 Okay the recording is on let's take a moment just to pray together and then we will get started can I request somebody just to pray with a class please and we will start sorry anyone can pray jeffina go ahead please hey heavenly father we come to you in the name of Jesus we thank you for this beautiful day and for the past we are about to help dad we ask for your guidance we wish them as pastor I should just help us to open our heart and mind and listen to it and not just listen to it but apply it in our lives fill us with your wisdom knowledge and understanding in life of this good I place each and every one of my classmates into your hands give us the good life connection and everything that Jesus we pray amen amen thank you all right good morning everyone once again so in our class now on Christian apologetics we started talking about the person sorry the person of Jesus Christ and this is very important because this is the core of our Christian faith that is we must know very clearly without any doubt or question who Jesus Christ is his uniqueness that's what we want to emphasize his uniqueness uh uh among you know lots of other names and uh so on and then also certain aspects of his life in ministry especially his resurrection and then we're going to talk a little bit about how to share Christ with people of other faith um so we are now looking at the uniqueness of Christ then we're going to look at the resurrection of Christ uh then we'll have a very short lesson on salvation through Christ what the Bible says about it and then we will talk about how to share Christ with people of other faith very specifically people from the Hindu faith and from the Islam or Muslim faith so that's what we want to cover uh I'm not sure how much ground we will cover today but we'll go as far as we can want to quickly review what we did last week in talking about the uniqueness of Christ and then we will move forward from there so we started lesson 10 talked about the uniqueness of Christ and uh we said you know why is Jesus unique and and this is how we must understand Christ and this is how we must present Christ uh to other people that he is unique and on what basis can we believe that and state that number one we said Christ Christ's claim for himself so when Jesus spoke about himself you know he was very he made himself very distinct you know he just didn't put himself as one in the crowd he was very distinct in the things he stated about himself there were several courts here about you know who he said he he was uh most notably John 14 6 when Jesus said you know I am the way the truth and the life he said no one comes to the father except through me so that is like you look this is the only way and except through me this is this is the only way um when he spoke about himself he equated himself with God he said I am you know and that's the reason they they were ready to stone him he said I and my father are one you know so again really angered angered his audience and in his high priestly prayer he prayed such in a such a unique way he prayed as being one with the father in glory before everything started before the creation of the world so Jesus was nowhere created being he was nowhere human just a human person as everyone else this was someone who always was eternally and who was now here in human form so very very clear secondly the bible presents you know very clear that Christ is deity and we see several passages most of these are familiar to us that Jesus is God thirdly uh the bible presents christ as absolutely unique you know we saw x4 12 verse 225 and 6 where the bible is saying and we will come back to this theme that there are salv the bible is presenting salvation only in the person of christ and by no other means so the bible is not saying you know there are several ways you can achieve salvation you can do this or this or this or this and all these will give you salvation the bible is not that kind of a book as you read through the scriptures you come into the new testament you follow the whole you know the development of the whole unveiling of God through the scriptures finally comes to this where the bible is saying this is salvation only in this person jesus christ so the bible presents christ as absolutely unique number four this is where we were we we spoke about the incarnation the virgin birth of christ as being a unique aspect of jesus christ nobody else born of born as a human could claim this that this is god who became man and he was born in this miraculous way uh that he was born through the and he was conceived by the power of the holy spirit and he was born through a virgin but this is what actually qualified jesus christ to be that one representative and that one substitute for the human race so this is what qualified jesus because he was fully man in the sense that he was born as a human but he was very different he was sinless he was a god who was wrapped in human body very different and that's what qualified him he was sinless he was not born in subjection to sin satan or death all other human beings were born automatically in subjection to sin satan and death but here was one human actually god wrapped in human form but he was fully human and he was not in subjection to sin satan and death so he could fully represent the human race but yet he was fully above sin satan and death and as representing us uh he conquered sin or he paid for all sin he conquered satan he conquered death so what we pointed out last week was while other religions may claim a similar concept of of god coming on in as a human and you know in hinduism we would use the word avatar you know god coming we see that there's a big distinction between the incarnation the bible talks about and other forms the incarnation of jesus christ is so unique so distinct because of several reasons we could see that you know logically if you say there are multiple avatars they kept coming kept coming kept coming then which one of them actually accomplished salvation and if one of them accomplished salvation then what about the others they all failed so then they cannot be god why would god need to keep coming over and over again to accomplish something which he could do as god in one attempt so the incarnation of jesus stands out very in a very unique manner and so christ was his christ's incarnation is absolute but it's complete there's nothing falling short he paid he did everything he needed to work and needed to do for salvation it's authoritative there's no one else who needs to come in and fill up anything that he left undone and he was so fully supernatural fully natural was god who became man so we covered till there number five the uniqueness of christ his life were teaching an impact on history so when you look at it very objectively he was a man actually he was just ordinary born to a carpenter family not born into some noble family lived a very simple life as a carpenter for the first 30 years he did his ministry for very short period of time only three years that means only three years he actually went about proclaiming his message and doing his works just three years and after that he was crucified that means earthly life ended his life on earth was brought to a close so he was a man who was actually very obscure for 30 years nobody knew anything he did his work for three short years and his work was done in such a small area just within about 200 less than 200 mile radius a very small region in the middle east that's it he never he had no political influence he never had political office nothing he didn't have an army he never you know he did none of those things and all said and done that there are many others before him and after him who've lived longer the name who've had bigger influence so to speak in their lifetime they've done a lot more etc etc but all of them have just forgotten or they're just a memory but this man for just three years of ministry today the whole world is you know it's all around it's all it's all about Jesus Christ history was divided around him yeah he say before Christ after Christ I know some some historians have tried to change that but essentially for almost 2000 years that's that's the way it was before people try to change it but he became the center mark his life became the center point of human history and then all over the world so so much has happened in his name in his name there have been many in in the past who've tried to completely wipe out the christian faith people who have predicted at various times saying you know Jesus will be forgotten and some other philosopher will be remembered or some other scientist will be remembered and the exact opposite has happened Jesus the name of Jesus has just grown in strength and power all over the world across languages and cultures and others have just faded off into history and so you have to think and say how could this be how could this be there has to be something divine something supernatural in all of this otherwise just think about so many other people and they've all gone all faded away nobody knows them but here Jesus Christ is just growing I would say increasing in strength and influence over the world so this is unquestionable and you know there's a nice little prose that was written a long time ago 1926 by James Allen Francis beautifully written I just kind of adapted it a little bit to include his some of some of the aspects is I think this is the one yeah this is the one uh this is the original I think yeah so nice little prose just just captures very beautifully the the impact of Christ's life on human history that one solitary life still continues to change the course and affect the course of human history and there are many others who've recognized that you know Napoleon recognized it that even the armies of the world that have marched under great generals did not have as profound as deep as lasting an impact as Jesus Christ you know Napoleon said you know I search in vain I search history you know I can't find anybody like Jesus and another British writer Hitchie Wells recognizes there's no other dominant figure in all of history other than Jesus Christ like this you know I'm sure there's so many others who stand amazed that this life which was so simple so short is continuing to affect millions of lives all over the world that itself speaks to the uniqueness of Christ number six this kind of ties into point number four but the point we want to emphasize here is that nobody else claimed or has claimed to give their life as a sacrifice for the remission of sins so yeah there have been many great religious leaders who have come they've done their thing or philosopher's they've done their thing they've gone away they died they died naturally whatever died their death naturally or so otherwise but nobody said look when I die I'm going to atone for the sins of the whole world Jesus before Jesus went to the cross he said this is my blood of the new covenant poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins others he's saying look I'm going to die but my death is going to result in the forgiveness of sins that's nobody else has claimed that and the Bible is presenting Christ saying when he died it was an expression of the love of God and God was dealing with the sin of the world you know for God Romans 5 8 for God commands his love towards us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us verse John 2 and verse 2 he is the propitiation for our sins and not for our sins only but for the sins of the whole world he is the payment for our sins not