Christianity proclaims that Jesus rose from the dead and hangs its entire existence on that fact. Yet, there is no practical certainty of it because actual eyewitnesses cannot be questioned due to them being dead! However, a logical case can be made on the certainty of historical evidence.
The Bible refers to the death of Jesus and Resurrection using words translated as "vain," "futile," and "no purpose."
"And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is FUTILE (vain) and you are still in your sins." (1 Corinthians 15:14 ESV emphasis mine)
"I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose (in vain)." (Galatians:21 ESV
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
It is the truth that all facts presuppose other facts, so any structured argument has basic expectations and assumptions. Here are some basic suppositions that must be taken into account before presenting the evidence of the Resurrection. Anyone who takes the time to research these diligently will discover the evidence that supports them.
1. Jesus lived. He is a historical person.
Some people today deny that Jesus ever existed. However, there is significant historical evidence that He did exist which cannot logically be denied. Because of the words He spoke and acts of kindness He did, there are such things as public schools, colleges, universities, hospitals, orphanages, democracy based political systems, the empowerment of women, etc., etc., etc., throughout the world today.
2. He was crucified by the Romans at the demand of the Jewish leaders. He was considered dead.
3. He was buried in a known, accessible tomb.
4. The preaching about Jesus was threefold:
a. He was raised from the dead
b. He ascended into heaven
c. His burial tomb is empty
5. The Jewish leaders were motivated to disprove that Jesus rose from the dead.
6. The Disciples were persecuted for telling others about the Resurrection.
7. The tomb was empty. (It was never preserved, and its location is not positively known).
8. His dead body was never found.
9. The teaching of Jesus found in the Bible has been faithfully transmitted throughout history.
a. The Bible has been translated numerous times in a one-step process from the original languages into multiple languages throughout history. However, it has never been rewritten. There are approximately 5,700 copies of the Greek manuscripts made very close to the time of originals, and they all agree with each other to 99.5% accuracy. The .5% variation would include textual misspelling or minor word alternations. There are also over 19,000 copies in the Syriac, Latin, Coptic, and Aramaic languages, which bring the total supporting New Testament manuscript purity to over 24,000 copies!
WAS JESUS JUST GOOD AND WISE, OR A GOOD OR WISE TEACHER?
If Jesus was good, meant well, honestly tried to help people, then He must have been a deluded lunatic who didn't realize that no human being could do the things He said He did. If He was wise and not a lunatic, then He knew that His claims were humanly impossible, and He was a big fraud and therefore was not good or wise. To be wise, a person must be correct; to be good, a person needs to be honest. Jesus could only be good but not wise, wise but not good, but certainly not both. Here is a brief list of His claims made:
a. Jesus said He would live forever (John 8:58).
b. Jesus described the eternal world from the inside: He saw satan fall (Luke 10:18, 15:7; Matthew 13:41, 18:10, 25:41; John 14:2).
c. Jesus seated all authority in Himself – His authority was Himself! (Matthew 5:17,20,22,26,28,32;7:29; 28:18).
d. Jesus thought He was perfect. He presumed His adequacy to forgive sin. He defined the Law.
He never had any sense of imperfection (Matthew 5:17, 9:2; Luke 7:48; Mark 10:21).
e. Jesus said that He was the ransom that would redeem people from sin and its eternal
consequences (Matthew 20:28, Mark 10:45; 1 Timothy 2:6 - see also Numbers 18:15-16; Ex 13:13, 34:20).
f. Jesus said He would rise from the dead! (Matthew 20:19, 26:61-64, 27:63-65; John 2:19)
g. Jesus said He alone was “the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6 ESV).
h. Jesus was the center of His belief system and placed Himself at the center of the religious Universe. He preached Himself!! (Matthew 10:32-39, 11:28-30,19:29; John 6:51,14:6)
i. Jesus declared that He had the same level of authority as God; that He existed before Abraham and that He had the name of God. (Exodus 3:13,14; John 5:19, 6:35, 8:24, 58-59, 10:11-14, 11:25)
j. Jesus said that He the Lord of the Sabbath and those who have seen Him have seen God. (John 14:6,9; Matt 12:60)
k. Jesus said “I am the Alpha and the Omega,…who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty" (Revelation 1:8 NIV).
