Evidence for the Resurrection Notes

March 7, 2010




Evidence for the Resurrection


People often associate the Resurrection with theology while forgetting it was an actual, historical event. Although it has theological implications, its truth is grounded in history: either it happened or it did not.

Significance: No other world religion claims a resurrected leader.

-Supports his claims of deity.

“All evidence of the NT is not ‘Follow the teacher and do your best’ but rather ‘Jesus and the resurrection’.” -Wilbur Smith

The early church was not convinced in his teachings, his characters, and his morals. They were convinced he had been resurrected.

Without the resurrection, there would be no Christianity.

Luke writes in Acts 1:3 “He presented himself alive by many convincing proofs”

For two millennium people have dissected the resurrection account and history and NO ONE has offered a satisfactory explanation.

Alternative theories:

-Jesus was alive when taken off the cross. This cannot be true because 1) He would have been in awful condition, hardly worth inspiring anyone 2) The roman soldiers would have known he was alive 3) There are no historical claims that he survived to refute the church’s claims that he had actually resurrected. The whole idea that he sat in a tomb in 1st Century Palestine, after having been flogged, crucified and speared, and then healed is either ludicrous or a miracle in itself.

“He burst from his graveclothes, rolled away the stone with his nail-pierced hands, scared the daylights out of the Roman soldiers, walked miles on wounded feet and convinced his Disciples he'd been raised from the dead. This one is harder to believe than the resurrection itself.”

-Jesus died but his body was stolen from the tomb by his disciples. This cannot be true because there is no motive. Early Christians often lived poor, persecuted lives. Why would they do that if it were all based on a lie?

-Jesus never existed/its all just a myth. This cannot be true because the NT accounts are grounded in history. The writers spoke of real places and real people. Much of the NT consists of letters, not mythological writings. It is typically a cop-out for those who refuse to believe.

Thomas Arnold, at one time the chair of modern history at Oxford, put it this way: “I know of no one fact in the history of mankind which is proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort, to the understanding of a fair inquirer, than the great sign which God hath given us that Christ died and rose again from the dead,”

The disciples fled when Jesus was arrested (Matthew 26:56, Mark 14:50) Luke 24:21 records that the disciples had “hoped that He was the One” and that after his death they had lost hope.

On his death: The gospels record detailed accounts of his death, giving proof of eyewitness. Especially is this true in John 19:34, when blood and water came out when the guard stabbed him. This did not occur in many crucifixions, and has been shown to be a medically reliable account that his heart had actually burst after building up fluid. The Journal of the American Medical Association has even affirmed this.

The first people to see the empty tomb were women. A woman’s testimony at this time period was essentially worthless. This is actually an embarrassment to the writers, but they are recording what actually happened.

The disciples had nothing to gain from living a lie. And had every reason to go back to their lives and escape persecution, but instead chose to believe and spread the gospel.

AD 112, Pliny, a governor, wrote to his emperor Trajan on how to treat Christians. He had been killing all of them, and wondered if he was killing too many people, if he should only kill some of them. He said in his letter that he had attempted to make them “curse Christ, which a genuine Christian cannot be induced to do.”

The enemies of Christianity never claimed to have the body of Christ. Moreso, Christianity came into existence in Jerusalem, the very city where he was executed and buried, and yet the Jewish authorities had no response beyond “we don’t like it”. In fact, the empty tomb was never disputed, and the focus is simply on the fact that he resurrected. “Their silence is as important as our testimony”

The NT records that over 500 people saw the resurrected Christ.

I Cor. 15:6 – Paul says he appeared to over 500 at one time, and many were still alive (I Cor was written 56 AD). How could such a thing be made up?

See Acts 26:24-27. Paul states that these events “did not occur in a corner” and yet their best reaction was to mock and laugh. No defense was presented.

James, his brother, was skeptical, but after seeing the resurrected Christ became a leader of the church.

Thomas did not believe even when the other disciples told him what they had seen. He believed after seeing.

Peter is said to have been crucified himself for his beliefs.

Paul went from a legalist Jew who persecuted Christians to a believer who wrote 13 books of the NT, spent much of his time in jail and was willing to die for this faith.

The very growth of the church is evidence of the resurrection. What was their motive??




Simon Greenleaf, once the Royal Professor of Law at Harvard University, authored "A Treatise on the Law of Evidence", which is “still considered the greatest single authority on evidence in the entire literature of legal procedure”.

Here is his observation:

“The great truths which the apostles declared, were, that Christ had risen from the dead, and that only through repentance from sin, and faith in Him, could men hope for salvation. This doctrine they asserted with one voice, everywhere, not only under the greatest discouragements, but in the face of the most appalling errors that can be presented to the mind of man. Their master had recently perished as a scoundrel, by the sentence of a public tribunal. His religion sought to overthrow the religions of the whole world. The laws of every country were against the teachings of His disciples. The interests and passions of all the rulers and great men in the world were against them. The fashion of the world was against them.

Propagating this new faith, even in the most inoffensive and peaceful manner, they could expect nothing but contempt, opposition, reviling, bitter persecutions, stripes, imprisonments, torments and cruel deaths. Yet this faith they zealously did propagate; and all these miseries they endured undismayed, no, rejoicing. As one after another was put to a miserable death, the survivors only prosecuted their work with increased vigor and resolution. The annals of military warfare afford scarcely an example of the like heroic constancy, patience and unblenching courage. They had every possible motive to review carefully the grounds of their faith, and the evidences of the great facts and truths which they asserted; these motives were pressed upon their attention with the most melancholy and terrific frequency.

It was therefore impossible that they could have persisted in affirming the truths they have narrated, had not Jesus actually risen from the dead, and had they not known this fact as certainly as they knew any other fact. If it were morally possible for them to have been deceived in this matter, every human motive operated to lead them to discover and avow their error. To have persisted in so gross a falsehood, after it was known to them, was not only to encounter, for life, all the evils which man could inflict, from without, but to endure also the pangs of inward and conscious guilt; with no hope of future peace, no testimony of good conscience, no expectation of honor or esteem among men, no hope of happiness in this life, or in the world to come.

Such conduct in the apostles would moreover have been utterly irreconcilable with the fact that they possessed the ordinary constitution of our common nature. Yet their lives do show them to have been men like all others of our race; swayed by the same motives, animated by the same hopes, affected by the same joys, subdued by the same sorrows, agitated by the same fears, and subject to the same passions, temptations and infirmities, as ourselves. And their writings show them to have been men of vigorous understandings. If then their testimony was not true, there was no possible motive for its fabrication.”