When Andre Cole—known as the world’s greatest creator of illusion, the man who’s referred to as the magician’s magician, or the illusionist’s illusionist—when he set out to refute all the miracles of Christ by explaining it away though modern technology, and illusion, and magic, most of them he said “I could not explain away, but there was one” he said, “there was no way that Jesus could have deceived his disciples.” Do you know what miracle that was? The resurrection. He said, “Josh, if the resurrection didn’t happen, they absolutely had to know it.”
This is when he pointed out several things to me. One, he said, “No illusionist would hardly ever, ever do an illusion outdoors.” Why? Because you have to control the lighting, the visual approach, everything in illusion and magic. Because everything is a simple trick. But he said, “Almost all of Christ’s miracles were done outdoors. Even with our technology today, you’d be crazy to do that.” But then he said, “Second, you have to understand that some of the illusionary effects that I create and magical effects that I create for many of the great magicians in the world, it would take anywhere from one to two, even three large, huge semi loads of equipment to do one illusion.” I never knew that. Just to do one illusion. He gave me an example of it. He said, “Look at Jesus. He had a donkey.” And that’s when it hit me. Whoa! You know? There’s no way he could have deceived them. And what Andre concluded was that if Christ was not raised from the dead, they had to know it. And therefore, you would have to conclude to the twelve disciples, eleven of the twelve died martyr’s deaths, that they not only died for a lie, but they knew it was a lie, and under the worst torture and in the threat of death and being killed, never once denied it.
I’ve had over 250 debates in universities around the world, and almost every debate would come back to the resurrection. And I would challenge my opponent to give me one piece of evidence, and I used to joke it doesn’t have to be credible; give me one piece of evidence that any disciple under the worst torture ever retracted his belief that on the third day Christ was raised from the dead. And no one in 50 years has done that. If I can’t trust them on what Jesus said and did, then I can’t trust anyone, because they went through the test of death to determine their veracity.
When Andre Cole—known as the world’s greatest creator of illusion, the man who’s referred to as the magician’s magician, or the illusionist’s illusionist—when he set out to refute all the miracles of Christ by explaining it away though modern technology, and illusion, and magic, most of them he said “I could not explain away, but there was one” he said, “there was no way that Jesus could have deceived his disciples.” Do you know what miracle that was? The resurrection. He said, “Josh, if the resurrection didn’t happen, they absolutely had to know it.”
This is when he pointed out several things to me. One, he said, “No illusionist would hardly ever, ever do an illusion outdoors.” Why? Because you have to control the lighting, the visual approach, everything in illusion and magic. Because everything is a simple trick. But he said, “Almost all of Christ’s miracles were done outdoors. Even with our technology today, you’d be crazy to do that.” But then he said, “Second, you have to understand that some of the illusionary effects that I create and magical effects that I create for many of the great magicians in the world, it would take anywhere from one to two, even three large, huge semi loads of equipment to do one illusion.” I never knew that. Just to do one illusion. He gave me an example of it. He said, “Look at Jesus. He had a donkey.” And that’s when it hit me. Whoa! You know? There’s no way he could have deceived them. And what Andre concluded was that if Christ was not raised from the dead, they had to know it. And therefore, you would have to conclude to the twelve disciples, eleven of the twelve died martyr’s deaths, that they not only died for a lie, but they knew it was a lie, and under the worst torture and in the threat of death and being killed, never once denied it.
I’ve had over 250 debates in universities around the world, and almost every debate would come back to the resurrection. And I would challenge my opponent to give me one piece of evidence, and I used to joke it doesn’t have to be credible; give me one piece of evidence that any disciple under the worst torture ever retracted his belief that on the third day Christ was raised from the dead. And no one in 50 years has done that. If I can’t trust them on what Jesus said and did, then I can’t trust anyone, because they went through the test of death to determine their veracity.
SUMMARY: Andre Cole set out to refute all the miracles of Christ as illusions. He said, “Most I could explain away most of them but there was one I could not explain away.” How could Jesus have deceived his disciples about his resurrection. “Josh, if the resurrection didn’t happen, they absolutely had to know it.” Also most illusionists would not “do an illusion outdoors”, and they would use three semi loads of equipment. So much more than a donkey could carry. The disciples had to know if Jesus was dead or not. Josh said that of the 250 debates in universities he has had almost every debate came down to the resurrection. I asked for one piece of evidence that any disciple said that Jesus never came back to life. No one in 50 years could give any.
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