Josh McDowell
Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. Mr. Deedat, and the wonderful people of this city, and this country of South Africa, I am thankful for the opportunity to be a part of this symposium on Islam and Christianity's view of the crucifixion and the resurrection.
In preparation for this, I didn't realize that I would be dealing with so many different theories on the crucifixion from the Islamic viewpoint. I found out, first of all, that the majority of the Muslims throughout the world hold to the substitutionary theory. That in Surah number 4, in the Qur'an, a substitute, another person, was placed in Christ's position on the cross that Jesus was removed and taken to heaven.
In other words, it was someone else. But then, I found such a diverse opinion among Muslims. Some Muslim writers say that it was a disciple of Jesus who was placed on the cross in His stead. Another Muslim writer, Tabari, quoting Ibn Ishaq, said it was a man by the name of Sargus, or Sergius, who was placed on the cross. Another Muslim writer by the name of Baidawi, said it was a Jew named Titanus who was placed on the cross. Another, Ath-Tha-'labi, says it was a Jew named Fal Tayanus, who was placed on the cross. And still another Muslim writer. Wahb ibn Munabbah, said it was a Rabbi of the Jews, Ashyu, who was placed on the cross.
Then, others feeling that it might be a little unfair to put an innocent man there, say, well, it must be Judas Iscariot who was placed on the cross. Now, Mr. Deedat might be able to correct me, but I do not believe there is any evidence whatsoever in the Qur'an for that. There are in some of the sects. earlier than Islam, references to that. But I always wondered, why did God have to have a substitute? Why couldn't He have simply taken Jesus then?
Others will say - and this is not what the majority of Muslims believe - that Jesus died a natural death some years after the crucifixion and the alleged resurrection. In other words, "Hazrat Isa," Jesus is dead! This is a more recent development in Islam. And I'm always wary of recent developments.
It was started mainly by a man by the name of Venturini, who said Jesus really didn't die on the cross - He just swooned or passed out, then was put into a tomb and resuscitated. This is also the theme of the Ahmadiyas, a radical sect of Islam. One of their main doctrines, established by their founder and allegedly their prophet, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, it is a part of the doctrine of Qadianism.
Some will say to be crucified means to die. Therefore, Jesus wasn't crucified because He did not die on the cross. I'm not quite sure how they got that definition. What I need to do is this: present the facts to you, as I have been able to document them in my books, and then let you, as fair minded, intelligent people, make up your minds. The background for the points I'm going to make is that when I was in the University, I wanted to write a book against Christianity. I wanted to refute it intellectually. The last thing I wanted to do was become a Christian. But after two years of research and spending a lot of money and time, I discovered facts - not only facts that God has stated in His Holy Word, the Bible, but facts that are documented in sources in history. Men and women, these are some of the facts that I found as I tried to refute Christianity and I couldn't.
The first fact I found is that Jesus was not afraid to die. In fact, He predicted His own death and resurrection. He said, "Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem." He said to His disciples, "The Son of Man is going to be delivered up to the death. And they will deliver Him to the Gentiles to mock and to whip and to crucify Him. And on the third day He will be raised up" (paraphrased from Matthew 17:22-23).
In another place He began to teach them that He had discovered many things. And then He said He'd be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, He would be killed, and He added that after three days, He was to rise again (Matthew 20:18, 19).
In Matthew 17, Jesus said to them, "The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill Him, and He will be raised again on the third day."
The second thing I learned as I studied the life of Jesus Christ is that Jesus was willing to die. In Matthew 26, He said, "My Father, if it is possible, let this Cup pass from Me." But what a lot of people leave out is the context of what Jesus said. He said, "Yet not as I will, but as Thou wilt, Father" (Matthew 26:39).
Now Jesus did not hide Himself. He is very clear about where He is. It says in John 18 that He went to the place where they usually found Him. He didn't want to hide from the authorities. He knew what was going to happen. In John 18, verse 4, it says, "Jesus therefore. knowing all the things that were going to come upon Him." He knew it! And He was ready for it. In Matthew Jesus says, "Don't you understand, I could call on twelve legions of angels to protect Me?" But He said, "I want Your will. Father." and God answered His prayer and let Him fulfill "the will of the Father." Jesus said in John 10: "The Father loves Me because I lay down My life that I may take it up again. No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative." You have to remember - Jesus being the God-Man, came as God the Son, the eternal Word, to take the sins of the world upon Himself. The Holy Bible (I Corinthians 5:21) says that He, God, made Jesus sin for us, and, if you can, imagine the agony that the eternal Word, the Son, was going through at that time.
