Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Hope in Times of Fear: An Interview with Tim

Episode Date: March 11, 2023

In this special episode, Susan Nacorda Stang interviews Tim about his book, Hope in Times of Fear.  The interview was recorded prior to the book's release in March 2021.

Good morning, Tim. It's so great to be with you. On behalf of Gospel and Life, I'm Susan Nacorda Stang and I have the opportunity to speak this morning with Dr. Timothy Keller about his next book, Hope in a Time of Fear. Thanks, Tim. I'm so glad to be with you. I'm glad you're we're talking Susan. So Tim, I know that every year you've been publishing different types of books and this book, Hope in a Time of Fear, just seems so needed and perfect for all that the world is going through. Can you start off by just telling us some of the journey behind how you thought of this

book, the writing of it. We'd love to hear about that. Yeah, it's turning out that this book is very much aukeram, very much of the moment, but it didn't start that way. When I started writing it, I had a contract for it two, three years ago, as I was supposed to be writing a book on the resurrection of Jesus, that would be a kind of companion book to my book, Hidden Christmas. So you had a short book of meditations on the meaning of the birth of price in Christmas, then there would be a short book

of meditations on the meaning of Easter and the resurrection, right? So it was almost more of a book in and a topical thing. And then the pandemic hit. And I started writing the book as we were just starting to shut down. In fact, the shutdown gave me a lot of time to write. In the beginning, everything was disrupted if you remember. And everybody was at home. And I have an empty minute, unlike you, I have an empty nest. So I actually was able to get started on the book and immediately the pandemic and the feelings of hopelessness people had and the panic immediately

affected the way I was writing this book. And it became a longer book. This is definitely at least twice the size of Hidden Christmas, which was a pretty short little one. Because I had to start to take the resurrection and apply it to a lot of different things, including hope for the future, hope in the face of death. So I really had to expand it.

And the pandemic really did help me expand the book. And I was speaking to those situations. That situation, two thirds of the way through the book, I found out I had pancreatic cancer. And so, starting in March, I was writing the book, and I was doing great. And then by the end of May, I knew I had pancreatic cancer.

And as you might guess, that affected the book, too. So I actually mentioned my cancer in the intro. A couple of other places, I don't talk much about me, but I want to make sure people realize that's the context. And I do have a section in there on how do you face death and the threat of it. And so, yeah, that was quite a more of a journey on this book than I've ever had, where I was going through experiences out in the world and in my own life, that then started to become, it forced me to start to address those things in the book.

I don't know what that's happened before. Mm-hmm. Thank you so much for sharing that. And as part of the Redeemer family, we have been so grateful to know how to be praying with you that you and Kathy have been so generous with sharing with how you're doing. But to that end, that this book is not simply something that's abstract for you. What does it look like in your life to work out the implications of the content of this book of the resurrection?

Right. Well, one of the things I did was I have an early chapter, the first chapter, on did the resurrection really happen. Now, I thought I was the first chapter on the resurrection. I thought that was the foundation. Even when I started the book, I figured I would have a chapter like that. Even before, you know, I was just thinking about it. The good news is that there are several scholars,

the foremost of which was his N. T. Wright, who not only wrote this massive book, the resurrection of the Son of God, almost 20 years ago now, and you can see it's massive. And you can see, yes, and you can also see that I read it. And, but he's actually written this, a number of things since then as well. if I read it. But he's actually written a number of things since then as well. And what's going to, what I'm trying to do in that first chapter

is not to break any new ground, but to still the remarkably strong historical work that anti-right and others have done, John Polkinghorn and some others, have done to really show that as much as you cannot prove anything in history, you can't actually prove anything in history the way you can prove something in a laboratory. So when you talk about proof and evidence, you have to say, look, I can prove that this substance melts at this temperature,

at this barometric pressure, at this sort of thing. And you can't actually prove that really anything happened in the past in the same way. But as much as we have historical certainty about things in the past, the resurrection, we have a plenty, plenty of evidence that it happened, lots and lots. And I go there first because honestly when I found out I had cancer, I went back there right away too. I went right there because I said, look, if I have hope that I can really look forward to dying, then the resurrection has to have happened. Did it happen? And I went back and I reread my chapter because I did write that chapter before I found out I had cancer.

