good evening everyone good evening and a very very warm welcome to uncover my name is Josh I’m a member of the Christian union and it’s my pleasure again to welcome you along this evening it’s great to see you here well uncovers a week of events exploring some of the biggest issues of life and faith and so every lunch time this week uh we were looking at uh life’s big questions and in these evening events we’ve been considering the life that Jesus offers to us and the claims that he makes about himself well this evening’s title is uncovering Hope and uh joining us in in helping us think through that topic um is Dr Tim Keller again who’s been here with us all week Tim’s a New York Times bestselling author and he leads a large Church in Manhattan and has uh spoken and taught in countries all around the world well in just a minute he’s going to speak for about 30 minutes and then after that there’ll be a chance to um answer any of the questions that that you have so please be texting those questions in throughout this evening that number will remain on the screen for the duration so do text in your questions as you think of them after uh that we we’ll hear um from Alice who’s a student at St Peters about how she began to Grapple with uh some of these issues for herself and then at the end we’ll enjoy some more live music together well now Tim let me invite you up and uh have just on your way up um a couple of questions for you you again um hello Tim it won’t have escaped your attention that it is Valentine’s Day today h um H you’re here with your wife Kathy um we’d all love to know how did you meet Kathy well I went to uh I was an undergraduate with Kathy’s uh younger sister she’s uh uh two years younger than me and uh one of the things that uh her name was Susan one of the things that Susan seemed to int it was um that I and and Kathy were similar so they were always she was always saying you know you would like these books because my sister likes them uh and or you would you or she would say right to you sometimes say you ought to read this Tim Keller’s reading this and and so when we actually showed up at theological college at the very same time we knew each other other through Susan and uh we just immediately uh took up with each other we didn’t know one another that way and the rest is romantic history thank you I’ll ask no more um yes let’s just we we’ll just uh uh uh draw a veil of discretion over the rest of the story good right I’ll move on to the next question yes you are English you know so you can only take so much so you’re you’re blushing I am blushing yeah it’s the lights it’s the lights now we’ve been hearing each evening from an Oxford student about how they began to Think Through um Christianity for themselves how did that happen for you how did you begin thinking about it well I can be brief but and I want you to know that no one from um the Christian union paid me to say this but there’s a uh in the United States there’s a um uh an organization of um a Christian campus organization University students organization that descended from um the Oxford Christian union and the Cambridge Christian union many many years ago was called inar City still is over there and I was just drawn I was brought along by a friend in my uh I was a fresher at the first year and brought me along and I began to read uh books that were uh read over here in the same uh cires so people that most of whom maybe would not have heard of uh today but anyway people like I Howard I Howard Marshall FF Bruce helped me begin to trust the Bible actually uh and of course CS Lewis who was also one of the people you read and um like I said uh because Kathy and I uh when we became new Believers we read British books for many years we really thought that Jesus was our Sav hour until American came along and explained to us um the the faith better thank you now a few people have noticed him over the course of your talks this week you’ve referred to musicals on a number of occasions from Frozen through to The Sound of Music are are musicals a particular passion of yours uh my my my parents and especially my mother loved them and uh when I was growing up they’re always playing uh and so unfortunately when I first met Kathy to her surprise uh and it wasn’t because I tried I knew many many American musicals essentially by heart so and and actually when we when we were first getting to know each other I try to impress her by reciting all of my fair lady all of the music man all of what what else everything and uh trouble with the capital T and that rhes with p and it stands for pool okay but uh ever since then she’s been trying to get me to do it in public and I have refused Tim thank you for answering those questions yes over to you thank you yeah well uh and by the way please do text in questions as they come to your mind as I’m speaking tonight um I’m U been delighted to be with you for these uh five nights and we have talked about such massive themes we’ve talked about how I’ve been arguing actually that Christianity can give you a meaning in life that uh suffering can’t take away it can give you a satisfaction a contentment that is abiding it’s not based on circumstances we’ve talked about the fact that Christianity gives you a unique identity different than any other different than any other culture will uh give you because it’s it’s not an achieved identity based on your performance is a received identity based on Christ’s regard of you and because it’s so unique it’s completely different it’s based on his regard of you not on your performance it doesn’t wax and wne your self-esteem your self-regard doesn’t wax and wne depending on how successful you are in a given time or a given day even in work or in love uh it brings we were talking about it brings about a kind of unique Freedom uh if you any other kind of identity since it’s based on performance what it means is that uh you might be humble if you’re living up if you’re not living up to your standards you’re not performing well you might be humble and kind and understanding to people but not confident if you are living up to your standards you could be very confident and bold but usually self-righteous and condescending toward others but Christianity says in yourself you’re a sinner in Jesus Christ you’re absolutely utterly loved there’s no condemnation any longer longer for you and that gives you a unique combination of both you can’t be superior to anyone there’s a humility and a boldness at the same time there’s all sorts of ways in which uh the Christian identity the Christian Gospel gives you freedoms uh from what uh from cultural conformity from public opinion uh it gives you a satisfaction it gives you meaning and we’re not done one more one more thing to talk about