The third fact that I learned is that the Jews were not guilty of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. I was very surprised. Mr. Deedat, that you needed to be the defender of the Jews. There are Muslims and Christians that have gotten that distorted all through history. Jesus said in Matthew 20. verses 18 and 19, "We are going up to Jerusalem, and they will condemn Me to death. and will deliver Me over to the Gentiles, to mock and whip and crucify Me." Jesus said, "I lay down My life." If anyone was guilty, Jesus was. He said, "I have the power to lay it down, I have the power to take it up."
Also, Mr. Deedat, I feel that both you and I are responsible, because the Bible says,"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). It was our sins that drove Jesus Christ to the cross.
The fourth fact that I learned is that the Christians are called to an intelligent. intellectual faith - not a blind faith. I was quite surprised when I read in the little booklet, What Was the Sign of Jonah? by Mr. Ahmed Deedat, that over one thousand million Christians today blindly accept that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ. I'm a little confused, because really, Mr. Deedat, you read from the Qur'an and you said you accept it, you don't need facts, you don't need any evidence. You simply accept it and then you're saying that Christians, because they accept what God, Yahweh, has revealed through the Holy Bible, that Jesus is the Christ, that because we accept that, we do it blindly. I'm amazed, because in the Muslim book, the Qur'an, it states that one of the titles given to Jesus is "al-Masih." I believe it is referred to 11 times that way. The Muslim translator of the Qur'an into English, Yusuf Ali, translates the Arabic here as "Christ" in the English translation. So, why are we accused of being blind in accepting Jesus as the Christ?
In my country, one of the greatest legal minds that ever lived - the man who made the university of Harvard famous - was Dr. Simon Greenleaf. He became a Christian through trying to refute Jesus Christ as the Eternal Word and the resurrection. Finally, after trying to do it, he came to the conclusion that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of the best established events of history, according to the laws of legal evidence administered in the courts of justice.
C.S. Lewis, the literary genius of our age, was the professor of medieval and renaissance literature at Oxford. He was a giant in his field. No one could question his intellectual capabilities. He became a believer in Jesus Christ as his Savior and Lord when he tried to refute the reliability of the New Testament and he couldn't. And he said, "I was one of the most reluctant converts, but I was brought to Jesus Christ because of my mind."
Lord Caldecote, the Lord Chief Justice of England, a man that held the highest offices that anyone could hold in the legal systems of England, said, " ... as often as I have tried to examine the evidence for Christianity, I have come to believe it as a fact beyond dispute."
Thomas Arnold was the headmaster of a major varsity and university for 14 years. He is an historian and the author of the famous three-volume series, the History of Rome. He said, "I know of no one fact in the history of mankind which is proved by better and fuller evidence than the resurrection of Jesus Christ."
Dr. Werner von Braun, the German scientist - the man who immigrated to my country - was one of the creators of the American Space Program. He said he never really became a scientist until he came to know Jesus Christ personally as Savior and God.
The fifth fact that I discovered was the historical accuracy of the Christian Bible. The Christian New Testament is exceptional in its reliability and trustworthiness and survival down through history. It is unrivaled in manuscript authority. A manuscript is a hand-written copy over against a printed copy. Men and women, of the Christian New Testament alone, there are more than 24,000 manuscripts. Not versions of the Bible, Mr. Deedat, manuscript copies. Men and women, the number two book in all of history in manuscript authority and literature, is Homer's Iliad, with 643. The number two book in the whole of history in manuscript authority.
Then, Sir Frederick Kenyon was a man who was second to no one in the ability and the training to make authoritative statements about manuscripts of literature in history. The former curator and director of the British Museum, he said, "The last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us as they were written now has been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may now be regarded as finally established."
