By Pastor Steve Feinstein
1Co 15:17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.
The most crucial point of the gospel is the resurrection of Jesus Christ, because without it the gospel becomes meaningless. Are you ready to give a defense to those who question you for the hope that you have (1 Peter 3:15)? I hope so. Below I will place one possible line of argumentation that I think effectively demonstrates the veracity of Christ's resurrection. Feel free to take and use this information as you please.
Let me tell you quickly what the New Testament tells us. The Jews convinced Pilate to place Roman soldiers as guards of Jesus’ tomb. Tombs of this day were small caves covered by a stone weighing thousands of pounds. On the third day, an angel rolled the tomb back, the Roman soldiers freaked out, and the various Maries showed up and found the tomb empty. Jesus then appeared to them risen, then to the Apostles, then to 500 eyewitnesses all at one time in one place, and then He stuck around for 40 days teaching the Apostles everything they needed to know about the Kingdom of God. In addition to that, Jesus appeared to his half brother James (son of Mary and Joseph), which caused His brother to change from a non-believer to a believer. During the 40 days, He let people touch Him and see Him to make sure He was really there, and He ate with them. After the 40 days, Jesus ascended to heavenawaiting the day fixed by the Father for His return. Since the Jewish leadership could not explain the report of the Roman soldiers, they bribed the guards to say Jesus’ disciples stole the body in the middle of the night. Finally, a few years later, Saul of Tarsus who was on a crusade to destroy the church by killing Christians, claims that Christ blinded him on the road toDamascus, and called him to be an Apostle. So these are tidbits of information given to us. Let us now construct an argument.
The evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is so strong, that only a fool would deny it after considering the weight of the evidence. One only needs to look at early history of the church. Just 50 days after the crucifixion, Peter and the 12 preach Jesus as the Messiah and that He is raised from thedead, and 3,000 Jews convert. A few days later, they heal a lame man in the presence of everyone at the Temple, get arrested and then proclaim the same thing to High Priests. In their preaching they constantly appealed to the fact that crowds in Jerusalem and the priests were eyewitnesses. The only thing the High Priest needed to do was pull the body out of the tomb and show it to everyone. A decomposing Jesus would have ended the faith right then and there. But they could not provide the body because the tomb was empty. So they said the disciples stole the body. Let us be logical. Tombs of this time were caves covered by stones weighting thousands of pounds. This particular stone was guarded by professional Roman soldiers, the most feared warriors in the ancient world. The 11 Apostles (Judas hanged himself) could not have overpowered armed Roman soldiers, and then moved the extremely heavy stone to get Jesus out of there. It is impossible. Furthermore, Pilate would have ordered Jerusalemturned upside down if Roman soldiers were murdered.
Related to this, the women found the clothes left in the tomb. Grave robbers do not steal dead bodies, but instead they steal the clothes on the dead bodies. It is unheard of in history for someone to run off with a dead body, but not the clothes in a situation like this.
Furthermore, study a little psychology. The Apostles scattered and were terrified when Jesus was arrested. The same Peter who boldly proclaimed Jesus risen at Pentecost, just 50 days prior denied Jesus 3 times, and freaked out when a little girl accused him of being a disciple of Jesus. All of the Apostles hid and locked themselves indoors because they feared being arrested due to following Jesus. Yet, 50 days later they were so convinced that Jesus was alive that they would stand in the most populated parts of Jerusalem and proclaim Jesus is risen. They gladly accepted arrests and beatings, but they kept preaching Jesus as risen even when threatened with death. In addition, they did miracles in the streets that the Jewish leaders could not explain, nor deny. In fact, they admitted openly that these men could do miracles. Eventually, every single Apostle except for one went to his death in torturous execution. Here is the psychological question. What could possibly in a 50 day period cause 11 people to go from being scared of little girls accusing them of knowing Jesus, to being bold preachers willing to endure death for the name they denied just a little while earlier. Many people are willing to die for a lie if they believe it is the truth, but no one is willing to die for a lie that they know to be a lie. The Apostles would not endure torture – Peter was crucified – upside down, when all they had to do to end it was say they made the whole thing up. How do you explain such a change, if Christ really did not raise?Peterconstantly addressed his crowd appealing to their knowledge of events as eyewitnesses. Why did no one dispute him? It is because they remembered everything he told them. Paul the apostle in 1 Corinthians 15 said that Christ appeared to 500 people at one time, most of who were still alive when Paul wrote 1 Corinthians. If he was lying, why do we find not one single example of a person in history coming forward to say this wasn’t true? Most of these 500 people also sealed their testimony with their blood. No known witness ever denied Christ. The Roman government would have looked for anything or anyone to disprove the Christian faith, but nothing could be found. None of these witnesses would deny what they saw.