tonight it gives you a future hope and uh uh to do this uh to bring it out tonight I want to read you one more passage uh from The Book of John I’m going to read to you from John chapter 20 it’s a short passage it’s verses 24 to 29 very very famous let me read it to you John 20: 24-29 now Thomas who was known as dimus one of the 12 was not with the disciples when Jesus came so the other disciples told him we have seen the Lord but he said to them unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were and put my hand into his side I will not believe a week later his disciples were in the house again and Thomas was with them and though the doors were locked Jesus came and stood among them and said peace be with you and then he said to Thomas put your finger here see my hands reach out your hand and put it into my side stop doubting and believe and Thomas said to him my Lord and my God then Jesus told him because you have seen me you have believed blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed now uh this is a an account of a time in which Jesus Christ after his resurrection from the dead appeared to Thomas and here’s what I like to uh learn from this passage first about the necessity of future hope it’s absolutely necessary we have a future hope and then secondly something about the nature of the future hope that Christianity can give you the necessity of future hope the nature of the future hope that Christianity gives you so first of all the necessity um to get across what I mean by that we are unavoidably irreducibly hope based creatures to uh uh demonstrate imagine you uh get two men they are men of the same age they’re the men of the same uh socioeconomic status same educational level they’re men of the same temperament so they’re essentially identical in every way and you hire them and you uh say I want you every day all day to do a particular uh operation let’s say put a widget on a wet over and over and over again pretty tedious a wig Wich it and watch it and you put them in identical rooms identical lighting identical temperature identical ventilation identical conditions in every way it’s very boring work 10 hours a day uh only 30 minutes off for lunch uh and so it’s they’re they’re they’re identical in every way but only one difference you tell the first man at the end of a year I will pay you £10,000 and you tell the second man at the end of the year I will pay you 10 million so after a couple of weeks you know they eat together and the first guy is saying isn’t this tedious isn’t this awful don’t you hate it isn’t it driving you insane aren’t you thinking about quitting and the other the second man says no no actually I kind of enjoy it in fact I Whistle While I Work what’s going on here you have two men who are experiencing the same circumstances in radically different ways and their experience is determined by their expected future what they believe their about their future completely controls how they’re experiencing their present they are we are utterly unavoidably irreducibly hope-based creatures and what we think about our future completely determines how you are experiencing your present uh this is actually there’s ramifications of this for entire cultures we won’t even go into this but uh one of my favorite books is written by an American academic uh a u a secular author by the way not a Christian Author uh Andrew delbanco who teaches at Columbia University and he wrote a book some years ago called the real American Dream a meditation on Hope and uh he’s thinking at a cultural level but listen to this he says the part of any culture is its hope hope is the way we overcome the lurking suspicion that all of our getting and spending amounts to fidgeting while we wait for death we must imagine some end of life that transcends our own our own tiny allotment of days and hours if we are to keep at Bay the dim back of the Mind suspicion that we are a drift in an absurd world every culture he says has got to give people hope or else they do just sink into absurdity because what we think about the future what our future is completely determined is determines how we experience the present now uh what is the Christian response to this incredibly profound human need and the answer is the fact of the Resurrection why do I say fact well let me just show you in the text it’s interesting that um Thomas uh says when everybody else says Jesus is raised from the dead we’ve seen him and he says I’m not going to believe that why this is why this has been a very uh precious text to many people especially those of us of a more and I say of us of just a general skeptical bent and he says I’m not going to believe until uh he appears to me and I can put my hands in his side where his wounds were and I can put my finger in the holes where they nailed put the nails and spikes through his hands I’m not going to believe till then and then what happens of course that the account says that Jesus Christ appears to him visibly and then actually says you can touch me now and yet the very last thing Jesus says almost seems to contradict what he’s doing what Jesus is doing by appearing because the last verse says the last thing Jesus says is because you have seen me you have believed blessed are those who have not seen and have believed so what he’s saying and there’s plenty of people probably in this room who can attest to it I certainly contest test it you can actually certainly believe that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead you can achieve tremendous certainty about that without ever having had a visible uh encounter physical encounter with the Risen Christ Jesus says that right there so if that’s the case if you don’t really need this why did he show up for Thomas and the answer is it says here now Thomas known as dimus was one of the 12 he was one of the 12 12 AP Apostles and the answer to my question is J Thomas did not need to actually meet the Risen Christ physically encounter the Risen Christ in order to be a believer but he did need to encounter the physical and risen Christ to be an apostle to be one of the 12 because the apostles were Jesus chosen uh Messengers who were going to take the message of the Gospel the message of Christ to the world and the fact that that uh Thomas needed to actually see Jesus risen from the dead tells me something tells us something about that message what is that message well the message of Jesus Christ the the core of the message of the Gospel is not Jesus ethical teaching Jesus had wonderful ethical teaching turn the other cheek blessed are the peacemakers forgive your enemies very famous come down to us marvelous Sublime but Thomas didn’t need to see the Risen Christ if his job was to transmit the message and the message of the Gospel the message