 Okay. Recording is on. Welcome back everyone to BC 212, our second lecture on Christian apologetics. Today we have been focusing on the person of Christ and we have been, towards the end of the last lecture, we've been looking at the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, just looking at it very practically and saying can be in a very practical manner established evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. So the first thing we mentioned was that the Roman seal was broken and so that took place, the Roman seal was broken, of which we are saying could not have happened just the disciples could not have that they would not have done it. They were too scared at that time. Secondly, we are saying that the empty tomb was right there in Jerusalem. So there could be no foul play. There could be no game that the disciples were playing, you know, they could if in case, in case they said, oh, we took the body far away. Some place to bury it and that time the body after three days, the body rose up and now that tomb is empty. It's way over there. Nobody, you know, if people were not able to go and verify it, then it could be a big question mark. But the fact is the empty tomb was in Jerusalem. It belonged to a person. Everything was very clear. So there was no foul play involved and added to that what we are saying is that there were historical sources, Jewish and Roman historians who have recorded about this empty tomb in Jerusalem. And this is coming from sources that are not Christian. So there's not a believable record. This is others were recording and saying the tomb was empty. So we looked at these two. Let's move forward. Let me share the notes and we will move forward. Number three, we are seeing the next piece of evidence, which is there was a large stone that was placed in front of the tomb. And some estimate, it's not obviously something that is recorded for us, but the estimate that the storm that sealed the tomb would have been very heavy. And this was pushed up the hill away from, you know, to open the tomb. And this was not an easy job. So if the disciples, the disciples of Jesus were up to tricks and they wanted to steal the body, hide it somewhere else and then say that Jesus was from there. Well, think about this. They had to get past the soldiers. They had to open this heavy tomb. They had to push this heavy tombstone up. Of course, they had to break the Roman seal, as we said earlier, and then they had to push this heavy stone up in order to steal the body. If that was what something people say was done. But that would not have been possible because you've got the guards there, you've got the Roman seal there, and then you've got this heavy stone that was pushed uphill in order to open the tomb. So practically, you know, the sepulchre, the stone would have been pushed down, but it's pushed the other way. And it's not possible to do all of that and steal the body. So the tomb was open. The stone was rolled up the hill. Their guards were there. So the fact that the stone was moved away, moved uphill is also a very important point to consider. How could, if the disciples had to steal the body, how could they have done it? How could they have moved the stone without making any noise? How could that have happened? A fourth point to consider is the Roman guards were not just, you know, at that place. But when they found out that something had happened, they fled in terror. That means they left the place totally scared. Something beyond their control had taken place. And they went straight to the Jewish priests and told them what had happened. So the fact that they were so afraid that they left their place of assignment tells us that something unusual had happened. You know, if the disciples of Jesus came to steal the body, these guards would have chased them off, maybe even killed all of them. So that there was no such kind of an encounter. But something happened that made these guards, Roman soldiers, so scared, so scared, something overwhelming, something really powerful that happened, made them scared. They left their place of duty, which simply meant they would face death penalty. They would be killed for leaving their place of duty. And they went to the priests and told them whatever happened. So you can imagine the soldiers, they would have gone to the priests and said, you know, something just beyond us, something supernatural happened. And we don't know exactly what they experienced, whether they saw the powerful angel of God come to open the tomb, whether there was, you know, overwhelming presence of God upon them. We don't know. But something just beyond their control. And so they would have gone and probably even not have had words to describe to the high priests, you know, what had happened. Saying that this, you know, something just made us of, you know, overpowered us. We could not do anything. The stone was moved out of the way, and the body has disappeared. We don't know. Right. So the Roman soldiers left their place of duty, risking that they would be put to death, went and reported it to the Jewish elders. Now, of course, the high priests just told them