Shabbat shalom and for those of you observing the Passover Season the first time round, a blessed Chag haMatzah (Feast of Unleavened Bread) too! To remind first time visitors, we have scheduled a Late Pesach (Passover) next month in the hope that the plague will have passed by then and we can assemble again though I have to admit I am sceptical.

In place of the usual moed sermons this week, we are taking a look at the resurrection which is also central to Yom haBikkurim (Day of Firstfruits) which comes tomorrow. Yesterday we tried to imagine a conversation between the great philosophers Socrates and Solomon, with Tennyson added for good measure, and to determine, largely using the Book of Ecclesiastes, what the two men would have found in common as far as observing ordinary life is concerned. Neither had any knowledge of the cross, the eternal atonement or the resurrection, none of which had yet occurred, through Solomon would have understood 'atonement' as taught and practiced in his day under the Levitical system. Today we ask the question: how might Solomon, in particular, have written the Book of Ecclesiastes in light of the resurrection, given that there is not a lot of hope in it?

I make no apology for the claim that the literal, physical, historial resurrection of Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) lies at the very centre or heart of the Christian/Messianic Besorah, Good News or Gospel. It is the core of our emunah (faith). Without it, Christianity is eviscerated, powerless, and really becomes no better than any other religion. Without the resurrection it cannot really get much beyond being a philosophy. And whilst there is most definitely what one might call 'Christian philosophy' it is not simply an abstract idea reliant on playing around with words in the head. Christianity is rooted in the soil, in physical stuff, in material, in water, air, fire, blood - you name it.

I realise that that may surprise pagans who think they hold the religious monopoly to physical reality, yet it is an undeniable fact that the physical world (and indeed universe) was purposefully created for man by Yahweh and that our final destination is not as disembodied spirits in some etherial, 'Heaven' or heavenly dimension, but here on a physical, restored earth filled with physically, resurrected people, able to eat and do all the things we do down here, but better and disease-free and immortal. The resurrected world-to-come will be a meeting and fusion of Heaven and Earth, or spirit and matter, so that they become perfectly echad or one, inseparably connected. That is the meaning of 'immortality'.

Indeed, a resurrected body is an 'immortal soul' because in the Bible, Spirit + Body = Soul. (Paul later introduces the Greek idea of 'body, soul and spirit' but only as a literary device to signify completeness). We don't have 'immortal souls' even if the invisible part of us is more akin to the indestructable reality that is Yahweh Himself than it is to the physical body. Yes, the 'spirit' or ruach is the main thing, the essence of who we are, and most of us who are saved shall indeed live blissfully as disembodied spirits for a while in that non-physical Paradise or world of spirits likewise spoken of in Scripture, but we will only be there as travelers-in-transit, like being in the transit lounge of an airport terminal mind-way on our journey. Then we will be permitted finally to move on to a restored Eden-Paradise, which was very physical indeed when Adam and Eve inhabited it. I remind you of these things to put our subject matter in context because without it, the resurrection can make no sense.

The physical resurrection - I repeat - lies at the heart of our faith. It's the #1 doctrine because the resurrection of the Son of Man is what gives us hope for the life to come, for the triumph of justice and of ahavah-love - of chesed-mercy. There is no early form of Christianity that excludes the resurrection though there were cults like the Gnostics who denied that Yah'shua (Jesus) was ever a fleshy being, that his 'appearance' in the physical world was just an illusion, and who taught that matter is evil and spirit is good, and that therefore we need to escape the prison house of matter as soon as possible. They were either aesetics or hedonists, depending which extreme they adopted. They were not, however, Christians or Messianics even though they called themselves such, and pre-dated Christianity by some centuries. The apostle John went to great lengths to warn believers against their heretical doctrines.

The central witness of the Gospels is, in its simplest terms, that after Messiah's shameful and excruciating death on a gibbet, Elohim (God) raised Him to life again. Moreover, this fact - this truth - was not one of a list of 'articles of faith'. It was, and is, interwoven into the very structure of Christian/Messianic life and thought. It informs such teachings as baptism, justification, ethics and the future hope both for people and indeed the entire cosmos for as far as the Hubble telescope can see and beyond, none of which would have any real substance without it. The resurrection defines all the rest. If you take away that one central truth today I will have got my main point over.