And tweaked it. And that's how I feel like that is the basis for everything else, but it was only one chapter. There was like 12 or 13 chapters in the book. And all the rest of the chapters are implications. If the resurrection happened, what does that mean? What does that mean? What does that mean? And so as it not so much as an academic scholar, I'm not a historian like NT Wright, I'm not even a biblical scholar like NT Wright, I'm a preacher. I thought it was my job to spin out the implications for just about every kind of area of life. I also, and one more thing, maybe I'll save this for some other,

probably this would probably be an answer to some one other question you asked me, not to make this answer too long. The resurrection is not just hope for the future, but it actually gives you a confidence and even a pattern for life now, because the pattern of through death to resurrection, that you only get to resurrection through death, is actually a pattern for all of Christian living, which we can talk about if you wanna,

let's keep going with your questions. My guess is I can get back to that and answer to some other question. Yeah, no, definitely. I definitely wanna ask more about the implications and also about the concept of the great reversal that you get to the book. But I wanted to hone in on you mentioned that you revisited the resurrection when you first battle cancer years ago. But for many followers of Christ, they would say, well, I already believe in the resurrection.

And so why now are you focusing on this element of the gospel? Okay. All right, this is gonna sound, I don't want you to think of this as an old guy saying to younger people, this isn't talking down to younger people. What I am gonna be saying though is,

you think you believe in the resurrection and you think you believe in heaven if you're a Christian. You think you believe that when you die actually life gets better. Until you actually find out you may have only a couple months to live. And then you realize that it's up here and it's really not affecting your heart much. And I do think it's because we're probably more in denial about that. I think human beings have a very deep denial mechanism when it comes to their death. I mean, there's a place in John Calvin's

Institute where he says that when we go to a funeral, or if we actually see a dead body, we philosophize mentally about the shortness of life. But then we immediately put it out of our mind and we go about living and building a life as if we're never going to die. That's what he says in the institutes. And that is absolutely true. And I realized once I knew that there's a pancreatic, 80% of pancreatic cancer victims die within a year of diagnosis. And therefore, I suddenly said, am I really ready? And the answer was, my beliefs on this was pretty abstract.

And yet I didn't just say, well, I need to get emotionally close to God. I needed to go through my mind. I was pretty abstract. And yet I didn't just say, well, I need to get emotionally close to God. I needed to go through my mind. I had to go, I think, because your mind and your heart go together. In fact, the Bible doesn't even really make a massive distinction between the mind and the heart. They both are affected by what you trust in.

And the trust is partly mental and it's partly emotional. So I wanted to go back and look at the resurrection and say now, is my mind convinced of this? And it was, it was even more convinced when I went back over it. And then I started to have to work it into my heart and I could do it because my mind was convinced of it. But it took a lot of, it's taken hours and hours and hours

to say to God, please make this a spiritual reality to my heart. And there has been great progress there. And what are your thoughts on why particularly as it has to do with the resurrection, that it's something that is more abstract to us versus maybe other elements of the gospel? I actually think it's because where sin makes you deny everything. I mean, in other words, sin always makes you minimize your sin. So other people see, for example, you tend to have a sharp tongue.

And you say, well, I'm outspoken. Other people say you've got a drinking problem and you say, well, I'm the life of the party. And so you always, you tend to deny and minimize all sin. I feel like when it comes to death though, there's a deeper denial than with other things. And I think it's because death is basically the curse for our sin. You see, back in Genesis 3, that's the curse. And we deep down, Romans 1 says, we hold down the most fundamental truths about God and unrighteousness. That means to say, we suppress the truth. And I think

one of the truths that we really suppress is the idea that we're mortal because that is a really a way of saying, I'm totally dependent on God. I gotta get my life right. The only way you really sin is by, at the moment, thinking you're immortal. So, I just think the denial is deeper, Susan, than it is with other things. That's my experience right now. And so now I wanna follow up on what you mentioned earlier about how multiple chapters in your book have to deal with the implications

of believing in the resurrection. And so can you talk to us a bit about why when you're asking us Tim to revisit an event that took place thousands of years ago, what does that have to do with our here and now, with the real fear and anxiety that people are experiencing today? Well, let's just think of a couple. Well, let's just think of a couple. One of the things, one of the implications of the resurrection is that eventually justice will triumph. One of the things people, during this pandemic, there wasn't just a fear of the virus.

