Dr. John Ankerberg: Now, during these programs you have heard Dr. Habermas constantly refer to historical facts about Jesus that are accepted by virtually all critical scholars. What are they? I asked him to tell you what these 12 facts are and then why all scholars accept them as true. Listen:

Dr. Gary Habermas: Now, the question here, obviously, is, What kind of data do we have? What are these "facts" that I keep referring to? Because some people are going to be screaming, now, saying, "There are no facts!"

Okay. What is our audience? Evangelicals are going to look at the New Testament text and say, "Facts are all over the place. Every time I read and find one, that’s a fact because I believe Scriptures are inspired."

Others will say, "No. It’s only a book of ancient literature."

Now you have to ask the question, "Which are believable facts and which are not?" Most scholars will give you a list of facts surrounding the events that Christians call the Gospel: the trial, the death, the burial, the resurrection of Jesus. I think there are at least 12 facts, at least 12. I mean, the vast majority of scholars will give you more than these, but there are at least 12 facts that critical scholars admit. Virtually every scholar will admit virtually every one of these.

1. Jesus died by crucifixion.

2. He was buried. Nothing strange about these things. Most people die. Most people are buried.

3. His death caused the Disciples to despair and lose hope, believing His life had ended. What would you say if your best friend died and very suddenly?

4. Now, I admit this one is not as widely held, but many scholars believe that the tomb in which Jesus was buried was discovered to be empty just a few days later.

5. The Disciples had experiences…—And I’ll say this the way that even the critics will be able to accept it, I think: The Disciples had experiences which they believed were literal appearances of the risen Jesus. They thought Jesus appeared to them.

6. Because of these experiences, they [the Disciples] were transformed from doubters. They were afraid of their own shadow, so to speak, and certainly afraid to identify themselves with Jesus, into bold proclaimers of His death and resurrection.

7. This message was the center of preaching in the early Church. Remember what Paul said—"Of first importance": death, burial, resurrection of Jesus.

8. This message was especially proclaimed in the environs of Jerusalem where Jesus had died and was buried just shortly before.

9. As a result of this preaching, the Church was born and it grew.

10. Sunday became the primary day of worship. And that’s significant for Jewish believers.

11. James, who had been a skeptic, was converted to the faith when he also "believed" that he saw the resurrected Jesus.

12. A few years later, Paul was converted by an experience which he likewise "believed" to be the appearance of the risen Jesus.

What I’m saying is that with the exception of the empty tomb, virtually all critical scholars accept this list as historical, and most of them will even grant the empty tomb. And if you want to check some of the writings I’ve done on this, The Historical Jesus, and some of the books by others, you can find lists of critical scholars who accept all of these things.

Now, you might say, "Now, wait a minute. Twelve? That’s not bad, but can we cut this list down? Can we get some more skeptics involved by being even more picky in what we take?

All right. I’ll arbitrarily reduce this list to say four, five, six—somewhere in there. And if I were to reduce this list, I would say something like the following: Jesus died due to crucifixion. The Disciples had experiences that they believed were the appearance of the risen Jesus. Their lives were transformed because of that, and later, a man named Saul of Tarsus believed that he was converted to Jesus by an appearance, a personal appearance of the risen Jesus to him.

These are four tough facts that virtually anybody is going to give you. And I think that we can build a case for that central proclamation of the death and resurrection of Jesus based on just these four facts alone.

Ankerberg: Now, these are just 12 facts that are accepted by all critical scholars. Some skeptics will concede 20 or more. But Dr. Habermas believes you only need four to six of these facts to establish a strong historical basis for saying Jesus lived, died on a cross, and rose again from the dead. Listen as he explains:

Habermas: Now, we just got done listing four facts which I think are going to be admitted by the vast majority of critical scholars, folks in the middle and on the lefthand side of the scale. We might add a couple of others in here: the Resurrection is the center of early Christian preaching. What do you do with a fellow like James, the brother of Jesus—a skeptic who comes to Christ? The fact that the Resurrection of Christ was proclaimed very early, as we said in an earlier broadcast. What do you do with these four facts?