The point: there are some people who do not have an historical perspective of literature, who try to make an issue out of the fact that the writers of the four accounts of the gospel, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, never signed their names. Please, men and women, we need to go back through history and see how they did it then.
First of all, the manuscripts were so well-accepted as being authoritative, with everyone knowing who wrote them, they did not need names placed on them. You might say it was the writers' way of not distracting from the purpose of making Jesus Christ the central issue. Also, the work of these authors, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, went through the apostolic age. They went through the test of the apostolic period of the first century to confirm their accuracy, authenticity and reliability. Other people, through limited reading and absence of any type of research, say that the documents of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are hearsay because the writers were not eyewitnesses of the events surrounding the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The people who say that will often appeal to Mark 14:50. They say that within two minutes they could dismiss the argument because Jesus' followers all left Him and fled. So therefore, everything was hearsay. Men and women. this line of reasoning ignores common sense in the facts of the case. For example, read just the next four verses. It says this: "And Peter followed Him." You see, they left Him in a group, but they came back individually - immediately, Mr. Deedat.
Verse 4 says: "And Peter followed Him at a distance." He went right into the courtyard of the high priest. And he was sitting there with the officer. Can you imagine? With the officers, and warming himself. In Mark 14, it says, "And Peter was below, in the courtyard." Men and women, if you have studied the Scriptures, you'll realize that Mark, in his gospel, was writing down all the eyewitness accounts of Peter. Peter was right there. Then we go to John 18, verse 15: "And Simon Peter was following Jesus, and so was another disciple. Now that disciple was known to the high priest and entered with Jesus into the court of the high priest." John 19:26, "When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, 'Woman, behold your son.' " They were eyewitnesses. They were there.
About being permissible in a court of law. In most legal situations, you have what can be referred to as an ancient document rule. Now, you have to go to law to substantiate these things. Dr. John Warwick Montgomery is a lawyer and dean of the Simon Greenleaf School of Law, and a lecturer at the International School of Theology and Law in Strasbourg, France.
He said that the application of the ancient document rule to the documents of the New Testament (especially the four gospels) - this is a head of a law school speaking - "Applied to the gospel records, and reinforced by responsible lower (textual) criticism, this rule would establish competency in any court of law."
The greatest eyewitness testimony is not found in the gospels. It is found in I Corinthians, the epistle by the apostle Paul, chapter 15, and was written in A.D. 55 to 56. I have yet to find a reputable scholar who would deny that. Paul says (now it's 20 years earlier, right after his conversion - he had met with the leaders. He had met with James, the brother of Jesus in Jerusalem), that the tradition was passed on to him that there were over 500 eyewitnesses of the resurrection. If you take that into a court of law, give each eyewitness just six minutes, that would make 3,000 minutes of eyewitness testimony, or 50 hours of eyewitness testimony.
However, that's not the key point here. That was the tradition handed down to him, what he had examined personally. But Paul says then, the majority of them are still alive right now. Not when the tradition was passed down, but right now. Men and women, Paul was saying, "If you don't believe me, ask them."
Also, many people overlook the fact that when the message of Jesus Christ was presented by the apostles and disciples, and the New Testament was shared, present in the audience were hostile and antagonistic witnesses. If they would have dared to depart from the truth of what was said, there were hostile witnesses to correct them immediately. In a court of law that is referred to as the principle of cross-examination. They did not dare to depart from the truth. Also, apart from the Bible, you have several extra biblical secular sources.
One, a man by the name of Polycarp, was a disciple of the apostle John. He writes in his works. going back almost 2.000 years ago, "So firm is the ground upon which these gospels rest, that even the heretics themselves would not undermine it." They had to start from what was presented and then develop their own heresy. Because even then, they could not say, Jesus didn't say that. Jesus didn't do that then ... they couldn't do that. So, they had to start with what He said, and develop their own heresy.
The conclusion of many scholars is a tremendous confidence in the Christian Bible. Mr. Millar Burrows was on the staff of Yale University, one of the most prestigious universities in my country. He said, "There is an increase of confidence in the accurate transmission of the text of the New Testament itself." Dr. Howard Vox, a researcher and archaeologist, said, "From the standpoint of literary evidence, the only logical conclusion is in the case where the reliability of the New Testament is infinitely stronger than any other record of antiquity."