As I think everybody knows, at the very same time, there were these massive, you these massive millions and millions of people marching the streets against racial injustice because of many of the occurrences that happened during the summer. So along with this fear of death and also with the economic fallout from it, so many people losing their jobs,

so many people ending up in the hospital, you also had this sort of despair about racial injustice. And the reason I mentioned that, is I mentioned this in the book, Susan, is I was around for the civil rights movement. And there was a hope in that. I mean, it was not good. I mean, the civil rights protesters, they got firehose, they got tear gas.

They faced a lot of opposition, but it was a very Christian movement, by the way. It was very Christian, it was led by ministers. And there was a note of hope in it that the Lord is behind this, and this is the direction that God's taking history. And we're, you know, the Lord is going to be working. There was a note of hope that I don't see now in so much of the protest right now against racial justice or right. And yet there's a kind of, there's a hopelessness to it. A feeling like, you know, it's just never seems to ever get better.

And there's a lot of anger as a result of that, which is partly warranted, but in the end, the angry, hopeless kinds of protests, you almost never bear a lot of fruit. And so what I have a whole chapter on that is to say, if you believe in the resurrection, then you actually believe that anything you do toward justice is eventually going to triumph in the whole world. You don't have to have this hopelessness. And there's a whole chapter on that. Then you can talk about suffering in general.

And that is to say that if you're suffering right now, you don't believe in God, well, then you know what, you're just part of the strong eats the week. And this is how evolution works. And nature is red and tooth and claw. And that's just it. But what if you actually believe there's a God who says all things work together for good to those who love God

and are called according to his purpose? Who says, if you believe in me, I will, though I hate suffering, I want to end it someday. I will bring, I will help you in that suffering. I'll walk with you in that suffering and I will actually bring some resurrection of your suffering. There always be some resurrection, even out of the death and suffering and evil that I eventually will get rid of. But even now, I will walk in with you through it. So you see, when you bring the resurrection into every area of your life, you don't have that hopelessness. And that's now, that's nothing to do with, you know, after death. Well, it does have something to do with after death. But I'm saying it's,

the whole idea is the not yet, which is the New Heavens and New Earth, is to some degree already in the Christian life. Some of that future resurrection power and goodness is in the Christian life. Some of that future resurrection power and goodness is in the Christian life now that enables you to overcome these things. That's the relevance of the resurrection. Well, you speak to those, even those few examples, speaks to a lot of the anxieties and challenges. And I guess building on that, what hope is the right as a direction have here now? Because the divisions and the challenges we see

writ large in our country right now are also existing even within the church. So the hope of the resurrection have to say about the divisions that we're seeing. Well, this is a very general statement that I could be controversial, but I don't think I can take, I won't take the time to try to defend it. I just say this is that I think the divisions, I see in churches, I mean, people are walking away. I mean, this get really concrete. I've talked to people on the phone on Zoom, friends are walking away. I mean, this get really concrete. I've talked

to people on the phone, on Zoom, friends around the country, so I'm not just thinking about one place, who are leaving their churches either because they feel like the minister and the elders and the church are not acknowledging the problems of injustice. And other people are leaving because they feel like all they ever hear are sermons on injustice. That's all we ever hear about is if there's no other there's no other aspect to being a Christian. And I don't think that either of those, now I'm not judging because I'm not there. And I'm never telling my friends who I know, oh yeah, you're totally right in leaving because I'm sure that the, you know, the minister is wrong. I can't tell that I haven't listened. But I

do know that the people who are most likely to be either, how do I say it, to, to obsessed with social injustice or to allergic to talking about it tend to be more affected by secular political ideologies in the Bible and the doctrine of the resurrection. They tend to be, there are secular ideologies that are highly individualistic or highly Marxist and those are out there. They are really supercharged by social media. Because there's tremendous numbers of people who are animated by those secular ideas. They are, both sides have some good points, but they're animated by a secular idea,

which is the reason I go to extremes. They're simplistic. They say there's no social injustice. Everybody's, it's an individualistic approach. It basically says, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, stop complaining. And then the Marxist is also a secular approach. It says, if any, any unequal outcomes, any unequal outcomes are due to social injustice, never because you have not worked hard or something like that. And so when you go to the

