon a man's testimony. There's an ancient Jewish proverb, not a proverb in the Bible, that says, and by the way, I'm

just delivering this news to you. I'm not saying it's true. It says, better the words of the law burnt than delivered to women. Gosh, it's exactly right. Which shows positively how far we've come. But in that culture, if you're making up a story and you need an empty tomb to get to a resurrection, and you need to convince people that it's true, Who's the least likely people you would invent to be the first witness is the empty tomb. The women. Minimally, you can say they're not intentionally lying and making this story up. They believed it was true. Now there's other facts for the empty tomb.

For example, in what city was Jesus crucified? This is not a trick question. In what city was he crucified? This is the participatory part of the program. You're like, wait a minute. It feels like a trick question. It's Jerusalem, right? It's in Jerusalem. Now it's amazing. We know the exact name, Joseph, where he's from, Arimathea, that he's rich and that he's a part of the Sanhedrin. We know exactly who buried Jesus. Jerusalem's not that big. So the apostles within weeks come right back, not to Rome, not to Corinth, not to Cairo.

They go right back to Jerusalem and start proclaiming this resurrection. Now, if the tomb was, body was still in the tomb, they could have in principle shown that this was false. Minimally, they have a lot of shown that this was false. Minimally, they have a lot of confidence that the body is gone and won't be recovered. Friends, we have good reason to believe a tomb is empty. Now, we're not yet at something supernatural. Jesus crucified, tomb is empty. But the third fact, and I word this very carefully,

is that the disciples report experiences with Jesus. They believed were actual appearances of the risen Jesus. So disciples report experiences that they thought were of the risen Jesus. Now why do scholars accept this? It's multiply attested again. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Paul affirms this in 1 Corinthians chapter 15. We have it in Acts as well, early church fathers, et cetera. Now what's interesting is if you're not going to accept

the report, you're going to have to give some other explanation for why they report that they believe they saw the risen Jesus. Jesus was crucified. The tomb is empty. Then you have groups of people saying, we have seen the risen Jesus. The fourth fact is Saul became a follower of Jesus after having an experience he believed was of the risen Jesus. And we have Paul in his own words in 1st Corinthians 15 saying he's seen the risen Jesus. He says it again in 1st

Corinthians chapter 9, but we also have three accounts from Luke in the book of Acts of the conversion of Paul. Now here's why this is significant. A friend of mine, a former Muslim, I said, what's the most convincing thing in the New Testament that convinced you the resurrection is true? He goes, no doubt conversion of Paul. I was like, why? He goes, can you imagine what it costs Paul personally and socially to start following Jesus? That never crossed my mind because it's never really cost me anything Significant like that to follow Jesus. Let's be honest in Southern, California. It probably doesn't cost us near to what it cost Paul But what's important about this is if you come up with some explanation to count for the 12

You also have to have an explanation that accounts for Paul But if you have two different explanations now your theory becomes what's called ad hoc, which you're just kind of making up events to save the narrative. Now there's other facts that don't include, for example, that James believed he had seen the risen Jesus. Now James was a brother of Jesus. I mean, there's so many interesting questions here. What would convince you that one of your siblings is God?

I mean, seriously, during his lifetime, John 7 Mark 3, his brothers didn't believe in him. So James was not one of the 12. So you've got to now have a theory that explains the crucifixion, the empty tomb, why the report that they saw Jesus, conversion of Paul, conversion of James. This is only five or six of the facts that any theory needs to explain. Well, if you go back in resurrection studies to like the 18th and 19th centuries. There were all these naturalistic theories that people were putting out there to explain the origin of the Christian faith.

So, for example, a prominent one is that the disciples stole the body. And of course, we see this in Matthew, right? The disciples stole the body. Well, let's start running that through our facts. Does that explain the crucifixion of Jesus? Sure. The tomb was found empty. Sure. But why would the disciples report experiences now? And how do you get Saul? So that's problematic. You also have the guard in Matthew 28, how they got through the guard to do such a thing. But perhaps most damning for this theory to me is what it cost the apostles to proclaim the risen Jesus. Now I teach a class, my full-time job, I'm honored beyond the teaching team here, I enjoy it, but I teach full-time at Talbot School of Theology, at Biola.