for our sins only but for the sins of the whole world that's his death so very unique in his death so when he was nailed to the cross on the one hand it may seem like well the the Roman government is doing what they would normally do to any person who was an offender and therefore they have put them on the cross but Jesus foretold that he said that you know even before beforehand the Jews are going to deliver me to the Gentiles the Romans and they are going to put me up they're going to put me to death but that death is not the death of an offender but it's the death of the one who's paying for the offenses of the whole world so you're saying there's what's going to happen but that's the meaning of my death the purpose of my death very unique so the sacrificial death of Christ it was substitutionary that means one dying in the place of the rest of the human race it was atoning meaning it's meeting the demand of God just as God's justice demanded sin has to have a consequence there's judgment on sin that judgment was put upon Christ so his was an atoning death it was complete so he paid for the sins of the whole world whole entire human race past present future everything done this his death was triumphant I mean he conquers sin sickness satan he reversed the consequences of the fault everything Adam put us under Jesus brought us out of and it's transforming that means he died 2000 years ago but today when we look to the cross our lives are affected so when you look at the death of Christ you don't find a parallel anywhere else no other religious leader no other human has claimed such purpose meaning and efficacy a fulfillment of objective and in their death nobody else in fact the Bible the message of the gospel meaning the main message of the Bible includes the death and the resurrection of Christ it's part of sweety is the core part of the message of the Bible and number seven we will we'll give time for questions I'll just finish this number seven the resurrection of Christ so not only is his death so meaningful and powerful this is the amazing claim about about the Christian faith about Christ he just didn't die he rose up again bodily and if you and I have to believe in Christ really we have to believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ so that is even more staggering because nobody has claimed that before or after Christ no other human person foretold his resurrection and no other faith stands so solely on the resurrection of any person you know no religion stands or falls so the claim about the resurrection of its founder in a way that Christianity does Craig Bloomberg so it is so important it's not like a side piece of the faith or it's not a small aspect of who Christ was it is a major part if you and I really believe in Jesus Christ we have to believe in the Christ who physically rose up from the dead the third day otherwise if we don't believe that then we're not believing the Christ the real Jesus so the resurrection of Christ is absolutely unique nobody else has ever claimed that or no other religion of faith says you have to believe in the physical resurrection of you know whoever but throughout the New Testament this is over and over again every important aspect of who Jesus is he's the one who died was buried and the third day he rose up again Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15 1 2 3 in verse 3 he says this is the gospel Christ died for us since was buried and rose up again the third day that's the message and Philippians 2 9 to 11 we know that God exalted him and gave him you know exalted him to his own right and gave him a name just far above every other name so he's been raised up you know and Paul challenges his audience in Acts 17 now why should we thought a thing incredible to you that God should raise the dead you know why why is this so shocking so this is what Jesus is he has been raised from the dead so Christ again is unique in his incarnation the way he was born he's unique in his life an impact is unique in his death and he's unique in his resurrection nobody nor the human is claiming these things or has claimed these things and point number eight last one this is again very very important and we will talk about this in a subsequent lesson in a short way but what is so interesting about Jesus is that the Bible is saying salvation comes through simple faith in the person of Christ you believe in this person believe in Jesus Christ you will be saved salvation comes therefore comes as a gift it comes with you know an assurance you can use the word guarantee that means you believe in the person of Christ you will it's not a maybe you will be saved and it's a gift that says it starts here and now and it takes on goes on into eternity the salvation he provides and it's not just some new philosophy but he changes us as it makes us new person and it's not a religion that is not something you do outside just as outward form but he's saying he brings us into a relationship but he meaningful relationship with the eternal God so again in the provision of salvation he's unique sorry there's one more point number nine which is Christ transforms lives today so Christ is not just a faith in an historical person who lived it died and rose up again and has no impact on us but he transforms our lives he heals he delivers he works miracles today so it's not just I believe in somebody who lived in the past but I'm believing somebody was alive today and he is changing us today so so on these nine counts we say Jesus is unique so then of course we have to make our decision in either Jesus alive as a lunatic is a legend or he's God maybe he just deceived everybody to believe all these things about him just to lie him maybe he was just out of his mind to claim all these things about