Another thing to consider is Jesus’ half brother James did not believe in Jesus prior to the Resurrection. However, Paul tells us that Christ appeared to him too, and this caused James to go from a person mocking his brother, to being one of the early leaders in the church who worshiped Jesus as God. Josephus records for us how he too died for his belief in the resurrection of Jesus.
Finally we have Paul the Apostle. He wrote so extensively of his conversion experience that secular scholars cannot deny that he saw something drastic that changed his life. He was a rabbi trained under one of the four greatest rabbis in all Jewish history (Rabbon Gamaliel) who advanced among the Jews faster than all others. His entire goal in the life was to stop the spread of Christianity by arresting the Christians and having them executed. He persecuted the church so severely, that nearly all Christians fled Jerusalem in fear of their lives. The Apostles stuck around. Yet, on the way to Damascus, Paul tells us that he was struck with light, and Jesus spoke with him directly letting him know that He really is the Messiah and isrisen. Paul immediately became a Christian, and dedicated the rest of his life to building the church, and influenced the world more than any Jew (other than Jesus). He far surpassed his teacher Gamaliel and confounded the Jews in debate everywhere he went, until finally he too died at the hands Emperor Nero of Rome. What could cause a man in a single day to go from murdering Christians to being their greatest advocate among the Jews and Gentiles? Psychologists have no explanation for this other than something big really did happen to Paul on that road to Damascus.
And finally, we know Christ rose from the dead because the Scriptures say so! They accurately predicted what lineage he would be born from (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, David), what town it would be, when it would be (Dan 9), how He would die (pierced in the hands and feet [Psalm 22]), and that He would not be dead long enough to decompose. If it predicted all of those things to the detail hundreds and sometimes thousands of years ahead of time, then I think it is trustworthy and believable that He would raise from the dead. In fact, there are over 109 distinct prophecies made that Jesus fulfilled literally in His first coming. The odds of one man fulfilling just 8 of the prophecies is the same as covering the entire state of Texas with silver dollars, painting one of them gold, and then having a blindfolded man randomly draw the gold one. How much more so for 109 prophecies. The Bible itself is the greatest evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ!
So when you take all of this – the fact of the empty tomb, the failure of the Jews to produce a body, the bold transformation of cowardly apostles into fearless martyrs, the conversion of James and Paul, devout Jews changing the day of worship to Sunday, and the early explosive growth of the church due to witnesses of the resurrection – then the idea that Christ did not raise becomes inconceivable.
Of course, I do not want you to be ignorant. There are some honest non-believers out there that try to deal with the evidence. There are non-believing scholars who have went through ancient documents with a tooth and comb looking for even one ancient text to contradict the New Testament records, and none have been found. Furthermore, they have to deal with the fact that Church boomed to incredible size just two months after the crucifixion. They have to deal with the fact that cowards became bold martyrs, that the Jewish leadership failed to produce a body, no one wrote any records claiming these things were lies, and that the disciples went to their deaths for their belief in Christ’s resurrection. They also, have to deal with the fact that 500 people all saw the same risen Christ at the same time. As a result, they try to come up with alternate explanations other than the resurrection, but you will see that all attempts are futile and quite pathetic. So I will quickly introduce those arguments to you and then show you quickly why they are wrong. In the end, when you see how pathetic these arguments are, you should be strongly encouraged that this is the best the world can do.
The swoon theory says Jesus died, but the cool tomb revived him, and an earthquake moved the stone. Jesus then is supposed to have limped out of there and made appearances to the disciples. Eventually, He then went off in a corner to die of His wounds. This is supposed to account for the empty tomb and the eyewitness accounts. This fails due to the fact that all four Gospels describe Jesus resurrection body as being glorious. Furthermore, He could walk through chained doors, vanish into thin air, eat and drink, and He imparted power to the apostles. Furthermore, how could the swoon theory account for the conversion of Paul? It can’t since it was three years later. Finally, all of the disciples saw the resurrection as something to look forward to. If the swoon theory was true, then Jesus would have been in bad shape with blood randomly squirting out of his wounds as He limped to and fro. Who would call that the blessed hope? This truly is ridiculous.
