The Resurrection Conspiracy

I realize that this post is a bit behind the times, what with it being Easter related and all, and Easter is now past, but oh well. Back during the Easter week, I listened to a sermon by John MacArthur at www.gty.org from his series called The Murder of Jesus. It was about the Resurrection, and how Matthew seemed to be offering an apologetic for the resurrection using negative testimony. That is to say, rather than quoting everybody who did see the resurrected Christ, Matthew wrote about the Jewish leaders' conspiracy to make it appear that Christ's body had been stolen. It is as if Matthew was saying, "Look, you know Jesus rose from the dead because even His enemies tacitly acknowledged His resurrection by knowingly crafting a lie." The lie that the Jewish leaders concocted was that the disciples stole Jesus' body. That way, their beloved friend won't have looked like an idiot for predicting His resurrection. That, said MacArthur, was the only other explanation that could possibly be believed by anyone. I started thinking about all this, and I had a thought. Dr. MacArthur didn't mention this, it was must me going off on a tangent. Here is my thought:

Over and over again in the Gospels, we read of Jesus making comments about His impending death and resurrection, and we always then read of how His disciples had no idea what He was talking about. By the time you're done reading it all, one fact is firmly implanted into your brain: the disciples were absolutely clueless about Jesus' death and resurrection. His crucifixion came as a complete surprise to them, and it obviously left them very disappointed and disillusioned men. So then I thought this: If the disciples had no idea that Jesus was going to come back to life, it would never have occurred to them to steal Jesus' body! If we can accept the Scriptural testimony that the disciples were completely ignorant of Jesus' return to life, then that blows another hole in the anti-resurrection conspiracy.

The Interconnectedness of All Things

Lately I've been in a big George Harrison mood. I've been listening to all of his albums (or all of that I've got, anyway) over and over again. Keep that in mind.

I've also been on a bit of a Peter Sellers kick. I've been watching the Pink Panther movies, and I decided to listen to one of the discs from my Celebration of Sellers boxed set, a collection of his comedy albums. One lady that Sellers collaborated with on some tracks was a comedienne named Irene Handl. She seems pretty funny, so I thought I'd look up some information on her. It turns out that she was in the movie Wonderwall, with music by George Harrison (that soundtrack is one of the two George Harrison albums that I do not yet have). I noticed that the screenplay for this movie was written by G. Cabrera Infante, an author of Cuban birth who writes beautiful (though often smutty) prose. One of his cleaner books, Holy Smoke, is a beautifully written book, clever and funny, as well as informative. It is about cigars, one of my other great passions. That book is one of my favorites. But I didn't know that he wrote screenplays. I looked to see what other screenplays he had done, and one is Vanishing Point. Well, this movie features a line quoted by Axl Rose in the Guns 'N' Roses song "Breakdown." GNR is one of my favorite bands. Vanishing Point also features "Delaney & Bonnie and Friends", a group that George Harrison played around with, and most of which backed him up on his smash album All Things Must Pass.

Isn't it fun how all these things just connect together? Dirk Gently would be proud.