of Jesus Christ at the core was live a good life love forgive peac make is that the core of what it means no see it’s a historical fact that the message of Jesus Christ changed I it it it changed so many lives and it spread so much through the masses that within 200 years that incred incredibly strong classical Greco Roman Pagan culture was almost completely supplanted by Christianity it’s astounding and the only way that could have happened was not because there was a little Christian Movement here or there or that some of the intellectual classes or some of the middle classes uh became Christians so we had uh uh different kind of no the masses went Christian the downtrodden went Christian they’re still going Christian go to Latin America and go to Africa now and what would the poor and the downtrodden what would change their lives about Christianity the ethical teaching is that what the poor and downtrodden what are the poor and the downtrodden going to say oh turn the other cheek uh blessed are the peacemakers forgive your enemies now finally finally I I have a message that after my years of Darkness say the poor and the downtrodden I finally have got some way to conquer my Despair and something that will uh change my life and something that will heal my heart no they need a message of Hope and here’s the message of hope the message of Christianity is not what you must do it’s not here’s the ethical prescriptions now live like this that would be one more burden on us no the message of Christianity is what Jesus Christ has done that he died and Rose that’s the reason why Thomas had to see it that he died and Rose that’s the message of Christianity that when Jesus Christ died on the cross he took away the barrier between us and God and when he rose from the dead he destroyed sin and death that’s the reason why the downtrodden of the world can say no matter who I am or what I’ve done no matter what I’ve been no matter what the record is I can be reborn into the kingdom of God and whatever level of success in this life I have in my struggle for freedom I still have hope why because my future is certain because the resurrection is a fact the resurrection is not a fact there is no message of hope all you’ve got are ethical good ethical principles in fact you know today there’s plenty of people who say that’s the heart of Christianity we can’t take the Bible literally they say we can’t take the resurrection literally we can’t believe in that uh we believe the resurrection is a wonderful symbol what it means to be a Christian is to live a good life live according to the teachings of Jesus and the resurrection is a wonderful symbol all right what’s it a symbol of well it’s a symbol of how even in the darkest times there’s always hope that’s not true have you not lived life life is not like that sometimes there’s hope after Darkness but a lot of times there’s none none at all and if you say the resurrection is a symbol that reflects the fact of life that there’s always hope after Darkness it’s a lie because life’s not like that the resurrection as a symbol of how life is it’s a lie but the resurrection is a fact can actually change life because if the resurrection really happened then Jesus Christ has opened a cliff in the pitiless walls of the world there was this concrete slab as it were between the ideal and the real and in the resurrection Jesus Christ punched a hole in it and now the Divine Life comes in if the if the resurrection is a fact then the downtrod of the world said now I’ve got something that I can I I have a hope I’ve got a hope for the future I’ve got a hope for myself not here’s a bunch of nice wonderful principles because if that’s all you have listen middle class people sometimes can get excited about philos philosophy they can get excited about ethical principles but not the masses not the people who are really stuck in the darkness of this world the resurrection as is a fact the resurrection is a fact that’s what changes life that’s what changes your life and that’s what will change the world now let’s just take a second here because some of you are saying how do you know it’s a fact and you know finally especially if you’ve been here before finally I can say not only am I talking to you about something that Christianity offers so powerful that you should want it to be true finally I’m talking about something that also is strong evidence that it is true and that’s the resurrection itself um look Richard Dawkins uh says you shouldn’t believe anything you can’t prove he doesn’t like Faith don’t believe anything you can’t prove he does admit at one point I don’t have the actual page but he does admit at one point though that there’s nothing that happened in history that we can prove just the way you prove a logical theorem or the way you prove uh you know something in a test tube and yet it would be foolish not to say we can be sure of many historical facts no you can’t prove them in the same way you can prove you know something logically demonstratively but you certainly can say there are such things of historical facts and I believe if you just use the the ways in which people check out uh the truth of historical claims the resurrection is historical fact too I’ll just just just a little tiny slice of two just think like this here’s a little bit of historical reasoning if you don’t believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ how do you account for the birth of the Christian Church give me a historically viable alternate explanation you may say well Resurrection is not an okay give me a better explanation because here’s what happened we know from the letters of Paul at least Paul’s first letters were written just a decade and a half or so after Jesus life and we know from Paul’s letters that there were thousands of Jews who virtually immediately after the death of Jesus Christ began worshiping him as God on the strength of the fact he was raised from the dead they were worshiping him as God now look in the East when the idea of God is God is is uh in everything to talk about an individual being a God or an avatar or something that’s no big deal but the Jews understanding of God was he was infinitely Transcendent above the world he’s the creator of all things self-sufficient and the idea that a human being would be God the Jews were the last people on the face of the Earth to believe that a human being would be God they won’t even you know with Jews even to this day will not they won’t even write the name of God and yet thousands of Jews almost immediately began worshiping Jesus as God look worldviews changed but not overnight you know there’s Papers written and there’s books written and there’s and there’s parties that begin and there’s divisions and there’s fights not