In 1747, two brilliant English aristocrats sat in a massive library, poured a drink, and made a pact to destroy Christianity forever...

They were educated, articulate, well-to-do, well-known, and popular.

Their names were Gilbert West and Lord George Lyttleton (a member of Parliament).

At this time, England was awash in the confidence of the Enlightenment. Reason, not revelation, was the reigning authority in educated circles.

 

The old assumptions of Christendom were no longer taken for granted; instead, they were placed under the same critical scrutiny as any other ancient claim.

Deism was fashionable among the elite—an elegant, rational religion that affirmed a distant Creator but rejected miracles, divine intervention, and the authority of Scripture.

Christianity, with its supernatural claims and historical particularity, was increasingly dismissed as a relic of a primitive age.

For young intellectuals like West and Lyttelton, skepticism wasn't rebellious—it was simply what thoughtful, modern people did.

Against this backdrop, the two friends decided to examine what they saw as the most vulnerable points of Christianity: the resurrection of Jesus and the conversion of Paul.

They agreed to strike at these two foundational pillars.

One would write a book proving the resurrection was a hoax, while the other would write a book proving the conversion of the Apostle Paul was a psychological delusion.

If these pillars could be shown to collapse under rational investigation, the whole structure of the faith would fall with them.

Their project wasn't born of hostility but of confidence—confidence that the tools of Enlightenment reason would expose Christianity's foundations as weak.

We will come back to Lyttleton and West.

Welcome to Pathway

My talk today is part of a series.

The series is called, "Mysteries of the Resurrection."
This talk is part 5 in that series: "The Mystery of Multiple Eyewitnesses."

What do you do with the claim that so many people saw Christ after he rose from the dead? How do you reconcile that? Or explain it away?

It's not an easy question.

And to answer it, I invite you to think through this Scripture with me: there are some secrets here, hidden in plain sight.

Everybody needs a creed.

A creed is a formal statement of truth. It's the ultimate reality you bank your life on, stated in formal and concise form.

You have a creed, whether you realize it or not.

Christianity is a creed.

But not everyone likes the Christian creed. In fact, some people hate it.

The two friends we met earlier, West and Lyttleton, certainly did. They believed that Christianity was a cruel fable that gave weak people false hope.

So, over a few drinks, they made their pact. They shook hands. They went home to their massive libraries. And they gave themselves exactly one year to shut the door on heaven forever.

I am going to leave those two men in their libraries for a few more minutes...
Because before you find out what happened to them, you need to look at the creed they were trying to destroy.

The Chain of Custody (Unpacking the Creed)
In our Scripture for today, the Apostle Paul is writing to a church that is a mess. To anchor them, he doesn't offer a self-help formula. He drops a historical anchor.

"For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve." (1 Corinthians 15:3-5)

If you read that in the original Greek, it has a distinct, repetitive rhythm. Four specific clauses: That he died... That he was buried... That he was raised... That he appeared.

You aren't just reading a letter; you are reading a Creed. A formal, concise statement of truths to be believed. Written for clarity. And written for memory.

This is a creed.

How do we know?
Look at the very first sentence: "I delivered to you... what I also received."

In English, that sounds informal. But in the first century, the Greek words paradidōmi ("delivered") and paralambanō ("received") were highly formal terms used by Jewish rabbis to pass down sacred tradition.

Those words indicated the ancient equivalent of establishing a Chain of Custody for evidence in a court of law.

Paul is looking the skeptics in the eye and saying: "I did not invent this. I am handing you the official, untampered truth exactly as it was handed to me. There's a chain of custody here."

In this paragraph beginning in 1 Corinthians 15:3, Paul is quoting an ancient Creed.

But here is the most devastating detail for anyone who thinks the resurrection is just a legend that evolved over time. Legends take generations to grow.

This Creed did not.

If you trace the historical timeline, Jesus was crucified around AD 33. Paul converted shortly after that, and in his letter to the Galatians, he states that three years later, he traveled to Jerusalem. In Jerusalem, he met with Peter and James—two of the primary eyewitnesses named in this very Creed.

When Paul says, I'm delivering what I received, this is when he received it. A maximum of 2 years from the resurrection.

Because of this and other facts, historians and scholars across the spectrum agree on something staggering.

And I'm not talking about just conservative Christian scholars, but skeptical, secular, and even atheist historians.

They agree that this specific Creed existed and was being recited by the earliest Christians somewhere between 3 to 24 months after the crucifixion of Jesus.

Get this. The exact words: "he was buried and he rose again the third day" became the Creed of the Christians within months... way too short a time for a so-called legend to percolate and form.