00:00The Chibi News Daily Reflection
00:04Hi, I'm Chris Tufnell, the vicar of Utterbridge Parish Church.
00:10A few weeks ago I was at home when I heard a series of huge explosions outside.
00:17I didn't know what had caused it, so I started messaging friends to see if they knew what had happened.
00:22It turned out to be the scheduled demolition of some old industrial chimneys nearby.
00:27At first I had no idea what had happened, but I knew something had caused an explosion.
00:34In a similar way, when you see ripples spreading out across an otherwise still lake,
00:40you may not have seen what it was, but you know something landed in it and sent those ripples out.
00:47One of the remarkable things about the Christian faith is its very rapid growth in the weeks and months following the death of Jesus,
00:56an event historians almost universally agree took place outside Jerusalem in around 33 AD.
01:04Overnight, 11 leaderless disciples, scared for their lives,
01:09were transformed into the fearless leaders of a movement that gathered thousands in a matter of weeks.
01:17The question is, what caused that?
01:19Why did Christianity explode out of Jerusalem?
01:24Why have the ripples continued to spread through 2,000 years and to every corner of the globe?
01:31Something happened.
01:34What was it?
01:36People have come up with various theories, but I think none as compelling as what the Bible says happened.
01:42That really would explain it, because the Bible reports that over a period of 40 days following that first Easter Sunday,
01:51the resurrected Jesus appeared to hundreds of people who were so utterly persuaded that he had risen from the dead
01:59that they lived and many of them died, insisting it was true.
02:04The shockwaves of that claim have reshaped the world, and many still feel their force today.
02:12The shockwaves of that claim have reshaped the world, and many still feel their force today.
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