overnight what did it and the answer of course is the claims were that we hundreds of people saw him not just one or two hundreds of people saw him raised from the dead and one thing on the witness which I you know it’s the simplest one to quickly convey you say well how do you know that those Witnesses were credible well in the gospels and this is one of them Matthew Mark Luke and John you’ve got early eyewitness accounts of Jesus Christ you say well how do we know that those things are reliable well there’s a lot of tests but I’ll just give you one the first people in every gospel account who saw Jesus Christ every single one of them the first people were women we know that in that very patriarchal society women had such low status that both in Roman courts and in Jewish courts women’s testimony was not admissible evidence they were considered unreliable you know that’s that’s lamentable but that’s the way it was and therefore if you’re making up an account of Jesus resurrection if you’re trying to push your faith you would never never in a million years put women as the first witnesses there would have been enormous Prejudice on the part of almost any pagans reading that thing so give me give me an explanation for why women are in there as the first Witnesses about the only possible reason that they’d be in those texts is if they were and they just had to be put in there because they were that was the story there’s no other reason why they they would be in there there’s quite a bit of evidence that the resurrection of Jesus Christ happened and if the resurrection of Jesus Christ happened then it’s not what he said but what he did that will really change your life if Jesus Christ came mainly as a teacher and said like all the other founders of all other religions and said live like this and you will find God then he’d be no different than all and Christianity wouldn’t be different than any other religion but Jesus Christ is not one more founder saying here’s the way to God Jesus Christ says I’m I’m God come to find you every other religion says here’s what you have to do to save yourself here’s the eight-fold path here’s the Five Pillars here’s what you must do to save yourself Jesus Christ says no I have come to do what saves you I’m not here to tell you what you must do I’m telling you what I’ve done to save you I lived the life you should have lived I died to death you should have died in your place as your substitute so that when you believe in me my resurrection power comes in and begins to change your life now and at the end of time you’ll be raised physically and you’ll be part of that and glorious future that is the future hope that Christianity offers and the reason I’m going to not end right here because I said this is why we have to have a hope and this is the powerful hope but I’d like to talk to you a little bit about why the Christian Future Hope is actually unique because I can just hear a question coming saying well aren’t there other um you know religions that offer an afterlife and that sort of kind of hope yeah but let me give you three ways in which Christian the Christian hope is unique it’s Unique because it’s personal because it’s certain because it’s unimaginably wonderful it’s first of all it’s personal notice when Thomas says my Lord and my God he recognizes him he recognizes him there’s actually a lot of interesting discussion um in all of these first accounts uh when the uh on the road to Emmas when the two disciples meet Jesus when Mary Magdalene meets Jesus they look at first they don’t and then they say oh it’s you it’s still Jesus Jesus is still himself do you know how important that is both in East today in Eastern countries but also in ancient times the Greeks Greek philosophers believe this and today especially in the west more and more people are trying to mitigate the problem of of being afraid of death being despondent in the in the face of death we showed I think I quoted earlier this week how tolto at one point said just that the idea of Extinction just made everything he was doing uh meaningless and uh one of the ways in which we deal with this in our modern culture is to say hey no wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute we continue even after death we’re still part of life Remember The Lion King there’s the great Lion King and he’s talking to his son Simba and he says Simba syba yes yes we do eat antelopes we you know we chew them to bits it’s you know it’s bloody it’s awful but but when we die our bodies fertilize and enrich the ground and out of the ground grows the grass and the antelopes eat the grass and then we eat the antelopes and so we’re all it’s all part of the circle of life we’re all part of the circle of life how wonderful uh and uh and when you die you you stay as part of the circle of life so you continue in a way now way the Greek stoics believe something like that too Eastern folks say the same sort of thing uh Eastern uh religions I mean and and and so why be afraid why be afraid because you continue on in a in an impersonal way of course because you’re either part of the ground or you’re part of the cosmos in some way but you’re all part of the circle of life but look if our future after death is non-existence or impersonal existence that means there’s no love there because in order to have love you have to have persons and there’s if we’re not if you’re not yourself after death if you’re not a self after death then you’ve lost everything because see what we most want in life is love and where we our life is most meaningful when we have love and once we have love the most important thing in the world is not to lose love and you’re going to tell me oh it’s wonderful you’re just part of the circle of life you’re going to tell me that at death I’m going to be stripped of everything that means anything to me because what I want more than anything else is Love Without parting I want love you want love and in order to do that you just got to be persons and it’s of no consolation that kind of hope no consolation at all not if you think about it and you know John Updike in his uh Memoirs called self-consciousness is Just A Memoir of his life he actually his last chapter where he talks a little bit about why he was a Lutheran Christian and why Christianity was important to him you can you you actually I don’t even have to tell you I’ll just tell you um I’ll tell you what the answer is by the title of his last chapter in his book on being a self Forever on being a self forever not part of the circle of life not just part of Stardust not just part of the ground it’s on being a self and I think what’s going to happen to us if we believe and we’re resurrected something like what was happening to them on the road to emus we’re going to look