Now, here’s my point. Some critics are going to give you a longer list. Some of them...some skeptics might give you 20. And I said, "I don’t need 20. I only need 12." And for those who think, "Can you do it with any less than 12?" I’m saying, "I’ve got four, five, six, seven—somewhere right in there." And it’s an arbitrary number. Why? Because nobody, virtually nobody gives you only those facts. But I’m saying I’m arbitrarily reducing the list to 12, and then to four, five, six. And here’s my contention. With these data and the data that modify these facts that are admitted by all, we have enough of a basis to say that Jesus died and that He was raised again from the dead. You can sort of take home the whole pie with just these facts.

Ankerberg: Now, here’s the bottom line for all the information we’ve given you today. If you just take four to six of these accepted historical facts about Jesus’ life, they will knock out and refute all of the naturalistic theories that have been proposed to explain away the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. The facts show Jesus is God. Instead of running from Jesus, you should run to Him for forgiveness and eternal life. Dr. Habermas explains:

Habermas: With just these four, five, six, seven facts, just a small portion of what more critics will grant, most critics will grant, this is what I’m saying occurs. With just those facts, I have the major refutations there of the naturalistic theories—the stories that say, "Well, what if Jesus wasn’t raised? What if what really happened was ____ (fill in the blank)." I’m saying that with just these half dozen, approximately, facts, you can refute all those major alternative hypotheses and at the same time have the very best evidences for the Resurrection contained right in this list. And really, this list is shorter than almost any list of facts produced by critics. I mean, I’m really asking for less facts here than almost anybody would give me. And these facts, by the way, have two prerequisites. It’s not only that they are admitted by virtually all critical scholars, but second, they are individually attested by other data. So for the person who comes along and says, "I’m not going to give you any of your four. I’m just going to be belligerent with you. I’m not going to give you anything," then with that person you build from the ground up. You start with zero and you tell him the evidence for one, two, three, four, five, six. You give him the evidence for each one of these. But the conclusion is, these facts alone give the major refutations of the naturalistic theories, and secondly, they provide the major evidences for the Resurrection of Jesus.

Let me take a case in point here. Let’s pick not just some strawman and take some weakling theory. Let’s take the hottest naturalistic theory in the nineteenth century. The hypothesis says that Jesus died, all right. But He didn’t really rise from the dead. The Disciples saw hallucinations. We know hallucinations are out there. That’s it right here—they saw hallucinations.

Looking only at this list, notice, number one, the Disciples had experiences that they believed to be appearances of the risen Jesus. Paul said these experiences occurred in groups. Hallucinations are not contagious. They don’t occur in groups.

Second, hallucinations are fairly rare. When you’re talking about groups of people, you’ve got hardheaded Peter, softhearted Mary, softhearted John. My point is, you’ve got different people, different times, different places. Paul says individual here, individual there, 500 out there. He appears at different places and it’s not likely—and I’m being very conservative there—that all these people would be just in the right frame of mind to see hallucinations.

Further, they were transformed. Hallucinations don’t transform. In fact, I know of a man who has done some research personally with hallucinations and what the people said was, "I changed my mind when my friend said, ‘a.) These things don’t happen; and b.) We didn’t see them.’" Guess what? That would apply to the Resurrection above all. Dead men don’t rise. And we didn’t see Him unless they did.

So the transformations show that they really believed what they taught.

And what about the Apostle Paul? He wouldn’t be in the fight frame of mind to see a hallucination. I mean, the man was walking to Damascus, he says, to carry out threats against believers. Now, does that man want to see the resurrected Jesus?

And then you’ve got James, Jesus’ brother, an insider. What would you think if your brother were getting this kind of attention around the world? And James says, "I don’t believe." He’s a skeptic. And critics usually admit that. But is James in the right frame of mind to see hallucinations? I don’t think so.

These are some of the problems, maybe a half dozen right there, that come from just that short list of facts that we already gave.

Let’s try an illustration of what I’m talking about here. Let’s say we’re surrounded by a group of people and over on this side are the conservatives. They give me all the facts in the New Testament. Obviously Jesus was raised. You get to the next group. They give you most of them. Jesus was raised. You go over further and further over until you get to the left, and over here are people who say, "I’ll give you 10 or 12." I’m saying I’ll work with those 12. Or I’ll work with only four.

But for the person who says, "I’m going to give you zero facts," you work up to each one of them. You give the data for each one. And the conclusion is, these facts alone refute the naturalistic theories on the on hand and provide the best evidences for the Resurrection.