l. Jesus prophesied that He would die and come back to life and that He would return again to judge the world. (Luke 18:31-33; John 10:17,12;32-33,16:16; Matthew 24:27-30, 25:31-32; Mark 14:61-62)
m. Jesus said that if a person believes in God, they should believe in Him. (John 14:1)
n. Jesus claimed to be the ONLY way to God and that He was able to forgive sins as well as to give everlasting life - starting at the very moment a person chooses to make Him their Lord and Savior. (Matthew 11:27; Luke 5:20-21, 7:48-49; John 6:40,47, 10:28-30, 11:25, 14:6)
None of these sayings mean anything unless Jesus was who He said He was, the Creator God of the Universe! These profound claims are why He was put to death by the religious leaders of His day.
DID JESUS RISE FROM THE DEAD?
Most of those who deny the Resurrection of Jesus argue that it didn't occur because it defies all the laws of science. Before you discuss the Resurrection with anyone, specific facts have to be assumed.
Fact 1. Jesus lived. As noted, that is easy to prove.
Fact 2. Jesus was crucified at the urging of religious leaders in Jerusalem and carried out by Roman authorities. Jesus' death upon a Roman cross is much easier to prove than the Resurrection.
Fact 3. Jesus was considered dead. He was pierced with a sword, taken down from the cross, and placed in a tomb.
Fact 4. Jesus was buried in a known and accessible tomb. Those who participated in the events of the crucifixion knew where the tomb was and could get to it.
Fact 5. Jesus was preached as having been raised from the dead and ascended into Heaven.
Fact 6. The religious leaders who initiated the crucifixion were interested in disproving Jesus' Resurrection.
Fact 7. The Disciples were persecuted because of preaching the claims of Jesus' Resurrection. They were called liars and thieves who stole the body of Jesus. The whole Book of Acts tells of the Disciples' persecution for preaching the Resurrection. Throughout the centuries, Christians have been persecuted and made the target of verbal and physical violence because they would not stop preaching the Resurrection message and ascension of Jesus.
Fact 8. The tomb was empty.
If the Resurrection is true, it is THE central fact of history and the CENTER of the Universe. A sincere skeptic will be a disingenuous hypocrite if they think the Resurrection is not worth taking at least 40 hours of their life to study it.
WERE THE DISCIPLES/DIRECT WITNESSES HONEST MEN OR LIARS?
Here are four reasons why they are not liars.
Reason 1. Cataclysmic change for the better on the part of the witnesses.
Peter – Before the Resurrection, he was weak and undependable because of his extremes of behavior. He fled in fear and denied his friend and Lord. After the Resurrection, he preaches to a mocking mob, and ultimately dies with courage requesting that he be turned upside down on a cross because he was not worthy to die in the position of his Master. That was a profound change that can be identified to a specific point in history where Believers began to tell the Resurrection story.
John - He was self-centered to the extreme. Along with His brother, James, they were known as the "Sons of Thunder." John appears to be vengeful (Luke 9:54), judgmental (Mark 9:38), and selfish (Mark 10:35-37) but became more loving and compassionate after Pentecost in 32 A.D (Acts 4:13; 1 John 3- 4). No scholar disagrees with the fact that John was a changed man after the Resurrection. Instead of a "Son of Thunder," John becomes known as the "Apostle of Love" – a total dramatic change (Mark 3:17).
Thomas – He is consistently a doubter from start to finish. As a realist, he questioned everything. When Jesus said He was going to go through Samaria and face death, Thomas says, "Let us also go, that we may die with Him" (John 11:16 ESV). That is courage, but he thought Jesus would die, which is a humanistic view.