at each other and we’re going to say it is you isn’t it yeah I saw a seed of this in you in our Earthly life but now look at you look at how beautiful you are look at how glorious I knew you could be like this and now you are see that’s what you want that’s the hope of your heart Christianity gives it to you it’s a personal future secondly though uh kind of briefly it’s a it’s also a certain future here’s what I mean this hope is of no real um value to you if you’re not sure that that you’re going to get there see sometimes you say I’ve had people say well the resurrection is wonderful but I don’t know I don’t know if I’ll make it I don’t know the God’s going to I don’t know if he’s really accepted me I don’t how do I know that this is really going to happen to me how do I know no well weirdly enough the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the way for you to be certain that if you believe in him you’ll be resurrected you know why you know what the resurrection of Christ is it basically is the Vindication of the Cross or another way to put it is it proves that the cross was effective or let me put it like this uh if you’re um convicted of a crime and the judge says sentenced five years in prison okay so broke the Law wages of of sin is 5 years so you go into prison and when you have paid the price when there is nothing more to pay when you have fulfilled and satisfied the demands of the law how do you know that you have fulfilled and satisfied the demands of the law you get out you walk out and because you’re walking out that means it’s all been paid the Bible says what is what are the wages of rebelling against God refusing to allow God to be God in your life refusing to acknowledge the fact that you owe him everything but you you live your life the way you want what is the wages of that death and when Jesus Christ died and then walked out it meant it was paid it was paid you know I’m sure that in Britain everybody trusts everybody else it’s not that way in America I just want you to know that because in America when you go into a store a department store uh something like that you buy something and then they give you uh the the purchase they give it to you and you’re walking around with a bag and there are these things they call plain glows policemen in the stores or generally security guards in the stores who are watching for shoplifters so sometimes they’ll come over to you because they see you walking around with the uh package and say could I look in that package please because they’re trying to see whether or not everything in the package was purchased and if you are of a more dramatic sort and there are many American who are what you do is they walk over and they say can I look in there what you do is you open up you reach in and you find the receipt and you pull it out and you say trouble me not this is proof that I’ve paid you cannot make me pay for it again and of course uh the uh the plane closed policeman you know usually uh backs away in with confusion of face and say forgive me uh for even questioning you but you know what the resurrection of Jesus Christ is it’s a receipt it is a receipt stamped across history in letters so big that nobody can fail to see them that your sin your debt has been paid in full and you can be certain if he was raised from the dead you believe in him you will be here’s one more thing and it’s important and that is that the resurrection is unimaginably wonderful uh yeah there’s others other uh religions that offer an afterlife I told you some of them offer only an impersonal afterlife that’s not the Deep need of the heart we need love well but aren’t there others that offer a personal afterlife yeah but it’s only Heaven it’s only spiritual and the resurrection by definition means the Redemption not just of my spirit but my body and the resurrection means that God’s going to actually renew the material creation he’s going to give us a new Heaven and new earth and you know what this means this means that well listen let me start like this one of the things that I one poem uh Edgar Allen Poe The Raven which in some ways is very very dark and some ways very very hard to understand but it’s very powerful because you have this black bird The Raven constantly saying over and over and over again never more never more and even though I’m not utterly sure of this and I probably should read some literary criticism of it it seems to me that what PO is getting across is the irretrievability of life there’s a kind of death in the midst of life and the longer you are alive the more you’ll start to experience that death in the midst of life and that is when things go away that that you know at least within the walls of this world will never be brought back to you some of sometimes there are opportunities that you’ve missed I mean some of you as young people already know you’ve missed some opportunities will never come back to you uh it’s not just that there’s there’s people that you lose you know will never come back and relationships and even places I mean for Kathy and I it’s um it’s her family’s old summer Cottage on the shores of Lake Erie not only are the Cottages gone forever but the beach is gone forever and and there’s an irretrievability there’s a loss in the middle of life which is a kind of death in the middle of life and the resurrection says no to never more cu the resurrection says you are not not simply going to get a consolation for the life you’ve lost you know that’s Heaven Bliss you’re not just going to get a consolation for the life you lost you are going to get a the restoration of the life you lost you you won’t just get your body back you’ll get the body back that you never had that you wished you had you won’t just get your life back you’ll get the life back that you never had but you wished you had you’re not going to miss out on anything because this isn’t just a a consolation it’s it’s a it’s a restoration in that great article which was a lecture by JRR tolken called on fairy stories he tries to explain why it is um and this has very much irritated the the Literati you know of the world that people still spend so much money on reading and consuming movies plays books stories that are fairy tales they’re um uh those are the movies that are Blockbusters they got magic in them and they’ve got Sorcerers and they’ve got you know dwarves and elves and Hobbits and things like that and people just instead of the high literature realistic fiction that’s what people want to embe and he was trying to explain what’s going on there and he actually said there at F there in the in the essay he says there’s five things that human beings seem to have a such a deep longing for and those five things are to be able to step outside of time to escape death