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[upbeat music]
Bailiff: All rise.
Judge: Thank you everyone.
You may be seated.
Over the last few days, you've heard closing arguments
from representatives of various faiths.
You have also heard from people who believe
that there is no such thing as eternity,
as well as those who say we cannot possibly know
what happens next.
Today we will hear from our last representative,
a man of the Christian faith,
and I know that this has been a long and complex process
but I would ask that you give him the same attention
and consideration that you have granted
our other representatives.
Counsel, the floor is yours.
Tom: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
Jury: [Crowd] Good morning.
Tom: First, I wanna start by thanking you
for the attention that you have paid
to the evidence throughout this week.
I know that all of you are busy.
Many of you are missing important jobs, but I would submit
to you that the evidence that you have listened to this week
and deliberations that you will enter into shortly
and the decisions that you will come to as a group
will end up being the most important decision
of your lifetime.
I appreciate that you have listened to the arguments
which have been made by my brother and sister in the law
in terms of the other two positions that have been presented
that are held by members of the faith of Judaism,
the faith of Islam, those who are agnostic,
those who are atheist...
and I now ask you to listen to my closing argument,
as I present to you, our view of what we believe
the evidence has shown.
This case starts in Bethlehem,
where this man Jesus was born.
His life here on earth ends at Golgotha,
the place of the cross.
But the question mark that you will have to decide
is what happened in that tomb
and how that body got out of that tomb.
Let me start by explaining what the three
of us all agree on.
First of all, there's no question
about whether Jesus was an historical figure.
There are many secular historians
who have spent their lives researching the time period
of Jesus of Nazareth.
Also, there's no question that Jesus was crucified.
There were many, many witnesses to the crucifixion
including not the least
of which, a Roman Centurion and a Roman guard.
And third... that from the time that he left the cross,
and was put into the tomb,
that just two days after he left the cross, was empty.
The body was not there.
How did that happen?
Well, you have heard the three options.
Option number one is that Jesus got out
of that tomb on his own,
which would mean he didn't die on the cross.
He may have been suffering, but he somehow recovered
inside the tomb and somehow got out on his own.
Second, is that somebody, friend or foe stole the body,
dead or alive.
And option number three, is that as Jesus predicted
he was resurrected from death.
From that witness stand,
you have heard historical experts who are secular
who simply told you about the time.
We've heard from medical experts.
We've heard from eye witnesses,
to the passion and the crucifixion that occurred.
And we have heard from the written testimony
from back at that time. From Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,
what are commonly referred to as the Four Gospels;
who wrote both what they saw as well
as what they collected in terms of testimony from others.
But in this courtroom, you are to take that testimony
from that stand that was given to you
from those Four Gospels as sworn depositions
of those individuals, because indeed it is testimony
that those four men protected and shared with the world.
Now let's talk about the historical evidence.
Matthew testified about the tomb.
He explained, first of all
that there was a rock that was placed
in front of the entrance to the tomb.
Second, he explained that the tomb was sealed,
and third, Matthew explained
that a guard was set in front of the tomb.
Now, why would the Romans go to such trouble
in guarding a dead body?
Well, first it was a precaution against the very thing
that the Jewish authorities were concerned about,
and that is that body being stolen, because they wanted
to protect against any talk of a resurrection.
You can go to Israel today and see tombs just like the one
that Jesus was put in.
You've essentially got a cave that is dug out
and then there'll be an opening.
And then there's going to be a closure
of the opening by a stone.
What we know about Jesus' tomb is this... Mark wrote
as you heard from the witness stand
in a fourth century manuscript
that the stone that was placed in front of Jesus' tomb
was so large that even 20 men could not move it
once it was set in place.
Is it possible?
Like my opponents say that in the middle of the night,
the followers of Jesus came maybe with some special tools
or something like that and were able
to get that big stone moved.
Yeah, that's possible.
Is it likely?
No.
If you remember A.T Robinson, the New Testament scholar,
explained that the sealing of the tomb was done by a cord
that would be stretched across the tomb
and then both ends of the cord
would be stamped with the Imperial Seal.
Why do that?
What's that all about?
Well, that seal was of the Romans,
the people who occupied Israel at that time.
You break that cord, you break that seal
and the full power of Roman law and authority
comes down on you.