The reason Christianity as an historical phenomenon arose, the reason it took the shape it did, the reason why we even have such a thing as Western civilisation, liberty, and all that we hold dear about it (before moderns set about undermining and destroying it), is precisely because of the fact of the physical resurrection of Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ). It is denial of the physical resurrection in Europe and the rest of the West that is killing our cultures and causing them to revert to paganism, totalitarianism and satanism.

If you had got into a time machine and asked an early believer why he or she existed as a 'Christian' or 'Messianic', they would have told you: because of Yah'shua's (Jesus') resurrection. That is why the doctrine of the resurrection, which is as much historial as it is soterological (salvational) and theological, has been the most ferociously attacked by liberals and athesists. That is why it is the most important doctrine of them all that needs to be skillfully defended.

It is the primary tool of evangelism. And it's not hard to defend it. If critical, clear, logical thinkers like high court judges (e.g. Sir Norman Anderson), scientists (e.g. John Lennox), police detectives, and serious journalists (e.g. Lee Strobel) can defend it (and in many cases were converted by their attempts to initially disprove it), then what we are dealing with is not blind faith but reasoned faith.

I don't intend to go into all the objections against the resurrection that are commonly advanced. To do that justice, I would need a few weeks and there are those far more skilled than I who can guide the sceptic through all his objections. Sir Norman Anderson's little book, Jesus Christ: the Witness of History (1985) is really concise and was a huge blessing to me in my youth. There are many others equally good that would suit the layman.

If you are a high-powered theologian, and in particular if you have been ensnared by liberal Christianity, then N.T.Wright's tome, The Resurrection of the Son of God (2003) by the world's leading theologian, is definitely for you. Indeed, serious Bible teachers will appreciate it and anyone wanting to refute in detail some of the sensationalist, poor scholastic quality, blockbuster books like The Tomb of God which goes careering after one conspiracy after another involving Templarts, Rosicrucians, Freemasons, Gnostics and other occultists, all of whom claim Christ died a natural death and lies interred in France (others claim Kashmir, etc.) - if you fall within that category you will be thankful to have N.T.Wright at your fingertips. The liberal Anglican establishment is furious with him because he has systematically dismantled one of their golden calves, the belief that Christ was an ordinary human being and was only 'resurrected' in a spiritual sense, if at all. I can recommend other books if people come to me afterwards.

The case against the physical resurrection is very, very weak. Even Oxford scholar Geza Vermes, whom I knew personally (and who autographed my copy of his book, Jesus the Jew (1973) while we were having lunch together) - though he did not believe in the resurrection (as a secular Jew), admitted as an historian that the tomb must have been empty and that the talmidim (disciples) couldn't have stolen the body, though he didn't know what might have happened. Coming from a sceptic of his callibre that is not insignificant.

The very fact that the life and work of Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) was so enduring can only be explained by the resurrection. The talmidim (disciples) were not expecting any resurrection. Yes, they were expecting a big upheavel but they thought, like all the other messianists of the day, that this would be political. If the resurrection had merely been some abstract philosophical idea, Yah'shua (Jesus) would have had to spend a consaiderable amount of time preparing His followers before His death, but He did little more than push the occasional, mystifying hint in their direction. That Christianity began overwhelmingly as a 'resurrection movement' upon which the believers stakes their all, being willing to die for their testimony of the same, can only be explained because the resurrection actually physically, tangible happened, and that they saw, touched, spoke to, and even saw ascend bodily into the sky.

Now can you imagine what Solomon would have done had he been a witness to the events of the first believers? His writings would have been transported to an altogether more lofty and hope-filled level. Of course, we can't really picture how his Kingdom would have been transformed, an altogether radically different contrast to a semi-pagan, Idumæan puppet king of Rome called Herod, or indeed any of his sons. The trouble is, had Yah'shua (Jesus) lived during Solomon's reign, he would never have been crucified and thus would have failed to complete His mission to die and be resurrected, and we would still be in our sins!

Tomorrow we'll take this further because there is actually one other critical doctrine we must consider in conjunction with resurrection to make it complete, and that is the doctrine of the incarnation. Until then, Yahweh bless you and have a really blessed first day of Chag haMatzah! Amen.