to have love without parting to hold communion with non-human beings and to see good finally triumph over evil yeah step outside Time Escape from Death love without parting uh communication with non-human beings and good triumphing over evil and he says we have such a deep longing that we cannot get rid of um that that fantasy fiction fairy tales uh even though we know they’re fairy tales even though we know they’re not realistic we uh especially if they’re told well it it gets to Something in us that is satisfying that we Des we just want to see it depicted and when we see it depicted well it brings a joy we just because somehow deep down we sense this is the way the world ought to be in some ways we’re getting in touch with some kind of reality not not real life but maybe a reality of the life as it ought to be and tolken says realistic fiction will never scratch that itch realistic fiction will never quench that thirst and people will still spend all this money and and spend all this time and they uh well- told stories that depict those five things we want them we long for them now Christians have a good explanation for that it’s a Memory Trace we believe it’s a Memory Trace deep in the soul human beings all know that that’s what we originally were made for but here’s what the resurrection means think about this listen if the resurrection of Jesus Christ is a historical fact all those five things will come literally true for you no they’re not true now of course they’re fiction escape from Death stepping outside time communication with non-human beings love without parting good triumphing over evil finally if the resurrection of Jesus Christ is a fact and you believe in him those aren’t fairy tales they won’t be anymore why wouldn’t you want that to be true see the resurrection H how do I put it the resurrection of Jesus Christ there’s no greater human hope possible there’s the heart wants this desperately wants this nothing can answer the deepest needs of the human heart like this and even if you’re not sure it is true true you should certainly be motivated to find out if it is true if you’re ready actually to find out whether it’s true tonight and make a kind of a a commitment to that I will come back and I will talk to you about that in my wrapup but right now you’re going to hear uh and I’m hoping you’ve got questions you’re still texting them in uh right now we’re going to hear a uh one more account of a spiritual journey of an Oxford uh student and after that um joshu will come back we’ll do the questions and answers and then we’ll wrap up I wasn’t trying to discover what life was all about or anything when I arrived to Oxford but I met some Christians and I was intrigued by the way that they lived I’d heard some Bible stories growing up but why did these people believe them as truth and history and how come they let Jesus affect the whole way that they live their lives I noticed how the Christians who invited me along to things behave differently how they were really welcoming to everyone and went out of their way to selflessly do things for other people I started going along to some Christian union meetings and hearing more from the Bible and seeing how people were trusting in God as they prayed for each other I even went along to a few days away with the Christian union at the star of Hillary term of my first year there the speaker was talking about how the kingdom of God is all about relationships of love how it’s because God loved us so much that he sent his son to us and he died to save us to save me as we sang together I was struck by the incomprehensible amount of love that Jesus had that he was willing to bear the cost of death to take everything that we ever have and ever will do wrong upon himself so that we can have eternal life in a perfect world I heard the Bible verse everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved I thought it was pretty good really that God would do all of this for us but there isn’t anything that we had to do to receive it apart from ask so I did I can see now why Christians try and live the way that they do when you’ve discovered the enormous amount of love that God has for us how could you not want to try and share that by loving others when you’ve seen a perfect example of the Way That Jesus Lives and behaves towards anyone he meets in the Bible how could you not want to try and imitate that even a little bit and when you’ve accepted the amazing gift of eternal life in a perfect world how could you not want to try and share that with others it’s amazing to think that I know God that I can always rely on him pray to him and trust him although that definitely isn’t always easy but I’m so grateful that Jesus died for me to make that relationship possible that I can have even more joy at the beauty of the world now that I can thank the one who made it and that I have a hope for a better world in the future that can never be taken away great we’re going to go for some question and answers now before Tim concludes the evening so let’s have our first question up please we accept scient ific Things based on falsification not verification as you said like how Dawkins said nothing in history can be proven logically can the resurrection be falsified uh well I do think that would be possible I mean there there people have tried to do it with certain with certain findings you might U um it seems like there could be documentary um evidence for example eyewitness accounts uh to the body being stolen I mean I do think that there might be other things that you could you’re asking in a sense theoretically yes of course I do think just like almost any pretty much any historical event um can be falsified by um some kind of documentary evidence some kind of eyewitness account some kind of uh uh or even even certain um C certain historical facts that make it extraordinarily unlikely that uh this other thing happened I think what I didn’t say but I ought to say as long as you don’t have a philosophical presupposition that says resurrections can’t happen and I could understand why you might have one uh but you’re supposed to take that out when it comes to looking at history you’re not supposed to bring your philosophical presuppositions in uh you’d have to find a historical document or historical account that made this other historical claim unlikely or impossible and as far as I know people have been sifting the evidence for the resurrection for many many years um if you you go in the back the books that are out there will have some um some accounts of this but even for example in my own book I give a brief account of it but I give you other kinds of longer uh better frankly and uh uh historical uh studies that would show that so yeah the answer is it could be falsified