And I teach a class called In Defense of the Resurrection. And I wrote one of the texts that we use because it's tied to my doctoral dissertation on the deaths of the apostles. I defended in 2015, wrote a book in 2015, and just came out with a 10-year update trying to study historically, did Thomas make it to India? Was Bartholomew skinned alive? Was Peter crucified upside down? Like I've studied this for a decade

and interacted with scholars. And I won't go into the details here maybe another time, but here's what we know. The apostles believed that they'd seen the risen Jesus. And they intentionally put themselves in harm's way for the proclamation that Jesus has risen from the grave. Just read the beginning of Acts, which is a historically reliable text. In fact, they're told, just stop preaching Jesus.

We'll leave you alone. They're beaten, they're threatened, they're thrown in prison. In Acts 5, what does Peter say? He goes, nope, I'm not going to stop doing this. Why? Because we fear God more than we fear men. Why would they steal a body and go out and lie and intentionally put themselves in harm's way for something they would have known was false.

Friends, that makes no sense. A friend of mine, a former atheist, J. Werner Wallace, cold case detective, he said every case he's ever done, he's never lost a case. He said people lie for power, sex and money. They weren't following Jesus for power. In fact, he said, pick up your cross and follow me. It wasn't about sex or money. They weren't following Jesus for power. In fact, he said, pick up your cross and follow me. It wasn't about sex or lust. Jesus wasn't married and neither was Paul. Show nothing but respect for women. It's not about money. They emphasize giving to the poor. There's no way the

disciples stole, could have, or did steal the body. Another one, this is really popular in academia, is the hallucination hypothesis. That the apostles believe they saw the risen Jesus, but they hallucinated. Now there's a few problems with this. Number one, hallucinations don't generally change lives. Hallucinations tend to be projections of what somebody already believes, not the impetus to change somebody's belief. But second, if this is the case, run it back through our grid. Does this explain the empty tomb? No.

If they had hallucinations, the body would have still been in the tomb. And then third, if the disciples hallucinated, how do they convince Paul and James to believe? And finally, evidence for group hallucinations is incredibly rare. Hallucinations are internal projections of one's mind. You can't share hallucination any more than you can share a dream, which would be awesome if you actually could. Imagine how much you could save on vacations. If you could just wake up your spouse

and be like, let's go to Tahiti for the day. I'll meet you there. You can't. Another one was the swoon theory. Maybe Jesus didn't die on the cross. There was a book written called the Passover plot sold millions of copies that made this whole case. Jesus didn't die by crucifixion.

Friends, that's historically ridiculous. That's fiction. We know Jesus died on the cross. And one thing I do in my class, I used to do this at times in high school with my students, is I'd say, all right, you all come up with an explanation that can account for all these facts. That's a naturalistic explanation. Working groups come up with a theory and they'd work together and they'd say, well, they can

concoct these theories. We put them on the board and I'd say, okay, let's run them through the facts. And the class one by one, people are like, wait a minute, that doesn't explain the empty tomb. Wait a minute, how do you get Paul? I'm not aware of, and maybe I should use AI to help me with this, is some explanation that accounts for all the facts apart from the resurrection. And that's why I said in the 18th and 19th centuries, the debate was about the facts. The debate is not primarily about the facts today,

it shifted. The primary objection to the resurrection is on the level of worldview. Not about the facts. It's about the interpretation and meaning of the facts. So what do I mean by this? Maybe some of you have been up there to Hume Lake in Sequoia National Forest. You know, Sequoias are the largest trees, even though redwoods are taller. Sequoias by volume are the largest, and yet they have the smallest pine cone.