himself and some people bought into it maybe was a legend maybe just an extra auditory man just to doubt among others or he is Lord as he claimed to be or the you know believing the first three or you know it makes no difference but the Bible invites us to believe him as Lord all right let me pause here so what we've tried to do in this lesson is talk about the uniqueness of Christ be very clear about this and when we talk about Christ you should talk about him in this manner as somebody was so unique and like I mentioned last week in some areas people have it drawn I'm talking about Christians have it drawn from presenting Christ as unique because you know it sounds or it seems being very dogmatic seems being very unaccepting of other people and so on for whatever reasons so they don't come out and say you know this is who the Jesus is when they are asked on the question you just present you know Jesus who is okay one in the crowd but the Bible is very clear he's unique and so the Jesus we believe in and the Jesus we present must be this unique Jesus let me pause here take questions any if they're any from those in class any questions anybody's okay yes pasta okay so I see jeffine asked question so interesting question so Christ before his incarnation didn't have something he has after he came after his incarnation death and resurrection he has a body but the body is not human body in the sense the kind of body we have because when he arose from the dead he received a glorified body so when he told Thomas you know touch me see Thomas could touch him of course but that same body passed through the walls that same body ascended so this is what what I just just for the sake of using some language to communicate we would call it a spiritual body a glorified body a glorified body resurrected body so it is made up of a different material than our human body our human body flesh and blood it will decay put it on the ground it will decay but not so with the spiritual resurrected body and the good news is all of us are going to have that same body after we are raised from the dead that means you know John says first John chapter 3 verse 3 says when we see him we will be like him you know our bodies will put on immortality our bodies will become these resurrected bodies so today Christ is in heaven with this resurrected spirit glorified body it's a different material it can travel like he ascended you know it went up it came through the walls he suddenly just disappeared when he was walking with the two disciples suddenly just disappeared so but he has that body and we will all have that in resurrection um Elisha's question what body will the condemned in hell possess so we don't know for sure Elisha but we know from scripture that the spirit and soul that the inner person is condemned sent to hell now as soon as they die and so there is torment they're already feeling that then there is going to be the resurrection of the dead I mean everybody this is in Revelation 20 everybody will whoever lived the sea will give up the dead everybody we know everybody's going to stand before God and there is the great white throne judgment and there will be the separation of the sheep and the goats you know and there will be those who are sent away eternally to the lake of fire in what kind of body will they go Revelation 20 doesn't specify doesn't state it so we are not very sure but what we can say is it is something that that still causes them to experience eternal torment because Jesus talked about and there'll be weeping and gnashing our teeth and so he's using that language to tell us that it's a place of torment it's a place of pain separation but we don't know exactly you know what what form so I don't want to speculate because it doesn't tell us clearly yeah thank you okay any other questions you now go to our next lesson which is about the resurrection so this is lesson 11 I think the pdf has already been shared I think um resurrection of Jesus Christ so how can we be sure and you know remember we are here 2000 years later okay and we are looking back at an event that took place 2000 years ago how can we be sure uh that the resurrection of Jesus Christ actually took place now of course we can say okay we just believe that's that's true but can we also look at it in a very uh I would say in a very logical way based on whatever information we have and come out convinced that the resurrection of Jesus Christ was not a made-up story that it was real so that's what we want to do how you know let's look at of course we believe we believe that's true but can we look at it in a very um you know analyze whatever information we have and can we believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ can we do that okay so let's take a few minutes just to lay the background um the New Testament tells us that you know um when Jesus was crucified on the cross his body was taken put in the tomb um sorry let's go into the details Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus they were uh Jewish leaders or uh in the in their time they made a plea from the Roman government or from elders that now can you give us the body of Jesus so of course the Roman soldier verified that Jesus is dead so he checked the two thieves he broke you know just going through the story that what happened on that day he broke the for the other two thieves he broke their legs in order to make sure they're dying they died came to Jesus found out Jesus was already dead he pierced his side blood and water flowed it's okay the soldier said yeah this person is dead so the body of Jesus was given and to Joseph Arimathea who took it and used his own tomb that means he had a property that was in his name in Jerusalem in a garden in which he already had his tomb which he had