to lie about it. Just say that, you know, the disciples of Jesus came and stole their body. They gave them money to tell a lie. And just they said, okay, don't worry about you. You will take care of it. In other words, the high priest said, look, you're not going to be put to death for this. Meaning they are going to go and pacify the Roman government. Take care of it. And they just said, you just go and tell a lie. Just say that the disciples of Jesus came and stole the body. Go. But see the whole sequence of events. The soldiers were overpowered. They left their place of duty and they went to the church. They requested a deposit there. And so this again is another indicator here that the fact that the Roman soldiers would leave their place meant that they were overpowered by something. They didn't have to fight the disciples. They were overpowered and they left in fear. They left the place of duty. A few more things that we can look at is the grave clothes of Jesus were left behind. That means the cloth in which the whole body was wrapped, head to foot, the whole body was wrapped. That was left behind. His faith face cloth, the cloth that covered his face was folded and kept. Now you think about this. If somebody had come to steal the body, they would have taken everything. If the body was physically carried out of the tomb, they would not spend time trying to wrap the fold of his cloth. They would not spend time to try to take out the cloth that surrounded his body. They would take everything and leave if they came to steal the body. But amazingly, the body is not there but the cloth that wrapped the body and was used for the body. Everything is left behind. That is strange because when John comes in, he sees the grave clothes and it could have been most likely like a cocoon because by the time three days over like I said, the embalming, the spices, things that they were put on the cloth may have hardened to some extent. So it could have been just like a cocoon lying there but there's no body. So that's another key that it could not have been stolen because if somebody came to steal the body, they would take everything and quickly run but the clothes were left behind. And number six, the resurrected Christ appeared to many people. So Jesus rose up from the dead. For the next 40 days, he appeared to many witnesses. And now when you look at the witnesses, who are the people who saw Jesus? One is there was 500 of his own disciples, 500 people who saw Jesus. If there were 500 people, so remember, we're not talking about five people. We're not talking about 50 people. We're talking about 500 people and Paul writes about this in 1 Corinthians 15 that he was seen by more than 500 people, more than 51. So it could be a number bigger than 500. But if you had 500 people see something, then you've got a lot of witnesses to say that this was true. It's not five or not 50 but 500, more than 500 people. So that's the first thing. Secondly, among all the witnesses, there were hostile witnesses that means there were people who are not in favor of Jesus. And yet they witnessed the resurrected Christ. Most notably was Saul of Tarsus. Now, of course, Saul of Tarsus, his account of Jesus happened maybe eight plus years after the physical resurrection. But his encounter with Jesus, it's a huge, it's a big indicator of the resurrection of Christ. Meaning Christ showed himself alive for 40 days after his crucifixion and resurrection. He showed himself alive for 40 days to about 500 witnesses and then he ascended to heaven. The Christian faith was born. People said, be believe in Jesus. We have seen the resurrected Christ on the day of Pentecost that was the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. It was established. Work was happening in Jerusalem. Now, about eight years later, there is a man called Saul of Tarsus. He's a Pharisee. He does not like this message and the preaching about Jesus. He is going to go and try and destroy those people who are following Christ and he says he has an encounter with Jesus Christ. So he's a hostile witness and his whole life has changed in one day. In the morning, he began as a poser of Christ and a persecutor of the believers. By the evening of the same day, he's a follower of Christ and a professor of his professing faith in Christ. Same day, what happened? He encountered the risen Christ. In what way? In a very powerful way. He heard the voice. He encountered Christ in a very powerful way. That's a very powerful testimony that Christ had indeed raised from the dead. Another set of hostile witnesses for Christ's own family members. So other than his mother Mary, Christ's own brothers did not believe in him during his earthly ministry. So we read about this in John 7, verse 5, that even his brothers did not believe in him. His own brothers didn't believe in Jesus during his earthly ministry. Now, the brothers, they saw Jesus being crucified. They saw him nailed to the cross. They must have been wondering, oh, it's really sad. This has happened to him. Our own brothers, half brothers, been crucified. He should not have done what he did. Maybe he was cheating the people, whatever. Because they didn't believe him during the earthly ministry. But then, few days later, these brothers are sitting in the upper room. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is sitting with his brothers, the brothers of Jesus. They're all waiting in the upper room. And they're praying in salvation. So what happened between the cross and the upper room? Well, it was the resurrection of Jesus. So these brothers who did not believe in him during his earthly ministry, after his crucifixion, they believed. And they're sitting in the upper room waiting for the Holy Spirit. What happened? The resurrection. That means the brothers, Mary and the brothers, the brothers of Jesus. The special brothers of Jesus would have witnessed the resurrected Christ. And they would have been among these 500 witnesses who saw the risen Christ. And so now they are sitting in the upper room waiting for the Holy Spirit. And these are hostile witnesses because they did not believe in Christ before. So when we put all of this information together, and to some more points here, the disciples own lives. The 12 disciples, of course, we know that Judas Iscariot was replaced in the 12. But these 12 disciples who had known Jesus Christ personally, after the resurrection, they gave their lives for what they believed. If Christ had died and not risen from the dead, they would not have subsequently done what they did. What would they go and preach? Because they were ready to preach. They were ready to disperse. They were ready to go to something else. But the disciples gave their lives for the message they preached. They were all martyred. They are then John the Apostle, John the Beloved. They're all martyred. And fact number eight is that even today in the name of Jesus, lives are changed and miracles happen. So how can we say that Jesus Christ rose from the dead? Well, when you look at the facts surrounding his resurrection, all of these are telling us that, there is no way the disciples could have stolen the body. There is no way anybody else could have stolen the body. There is no way that Jesus didn't die on the cross. He died physically on the cross. That's why he was buried in the tomb. And the soldiers were standing there in front of the tomb. There's no way that there was any makeup of the story. Everything is telling us he had to have died. The resurrection had to be so supernatural, so powerful. And he was seen, the resurrected Christ was seen by more than 500 people. And if you have more than 500 eye witnesses to this, it's beyond a doubt that he did rise from the dead. So, when somebody asks us about the resurrection of Christ, how can we prove or how can we, yes, we believe, by faith we believe, but from a practical evidence, how can we prove that Christ indeed rose from the dead? These are things we can point to and say, just think about all of these. These are clearly indicating to us that Jesus Christ was buried and that he physically rose from the dead. And there is no way it is a made-up story. There's no way that this could be something that was made up or created by the disciples. Any questions, any thoughts on this, on the resurrection of Christ? Everybody with me so far? We'll just do one more short lesson and then we will close for today. The next part is a very short lesson about Christ himself. So, first we talked about the uniqueness of Christ. We talked about the resurrection of Christ. Now, the short lesson is simply about salvation in Christ. This is something we all know. I'm just going to just quickly review it and then we will stop. It's a little early but we will pick up the rest. Sorry, I need to, let me just pause here. I need to open up that PDF. I will put this up. Lesson 12 I think I didn't put up in the classroom. I will put it. So, this is a short lesson but what we want to emphasize in this lesson is that Jesus ears the only way to salvation. Now, why am I emphasizing this? But when you look at the Christian world, today people are afraid to say this, that Jesus is the only way to salvation. Today in a world where there is pluralism and relativism, pluralism means people accept more than one. So they say there's more than one way to salvation. There's more than one way to God. That's pluralism. And relativism is everything is relative. There's nothing black and white. There's no truth. Everything is gray. You do whatever you want. So in a world where we would say pluralistic society, a society that just embraces everything or a society where relativism is embraced, it means, you know, truth is whatever you make it to be. What you say is right for you. What I say is right for me. You know, we all live happily like that. In a world like that, to say Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation is a very difficult thing. But we need to. We need to be very clear of what the Bible says and what we are going to say. So if somebody asks you, you know, do you say Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation? Our answer is yes. Why do you say that? Well, for these reasons. Number one, the Word of God clearly states this. And we have looked at all of these scriptures. We've