EVIDENCE FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST

Did Jesus really rise from the dead?  This core principle of Christian doctrine is crucial to Christianity's survival or demise.  As Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15, “If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied,” and “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins.”

Let’s make this simple.  Prove to me that Christ did not rise from the dead, and I will no longer be a Christian.  Fair enough?  Let’s go.

To keep things on an even playing field, let’s not get into our preconceived ideas about Jesus being alive or dead; let’s look at the verified historical facts we can both agree on.

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1. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, Jesus existed.  He is just as historical as Ceaser Augustus, Alexander the Great, or Ronald Reagan. We can know this for certain because Jesus is not only mentioned in the Bible but also by the first-century non-Christian Jewish historian Josephus, the first-century Roman historians Tacitus and Suetonius, the Jewish Talmud, and a plethora of early Christian writings.  Jesus in the Jewish Talmud? The Jews did not believe He was what He claimed to be, but they always believed He existed. If Jesus did not exist, the last place we would find writings about Him would be in the Jewish Talmud.  If they could have proven that He was a mirage, they most definitely would have done their best to do so.  Jesus is a historical character.

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2. For a fact, we know that Jesus was Crucified.  Josephus and Tacitus write that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate.  Thallus and Phlegon mention the darkness and earthquakes that were recorded in the Bible during the same time of His death (without directly mentioning Jesus).

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3. Jesus' body was never found.  If Jesus did not rise from the dead, the Jews and Romans of the 1st century could have easily dispelled Christianity by producing the body of Jesus.  The fact is, they couldn’t.  Whether His body was stolen, misplaced, burned up, beamed up, or resurrected, Jesus’ body has never been found.  As an example, here is a letter circulated among the Jewish people after Jesus’ death, attempting to explain what happened to His body. 

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“[A] godless and lawless heresy had sprung from one Jesus, a Galilean deceiver, whom we crucified, but his disciples stole him by night from the tomb, where he was laid when unfastened from the cross, and now deceive men by asserting that he has risen from the dead and ascended to heaven.”

This old anti-Christian propaganda is recorded by Justin Martyr (heading up chapter 108 of his Dialogue with Trypho).

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There was another letter circulating in the 6th century, but its veracity is more questionable.

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“Diligent search was made, and he [Jesus] was not found in the grave where he had been buried. A gardener had taken him from the grave and had brought him into his garden and buried him in the sand over which the waters flowed into the garden.” From the Toledoth Yeshu, circa 6th century AD.

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This also explains the Nazareth Inscription written by Ceaser after the death of Jesus, which placed the death penalty on anyone found stealing a body from a tomb.  The rise of Christianity due to the resurrection account evidently caused trouble in Rome as well as Jerusalem.

These attempts to explain the empty tomb are evidence in and of themselves.

 

4. People claimed to have seen Jesus alive after his death.  According to Josephus in his Testimonium Flavianum, he writes:

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“About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.”

—Antiquities of the Jews, Book 18, Chapter 3,

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 Even the great skeptic and atheist Bart Ehrman said,

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“It is undisputable that some of the followers of Jesus came to think that he had been raised from the dead, and that something had to have happened to make them think so.”  Bart D. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (New York: Harper One, 2014), 183-184.

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Bart Ehrman doesn’t quite agree with Christians on what exactly that “something” is.  However, his acceptance of this historical truth just adds one more fact that we can all agree on.

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5. The disciples of Jesus suffered horrible deaths without recanting the story of Jesus’ resurrection even once.  This may seem to be a cop-out, but the fact of human nature is that no one on earth is going to go through what the disciples went through for a lie. A lie they know to be a lie.  Many have suffered fates as bad, or worse, than the disciples' because of politics, family, or another religion. Still, it is important to note that those who did, actually believed the lie they died for.  They weren’t dying for a lie that they just made up a few years prior, as some claim the disciples did! People make up lies to gain power, money, or fame, not torturous deaths.  The terrorists who crashed into the twin trade towers believed in Islam; they were taught it as a fact.  But, backing up to Muhammad, who actually started the lie, Muhammad is stated in the Quran to have been poisoned.  If this is true, Muhammad did not die for the lie he created.  Buddha, (Siddhartha Gautama) died of old age (or complications thereof), Joseph Smith was killed by angry citizens while he was shooting his way out of prison, and leaders such as Jim Jones drank the Kool-Aid because the law was closing in…he had no choice; he couldn’t just admit he made up his lies and live happily ever after.

If the disciples created a lie about Christ rising from the dead, and then died for that lie, what did they gain?  Money? Positions? Power? Fame? Who needs any of those things during execution? 

There is no man, much less a group of twelve men scattered over the globe, who has, or would die for a lie they recently made up and didn’t truly believe in.

 

6. Previous enemies of Jesus were converted after the death of Jesus.  If Jesus didn’t provide proof of his resurrection, this would hardly be the time for His enemies to begin believing in Him.  Jesus had just been beaten, killed, and buried.  They could wash their hands of Him and walk away.  But now, after they had witnessed His entire life of miracles, they began to believe in Him after His defeat?  Why?  James, the brother of Jesus, had spent his entire life not believing Jesus was actually the Messiah.  But according to Josephus, James was martyred for his faith in Jesus.  A faith that came after the death of Jesus.  What caused that faith?  No one had anything to gain by claiming Jesus rose from the dead…nothing but ridicule, pain, shunning, loss of liberty and possessions, and finally, horrible deaths specifically designed to make them recant.

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“An enemy's validation is worth a thousand friendly eyewitnesses.” – Clay Riggs

…Yes, you may quote me on that…

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7. This brings us to another historical and present-day fact.  People claim that their lives have been changed due to Jesus’ resurrection.  Two or three eyewitness testimonies can send a murderer to death row.  It is said in the Bible that more than 513 people claimed to have seen Jesus alive after his death.  A statement which, when written, would have been easily falsifiable.  If we add in the millions of lives changed, addictions miraculously released, Christians’ visions of Jesus, Muslims’ visions of Jesus (Muslims who claim Jesus didn’t rise from the dead), and the enduring Christian belief in the resurrection…we have more than enough evidence to prove that Jesus rose from the dead.  Don’t think so?  Contact me, and we’ll talk more about it!

 

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Right now, you may be asking, “Yeah, but these are all Christians…where are all the eyewitnesses that aren’t Christians?”  In turn, I would have to ask, “Where are the NASA scientists who deny space flight?”  If they saw it, they believed it.

The fact that the first accounts of Christ’s resurrection were already documented as Christian dogma within a few years of Jesus' death is proof in itself that the story was not a legend that grew out of wishful imaginations. 

These historical evidences, coupled with the absence of factual alternative explanations, create a strong case for Jesus’ resurrection.  But the evidence doesn’t stop at His resurrection!  What about prophecy, creation, textual veracity, changed lives, enduring belief, and personal testimonies?  What about there being no observational evidence for evolution?  And if evolution is not true, what are we left with?  What about the Kalam Cosmological argument, or the second law of thermodynamics?  What about the fine-tuning of the universe, or evidence for the Flood?  A thousand questions and answers working together to knit a Kevlar fabric of truth, hope, and purpose.  The arguments for God are overwhelmingly obvious.  All you have to do is have an open mind and be willing to think critically about the evidence before us. 

 

Want more?  Check out Lee Douglas: One Man’s Life – Everyone’s Journey, a film designed to answer some of the most challenging questions posed by skeptics.  Is God real?  What about carbon dating?  Doesn’t natural selection prove evolution?  And, if God is good, why is there pain and suffering?

 

God Bless,

Clay Riggs