[dramatic music]
Let's also remember this, Jesus at that time
was the most notorious criminal in all of Jerusalem.
The Romans and the Jewish leaders
didn't wanna take any chances, the Roman guard
was at the tomb around the clock at all hours.
And remember the testimony of professor Daniel Whedon,
who's a Professor of Ancient Languages
at Wesleyan University, who explained
that a guard is not one person, but instead 16 soldiers.
We know that Roman guards took their jobs seriously.
And why is that?
Because of the punishment that was inflicted on you
in the event that you did not do so.
If you abdicated your duties,
if you fell asleep on the job, if you walked away
from being on watch, your punishment was death.
They literally threw you off a cliff.
And all the guards knew that.
So you can rest assured that that guard stayed vigilant
throughout the time that they were there.
And remember something about this guard.
On the very day they took their post,
members of that same group of soldiers flogged Jesus
within an inch of his life.
And what does that mean?
It means taking the leather straps that are loaded down
with rocks and have glass put in them and sharpened bones
and taking them to the man's front and his back,
and whipping him 39 times tearing the flesh off of his body.
And then they took that man
and they had him carry his own cross
and they nailed him with railroad spikes to a cross.
And then they sat there and with their Centurion
who was in charge, they watched for six hours
while the man died,
while he slowly suffocated from his own body weight.
No, the position of the Roman guards
and their feelings about Jesus of Nazareth is crystal clear.
Their allegiance was to Rome.
And that's where it stayed.
Well, think about this hypothetical.
Let's take what we said before and just add to it,
which is, maybe in the middle of the night
you got the 11 apostles
or however many followers were needed.
And they come in with specialized tools and they come in
with a counterfeit stamp and they pry the thing open,
get Jesus' body out, put the cord back over it
and use the counterfeit stamp and seal it up again.
And everything's good.
Is that possible?
Yeah, it's possible.
But in your life experience and common sense,
does that make any sense to you whatsoever?
No. It's doubtful.
Now opposing counsel would have you believe
that Jesus was just an historical figure,
barely charismatic, because he had a following
by just some guy from the sticks
and that this whole thing about the resurrection,
is a hoax, clever, make believe a performance.
And they would have you look at Jesus as being
a well-spoken controversial,
radical troublemaker. But let's remember the teaching
of Occam's razor, which is the theory that
oftentimes the simplest explanation is the correct one.
Well, you know, there are some people who believe
that Jesus did not die on the cross,
that he was merely tortured, fell unconscious,
body put into the tomb, gets out of tomb on its own
but it comes back to, did he die on the cross?
What do we know?
There were two things that are important to know
other than that Romans know how to kill.
And that is at the end of the six hours,
as was explained from the gospel,
a Roman guard took a spear and thrust it into the side
of Jesus and both blood and a clear fluid, water, came out.
Well, we know from medical science today
that from the blood loss that Jesus had,
that he would have developed probably either
or both pleural effusion which is water on the lungs
or pericardial effusion
which is water surrounding the heart.
And if there was enough water in Jesus' chest
so that when he was pierced with a spear into the heart
or into the lung, so that water came out
so that the Romans can see it,
you know one thing. You know that that man is in a state
of hypovolemic shock. And most of us in this courtroom
would have a difficult time surviving
under those circumstances,
even with today's modern medicine.
We also know that there's another test here.
Its because it was Passover,
you couldn't continue with a crucifixion
once it became dark.
Because it would violate Jewish law
and this was the Passover.
So these people had to be dead.
So they broke the legs.
The Roman guards broke the legs of the other two men
who were on either side of Jesus, who were being crucified.
Now why do that?
Well, it means you can't push up anymore.
So you're like this and you suffocate
from your own body weight,
but they didn't do that with Jesus.
They didn't break his legs.
Why is that?
They certainly didn't have any problem torturing him.
It's not like they felt for the guy.
Its because they knew he was already dead.
Again, John, the eyewitness knew he was dead.
Ladies and gentlemen, Jesus died on that cross.
The idea that he didn't is foolishness.
Now you might wonder how the idea
of Occam's razor explains what is truly a miracle?
I mean, a resurrection is a miracle.
In this instance, there was no question
that Jesus had already performed miracles.
He turned the water into wine
at the wedding in Canaan was his first miracle.