The sixth fact that I discovered was that Christ was crucified. What does the historical, reliable record show? It is clear, not only from the Christian's biblical historical record, but also from secular sources, which are documented in the back of my book, Evidence That Demands a Verdict, that He not only predicted His death by crucifixion, but that He was actually crucified. Jesus said that He would be whipped and delivered over to be crucified. And then. in John 19:17. 18, "They took Jesus therefore, and He went out, bearing His own cross, to the place called the Place of a Skull.... There they crucified Him, and with Him two other men, one on either side, and Jesus in between."
Let's follow through what actually happened. First of all, it points out that Jesus was whipped by the Romans. What did that mean? The Romans would strip a person down to the waist and would tie him in the courtyard. Then they would take a whip that had a handle about a foot and a half long. At the end of the handle, it had four leather thongs with heavy, jagged bones or balls of lead with jagged edges, wound into the end of the straps. A minimum of five. They would be different lengths. The Romans would bring the whip down over the back of the individual and all the balls of lead or bone would hit the body at the same time. and they they would yank the whip down. The Jews would only permit 40 lashes. So they never did more than 39 so they wouldn't break the law if they miscounted. The Romans could do as many as they wanted. So, when the Romans whipped a Jew, they did 41 or more out of spite to the Jews. And so he had probably at least 41, if not more, lashes.
There are several medical authorities that have done research on crucifixion. One is a Dr. Barbet, in France, and another is Dr. C. Truman Davis, in the state of Arizona in my country. He is a medical doctor who has done meticulous study of the crucifixion from a medical perspective. Here he gives the effect of the Roman flogging:
"The heavy whip is brought down with full force again and again across (a person's) shoulders, back and legs. At first, the heavy thongs cut through the skin only. Then, as the blows continue, they cut deeper into the subcutalleous tissues, producing first an oozing of blood from the capillaries and veins of the skin, and finally spurting arterial bleeding from vessels in the underlying muscles. The small balls of lead first produce large, deep bruises, which the others cut wide open. Finally, the skin of the back is hanging in long ribbons, and the entire area is an unrecognizable mass of torn, bleeding tissue."
Other sources I have documented said that sometimes the back is literally opened up to the bowels within. Many people would die just from the whipping.
After the whipping they took Jesus out to the execution area and drove spikes into His wrists and His feet. It says that late that Friday afternoon they broke the legs of the two thieves hanging with Jesus, but they did not break His legs. Now, why did they break someone's legs? When you are prostrate on the cross, or hanging there, they bent the legs up underneath and drove the spike through here. When you died by crucifixion, often what would happen is you would die from your own air. The pectoral muscles would be affected and you could not let your air out. You could take it in, but could not let it out.
And so, you'd hang there and suffocate, you would push up on your legs to let the air out, and then come down to take it in. When they wanted to bring about the death immediately, they broke their legs and they couldn't push up, and they would die. Jesus' legs were not broken. As the Holy God, revealing His Holy Word in the Bible, points out, Jesus had died. Men and women, if they had broken His legs, He would not have been our Messiah. He would not have been the Eternal Word, because God, Yahweh in the Old Testament, prophesies in Psalms that His legs would not be broken. His bones would not be broken. Men and women, He was fulfilling what God, Yahweh, had already revealed would take place.
The next fact that I discovered was that Christ was dead. That's the seventh fact that I discovered, Men and women, in John 19:30, Jesus willed Himself to die, That's why He didn't take so long, He came to die. He said, "I lay My life down." And in John 19, He said, "It is finished," and He bowed His head and He gave up the Spirit, He willed Himself to die, Now, in John 19, verse 34 (Mr. Deedat, in his booklet, has referred to it as 'Evidence That Jesus Was Not Dead') you have reference to the blood and water.
He was on the cross and they'd already acknowledged Him being dead, but they thought they'd give a parting shot, as you would say, They took a spear, and thrust it into His side. Eyewitness accounts said blood and water came out separated, Mr. Deedat, in his book, appealed to this phenomenon as evidence that Christ was still alive, He supports this in his writing, by an appeal to an article in the Thinkers Digest 1949, by an anesthesiologist. I was able to acquire medical research by various people in this area.
