Billions of Christians this morning around the Earth celebrate what they believe to be the central fact of all human history: More than 2,000 years ago, Jesus Christ, an intinerant preacher/prophet in a backwater province of the Roman Empire, was resurrected three days after dying the most horrible of deaths by crucifixion.
Easter is celebrated because, without the Resurrection, there is no Christianity. Resurrection was Christ’s method of proving that He was exactly who He claimed to be – the incarnate Son of God, the creator of the universe, and the sole source of salvation for those who accept Him as their personal savior. None of those claims can be true if the Resurrection did not actually happen.
That is the crux of the entire debate about Jesus – Either He was what He claimed to be, or the man was a lunatic or a liar. For me, I have no doubt that He was resurrected from the dead. He said He would be beforehand and there is nothing during his prior life to suggest even the remotest doubt His veracity. Jesus was, after all, the most un-selfish human being who ever lived.
I also believe because of what He did for me on the morning of March 1, 1991, when He rescued me from the hell of alcoholism, and because of how He has changed my heart and mind in the years since. As the most wonderful hymn ever written puts it, before I was blind, but now I can see. And I am merely one of legions of people whose lives were completey changed by knowing Jesus.
One of my great passions has long been researching the proofs of the Resurrection. The evidence from history, archeology, logic and science is over-whelmingly in favor of the Resurrection as fact. So, if you will, allow me on this wonderful morning in the Spring of 2009 to share with you just a few of the reasons why I believe.
You are, of course, free to reject my thoughts on this issue, just as you are completely free to reject Christ and everything He said about Himself (and about you and me as well). I praise God that we live in America where you and I have complete freedom to think and talk about these things, and to reach our own conclusions about them.
Consider the crucial issue of what happened to the body. The claim that He somehow survived the crucifixion and was able to fool his executioners, followers and burial detail into thinking He was dead, then was able to escape unnoticed from the tomb reveals complete ignorance of the physiological nature of crucifixion and the physical and political circumstances surrounding the tomb. To believe this is to accept what seems clearly to be the least likely explanation.
So, it is impossible to conceive of anything but His dead body being placed in the tomb. The disciples claimed His body was missing because He was resurrected. There are only a few logical explanations for the missing body: Either the disciples or somebody else somehow managed to get past a trained military guard, roll back a huge stone weighing multiple tons and take away the body to hide it without a trace. Or He really was resurrected, just as He said He would be.
It makes no sense at all to believe the disciples got away with His body. In the hours after the crucifixion, they were scattered, dispirited, terrified that they would be next to face the cross, and utterly without military resources. Such men would not have attempted to retrieve the body, and even if they had tried to do so, there is simply no way they could have overcome a crack military guard without creating quite a disturbance and leaving behind subtantial evidence of their actions.
Plus, all but one of the 11 disciples remaining at the time of the Resurrection later died violent deaths for their faith. Men don’t voluntarily die for what they know to be a lie. One of them at least would have cracked under Roman torture and gave away the theft in an attempt to save his own life. Instead, they all went to their deaths insisting that they had seen and talked with the living Jesus after His death and resurrection.
If not the disciples, who else might have stolen the body? It wouldn’t have been the Romans or the Jewish authorities. Both knew that Jesus had predicted His resurrection and both feared the disciples would try to steal the body and claim the resurrection had occurred. That is why the guard unit posted at the tomb was either a Roman Kustodian or a Jewish Temple Guard, neither of whom were likely to be overcome by the disciples in a fight.
But if either the Romans or Jewish authorities did, for whatever reason, take the body, they would have rolled it through the streets of Jerusalem as soon as the disciples started claiming the Resurrection had taken place. That would have been the end of Christianity right there. That they didn’t is a persuasive indicator that they didn’t know where the body was.
Could an unknown third party – grave-robbing thieves, for instance – have possibly gotten the body? It’s hard to conceive that grave robbers would have gone to the trouble to rob the tomb of somebody not known to be rich while they were alive. And even if they did get into Jesus’ tomb, having mistaken it for somebody else’s, why would they have taken the body?
Or maybe there was a grave-robbing third party that just did it on a lark. Any third-party had to have overcome the guard unit, just as the disciples would have, and, once the disciples were claiming Jesus was alive, a third-party that successfully stole the body would have been likely to produce it in return for a reward from the Romans and Jewish authorities. Unless, of course, they feared being prosecuted for stealing the body in the first place but then we still have the fact of the guard unit to contend with here.
These considerations are only a tiny sliver of the overwhelming evidence for the Resurrection as an historical fact. If you are interested in exploring this topic further, read Josh McDowell’s excellent primer on the issue, entitled “More Than A Carpenter.” This concise little paperback brings together and summarizes years of research in a handy reference book that is certain to give you much to think about. And I would be happy to discuss these matters further with anybody with a sincere interest.
Regardless whether you believe or not, my prayer for every reader of this post is that today is a day that brings joy and peace to you as never before.