He went through systematically healing people
who were either blind or had leprosy
or had other diseases or problems since birth.
He had fed 5,000 people with a few loaves and a few fish.
And that was reported by every one of the gospel writers,
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, all four of them.
Christ himself had even raised other people from the dead.
The testimony was that he had done so on three occasions,
one of them being Lazarus, his friend
who had been in the tomb for four days,
but you know even the Jewish leaders at the time
they didn't challenge whether the miracles occurred.
They couldn't, there were too many witnesses to them.
No, instead they challenged him to his face,
on more than one occasion asking,
"By whose authority are you performing these miracles?"
That's what they wanted to know.
So the idea of there being a miracle
that's not really in dispute.
These were not shows.
Now there are differences in testimony.
A lot of people point that out.
They say that well, you know, when we listened
to these guys, explain what happened at the tomb.
All their stories are a little bit different,
that ladies and gentlemen is common in trials.
You can have one of the most straightforward cases,
a bank robbery, okay?
And you're gonna have several witnesses, tellers,
and customers, and whoever else is in the bank.
And there's gonna be differences in their testimony
about what the robber looked like, how tall the robber was,
what the chronology of events were,
what the gun looked like, what the robber said.
In fact, what you find is that if everybody says
the exact same thing, that testimony is not credible,
because that just tells you
that everybody has gotten together.
It's the most normal thing for people to do.
And quote, unquote, gotten their stories straight.
They're singing the company song.
That is not credible testimony.
So how do you figure out what to do
when you've got circumstances where you've got differences
in the testimony?
Is you look to see what is important about what occurred?
Let's look to see what happened in this case.
All four of the gospel writers say that Mary from Magdala
known as Mary Magdalene went to the tomb,
all of the writers, explain that that tomb was open
and that it was empty.
There are many other similarities
that you heard the testimony about,
but three of the gospels told us
that there was a man on the inside wearing white,
possibly an angel who said that, "Jesus is not here.
He is risen."
You have a lot of other similarities in the testimony.
But the most important is that after that tomb is empty,
Jesus himself appeared to dozens of people,
including all 11 of the remaining apostles.
And that he picked up to some extent where he left off
that is he went up to Galilee
where he picked his apostles from and he ate with them.
And he walked with them.
Unafraid, out in the open, even offered his wounds
of his hands and his side for others to see
including most notably,
the apostle whom I share a first name with
that being Thomas. You know him probably
as the doubting Thomas, who did not believe
that Jesus had arisen, even though his other apostles said
that he had, that he would not believe
until he put his hands into Jesus' wounds.
So what did Jesus do?
He appeared to Thomas and he said,
"Go ahead, put your hands into my wounds."
And Thomas on seeing this, he sees this man he's traveled
with for three years who now is alive and in front of him.
And he recognizes what happens.
And he drops to his knees
and he looks right up in the face of the man.
He knows his friend to be Jesus.
And he says, "My Lord, my God."
Why?
Because he knew right then and there that Jesus was Christ,
he was the Messiah, he was the son of the living God.
Well, the feat of what happened was so staggering,
was so convincing, was so important.
These men left everything they had and their homes
and went to all four corners of the known world,
and went ahead and preached the gospel of Jesus Christ
and think of what kind of men these were.
These weren't some kind of nuts.
They were fishermen for the most part.
Working class, they lived comfortably enough.
They were relatively safe.
They were up in Galilee.
They went down in Jerusalem where all the Romans were.
They left the safety of their homes and their occupations.
And these guys traveled through the wilderness,
the completely unknown parts
of the world preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ
that he was the Son of God, preaching the resurrection,
preaching eternal life.
And where did they go?
Think about it, North Africa, Greece, India,
modern day Russia, all to preach the gospel.
Now they committed the rest of their lives to this.
And they ended up giving the rest of their lives to this.
These men who preached about Jesus did so at a cost.
And they knew what the cost was.
Very first one who died was Stephen.
He was stoned to death.
Thomas was killed with a spear.
Bartholomew was flayed alive with a knife
and then was crucified.
And this happened to one, after another, after another
after another.
And these reports of the death of the apostles,
they don't come from the New Testament.
They come from secular historians.
You can believe it.
You don't have to believe in the New Testament
to believe the way that these men died.
