Easter Message: Going All In

An Easter Message

“Going All In”

Billy Graham once told Time magazine, “If I were an enemy of Christianity, I would aim right at the Resurrection, because that is the heart of Christianity.” (Billy Graham) (Crosswalk “A World Without Easter”)

You see, Christianity is all about Jesus going all in, that is, dying upon the cross, and rising from the dead. And so, what we might say is that Jesus not only went all the way into the grave, but also came all the way out.

But Graham wasn’t far off, because the world and scholars have been trying to disprove the Christian faith by aiming right at the Resurrection. This is seen in several of the myths and false theories that have been circulating for hundreds if not thousands of years, but they have no validity and have been rebuffed and proven false time and time again.

But there is an old adage that says, “If you keep telling the lie long enough, and passionately enough, then eventually it is going to be believed as the truth.”

And so, what are these various myths and false theories?

The Swoon Theory

The swoon theory says that Jesus didn’t actually die, but rather He went into a deep coma, or “swooned” on the cross from the severe pain and trauma from His Crucifixion. However, in the cool atmosphere of the tomb, they say that He “revived,” and it was in this state that He showed Himself to His disciples.

However, what we must understand is that the Roman guards were actually the first to report Jesus’s death (John 19:33–37). Further, they were experts at execution and would have been put to death themselves if they allowed a condemned man to escape death. They were so certain that Jesus was dead, they did not even bother to break His legs. And when the spear they thrust into Jesus’ side brought forth blood and water, this was the proof they needed that Jesus was indeed dead, because this only occurs when the heart stops beating.

Now consider, for the “swoon” theory to work, Jesus would have had to survive massive loss of blood through the scourging, the nail wounds, and the spear thrust.

• In addition to this He would have had to endure 40 hours without food or drink, manage to unwrap Himself from His grave clothes, which would have been no easy task seeing that his hands and arms were wrapped up as well.

• And then He would had to have the strength to roll away the massive stone closing the tomb, fight off and defeat both the Roman and Jewish soldiers that stood guard outside the tomb, and then convince His followers that He had risen from the dead.

• And to top it all off, He would have had to delude His disciples that He could somehow appear in the middle of the room without using the door to get in.

The Mass Hallucination Theory

This theory promotes that everyone who claimed to have seen the risen Jesus were actually having one mass hallucination out of an earnest desire to see Jesus alive again.

But consider that Jesus’s disciples never expected to see Jesus after His death and burial (Mark 16:10–11). It came as a complete surprise and total shock to them.

What’s totally ironic when it comes down to this is that it was those who didn’t believe in Him as the Messiah initially had more faith in Jesus’s words than His disciples. The chief priests and Pharisees came to see Pilate and said, “Sir, we remember, while He was still alive, how that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise.’ Therefore, command that the tomb be made secure until the third day, lest His disciples come by night and steal Him away, and say to the people, ‘He has risen from the dead.’ So the last deception will be worse than the first.” (Matthew 27:63–64 NKJV). They remembered Jesus’s words concerning the Resurrection, while the disciples had apparently forgotten them!

The problem, however, with this being a mass hallucination is that I am told that it is impossible for more than two people to have the exact same hallucination, and here we’re talking about over 500 people.

The Stolen Body Theory

This theory says that Jesus’s disciples took His body in order to fulfill His words that He would rise again (John 2:19-21). According to Scripture, on the day is His resurrection, the temple guards told the chief priests what had transpired. The chief priests then bribed the guards, telling them to spread this story instead of what they had witnessed (Matthew 28:11–15).

But how could Jesus’s disciples steal His body. They fled and hid, and were convinced that He was dead, as we see when the women came with news of Jesus’s resurrection, it seemed nonsensical, and they didn’t believe (Luke 24:11). The apostles had no reason to counterfeit Jesus’s resurrection since they did not even believe it themselves.