More Than a Carpenter by Josh McDowell, Sean McDowell Page B

Testament Studies at Oxford University in England, explains,
The historian has to say, “How do we explain the fact that this movement spread like wildfire with Jesus as the Messiah, even though Jesus had been crucified?” The answer has to be, it can only be, because He was raised from the dead. 12
    Paul Little, who was associate professor of evangelism at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, asks:
Are these men, who helped transform the moral structure of society, consummate liars or deluded madmen? These alternatives are harder to believe than the fact of the Resurrection, and there is no shred of evidence to support them. 13
    The steadfastness of the apostles even to death cannot be explained away. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the philospher Origen records that Peter was crucified head downward. Church historian Herbert B. Workman describes the apostle’s death:
Thus Peter, as our Lord had prophesied, was “girt” by another, and “carried” out to die along the Aurelian Way, to a place hard by the gardens of Nero on the Vatican hill, where so many of his brethren had already suffered a cruel death. At his own request he was crucified head downwards, as unworthy to suffer like his Master. 14
    Harold Mattingly, who was an emeritus professor at the University of Leeds, writes in his history text: “The apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul, sealed their witnesses with their blood.” 15 Tertullian writes that “no man would be willing to die unless he knew he had the truth.” 16 Harvard law professor Simon Greenleaf, a man who lectured for years on how to break down a witness and determine whether or not he was lying, concludes:
The annals of military warfare afford scarcely an example of the like heroic constancy, patience, and unflinching courage. They had every possible motive to review carefully the grounds of their faith, and the evidence of the great facts and truths which they asserted. 17
    History professor Lynn Gardner rightly asks,
Why would they die for what they knew to be a lie? A person might be deceived and die for a falsehood. But the apostles were in a position to know the facts about Jesus’ resurrection, and they still died for it. 18
    Tom Anderson, former president of the California Trial Lawyers Association, states,
Let’s assume that the written accounts of His appearances to hundreds of people are false. I want to pose a question. With an event so well publicized, don’t you think that it’s reasonable that one historian, one eyewitness, one antagonist would record for all time that he had seen Christ’s body? . . . The silence of history is deafening when it comes to the testimony against the resurrection. 19
    J. P. Moreland points out, “No historian I know of doubts that Christianity started in Jerusalem just a few weeks after the death of Jesus in the presence of friendly and hostile eyewitnesses.” 20 Furthermore, as William Lane Craig, research professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, concludes,
The site of Jesus’ tomb was known to Christians and Jews alike. So if it weren’t empty, it would be impossible for a movement founded on belief in the Resurrection to have come into existence in the same city where this man had been publicly executed and buried. 21
    The apostles went through the test of death to substantiate the veracity of what they were proclaiming. I believe I can trust their testimony more than that of most people I meet today. I grieve to find so many who lack enough conviction in their lives even to walk across the street for what they believe, much less to die for it.
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    What Do You Think?
     
    How much credibility do the disciples deserve for offering their lives as confirmation of their beliefs? Could they have done anything more to show their sincerity?
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Chapter 8: What Good Is a Dead Messiah?
     
    Many people have died for causes they believe in. In the 1960s many Buddhists burned themselves to death in order to bring world