considered these scriptures before. The Word of God is very clear that Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation. John 14.6, Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father, but by me. Acts 4.12, the Bible says there is no salvation in anybody else except in Christ. First Timothy 2.5 and 6 is one God, one mediator between God and man. First John 5.11 and 12. If you have the Son, you have life. If you do not have the Son of God, you do not have life. Very clear. So the Bible is very clearly stating this. Second, why do we say the salvation only in Jesus? Because there's nobody else like Jesus. We already established the uniqueness of Jesus. Nobody else matches to Christ. If there were three other people who matched up exactly to Christ, we would say, okay, there's salvation in any one of them, but there's nobody else like that. Christ is absolutely unique. That's why we say the salvation only through Christ. Thirdly, because it's only Jesus Christ who provides a complete remedy for sin and the promise of relationship with God. Nobody else is saying, look, I can provide you the cleansing for your sin and bring you into our right relationship with God. There's no one else who brings that message or who provides that for us. So we therefore say, look, Jesus is the only one who does this for us. Christ came into the world to save sinners. So we say salvation is only through Jesus Christ and salvation is received by grace through faith. So it's not like we have to go and earn our salvation. It's provided freely through the person of Christ and we receive by grace through faith in Christ. We're not saved by following religious laws. We don't go through those cycles of birth and rebirth and reincarnation and so on. We're not going to be saved by somebody else's good deeds, but it's just through faith in Christ and we need to repent and believe in Jesus Christ. So I just wanted to make this very clear because in today's Christian world, there are people who compromise on this part. They would not say, oh, salvation is only through Jesus, but we need to be very clear. The Bible teaches and this is what we will state that salvation is only through the person of Jesus Christ. So we will pause here for today and next week what we're going to do is, and I will share the lessons, we're going to talk about how to share Christ with somebody from the Hindu faith and somebody from the Muslim faith. How do we share Christ with them? Basically to understand how do we help them see the difference? Now with people from the Hindu faith, it's very difficult because Hindus generally, they just accept everything because by nature there are many gods and goddesses and they would just say, Jesus is one of the gods. But then we don't want Jesus to be one of the gods because he's not, he's unique. How do we help them see that? And then people from the Muslim faith, there are different challenges for them to embrace Jesus Christ or we need to understand what are those challenges and how do we present Christ to a Muslim so that a Muslim can see the difference and be willing to receive Christ. So that's what we will cover next week in going forward. Let's take some time for questions. Rosalind, is gospel track distribution on the streets a wise thing to do now? Considering the situation around us, not so pleasant. Is there a way that we can help someone who wants to distribute tracks on the streets? Now, here especially in India, there is in many, many states we have these anti-conversion laws and people are hostile. So we'll have to take it place by place, city by city. And also how and what we distribute. For example, if we distribute something that is not directly in the face telling people you have to believe in Jesus and Jesus is the only way. And if you don't believe in Jesus, you'll go to hell. If you have a track that says, God is a good God or don't lose hope or something very general and of course inside the message you slowly communicate about Christ. If you just stand and give it out in certain areas, it's not a problem at all. So for example, what we distribute, we go to colleges, inside colleges, of course we get permission, we put up posters on generic things like on our sermon series. For example, recently along our Bible college students and others in Bangalore, we put out posters and also we gave out small handouts just at Faith and Science and give a link to our website. So that's a very general thing that's like, hey, what is this Faith and Science? And now we're doing a new sermon series on my mind. So it'll just say my mind and links to our website. So we will say like my mind and say, okay, what is this? And we gave it to restaurants who put it out as posters. We gave posters in certain colleges to put up on their notice board. So people are kind of open because they're very generic. It's not like straight in your face saying something like you have to believe in Jesus or something. It's very generic. It's actually a sermon series and it links to our website. And in the website, of course, there will be a lot of content that's pointing them to the word of God and so on. So that way we