A book called the “Passover Plot” shows a second view. They think Jesus read the OT and put a plot together to make it look like He fulfilled the prophecies. To pull it off, Jesus instigated Pilate and the Jews into crucifying Him. They claim that he thought he could survive the cross since some people were reported to go 9 days on the cross. After a few hours on the cross, part of the plan was for him to declare thirst, which would be a cue for the disciples to give him something on a sponge to knock him out, but make it look like he died. Later on, he could wake up and appear alive and resurrected. Well the plot backfired when the Roman soldiers killed him anyway with the spear thrust, but they accidentally put him in the wrong tomb. As a result, people remember him saying he was going to rise from the dead, and they believed it when there was an empty tomb. In the end, it was all supposedly an accident. The Gospel accounts certainly disprove this as well. The tomb was well known and the testimony is unanimous that it belonged to Joseph of Arimathea. The Gospel accounts make it clear that Joseph himself took Jesus’ body in the tomb. How is Joseph going to put Jesus in the wrong tomb? You think he would know what tomb belonged him.
Mat 27:57-60 When it was evening, a rich man fromArimathea named Joseph came, who himself had also become a disciple of Jesus. (58) He approached Pilate and asked for Jesus' body. Then Pilate ordered that it be released. (59) So Joseph took the body, wrapped it in clean, fine linen, (60) and placed it in his new tomb, which he had cut into the rock. He left after rolling a great stone against the entrance of the tomb.
A third view (Wrong Tomb Theory) is there are many tombs in the area and they simply went to the wrong one. Once again, the Gospel testimony makes it clear that the tomb was well known and this is documented in all four Gospel accounts. Those who promote this false theory, as well as the Passover Plot, need to offer documented evidence that supports their view. Otherwise it is just speculation. From a purely historical viewpoint, the evidence is staggering. Three accounts were written by eyewitnesses, and Luke’s account was written based on the interviewing of eyewitnesses, and all four agree that Joseph of Arimathea took the body of Jesus and placed it in his tomb, and the disciples knew where that tomb was, as did the Jews, Pilate, and the Roman soldiers. There is not a single ancient text to dispute this. Thus, assuming they went to the wrong tomb without offering a single historical source as evidence is foolish. Also, neither the Passover Plot nor the Wrong Tomb Theory account for eyewitness accounts with the risen Lord.
The fourth view is the dual level of interpretation. On a natural level, Jesus died. On a supernatural level, he underwent a spiritual resurrection. The Jehovah Witnesses hold this view. The idea is that Jesus’ resurrection was a ghost. This is supposed to explain the eyewitness accounts and the conversions of James and Paul, but it does nothing for the empty tomb, and contradicts the Scriptures. The Gospels utterly destroy this view. Jesus ate and drank, and allowed His disciples to touch Him as evidence. He even declares outright that He is not a ghost, but a body of flesh in Luke 24:39.
Luk 24:39 Look at My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself! Touch Me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have."
A fifth view is subjective vision. Allegedly his fanatic followers got carried away and thought they had visions of their master after the death. They hallucinated seeing him because they wanted it to be true so badly. Really? This one is truly pathetic. Jesus appeared on ten different occasions and each time never to the exact same group. Some even doubted, such as Thomas, and only became convinced after touching and eating with Jesus. Furthermore, Jesus’ brother James was not a fanatic follower and was not expecting his brother to be raised, yet it was the fact that Jesus rose that caused James to be a Christian in the first place! Also, Paul records in 1 Corinthians 15:6 that Jesus appeared to over 500 people all at once and many were still alive in his day and could have been interviewed by Paul’s Corinthian audience. Never in history has there ever been recorded a situation where over 500 people all at the same time hallucinated the exact same thing. This theory is simply ridiculous.
In conclusion, I hope this has been quite helpful for you. It shows us one major important truth: The evidence of the resurrection is so infallible, that the best guesses of “honest” nonbelievers is more fantastical than believing in the tooth fairy. So be encouraged in the resurrection of our Lord. Our faith is not in vain, but is a historical and true faith. God bless.