I have time to share just two of the findings. First, from a scholastic viewpoint: many medical and university or varsity libraries that once carried this journal, no longer do so. It is considered by many in the medical field to be not only out of date, but behind the medical times.
Second, from a medical viewpoint: A wound of the type inflicted on Jesus, if the person were still alive, would not bleed out the wound opening, but bleed into the chest cavity, causing an internal hemorrhage. At the aperture of the wound, the blood would be barely oozing from the opening, For a spear to form a perfect channel that would allow the blood and serum to flow out the spear wound is next to impossible. The massive internal damage done to a person under crucifixion, and then being speared in the heart area, would cause death almost immediately, not even including what happens with the details of a Jew's burial.
At the State of Massachusetts General Hospital, over a period of years, they did research on people who died of a ruptured heart. Normally, the heart had 20 cc's of pericardial fluid. When a person dies of a ruptured heart, there is more than 500 cc's of pericardial fluid, And it would come out in the form of a fluid and clotted blood. Perhaps this is what was viewed at that time.
The Jewish burial would have been a final death blow. Mr. Deedat says in his book, page 9, in "What Was the Sign of Jonah"? that they gave the Jewish burial bath, plastered him with 100 pounds of aloe and myrrh. Now, going through whipping, where the back is almost laid open, having your arms and feet pierced, being put on a cross, having a spear thrust in your side, being taken down and then plastered with 100-some pounds of spices of cement consistency - it would call for a greater miracle than the resurrection to live through that,
Then, the severe discipline of the Romans. Pilate was a little amazed, and I would have been too, that Christ had already been dead, or that they had come and asked for the body, So, he called a centurion in. And he said, "I want you to go and confirm to me that Jesus is dead." Now men and women, this centurion was not a fool. He was not about ready to leave his wife a widow.
The centurion would always check with four different executioners. That was Roman law. There had to be four executioners. They did that so in case one man was a little lax, the other one would catch him in it, And you would never have all four lax in signing the death warrant. Discipline was severe with the Romans.
For example, when the angel let Peter out of jail in Acts 12 in the New Testament, Herod called in the guard and executed them all - just for letting one man out of jail. In Acts 16 in the Christian New Testament, the doors had been opened up in the jail for Paul and Silas, their chains had been loosened, and the moment the guard saw they were freed, he pulled out his own sword to execute himself. And Paul said, "Wait a minute!" You see, that guard knew what would happen, He would rather die by his own sword, than be executed by the Romans.
Then Christ was dead. Flavius Josephus, the Jewish historian, records that when he went into Jerusalem in A.D. 70 when Titus was destroying it, he saw three of his friends being crucified. They had just been put up there. They had been whipped and everything. He went to the commander of the guard and he said, "Please release them." Now, you have to understand, Flavius was the name given to Josephus by the Roman Emperor who had brought him into his own family. That's why he had influence as a Jew. And you know, immediately, the Roman guard captain took the three men down from the cross and still, men and women, two of the three died. They'd just been put up there and they were removed quickly. Crucifixion was that cruel.
The Jews knew that Jesus was dead. In Matthew 27 they went to the Roman leader and said, "Sir, we remember that when He was still alive. ..." In other words, what is He now? Dead! "When He was still alive He said, 'After three days I am to rise again.' "I believe Mr. Deedat has his books saying that the Jews realized they'd made a mistake. He really wasn't dead, so they thought they wouldn't make a second mistake, so they go and get a guard unit put there. Well, the Jews themselves said He was already dead. "We just want to make sure no one takes His body so there won't be any deception." The Jews have been accused of a lot of things, but very seldom have they ever been accused of stupidity. They knew He was dead.
The next fact I discovered was the burial procedure of the Jews. Some people say they were hurrying because of the Sabbath coming, and they had to carry Him back. Men and women, I checked this out in detail. And I documented in my Resurrection Factor book that the burial procedure was so important they could even do it on the Sabbath. They didn't have to worry about the Sabbath coming up. They didn't want the body to hang on the cross once the Sabbath began, but they could take their time burying Him. They would put spices around the body - in this case, 100 pounds of aromatic spices - along with a gummy, cement substance.