Bible, it's complicated, which is wonderful. The Bible is true, and therefore it sees reality is not a simplistic, one-dimensional explanation for everything, but sin is very complicated. There is social injustice. There is personal sin. There are sinful aspects of every culture, and it's complicated. And I do think that the extremes that where people just walking away from each other are more animated by secular ideologies, and they are by coming together and talking,

what does the Bible say? The resurrection speaks, every time the Bible talks about injustice, especially in the New Testament when it talks about it, it's always looking forward to the kingdom, when we're all going to be resurrected and all suffering and evil and death will be gone. And yet we get forte subit here. And that's so as soon as we stay biblical, I think we can come together.

Even if we might be different politically in some ways, there will always be a spectrum of people who believe the size of government and things like that. Those are significant differences that we can make you are public and are a Democrat. The Democrat, let's have the government be bigger, let's have the taxes be higher and hold on, let's have it smaller. Those are things that Christians can disagree on because they don't take you out into the secular extremes. So those are my thoughts. That is a look. I can't defend all that season because I would go on too long and give you a chance to ask any more questions, but that's my belief. Hi, I'm Tim Keller. You know there is no greater joy in hope possible than that which comes from the belief that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead.

The Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 13 verse 4, The Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 13 verse 4, although Christ was crucified in weakness, he now lives by the power of God. If you grasp this life altering fact of history, then even if you find things going dark in your life, this hope becomes a light for you when all other lights go out. With Easter approaching,

I want you to know the hope that stays with you no matter the circumstance, the hope that comes from the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In my book, which is entitled Hope in Times of Fear, the resurrection and the meaning of Easter, you'll find why the true meaning of Easter is transformative, and how it gives us unclenchable hope and

joy even when we face the trials and difficulties of this life which can be considered. Hope and times of fear is our thank you for your gift this month to help gospel and life reach more people with the hope and joy of Christ's love. You can request your copy today by going to gospelandlife.com slash give. That is gospelandlife.com slash give. Thank you so much for your generosity. And as we prepare to reflect on the amazing love of Christ, demonstrated when he went to the cross to save us. I pray you will find a new hope and comfort in the historical fact of his resurrection because the gospel changes everything.

Well, thanks. I know that we could talk for hours by appreciating the grace, making a window. And so where that hope can come from and also the nuances of what's happening. But that's also one of the things that you talked about in your book, looking at how the scripture does give us a nuanced way

to see the issues happening in a world and in a way that is unexpected. To you talk about this concept of the great reversal on that the resurrection points us to and the great reversal in the resurrection can help us even understand the gospel in deeper ways. Can you talk to us about what that means and how it helps us understand the gospel?

Yeah, it's pretty early on. I mean, right after the resurrection chapter, did the resurrection happen? I get into this idea of the great reversal being that that death leads to resurrection, that the way up is to go down, that the way to, you know, Jesus' way to power and glory was to give all of his power and glory away in service. And that's not, I mean, I think I, at one point I say, if you went to a consultant or a bunch of consultants and said,

my client would like to be, you know, my client, Jesus Christ, is alive right now, but what we really want is 2,000 years from now. We wanted to be the, his followers to be the biggest single movement in in in world. We wanted to be the most well-known figure in the history of the world. We wanted to have more power and influence over cultures and societies than any other figure in the world. So how can you go about that? How can you live this life like that? I don't think any of the consultants would say, well, he needs to make sure he does not raise an army, he does not get into politics, he does not write any books. And he gets executed unjustly at the age of 33.

And I don't think anybody would say that. In other words, Jesus did everything wrong. And yet, guess what? He is the most, well, I mean, all those things happen. And because what instead, we think the way up is just to go up, not to serve, not to say, or look, like over and over again, that Bible says, you have to lose your life to find it.