I'll tell you one thing,
is that those guys were not about to do that
if they thought that Jesus had pulled a fast one on them,
no, they believed in a simple truth that the resurrection
had occurred just as Jesus said, it would,
the apostles understood the resurrection to be a simple fact
and a true miracle.
And I think you may believe that as well.
Now, the judge is going to instruct you
on how to consider the evidence.
You have two kinds of evidence.
You have direct evidence, okay?
Where someone sees, hears, smells,
whatever through their senses,
their personal witnesses to something.
And eye witness being the easiest example.
There's also circumstantial evidence but what's that?
Well say that, it's the evening
it's winter time and you go to sleep
and there's no snow on the ground.
Next morning, you wake up
and there's an inch of snow on the ground.
You conclude based upon that,
based on your deduction that,
well it must have snowed last night.
That's circumstantial evidence.
Now, the judge is going to explain to you
that the law makes no distinction
between direct evidence and circumstantial evidence.
You're going to be instructed
that you are to make deductions and reach conclusions
which reason and common sense would lead you to make
and that you should not be concerned, whether that's based
on the evidence being direct or circumstantial.
Is it realistic that Jesus did not die on that cross
and recovered in the tomb and walked out on his own?
Is it realistic that his followers got through the guard
and the cord that sealed it
and the stone in order to steal his body?
Or is it realistic that Jesus did for himself
what he had done for others, and that is, the resurrection.
And that's how the body got out of that tomb.
In some instances, people use an erroneous standard to try
and judge these kinds of things.
They say, well, you know, I'm not 100% convinced.
Well, in the law, in this courtroom,
there is no such standard, cause in matters of human affairs
there's rarely a situation where any of us
would be 100% convinced.
What we use in courts of law like this is the standard
of reasonable doubt and belief beyond a reasonable doubt.
Now, what is a reasonable doubt?
It's that level of doubt that would cause you to hesitate
in the most important of your affairs.
Our entire United States justice system on the criminal side
is based upon that concept of proof
beyond a reasonable doubt, but not based upon a 100%,
'cause there's always some level of doubt in anything.
I would submit to you
that is the standard that you should use.
And it's a high standard, that you look at the three options
the only possible three options
and decide which one meets that standard.
Because if the resurrection occurred,
it means that Jesus indeed was the Son of God
and that he defeated death.
And that what John said was true, which is that,
"God so loved the world that he gave to us his son,
his only son, so that all who would believe in him
would not perish, but would have everlasting life."
Which means if you believe that the resurrection occurred
that you will have everlasting life.
So when you're deliberating and when you're thinking
about the evidence in this case
and the importance of this decision, it's not just this case
that you're deciding, no ladies and gentlemen
it is your own life that you are deciding.
It is your future, that you are deciding;
both your life here and your life eternal.
The judge is going to explain to you
that when you go into that jury room
there will be a verdict form for you to fill out
at the end of your deliberations.
And I'm going to read it to you exactly what that form says.
You are going to select one choice.
It says as follows quote, "I believe that to get Jesus' body
out of the tomb, one, his body was stolen,
or two, he did not die on the cross,
but instead he passed out and fell unconscious.
And while in the tomb, he revived and got out on his own,
or three, Jesus was resurrected."
There's the only three possibilities.
You are to sign your name and date,
the date of your verdict.
And as you deliberate,
the question that you really have to ask yourself is this,
who moved that stone?
Ladies and gentlemen thank you for your attention
during my closing argument, and my explanation
of what we, the Christian Church, believe occurred
in that tomb.
I ask you as you go for your deliberations
that you will listen to one another.
Use your mind, use your heart,
use your soul, use your conscience,
and you consider everything that you've heard
during this past week.
And you render a verdict which is fair and speaks the truth.
Thank you for your attention.
[upbeat soft music]
Judge: Thank you counselor.
Jury, you have now heard the full arguments
from members of each faith presented here.
After I dismiss you, please go directly
to the deliberation room and elect a foreperson.
All the evidence will be with you in the jury room,
you may ask any question
or review any evidence necessary
but you must reach a verdict.
You are now released to begin deliberation.
[upbeat music]
I understand you've reached a conclusion.
Foreperson, what is your verdict?
Foreperson: Your honor, we, the jury believe...