it hasn’t been arguing that the resurrection is true from the spread of the church does not hold Islam Hinduism and Buddhism have all spread and grown as religions people have died for such faiths what is it that distinguishes distinguishes Christianity and its claims and makes you think Christianity is true rather than some of the other faiths or claims yeah that’s on the surface that looks like a great objection but I it says arguing that the resurrection is true doesn’t hold because I didn’t say it’s because the um Christianity spread I said it was because Jews who had a massive worldview change in their lives because they said they saw Jesus Christ raised from the dead uh there’s no similar kind of claim I mean the the uh Buddhism Islam Hinduism largely are ethical religions they’re largely saying here’s how you have to live ethical religions or any movement any movement like that grows because uh this sounds reasonable this sounds good I want to live like this Christianity started out with a very falsifiable claim a a uh a radical claim that required an immediate worldview change I don’t think frankly Christianity did spread the way the other religions spread doesn’t hope for an afterlife lead to complacency um I think a certain kind might uh but uh and and here’s one of the great dangers here is that uh you can’t take what I said to T night and take it away from what I’ve said other nights uh the resurrection gives you hope for the future but Christianity doesn’t simply tell you when you’re dead everything will be fine Christianity also gives you plenty of motivations for uh uh simply serving God now I mean I tried to say earlier that uh generally religion uh says if you obey if you do all these great things in life uh then God will uh take you to heaven listen to your prayers that’s actually a burden to crushes you and even though you it it is a frankly it’s a motivation uh it gets you out of complacency to say you got to earn your own salvation wow yeah you’re not going to be complacent you’re going to be wor but you’re also going to be crushed Christianity doesn’t just come in and say oh you’re you’re accepted you know uh no problem Christianity says at infinite cost to the Lord Jesus Christ he died for you so now you are living without condemnation and any normal human being if you believe believe that immediately says I want I want to serve you I want to become like you I want to please you anybody who’s done anything like that for you anything close to that you don’t just say well thanks you you’re moved and you say what can I do how can I how can I help I mean what can I do uh you served me how can I serve you that’s natural and therefore the cross does not lead to complacency the resurrection I guess technically might if it if it existed in uh you know abstract it was abstracted from the cross but it’s not does the fact that Jesus rose from the dead undo the sacrifice if you get your speeding fine refunded you haven’t really paid anything and then I’m assuming this is the same question could God not have canceled the debt yeah well now uh yeah I under look I I do understand that it’s it’s like saying if if it is true for example a parent if a let’s see if a parent pays uh your the child’s way and the child never has to do anything it can create complacency um but uh it’s really not so much that you you’re getting the the money back it’s not that you’re getting the money back it’s that Jesus Jesus Christ paid it and I really actually I mean you didn’t whoever texted that question and didn’t hear my last answer and I think my last answer to some degree uh speaks to this one and that is it’s Jesus payment of the debt that makes me want to serve him and uh I don’t in any way say well I actually nobody really died maybe I mentioned this I think I I said this one other night if if somebody comes to your house and uh uh at a party in a very stupid way gets drunk and breaks a piece of your furniture uh oh I’m so sorry he says there’s two things that can happen either you can say please pay to replace the furniture that’s one way the other thing you could say is I forgive you don’t worry about it but then you pay for it or you go without so either the debt doesn’t go into the air either the person pays or the forgiver pays but somebody pays and if Jesus Christ has paid for me then it’s not like I get my money back it means that he saved my life and because he saved my life I want to serve him I want to love him I want to please him I want to become like him and the motivation is incredibly natural and it’s internal and so I I I don’t think I I see I mean we’re using analogies and every analogy is partly true to the reality and the analogy of the payment of the debt and the refund I wouldn’t see it as a refund he paid oh hey two questions isn’t that cheating um I think I answered the question I to cancel a debt to you see know if you’re just saying uh if you know if I punch Josh in the nose uh uh you know you could say Josh could forgive me but if God God if God cancels a debt that would be unjust but the fact of the matter is uh God made both of us and um uh God loves Josh God is Josh’s God I’m uh God loves me and if I viol at him I’m actually also sinning against God and so when Jesus Christ dies on the cross to forgive our sins he has to absorb the debt himself he can’t cancel it debts don’t actually go away somebody has to pay God paid great time for another question why do Christians not float in a Euphoria if Christianity is so great well you know um because walk by faith not by sight and um the faith is always U uh partial you know the place where where Jesus I mean not Jesus were Paul it’s it’s it’s very poetic and you probably heard it because it’s in 1 Corinthians 13 and it was read at weddings and so it sounds very poetic but think about it he says now we see in a glass Darkly which is his way of saying um especially back in those days mirrors were not very nice I mean mirrors were not like our mirrors today they were usually polished bronze or something so when you looked into a mirror you could kind of see your face but it was always somewhat distorted it was kind of dark and that’s the analogy of what it means to walk by faith it means that Christians always only partially experience the realities I even hinted at this last night we we have this incredible identity it takes all of our lives for us to live into that identity we only get there partially uh we have this incredible hope we only get there partially because we walk by faith not by sight and we uh uh also we our hearts are still allergic to God even though we’re forgiven and even though they’re turning there’s still a great deal of allergy there and so for all those reasons yes but Christians really that I I shouldn’t be