What does that mean? You lose your life. If you say, I'm gonna find my life, I'm gonna go out and discover myself and I see inside me, I want to be a great violinist. So I'm going to get out there. I'm going to get into the best schools. I'm going to become the best violinist in the world. And that's how I'm going to go up. I'm going to way to go up is to go up. Get the best teacher, get into the best grad school, get into the best grad school, get into the best orchestra, up, up, up. And the Bible says, there's nothing wrong with wanting to bless the world with your gifts

and be a good steward of the gift God gave you. But you do it actually in service. And that means if every part of your life is in service, you're not going to do everything you possibly can to get up. You're not going to exploit people. You're not going to cheat everything you possibly can to get up. You're not going to exploit people. You're not going to cheat in order to get ahead. You're not going to, you know, instead, the way, the real way up is down. The real way to power is to serve.

The real way to be happy is to not think of your own happiness, but the happiness of others. The real way to get rich is to be incredibly generous. And that's the death resurrection great reversal. And honestly, it works in the world. If you actually get out there and say, I'm not going to be thinking about myself, I'm going to be thinking about others. I'm not going to be thinking about myself, I'm going to be thinking about God. That's losing your life and you will find it. But if you try to find your life by putting that ahead of serving God and others, you will actually lose it.

You'll always be haunted because you'll never be high enough and you'll always feel like, oh, I've achieved this, but it actually hasn't satisfied me. So over and over again, the Bible basically gives you versions of this great reversal, the way it loses yourself is to find your, I mean, the way to lose your life to find it, take up your cross and all that sort of thing. The other thing I could tell you is this, Greg Beale and he's got a book on this,

and I bring this out. If you want to understand what's happening in the world, blessings embraced without faith in Jesus Christ will become curses. And curses, what look like curses embraced in faith in Jesus Christ will turn out to be blessings. So, without Jesus Christ, making a lot of money is going to corrupt your soul.

Um, and without Jesus Christ, not making a lot of money is going to bitter you. But on the other hand, curses that are embraced in Christ turn out to be, you find riches in other ways, blessings without Christ turning to be curses. And everybody in history, everybody right now is on one of those trajectories or another. Because if you don't embrace the Lord, and then even the good things will turn out to be bad for you, especially ultimately and eternally. And if you do embrace Christ, even the bad things will eventually turn out to be good. And of course, perfectly good eternally. So those are both aspects of the great reversal. One is

something that's going to happen to you with just embrace Christ or not. And then the other thing about the great reversal is that the way you personally at various times have a chance to either choose self or or God and other people. And every time you do that within within inside your life, that choice matters enormously. So anyway, that's the mind is one of the great. So that comes second in the book after belief in the resurrection. And then the third section of the book is basically taking that out into various parts of your life, like suffering, justice, relationships. We talk a lot about how the resurrection relates to relationships

and so on. Well, thanks. And you know, as you as you talk, it makes me think to who is this book for? You know, because as you highlight, you know, if you want to find your life, you have to lose it. You have to, you know if you want to find your life, you have to lose it. You have to lose your life in order to find it. But what if you and I, we've had the privilege of getting to post-questioning Christianity with you over the years, and a comment comment we've heard is this is great.

They like some of the teaching, but I don't feel in need to be saved by from anything. Right. What my life is, things are going fine. So the salvation that you're talking about, it's, it's, it's, anyway. So how is this book also for people who are not people of faith or do not consider themselves people of faith? Right.

I'll tell you, I actually I've got three or four books that I think are pretty good for non-believers, but different kinds of non-believers. You've actually already, you've actually answered my question. You've given me a good answer. I think non-believers who are sensing a need, know where they actually say, I am struggling with fear in a certain area.

I think the book will help them a lot because the first chapter is making a case for the resurrection, making a case for Christianity. The second part on the Great Reversal, I think, will be very intriguing to a non-believer, especially if they're already saying, I might need some spiritual help here. So if you go into the book, feeling some need, like, I could, you know, I'm struggling a bit. I like to find something. I think the first chapter on the resurrection and the next chapter is on the Great Reversal

will be very, I hope compelling. And then they'll read the whole book and I think it could help them a great deal. I don't think it's the best book for somebody who says, I actually, I'm doing just fine. And I really don't see any. I would take them to making sense of God for that, by the way, as a person who actually is a real,

got a great evangelistic heart, and actually a lot of skills in that area. I would take making sense would be for the kind of confident non-Christian. And the hope in times of fear would be for a person who's I think open, more open because they are experiencing their own fear. Reason for God would actually be for person who actually says, I'm pretty interested in Christianity, I'd like to find my way in and still be intellectually feel like I've got

integrity. So reason for God is for people are already leaning, I think, toward Christianity and are, just wanna make sure they can do it with integrity. So each one of those is for people a little further away. Making sense of the furthest away, hope in times of fear is kind of the middle and reason for God of people kind of leaning toward it.