prepared for himself he had bought it okay um sorry um i had just lost my connection everybody's here sorry um my connection just dropped and uh i'm back everyone is here okay uh at what point did you um lose my voice i just want to know where to start from i did i don't uh john um when did you lose can you hear me uh yes first oh okay uh so okay fine i was sharing but nicotine messenger as well okay thank you yeah all right i'm sorry about that um um so yeah so the the body of Jesus was taken and buried in the tomb of Joseph Arimathea right after that the Jewish priest went and uh the Jewish priest went and you know got permission i mean rather they told the Roman soldiers you know this Jesus said he's going to rise up from the dead so you don't want anybody stealing his body and then claiming that he rose up so send a you know put the Roman seal send uh the soldiers there so that's what they did so Joseph uh the Romans went and they put a seal which is they tied like a ribbon or a rope around the tomb saying nobody can touch this soldiers were there on guard on duty right through and uh then Sunday morning or the third day Sunday morning we have Mary Magdalene uh along with few others they are still thinking Jesus is in that tomb let us go and em bomb let's go and you know just do what they would do after three days now when they had buried Jesus the typical way to do it is they would you know they would wrap the whole body in cloth and em bomb with spices which would solidify or whatever they would do which would solidify over over a period of time so they had done that they put the body in the tomb and third day they're thinking you will go in try to you know do whatever you can do for the body so it's not that so again so just think think about this is the historical narrative that we have so what we want to do is we want to look at it in detail and say hey given the information can we logically come to the conclusion that this had to be a resurrection and nothing else so i'm going back to mine the notes what do we know and this is going to be a simple lesson but yet you know it just highlights important things number one there was a roman seal that was broken that means remember we said the roman government had sent about a group of soldiers let's say about 12 soldiers these are roman soldiers they are trained military men and there's a seal that's been put across the tomb if anybody removes that seal without authorization that means they are while they're going against the roman empire the roman government the seal is representing the roman empire and if anybody breaks that seal there's only one thing they're going to be executed and so in the resurrection of jesus the roman seal was broken that means somebody or whatever happened broke the roman seal could the disciples of jesus done have done it what we can say is just by looking at the events that led up to the crucifixion of christ the disciples of jesus were afraid i mean they were scared they dispersed the moment the roman soldiers came along with a chief priest and enters to capture jesus that the disciples of jesus were gone peter and john were following from a distance peter denied christ now these same scared disciples would not dare break the roman seal but the fact is the roman seal was broken then number two there's an empty tomb the empty tomb as we said it belonged it was it belonged it was a legal property it belonged to a particular person joseph of aramitya it was right there in jesus and everybody knew okay this is the property of joseph of aramitya this is his tomb in this tomb the body was there so it was there could be no mistake the tomb could not be mistaken because it was the tomb of joseph of aramitya secondly this empty tomb was right there in syrusla now why is that important because um supposed i'll just make this point and we'll go for a break suppose the disciples said we have taken the body of jesus and we have you know they went away to some far city and they said you know he buried the body of jesus somewhere where nobody can go and verify and they said you know oh we put it there we put him you know we took him far away put him in a tomb somewhere there in the wilderness and after three days you know the tomb is empty then it's a big question mark you know they yeah we don't know where the where they took the body they put it somewhere far away and they're saying the the tomb is empty hey we don't know but that's not what they did the tomb was right there in the city of joseph everybody knew who it belonged to everybody could go and see it and that tomb in the city of joseph was empty that means there was no game being played here the tomb was there so there are jewish and roman sources and traditions that admit an empty tomb so it's not just the disciples saying the tomb is empty there are roman roman and jewish sources that are saying the tomb was empty and so paul mayer says you know this is positive evidence from a hostile source that means these are people who are not like not supporting our supporters or believers in the christian faith and yet they say there's an empty tomb they're recording there's an empty tomb so this is point number two that this tomb was in the city of joseph everybody knew whose tomb it was and it was not done in some you know it wasn't like okay we went off to Athens or Rome and something happened over there along the way something no it was right there in the city of joseph and other historical accounts are reporting an empty tomb okay so let's pause here we'll come back and we will look at the other facts and then we will also discuss some questions here on the resurrection of jesus how you and i can be sure that christ rose from the dead okay let's go for a break and we'll be back in 10 minutes thank you