Once we have placed our trust in the Bible as the Word of God we must fully embrace the central figure of Christianity and His work: that is Jesus Christ. Jesus is what Christianity is all about. No one who knows anything about history doubts that there was a man named Jesus Christ, who lived in the first century. No one, without denying historical facts, denies that Jesus died on the cross. The doubt comes in when people consider His resurrection and His deity. Is Jesus God? Was Jesus resurrected from the dead? If the answer is no, then Christianity is meaningless. If the answer is yes, then Christianity is the only path for life.
The Bible declares that Jesus was resurrected, but is there any other evidence for that claim. For the purposes of removing any remaining doubt, we want to show that the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the Resurrection being true. The first bit of evidence is that many Jews changed their day of worship from Saturday to Sunday, which was not within their character. They did this when Jesus was pronounced raised from the dead on a Sunday. For them to have made this change, they had to have seen something significant.
Secondly, the tomb was empty; especially note that those who could have produced the body, if it existed, did not. Jesus was crucified and then on the third day Jesus began to appear before his disciples. Now keep in mind that a resurrected Jesus would ensure Christianity to continue. Also, keep in mind, that along with the fact that the Jewish authority, who had already influenced the Roman government to crucify Jesus, was passionately opposed to Christianity. They would do anything to squelch this faith. The easy way to make that happen would have been simply to show off the dead body of Christ. It had only been three days since the death. The body would have still been recognizable. However, they never produced a body. They never even attempted to. Their claim was that the disciples came and stole the body.
However, this claim cannot possibly be true. Weather it was the Jewish temple guard or the Roman makes little difference. In both, if a guard was found sleeping on duty, he was executed. Even leaving ones post is punishable by death. If the disciples would have beaten up the guards, moved the stone, and taken the body, the guards would have still been executed as cowards. Even if there were an earthquake that moved the stone away, again they would have been executed as cowards for running from their posts. No guard was executed, so there is no way that anyone stole the body. It was simply missing. The guards ran away and were not executed. The only way this could happen is if the stone was rolled away in such a powerful way that it could not be explained by natural causes. Again, no guard was executed. Not to mention if the disciples had stolen the body and lied about the resurrection, who would be willing to die for such a lie. As most of the apostles were threatened with execution in the attempt to force them to deny their claims and they did not recant. They were executed. Again, this shows that the disciples did see the resurrected Christ. Who would die for a lie?
Now some may attempt to say that they were hallucinating. However, the disciples said that they saw the resurrected Christ together as a group. They describe seeing the same things all at the same time. This is significant since hallucinations take place within one’s brain. Two individuals cannot have the same hallucination, especially at the exact same time, and yet all the apostles saw the same thing together.
In summary, the facts are the following. (1) Many Jews changed their day of worship from Saturday to Sunday, which was not within their character. (2) The tomb was empty; especially note that those who could produce the body, if it existed, did not. (3) It is not possible that the disciples stole the body, i.e. the solders. (4) People saw what they believed was the resurrected Christ. (5) What they saw could not be hallucinations. (6) They could not have lied about what they saw, i.e. the executions. (7) Lives were radically changed at what they saw. For more information, please read The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus by Gary R. Habermas and Michael R. Licona. Jesus is alive!
