The Resurrection of Jesus

In Acts 25, we read the account of Paul's trial before Governor Porcius Festus and King Herod Agrippa II. The Jews had brought Paul, who had been in prison, before Governor Festus in hopes of having him transferred from Caesarea to Jerusalem, because they had laid an ambush in Jerusalem and were plotting to kill him.

Festus disclosed the case with King Agrippa, telling him, "When I went to Jerusalem, the chief priests and the elders of the Jews brought charges against him (Paul) and asked that he be condemned. . .When his accusers got up to speak, they did not charge him with any of the crimes I had expected. Instead, they had some points of dispute with him about their own religion and about a dead man named Jesus who Paul claimed was alive" (Acts 25:15, 18-19).

The key statement in the above passage is, "a dead man named Jesus, who Paul claimed was alive" (vs. 19). This is vital to understand why the Jews wanted Paul dead. The Jews did not, and could not, deny the fact that a man called Jesus of Nazareth existed, and that He had been crucified. In fact, they were the ones who had so adamantly requested that Pontius Pilate have Jesus killed. The argument against Paul had nothing to do with claims of Christ's life and death. Rather, it was against the most pivotal part of the story: His resurrection.

JESUS: LIAR, LUNATIC, OR LORD?

Most historians would agree that Jesus was a real man; that He really walked the earth 2,000 years ago, that He really taught what we read in the Gospels, and that He really was crucified. Many people would even agree that many of His teachings were "good"; loving one another, giving to the poor, etc. But it is His resurrection - the most important and glorious part of all history - that is debated and denied.

Yet if Christ never rose from the dead, then He would either be the most deceitful liar or the craziest lunatic in all of history. In addition to His teachings on love and charity, Jesus of Nazareth also claimed that:

• He was the Son of God (Matthew 26:63-64).
• He had existed with God before time began (John 8:58).
• He Himself was God (John 10:30).
• He had the power to forgive sins (Mark 2:5-11).
• He would be killed, but would rise to life three days later (Mark 9:31).
• He would ascend into heaven and sit at God's right hand (Luke 22:69).
• He would return in the clouds with all power and glory (Matthew 24:27, 30).

For a mere mortal, these would be the most absurd claims anyone could make. No matter how good He was, or how loving His teaching may have seemed, such statements would have made Him the greatest maniac of all time, if untrue. Not even the "great" religious teachers of history, such as Mohammad, Gandhi, or Buddha, made claims that equaled the immensity of those made by Jesus. He didn't just claim to know the way to God, He claimed to be the way to God. He didn't just claim to be from God, He claimed to be God.

If He never rose from the dead, then every single one of those claims was proven false. If He was crucified, and that was the end of the story, then His entire ministry and entire purpose was a failed, wasted sham. He could not be acknowledged as a "good" teacher, because the entire basis of what He taught would be rooted in deceit.

Paul himself said, "And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. . .And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied" (1 Corinthians 15:14, 17-19). If Jesus never came back from death, then the entire Christian faith is meaningless. Jesus would be proven as a lying lunatic, and His teachings would mean nothing.
That is why C.S. Lewis said, "Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important." Either Jesus was right in all He claimed and He rose from the dead, and He means everything, or He was wrong in all He claimed and His carcass is still buried, and He means nothing. There is no middle ground.

Simply acknowledging Jesus' life, teaching, and even death means nothing if not accompanied by faith in His resurrection.

EVIDENCE FOR THE RESURRECION: THE GOSPELS AND TESTIMONIES

So then, how can we know that Jesus has indeed risen from the dead? With so much criticism from the skeptics, and with so much skepticism from the critics, how can we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that His resurrection is real, and not the man-made fable of His delusional, first-century followers?

Our first example of proof is the Four Gospels themselves. Four different men, each of them writing at different points in time, documented the same story. And each of them documented the resurrection of Christ, based on the fact that He was physically seen by multitudes of people after His death, including themselves.

• Matthew: He was one of the twelve apostles, and was a personal eyewitness to the events of Christ's resurrection. When he said, "When they saw Him, they worshiped Him" (Matthew 28:17) after Jesus rose, he himself was amongst the disciples. Matthew's testimony concerning the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is based off what was seen with his own eyes.
• Mark: Although he was not a personal eyewitness, he gathered the information for his Gospel from the Apostle Peter, who was one of the closest disciples to Jesus. This is confirmed by Eusebius and Jerome, two renowned historians in Church history. Mark's words are the testimony of one of Jesus' closest friends, and one of the first men to see the empty tomb. Mark's words are so compliant with other witnesses that only 4% of the content of his Gospel are not found in the other three Gospels.
• Luke: He was not a personal eyewitness to the events of Christ's death and resurrection either, but received his information from many others who had. He testified that, "Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account" (Luke 1:1-3). Luke's research about the resurrection of Christ was obtained from multiple first-hand accounts of those who had seen Jesus alive after His death.
• John: Like Matthew, he was one of the twelve apostles and a personal eyewitness. Not only that, but he was so close to Jesus that he is referred to as "the disciple whom Jesus loved". He was there during Jesus' ministry, He saw Jesus die on the cross (19:26), he was one of the first spectators of the empty tomb (20:4-5, 8), and he witnessed the resurrected Christ, complete with the scars in His hands and side (20:19-20). He wrote what he had personally and physically seen. "This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true" (John 21:24).