Yeah, no, that's very helpful. And making sense of God is such an excellent book on helping people wish the gospel were true and looking at the rationale behind that. But for people who maybe don't wish it to be true yet. Oh, yes. It is trying to show them when it comes to things like identity and satisfaction, all that,

that they actually are relying themselves on faith assumptions that work may let them down. So it's a little more in your face. And interestingly enough, by the way, it's probably the least red of the books. I've found that when I've actually used it with non-Christians, that they are very surprised at it. But see, here's the point, making sense is written

for people who are not likely to pick it up and buy it. It's written for people who are less likely, they're not motivated. So basically, that's the reason why, essentially, it's not as much a seller, I guess, is the other ones. And yet, I have found that when I actually gave it to non-plievers who are pretty far away, they usually are very, they really appreciate the book.

Well, Tim, you know, you, you highlight that in chapter one, you give people a rationale behind why they can believe in the resurrection. What about for people who have a lot of just scientific doubts or historical doubts, not just existential doubts about the resurrection. Can you speak to that? That'll be addressed in the first chapter. It will. I've already gave you that one caveat,

and that is that you do, and Antiride is very, very clear on this. He says, there's different levels of rational certainty. But you know, keep in mind, maybe you can't prove the resurrection happened the way you can prove that water boils to 212 degrees Fahrenheit. In a lab, on the other hand, think about a lot of things you're basing your life on, like the reality of human rights that all human beings are equal in dignity and all human beings have rights. Now, I laugh a lot of secular people believe that is absolutely not provable. I mean, if you go to scientifically to prove all people are equally valuable and dignified, no matter what measure you use, that's not...

If science won't give you any measure that'll enable you to believe that. If you actually look at economic value, the fact is some of us are way more economic value to everybody else than others. If you look at ability, intelligence, anything, you're not equal. Where'd you get that idea of being equal? If people are basing their lives, people will die over that.

But that's not something you can prove either. The resurrection is way, way more rationally certain than the reality of human rights. On the other hand, by the way, if the resurrection happened, then we Christians have got a rational basis for the idea that every human being is, you know, in the image of God, and therefore every human being has equal rights and dignity. But if you don't believe in the resurrection, then it's really a leap of faith to believe in human rights. So he points out the fact that none of us are fully rational. We all are a mixture of reason and faith,

in what we think and believe and what we're basing our lives on. The resurrection, if anything, gives you a lot more rational certainty than an awful lot of the secular basis for things like the reliability of our cognitive faculties and moral values like human rights and things like that. So no, that first chapter will address that. I don't go on too long.

It's not a book that I didn't want the book to be an apologetic. All of the time, I'm being practical. I'm trying to say in the very beginning, well, here's a reason to believe in this. But most of the book is not trying to convince you. It's really trying to show you how it would work. And that's also part of convincing. So if you're a skeptic, you read the first chapter, okay, that hopefully it's dressed right to your doubts. After that, most of the way in which I'm going to draw you toward the gospel, showing you how if it's true, it really is a remarkable effective, a terrific resource for facing life and death.

And how did you arrive at the issues that you wanted to speak towards? Like the issues where you were wanting to show us how apply the hope of the resurrection. I have a pastoral experience. I mean, there are, there are many disadvantages of being old Susan, but one of the great advantages is just I was just thinking about people over the years that I've sat with and cried with and talked with. And I just made every chapter has a certain number of people. I've got faces for every chapter.

Faces to go back sometimes 45 years. But people who I talk with or I knew experienced fear in this area were experienced anxiety or uncertainty in this area. So it's really just pastoral experience. That's how I chose the various chapters. So Tim, in your earlier chapter, earned the introduction, you highlight how you first,

well, one of the times you explored the resurrection was the first time that you battled cancer. Can you tell us more about how you've processed the resurrection over the years? Yeah, there were really three seasons in which I dove deep into the question of, was Jesus' basement dead. First one was when I was in college, when I was actually coming to faith, which makes sense. But it was during the Cambodian vision when Bucknell University, the student struck.