I actually kept the pine cone and I keep it on my desk to remind me that small things can have great power. I see it every day, which is also a theme of Spider-Man, but I digress. Now, I took a picture, this is a few years ago, sitting at the base of what some believe might have been the largest tree that ever existed. This is called the General Noble Tree. Now it's called the Chicago Stump. 18 men roughly locked arm and arm go around the basis. That's how big it is. It's estimated to be about 3,200 years old. So we're back in roughly the time of King David or maybe into the judges.

and roughly at the time of King David or maybe into the judges. In 1898, it was chopped down, sadly, taken to the World's Fair. But people did not believe it was real, even when they saw it with their own eyes wouldn't they believe it? They had testimony of their friends. They could touch it and see it. Why didn't they believe it? Because they had a worldview that said, trees are not this big. It must be fiction. See, when you're presented with evidence that doesn't make sense of how you see the world, you have two options. Number one, reject the evidence. Number two, shift your worldview. I think the primary reason people reject the resurrection is not in the facts,

but because of a worldview that just doubts we can know things with confidence from history or doubts that the supernatural happens. I used to take my students on trips to Berkeley and we'd bring in atheists and agnostics and LGBTQ activists to speak to our high school students at CVCS. And I trained them how to just defend their faith lovingly. And I went back a couple of weeks later and met with this atheist group early on, and this physics student in PhD at Berkeley, he was an atheist, he sat down and goes, Sean, how

can you believe in resurrection? Doesn't science tell us that dead people stay dead? I said, you know, I'm pretty sure we don't need science to tell us that. People knew this long before modern science. But science describes how the natural world works. If there is a God who made us and put the world into motion, then a God could easily do a miracle. In fact, you can only have miracles if the world is orderly, which you need for science.

Don't dismiss this before you look and consider the evidence. Friends, I think those with eyes to see and ears to hear, there's sufficient evidence that Jesus has really risen from the grave and you could actually film it if you were there 2,000 years ago. But the older I get, even though I'm an apologist, I'm actually convinced that the facts are not the most powerful evidence for the resurrection. The most powerful evidence for the resurrection is a changed life. Like the blind man who says, all I know is I was blind, but now I see. All I know is I was a sinner and by God's grace, he changed me. So let me ask you some questions. Do you live as if you're really forgiven?

Because if Jesus hasn't risen from the grave, we're in our sins, friends, but if he has, we're forgiven. Matthew 18 is about the unmerciful servant who didn't understand how much he was forgiven, so he didn't extend it to others. Forgiveness actually makes no sense in our culture today. It's about vengeance and getting even. Do you live as if death has really been defeated? Do you live that way? Do you live as if Jesus is really God in your time, in your marriage, in your finances? You see, Jesus is the King.

He will come back someday and he's gonna clean house like they do at the end of end game. And we read it in Revelation. But right now we look back and we have a King who showed not only his power, but his love and his sacrifice for us. When Jesus was standing before Pilate, the irony is so thick. Pilate says, you will not speak to me?

And he says, do you not know that I have power to release you and authority to crucify you? And Jesus said, you have no power over me. Only that which was given to you from above. I lay down my life and I pick it up again. If Jesus has risen from the grave, eternal life is real. We've been forgiven and we have the power of the resurrection inside of us. I'm going to give you a very specific challenge this week, different than how we often end most sermons. And it's this, two things. Number one, consider sharing this message or one like it with a friend. Who do you know where you can say, you know, I was in church and they lay out the evidence of the resurrection. I'm a Christian. This is, this week's kind

of a big week. I'd be curious if you had a chance to watch this and just told me what you think. Hardly anyone's going to get mad if you share something important to you. I think the reason we don't is because we fear men more than we fear God. Consider sharing this message, or if you like Lee Strobel, share his talk on the resurrection. It doesn't matter, but this is a great week to share with someone. Second, invite a non-Christian friend to resurrection Sunday next week. Invite someone. You know, according to Barna's research, 82% of people would likely attend if invited to church, but only 2% of Christians regularly do so. We have parking issues at our church, I get that. I think it'd be great if we had terrible parking issues this Sunday and I'll just take the blame if that happens

Because that means people are coming to hear the greatest message in world history How can we not share that if Jesus is risen and he changed our lives? share that if Jesus is risen and he changed our lives. Let's worship together that Jesus is risen. Amen. God bless.