They would stretch the body out or straighten it out. They'd take a piece of linen cloth 30 centimeters wide. They would start to wrap the body from the feet. In between the folds, they put the cement consistency and the spices. They wrapped the body to the armpits, put the arms down, started below the fingers again, wrapped to the neck, and put a separate piece around the head. In this situation, I would estimate an encasement of 117 to 120 pounds.
The next fact that I discovered is that they took extreme security precautions at the tomb of Jesus Christ. One, it says that they rolled large stone against the tomb. Mark says the stone was extremely large. One historical reference going back to the first century says that 20 men could not move the stone. Now. I think it was exaggerated a little bit there. But he was making a point about the size of the stone. Two engineering professors. after they heard me speak on the stone, went to Israel. As non-Christian engineering professors, they calculated the size stone needed to roll against a four-and-a-half to five-foot doorway of the Jewish tombs. They wrote me a well-documented letter, and said it would have to have a minimum weight of one and a half to two tons.
Mr. Deedat, in his books, makes an issue that one man, or two at the most, rolled the stone against the entrance. Therefore, one or two men could roll it back. It says Joseph of Arimathea rolled the stone against the entrance. Don't force on the Bible or the Qur'an anything you would not force in conversation today. For example: when I came to the stadium the other day to look it over. I said to one of the people that brought me here, "How did all these chairs get here?" He said, "Mr. Deedat brought them." Mr. Deedat, did you bring all 700 of these chairs personally, yourself? No! They were brought by many people. I could go away from here saying Mr. Deedat put on this symposium. But I think there were some others that helped make all the arrangements.
History says Hitler invaded France. Now, maybe he would have tried it in France alone, but I don't think he would try it in South Africa alone.
There could have been a number of people that helped Joseph of Arimathea. Plus, you find when you go back and research it out that the tombs had a trough going up the side. They placed the stone there. They had a block. Then, men and women, my seven-year-old daughter could roll it, because you simply pull up the block, letting the stone roll down the front and lodge itself against the entrance of the tomb.
Then, a security guard was put there. The Jews wanted one. They went to the Romans and said, give us a guard unit. The Greek word was kustodia. Men and women, a kustodia was a 16-man security unit. Each man was trained to protect six square feet of ground. The 16 men, according to Roman history, were supposed to be able to protect 6 square yards against an entire battalion and hold it. Each guard had four weapons on his body. He was a fighting machine, almost the same as was true of the Temple Police.
Next, a Roman seal was placed on the tomb with a Roman insignia. That seal stood for the power and the authority of the Roman Empire. The body of Christ was encased with 100 and some pounds of cement and aromatic spices. A one-and-a-half to two-ton stone was rolled against the entrance: a 16-man security unit was placed there, and a Roman seal. But something happened. It's a matter of historical record: after three days, the tomb was empty.
I don't have to debate that. Mr. Deedat agrees the tomb was empty. So, I won't waste any time here.
The sign of Jonah - I'm so glad you brought that up. The sign of Jonah - won't take too much time there because I don't think it's necessary in this sense. Whenever you study something, you study it in the language and the culture of that day. Now, you go back to the Jewish language, and the Jewish culture of that day. Not today - not South African, not Indian, not American. The Jewish-Israelite culture of that day.
Let's see what three days and three nights mean. In Esther, chapter 4, in the Old Testament of the Christian Jewish Bible, it says there was a fast for three days and three nights. But then. it went on, and it says they completed the fast on the third day. You see. in Jewish language, "after three days and three nights," meant "to the third day" or "on the third day." Jesus said in Matthew 12:40 He would be buried for three days and three nights.
In Matthew 20, Jesus said He would be raised up on the third day - not after the third day. The Jews came to Jesus, and they said in Matthew 27, verse 63, "Sir...that deceiver said 'After three days I am to rise again.'" So, they asked for a Roman guard. Now watch the language here. "Therefore, give orders for the grave to be made secure until the third day," not after the third day. They knew what Jesus said, three days and three nights, meant until the third day, "lest His disciples come and steal Him away."