That means they had a student strike, which means they wouldn't go to classes. Now, by the way, I wasn't, I didn't like that, but I know, when the majority of the students say we're not going to classes, then all the classes were canceled. And on the quadrangle there at Bucknell, every day, this was like in April and May, I think it was, that wasn't May. Anyway, it was like in April and May, I think it was, that wasn't May. Anyway, it was in the spring. If some of you might remember, it was right after the Kent State, well, right over the Kent State riots, where students were protesting the Cambodia war and they were actually shot

and killed, four of them were killed by, I forget who I think it was National Guard or something like that. And so it galvanized everybody. And everybody was meeting on the quadrangle, like they're the whole student body and people just getting up at the mic and talking. And the Christians, and I was a new Christian, set up a booth right on the outside and put up a sign that said, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is intellectually credible and existentially satisfying. I remember the sign and we people came by and some of the people just cursed at us, but a lot of people sat down and talked to us about it. And that was when I first was coming to the conclusion that it really happened.

Second time, as you kind of alluded to, I had thyroid cancer in when I was in my early 50s. And that's when I actually read through the, at least in the year or two after I had cancer, this book on the Resurrection by NTRec was just coming out. And I, in my recuperation time of year or two, I read that book and it strengthened my belief in the resurrection. Even though thyroid cancer, I was immediately told, we it strengthened my belief in the resurrection. Even though

Thyra Cancer, I was immediately told, we can treat this, we can get rid of this. So it was never, it was, it was never like now. It was certainly frightening, but at the same time it was, they reassured me. And they were right, they did cure it. It was fairly easy to cure. But in that time, I read it again, and I realized I didn't really grasp this as much and right was terrific. So there've been three times, there was thyroid cancer, pancreatic cancer, and when I first became a Christian. And then lastly, I wanted to ask,

for those who are reading this book, that are followers of Christ, what does the resurrection have to say for our purpose in life? The mission of our lives. For Christians. Look, that's actually, I'm glad you asked me that because I realized I don't think I stressed that enough in this interview.

So thank you, being a good interviewer. One of the main things about the resurrection is that Jesus didn't just rise in the dead, like a miracle, which it is, a great miracle that proves that he's the son of God. Yes, it is that. But when he rose in the dead and gate put the spirit in our hearts, Jesus Christ was actually bringing the future into the present, partially, not fully but partially. So the power of the future, New Heavens and the Worth, is brought into our life now. the future New Heavens and the Worth is brought into our life now. So we have a power to change. That's one of the chapters. We have a power to change that before the resurrection believers did not have. We have the Holy Spirit from the future in which we are going to be made perfect and glorious. Some of that can happen now. We actually can change. Don't look at any part

of your life and say, well, that's the way I am, I'll never change. You don't believe in the resurrection or you don't have the Holy Spirit, or both. The other thing, of course, is that when you look at into the world, we have spiritual gifts now, gifts of administration, of service, of speaking, lots of these gifts that with which we can do some healing of the brokenness of this world, because we have got spiritual power and it comes from the future when the world will be completely healed. And so there's a defeatism with a lot of Christians. Now you can overdo it and you can say, we're going to go out there and we're going to change the world because listen, utopia will not be here until Jesus Christ comes back. So there's a chain, you go out in a chastened way knowing you will never get

it all done at all. And if you're if you're trying to paint a picture of justice in the world like a tree, you may only in your lifetime end up getting two or three leaves painted. A Christian is going to live with that because we know eventually we're going to try out the Christians also are not defeat us because we know we can get some leaves out. So the main thing is confidence that we can change and we can change the people around us and we can change our neighborhoods, that the resurrection should bring us. And because the power of the future is with us now. So we should not be hopeless or defeat us. That's it. That's what we all need. Thank you so much Tim. This is such a timely book, very needed message

on where we can actually have a lasting hope for these uncertain times. So thank you so much for sharing with us today at Gospel of Life and look forward to talking to you again soon. for sharing with us today at Gospel of Life and look forward to talking to you again soon.