making an excuse for us because I’m a Christian and the fact is in fact maybe we ought to talk about this in in the in the wrapup uh we Pro those of us who are Christians here might spend some time reflecting on why we don’t let the hope of the Resurrection sweeten our daily life in a way that itn’t right now great time for one final question I think isn’t hope in some sense another name for wish fulfillment illusion well I don’t think you would say that about all hope would you I mean obviously I mean let’s get uh if somebody says if you work really hard you’ll you know you’ll get a first in this in this class um and you work really hard and you get the first that wasn’t an illusion I mean if you’re asking whether uh the resurrection is an illusion and the afterlife is an illusion I gave you um rather brief but I gave you uh at least a way for you to go and find out whether it’s an illusion or not uh I’ll just end like this the great thing about the resurrection unlike in some ways the other topics I gave you this week is the resurrection not only it’s it not only is an astounding uh desire of the heart when it’s described you say oh if that were true if that were true but it’s also an evidence that it is is true it’s not just a great thing it also gives you evidence that it actually is true the evidence is out there you you really should take the time I would hope you’d think it was sensible use of your time to discover whether it’s an illusion or not I don’t it is not it is not okay thank you well that’s all we have time for with Q&A so just before Tim concludes the evening um I’ll just mention if your question didn’t get answered then Tim will be around for a little while um afterwards at the front so do come and speak to him uh he also mentioned the bookstall which is just outside the the double doors at the back there’s books on there relating to some of the things we’ve been talking about throughout the week so do go and check that out also on your seat is a uh Little John’s gospel copy of John’s account of the life of Jesus that would be really helpful to you in thinking these things through and also if you have um uh if you’d like to kind of watch or rewatch any of the other talks from this week they’re all up um on the website now so if you if you’re interested in those it’s uncover oxford. org and then there’s a little um Link at the top listen to a talk Tim over to you to wrap up these evenings are like Peter Jackson movies there’s four endings so that was the first ending I’m the second then Josh will be back for the third and then there’ll be a fourth right so now here’s how I’d like to end I’m actually going to give you a minute of quiet to reflect um and there will be uh you I think you’ll probably fall into one of three categories let me start with the first one um if you are at this point if you’d like to take the first step if you’d like to say I think I’m ready to or at least I’d like to know how could I put my faith in Christ you talk about it sound you giv me a lot of pyate Technics this week please bring it down to the ground how do you do this how do you put your faith in Jesus Christ and uh the uh the two things that the in the Bible if you start to read the scripture and you start to look and say where does you know what’s the Bible’s answer it it boils down to two uh words usually repent and believe repent and believe in Jesus or repent and believe the gospel repent and believe and and the the reason those two things always go together and you need to keep them together is uh it’s not just repent and believe because if without repentance belief could mean I’m supposed to just subscribe to a set of doctrines repent means to turn away believe means to turn two the two sides of the same point you really can’t do one without the other to turn away and turn to repent I would say this might help you I hope uh you should repent at two levels at the first level it’s more the common sense level if there’s anything you think you have done wrong anything you feel like you need forgiveness for at all anything that still bothers your conscience repent repent of that repent of sins repent of wrongs repent of wrongdoing but at a it’s important if you’re going to find Christ and put your trust in Christ you have to look underneath and say what am I am I really trusting now I need to repent of that am I just trusting in my own mind my own self-sufficiency am I trusting in in academics am I trusting in uh what am I trusting in to help me make it in life what are my resources what am I looking to in a way to save me even though you wouldn’t have used the term save or salvation what am I really trusting in what am I really hoping in what is my real meaning in life what have I been looking for as the source of my satisfaction what is it is it just your smarts is it another person is it a uh your the the the hope of a career whatever it is that’s what you have to turn away from you have to turn away not just from doing bad things you have to turn away from in a sense self-reliance self-salvation being your own Savior and Lord you have to say I Repent of that and then you turn and what does it mean to turn you put your faith in Jesus and you say oh I wish I had Faith you’ve got faith you’re already putting your meaning and your hope and your satisfaction in other things that’s called Faith so I’m saying take it away away from those things and put it in Jesus repent and believe and maybe it comes down to something like this you could say something like Father please accept me as your child because of what Jesus Christ has done not because of what I’ve done or ever will do or can do but because of what Jesus Christ did for me on the cross father accept me not for my works because of what Jesus Christ did and I turn away from trusting anything else and living for myself and I follow you if you say something like that tonight I think you’ve crossed the line into Faith or if you say I’m not ready to do that well at least now you have some building blocks so here’s what I like here’s three kinds of people here I’m going to give you one minute of Silence believe it or not the one is those of us who are Christian Believers why don’t we ask why don’t we why don’t we pray and say Lord my resurrection hope is not sweetening my daily life like it ought to and I’m sorry please make please help me change that number two you might want to pray that prayer father Heavenly Father accept me not because of what I’ve done but what Jesus Christ has done I turn from trusting anything else give myself to you or you might just want to reflect and say I don’t know what I think about all this okay you got 60 seconds to think about it e thank you for giving that time and now Josh is going to come back and he’s going to close us up