Friday before six o'clock they had three hours to bury Him. It took less than an hour. The Jewish reckoning of time in the Jewish Talmud and the Babylonian Jerusalem Talmud (the commentaries of the Jews), said any part, an "onan" - any part of the day is considered a full day. On Friday before six o'clock by Jewish reckoning, any minute was one day and one night. From Friday night at six o'clock to Saturday at six o'clock, was another day and another night.
Men and women, from Jewish reckoning - not ours - any moment after six o'clock Saturday night is another day, another night. We do the same thing in my country. If my son was born one minute before midnight on December the 31st, on my income taxes to my government, I could treat my son with the same time principle as having been born at any time during that one full year - 365 days and 365 nights.
When the Roman guards failed in their duty, they were automatically executed. One way they were executed was they were stripped of their clothes and burned alive in a fire started with their own clothes. The seal was broken. Men and women, when that seal was broken, the security forces were thrown into finding that man or men, and when they were found, anyone breaking that seal was condemned to crucifixion upside down.
The stone was removed, men and women, and I'll ask Mr. Deedat to check it out carefully. The revealed Word of God in the Christian New Testament, in the original Greek (as the Qur'an is in Arabic, the New Testament is in Greek), points out that a one-and-a-half- to two-ton stone was rolled up a slope, away from not just the entrance, but away from the entire tomb, looking like it had been picked up and carried away. Now, if they wanted to tip-toe in, move the stone over, and help Jesus out, why all the efforts to move a one-and a-half to two-ton stone up away from the entire sepulchre? That guard unit would have had to have been sleeping with cotton in their ears and with earmuffs on not to have heard that one.
Then, Mary went to the tomb in John 20. Mr. Deedat says that she went there to anoint the body and that the word "anoint" means "to massage." Well, let me tell you, if that's true - it's not - but if it were true, and that's the way the Muslims do it, it would have killed Jesus. If I went through crucifixion, had my hands and feet pierced, my back laid open to the bowels, 100 and some pounds put around me, I wouldn't want anyone to massage me. The word "anoint" means "consecrated." As Mr. Deedat brought out in his book, the priests and kings were anointed when being consecrated to their office. When He said, "Touch Me not," Mr. Deedat says it means, "I am hurting - don't touch Me." Well, read the next phrase, Mr. Deedat. It says, "Do not touch Me, because I haven't yet ascended to the Father."
That's why they're not to touch Him because "I haven't ascended to the Father." And then He says, "Now, go tell My disciples I am ascending to the Father." A little bit later, He says, "You can touch Me. Grab My feet." Why did He do that? Oh, men and women, this is one of the most beautiful things. In the Old Testament, at the tabernacle, the Jewish high priest would take the sacrifice into the Holy of Holies. And the people would wait outside, because they knew if God did not accept their sacrifice, the priest would be struck dead.
They would wait for the high priest to come back. And when the high priest walked back out, everybody shouted with joy! Because they said, "God has accepted our sacrifice" Jesus said, "Don't touch Me ... I've not ascended to the Father." Jesus, between that time and when the others grabbed hold of Him and touched Him, ascended to God the Father, presented Himself as a sacrifice, and, ladies and gentlemen, if Jesus had not come back, if He had not permitted the others to touch Him, it would have meant His sacrifice had not been accepted. But I thank God He came back and said, "Touch Me". It's been accepted.
As for the spiritual physical body of Jesus Christ, I think, Mr. Deedat, you need to first study our Scriptures. I think you need to read just as I did to study your scriptures. You need to read I Corinthians 15:44, 51. The explanation of the glorified, imperishable body. It was a spiritual body, and yet, it had substance. He could walk through a door; He could appear in their presence. He didn't need food, but He took food. Otherwise, they would have said, "You're merely a spirit." No, He had what the Bible called the resurrected, glorified, incorruptible body. And if I were in that room and I knew I'd seen Him crucified, buried and everything else, and all of a sudden, with the doors locked, He appeared in the midst of the group, I think I'd be a little frightened, too. Men and women, Jesus Christ is raised from the dead! Thank you.