Thomas also doubted the Resurrection and said, "Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe" (John 20:25 ESV). When Jesus arrives, He did not condemn Thomas for his unbelief and but said to him, "Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe." Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!" Jesus said to him, have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed" (John 20:27-29 ESV). The facts spoke for themselves.
A crisis will change people for the better, but a lie seldom does, and most often, it will worsen. These men were radically changed for the better.
Reason 2. Indirect Evidence and Internal Consistencies.
There are indirect pieces of evidence of truth. Mark records Jesus referring to Himself as the "Son of Man" 14 times, which is more than any other Gospel. Recoding a phrase that suggests humanity rather than divinity does not make rational sense if Mark was trying to perpetrate a fraud.
Jesus said He was the "Son of Man" because He was preaching to a Hebrew audience that would have read the Book of Daniel where the Son of Man is viewed as the Messiah coming in clouds of glory to set up His Kingdom (See Daniel 7:13).
Mark was writing to a Gentile audience who didn't know anything about the Jewish Messiah. If Mark was trying to perpetuate a lie that Jesus is the Son of God, it seems logical that he would not use that term unless he was being honest and telling the truth.
The Disciples presented women as the first witnesses of the Resurrection. Yet, in the first century, women were thought incapable of being credible witnesses. If they were telling a lie, they would have known that the people would have written off what any women said about the Resurrection.
Reason 3. Paying a Harsh Price.
Most liars are not willing to pay the price the Apostles paid for preaching Jesus. Other than Judas Iscariot who killed himself after betraying Jesus, and John, who died a natural death, the other 10 Apostles died a martyr's death: Bartholomew (aka Nathaniel) was ripped apart and killed in Armenia; Thomas was pierced with a sword; Peter was crucified upside down, Andrew was crucified on an X shaped cross; James, the brother of John, was killed with a sword; Philip was either hanged or crucified; Matthew was impaled with spears and beheaded; James the brother of Jesus was killed; Jude (aka Thaddeus) was crucified and shot with arrows; Simon the Zealot was crucified. In addition, Mark who wrote the book of Mark, and Luke who wrote the books Luke and Acts, were hanged to death. All of these men willingly paid a great price beyond human belief for the perpetuation of a "lie."
Reason 4. They died alone.
St. Thomas Aquinas said that the proof of the Disciples' reliability, and the preaching of the Resurrection, is that they died alone. There is not one shred of evidence that has survived 2,000 years of scrutiny by critics, or any record on the face of the earth, that says or implies any of the Apostles wavered in their faith to proclaim the risen Savior and His Resurrection from the dead, even up to the point of their last breath.
CONCLUSION - JESUS ROSE FORM THE DEAD!
If the Resurrection is true, then all the rest of the New Testament is true, which becomes the starting point for faith in an eternal God. If a person can believe that Jesus Christ supernaturally passed through His grave clothes, and through a rock, then molecular displacement is nothing to Him because all things consist in Him, and He can control them. The Bible declares,
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." (John 1:1-5 ESV)
"The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth." (John 1:9-14 ESV)
The Resurrection makes it easy to believe that God's same substance, placed in Mary, came forth as Jesus of Nazareth through the Holy Spirit. God says He puts that same substance in human beings when they choose to connect with Him by trusting His Word and become Born-Again, which instantly causes them to be regenerated into a new creation supernaturally.
The Resurrection is the genesis of all Christianity that Christ is in us - the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27). That gives every Born-Again Christian the understanding of true Christianity, and they can spend their life pursuing His written words in the Bible as absolute truth and believing the promises that are written within.
"So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ." (Romans 10:17 ESV)
If Jesus is who He said He was, the divine Creator Lord of the Universe, then all He said was true, and all the other countless promises of God are true. Eternal freedom, starting today, can be found only in Jesus.
"So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed." (John 8:36 ESV)
The choice to receive Jesus as Lord and Savior is yours alone to make. Right now is a great time to make the most important decision that will affect all of your eternal future.
(This message includes notes that were taken in 2002 while listening to a live message given by Dr. W. Eugene Scott)