won't face problems because we are just giving some, like anybody else, we're giving some handout. So that's one thing I would say, you know, like instead of giving out a gospel track that says if you don't believe in Jesus, you will go to hell. If you give something like that, you know, or something very direct, it will anger people and the current situation is very difficult here. So we have to be a little careful. So give something generic that points them to a place where they will get more specific content. Then from there they can, you know, make their journey. So that's one option we can consider. Second option I also would recommend is to think about using online promotions. So we also run a small phase, you know, so you make a post on Facebook. That's again very generic. And then you promote it in your city. So what happens is that this Facebook ad is then presented to people in a very non-threatening way. You know, it's presented to people when they are scrolling through their Facebook wall and the ad or whatever they're doing on Facebook. The ad comes up. You can target this ad to say people in a certain city, people with certain demographics, you can target the ad. It doesn't cost much. So in Indian rupees, you know, we would spend 10,000, 20,000 rupees and you can reach close to half a million people. So I can just quickly show you if you just give me a moment. So you can see this is our APC of Facebook page. So we were running a promo. This is on Facebook. It's called Faith in Science, which you see the post is very simple. It just says faith in science. And then the link, this goes to the web page, which will give them a lot of information and invite them to service and so on. And we ran this ad. You see, how many people we reached? We reached more than half a million people, 540,000, 029 people. There were 22,000 engagements. That means 22,000 or almost 23,000 people paused to see it. And then there are about 20,000 link clicks. That means 20,000 or 21,000 people actually clicked on this ad. That means they went to our website. And this we just spent, I think we spent only 10 or 20,000 rupees. Let me tell you. Yeah, so yeah, this ad, we spent 20,000 rupees. So we spent 20,000 rupees. It covered two cities, Bangalore and Mangalore. It ran for almost 30 days. And this is the result. So you think about this for 20,000 rupees, we reached more than a half a million people. And about 20,000 plus people clicked on it to go and see what it's about. So I would encourage using this kind of promotion where it's very quiet. It's happening all the time, 24-7. Whenever people are online, the ad is being presented. They get to go to the website. The website has a lot more content than that can be given in a Gospel tract. And they can explore the website. They can see a lot of things about the church, where the church location is. They can listen to some and so many things. And it only costs us 20,000 rupees. If you think about printing the Gospel tracts, it's a lot more money. Each Gospel tract may be at least 5 rupees, 10 rupees to print, or 5 rupees maybe. And then somebody else physically, you know, if you had to give out a Gospel tract physically, how many can a person give? But imagine 500,000 plus people or impressions were made. And 20,000 people clicked on it and went to see what it's about. So I would suggest that using social media, and this is just one example. Using social media, we can get the word across faster, more widely targeted, and also give your people opportunity to engage a lot more with whatever content we have. Now, of course, just like in fact distribution, not everybody who gets a tract are going to get saved or will come to church. You know, it's not that. So even here, even the 20,000 people, some of them may just be watching quietly online. Some of them may be, you know, checking out more and more on the website. What is all this about? So people will take different parts in the journey. Not all of them will come to church right away, but we are doing our part to reach out. I hope that helps, Ruslan. Okay. Any other questions before we close in prayer? Okay. So we'll pause here for today. Next week, people deal with the aspect of how to present Christ to people of different faith. And yeah, so we will spend some time on that next week. Can I request somebody just to pray with a class and then we will dismiss? Anyone can pray, please. Father, we thank you for this time. Thank you for helping us to learn more about you, your uniqueness. And we pray Lord Jesus as we continue to take this journey. Help us to be ready to give answers and also to strengthen our faith in you, Lord Jesus. Help us to give you our utmost importance in every area of our life. And to be so strong in the faith that you are our God and you are the savior of the world God. We thank you for enabling pastor to share all of these information. We bless the class. Thank you Lord. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Amen. All right. Thank you everyone. We've got a little extra time here between break. Enjoy your break. Enjoy your next class and have a good day. God bless you all. See you soon. Bye.