What a Hoax!

On Halloween in 1938, one of the most famous hoaxes was not intended to be a hoax. On the CBS Radio Network’s radio series, The Mercury Theatre on the Air, Orson Welles directed and narrated a radio-adapted script of H.G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds.

Welles intended to produce an exciting, other-worldly drama about an alien invasion of planet earth. In the aftermath of the episode, though, others thought of it as an elaborate hoax!

Given the mechanics of the production, that’s quite an understandable indictment.

The first 30 minutes of the program followed the format of a typical evening of listening to the radio. Right in the middle of some musical package, an announcer broke in with an urgent news bulletin. At first, the newsman reported some unusual explosions on Mars…then a strange object falling on a farm in New Jersey.

This strange object, the reporter continued, was evidently an alien spacecraft. Then came an eyewitness report that creatures emerged from the craft and incinerated some officials who waved a flag of truce.

Surely, the panicked reporter declared, this is the onset of an alien invasion!

Then other reports came in from Manhattan. They’ve begun an attack on the city. Poison smoke begins enveloping the area…the reporter falls silent.

Apparently, enough people heard the broadcast—at least a good portion of part one—and believed it was an actual breaking news report. They didn’t hear the clearly stated opening announcement that the show was wholly fictional and panicked!

According to an article on the world’s most trusted news source, Wikipedia (that’s tongue-in-cheek, FYI):

In the days after the adaptation, widespread outrage was expressed in the media. The program’s news-bulletin format was described as deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the broadcasters and calls for regulation by the FCC. Welles apologized at a hastily-called news conference the next morning, and no punitive action was taken. The broadcast and subsequent publicity brought the 23-year-old Welles to the attention of the general public and gave him the reputation of an innovative storyteller and “trickster.”

I remember listening to a recording of the radio drama in a high school class, followed by the teacher’s lecture on how gullible people can be and how powerful the media can be in perpetrating a hoax.

Speaking of hoaxes, I shared in a recent article the hoax played on our youth pastor when I was in high school. In case you missed the story, as a birthday surprise, a few of the guys in the youth group conspired with his wife to break into the house in the evening, kidnap him, and spirit him off in the back seat of a car.

They did a pretty good job
with the ruse.

Did the stockings-over-the head thing, dark clothes, gloves, hats. Covered his head with a pillowcase and tied him up. Carried him out to the waiting car. All the while his wife was carrying on—as if she had no clue what was going on. Then they sped off as if in a panic.

They drove about 20 minutes away, saying nothing, radio blasting WLS. One of the guys even lit up a cigarette to add to the drama; after all, since no one in our youth group smoked, these thugs had to be bona fide bad guys!

The car finally came to a halt outside the entrance to Woodfield Mall. A couple of the guys manhandled the distressed youth pastor, forcing him to leave the car, dragging him inside the mall…to the Farrell’s Ice Cream parlor where the rest of the youth group was waiting to sing Happy Birthday!

Pastor Ron claims he caught on to the hoax, but claustrophobia from the pillowcase induced anxiety. Perhaps. But then, no one likes to be the victim of a hoax!

The Great Easter Hoax

Are you familiar with the Great Easter Hoax?

It’s that time of year when certain intellectual elites take to the airwaves and websites to declare that Christianity persists in propagating the “hoax” of Jesus rising from the dead.

They’ve come up with some interesting—and sometimes silly—explanations for what certainly must have happened instead of an actual resurrection.

“Jesus wasn’t really dead,” they declare with the confidence of a coroner. “He had just passed out from a loss of blood and inadequate oxygen, and everyone thought he must’ve been dead. Then when he was in the cool tomb for a while, he revived and was able to escape, flee the region, and go into hiding.”

You get the picture, right? A man whose hands and feet had been pierced by nails so he would slowly bleed out…then punctured in the side by a spear to confirm his death, resulting in even more blood loss…then wrapped head-to-toe in burial cloths…really wasn’t dead. And, in fact, once he came to a couple of days later, he had the physical strength to unwrap the cloths, move the boulder covering the tomb, and escape the posted guards.

Riiiiggghhhhttttt.

That one’s so preposterous not too many people hang on to it anymore.

Most who acknowledge the historical record of the gospels—and even that of secular historians—recounting Jesus’s death argue for some form of stolen body story to try to uncover the “hoax.”

“His disciples did it…in the garden…with a cot!” they declare, confident they’ve won the game of Clue!

In order to buy that explanation, of course, requires jumping through some hoops.

First, you have to forget the fact that none of the disciples expected a resurrection. Read the account in the gospel record of choice—or all of them, for that matter. They all hunkered down in fear that they might be the next victims! And even the women who went to the tomb intended to finish anointing a corpse for a proper burial.

Then, you have to believe that the body snatchers were able to elude the guards placed at the tomb. Snuck by them while they slept…grunted and groaned while rolling the stone away…and lugged the body out of the tomb and past the still-sound-asleep guards—that not a single one of them even roused! Oh yeah, first, the grave robbers took off all the graveclothes and folded them up nice and neat and left them behind.

And then you have to believe that the body snatchers were willing to die for a bald-faced lie. All of them. Not one of them spilled the beans to save his life.

Riiiiggghhhhttttt.

Well, when it comes to the resurrection of Jesus, there is a huge hoax we must acknowledge. Yet it wasn’t perpetrated by Jesus’s disciples, but rather His enemies.

A squad of soldiers had been tasked with guarding Jesus’s tomb for the express purpose of preventing body snatchers from doing their deed. They would’ve been successful in keeping a rag-tag group of Christ-followers from breaking and entering, but there was no way they could prevent the resurrected Jesus from breaking death’s grip and exiting! They couldn’t even stop the angels from moving the stone away from the tomb’s entrance—not to allow Jesus to get out, but to allow others to get in the empty tomb!

They failed miserably in their mission, did these soldiers, and legitimately feared severe punishment. But the enemies of Jesus came to their rescue with the purse and a lie—a hoax!

“Take this cash, and if anyone asks what happened,” they said, “Tell them, ‘His disciples came at night and stole Him away while we slept.’”

And that’s exactly what they did. And people today still believe the hoax rather than the truth.

What a contrast between the guards and the disciples, no?

The guards heralded a hoax to save their skin.
The disciples gave their lives to proclaim the truth!
The guards were gripped with fear because of the truth, and they cowered in fear to cover the truth.
The disciples overcame their fears because of the truth, and they defied all fear to declare the truth.
The guards went to their graves with a guilty conscience, knowing the truth about Jesus’s empty tomb but perpetrating a hoax.
The disciples—many as martyrs—went to their graves with a clear conscience, knowing and preaching the truth of Jesus’s empty tomb…and why it’s so critically, eternally important!

Resurrection Sunday is just a few days away. Rejoice in the empty tomb, in the living Savior, in the glorious truth!