Between the Four Gospels, we already have multiple historical accounts of Christ's resurrection from the authors and their references. Matthew and John saw it first-hand, Mark received most of his information from Peter (a first-hand witness), and Luke received his information from many other first-hand accounts in the early Church. In addition, there were nine other apostles of the twelve who testified to physically seeing a risen Jesus, as Peter declared to the city of Jerusalem with his fellow disciples, "God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it" (Acts 2:32).

Some will argue that secular historical accounts outside the Bible are necessary to prove anything, but they forget a very important factor - the Four Gospels were not originally written as part of the Bible. The four authors wrote their books at various points in history; it was not a collaborative effort between them, and they had no idea their separate works would become part of what we know as the "New Testament". During their lives, the Old Testament was the only Bible that existed. They did not write the Gospels with the idea of creating the second half of Scripture. They were simply recording what they had seen, and the result is four historical accounts.

Personally witnessing the resurrection was so pivotal to the Apostles that, when choosing Judas' replacement, they said, "It is necessary to choose one of the men who have been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus was living among us, beginning from John’s baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us. For one of these must become a witness with us of His resurrection" (Acts 1:21-22). They understood that, in order to be a credible witness, the new Apostle would have to be a man who had been a part of Christ's ministry and seen His resurrection and ascension into heaven with his own two eyes.

Even with all this, there are more testimonies yet to be found. In 1 Corinthians 15:3-6, Paul says, "For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, He appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep."
Along with the credible testimonies that formed the Four Gospels, here are accounts from over five-hundred people! Every one of them testified that they had indeed seen Jesus risen from the grave. Five-hundred is a mammoth number for even the worst critic to ignore.

If there was any other historical event that bore as many witnesses as the resurrection of Christ, historians would have no choice but to accept it as fact.

But because it proves the claims of Christ, which would prove that Jesus was indeed the Son of God, which would prove the existence of God, it is discredited and rejected. The resurrection of Jesus Christ, which easily earns the right of historical fact based on the number of eyewitnesses, is tossed aside as religious mumbo-jumbo simply to keep God stuffed away in the closet. If Jesus really rose from the dead, then everyone would have to re-think their lives and what they believe. And so, to avoid such an "inconvenience", the facts of His resurrection are excused and lambasted based on nothing more than intentional ignorance.

EVIDENCE FOR THE RESURRECTION: THE DEATHS OF THE APOSTLES

As if Jesus' resurrection needed any more evidence, it is further proven by the deaths of the Apostles. Of the Twelve Apostles (including Matthias, Judas' replacement), eleven of them died horrible deaths as martyrs for their faith.

According to historians:

• James, the brother of John, was beheaded.
• Peter was crucified upside-down.
• Matthew was nailed to the ground with spears and beheaded.
• Simon the Zealot was crucified.
• Bartholomew (Nathanael) was flayed to death with a whip.
• Andrew was crucified.
• Thomas was speared to death by having a lance run through his body.
• Matthias was stoned and beheaded.
• James, the brother of Jesus, was thrown over a hundred feet from the top of a pinnacle but survived; he was then beaten to death with clubs.
• Philip was crucified.
• Thaddeus (Judas, Jude) was stoned to death.
• John was boiled in oil but miraculously survived, and was eventually exiled to the Island of Patmos.

These twelve men all claimed to have seen a risen Jesus, and it was that same statement of faith that brought about their deaths. Yet they never backed down. They never once showed fear, and none of them ever denied their claims of Christ's resurrection.

Throughout history, there have been thousands of "martyrs" who have died for their religious beliefs. In modern times, the most notorious are the Muslim terrorists who have given their own lives in the name of their faith. But being willing to die in the name of a certain god doesn't anymore prove that god's existence than being willing to die for Bigfoot would somehow make him real. Simply saying, "The disciples died for their faith, so God must be real" would be a poor argument.

Except for one tiny, important detail.

A Muslim terrorist honestly believes that Allah is real, even though he's never seen Allah. A Hindu priest willing to die for his faith has no real evidence for what he believes, but dies with the hope that it is so. Their faith is based on nothing more than, well, faith. Blind faith. They have no way of knowing for sure whether or not their claims are true or false.

The Apostles, however, knew whether or not Jesus had really risen from the dead. If Christ never rose, the Apostles knew it. And yet they were so willing, and so joyful, to undergo horrendous torture and execution on behalf of such a claim. Similarly, the hundreds of first-century Christians who followed Jesus, and who died for His message, would have known the truth about whether or not the man named Jesus was still in the grave. No other martyr has ever died for what they knew, only for what they hoped.

How could twelve men, much less hundreds, have died for what every one of them would have known was a lie?

HE IS RISEN!

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the most important event in the history of mankind. One cannot accept the teachings of Jesus and yet make light of the resurrection, and one cannot excuse the historical legitimacy and testimony of the Gospels and first-century Church. Over five-hundred people witnessed the great and glorious truth in which we place all our hope - that Jesus from the grave. Let us rejoice in His great and glorious love; "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Peter 1:3).

After Paul's statement that "if Christ has not been raised. . .we are of all people most to be pitied" in 1 Corinthians 15, he goes on to say, "But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep" (1 Corinthians 15:20). What a glorious pronouncement! Although yes, our lives would be wasted if Jesus hadn't been raised, we can take full joy in the knowledge that He has indeed risen! The Christian life is not one that is lived in a state of "I hope", but rather "I know".

"You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He isn’t here! He is risen from the dead!" - Mark 16:6