Did the Resurrection of Jesus Christ Really Happen?

How can I be so sure that the Resurrection of Christ was a literal event in human history? I addressed the factor of the eye witness accounts in my article “The Lord has Risen, Hasn’t He?”

If you who are reading this do not believe that the four gospels are an accurate eye witness account of the life of Christ, I humbly request that you suspend your disbelief for a few minutes to at least entertain the idea that the resurrection could have happened just as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John said it did.

I’m sure that you are familiar with the events of the first Easter. On Friday (which the disciples didn’t see anything “Good” about at the time), Jesus was betrayed, arrested, and falsely convicted on charges of blasphemy and treason. He was executed by the occupying Roman government, and his body placed in a borrowed tomb.

The chief priests and Pharisees asked Pilate to seal the tomb and to post a Roman guard. They remembered what Jesus said while he was alive and preaching, “After three days I will rise again.” They didn’t want the disciples to steal the body and tell the people that Jesus was raised from the dead. Pilate told them to go ahead and make the tomb as secure as possible.

Three days later – guess what! The tomb was empty! It is the greatest “whodunit” in history.

The chief priest and Pharisees, despite the precautions taken, stuck with their story: “The disciples of Christ took the body.” This sounds plausible, except for the small detail of the Roman guard.

A Roman guard unit usually consisted of four to six soldiers. Roman guards were strictly disciplined fighting men held to the highest standards. Failure often required death by torturous and humiliating methods. How were the Jewish leaders going to explain that a ragtag group of untrained men managed to get past a Roman guard?

Matthew 28:12-15 tells us “When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.’  If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.”  So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.”

I am going to step out on a limb here and suggest that the idea of a whole Roman guard falling asleep on the job while the disciples rolled the huge stone away and stole the body of Christ is just not plausible. Keep in mind that before the resurrection, the disciples were a group of uncouth, uneducated men who all (except John) ran away when their leader was arrested. Even though Jesus had warned them of His impending death and foretold His own resurrection, they were completely blind-sided when it happened. (see: Why the Disciples Didn’t Get It). They didn’t even believe it when the women came running to tell them that they just saw an angel who told them that Jesus was raised from the dead. Thomas wasn’t the only one who doubted, he was just the only one who wasn’t present the first time the resurrected Christ showed up in the locked room where they were hiding from the Jewish leaders.

About a month later, the Holy Spirit was sent to the disciples. Suddenly, this motley crew was transformed to a team of fervent evangelists, fearless in the face of persecution. All of them were martyred for their refusal to stop preaching in the name of Jesus (except for John, who was exiled). Would they have endured torture for a lie, if they had actually stolen Christ’s body and made up the story of the resurrection? Doesn’t sound likely.

A second hypothesis is that either the Jewish or Roman authorities took the body. But why? Their goal was to silence this uprising, so if they had the body, they could prove the resurrection to be a hoax just by producing the body.

Then there is the “swoon theory” – that Jesus didn’t actually die on the cross. He was merely unconscious from the trauma of the flogging and the crucifixion. When placed in the coolness of the tomb, he revived, left the tomb, and showed up in the room with the disciples.

It is highly unlikely that Jesus, in the condition He was in after all that trauma and blood loss, not to mention the lack of food or water, would be capable of getting out of the grave clothes in which He was bound (they were left in the grave), pushing the stone away from the inside to get out. Once out, he would still have a gang of Roman soldiers to get past. Then he would have to walk into the city, naked, with holes in his wrists and feet, without attracting any attention. I doubt that even the Myth Busters would try this one.

The only explanation of the events of the first Easter is that Jesus was who He said He was, and that He was resurrected from the dead.

Consider also all of the recorded post-crucifixion appearances of Christ. He appeared to Mary Magdalene in the Garden, then to two disciples on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus, then to the ten disciples in a locked room. One appearance was to a group of five hundred assembled followers. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:6 that some of these 500 were still alive at the time that he was writing. If the resurrection was a hoax, any of these people could have come forward and told the truth.

Paul Little, in his book “Know why you Believe” (1968, Inter-Varsity Press) says that the resurrection of Christ is the foundation stone of the faith: “Either he did or he didn’t rise from the dead. If he did, it was the most sensational event in all of history, and we have conclusive answers to the profound questions of our existence: Where have we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? If Christ rose, we know with certainty that God exists, what He is like, and how we may know Him in personal experience; the universe takes on meaning and purpose; and it is possible to experience the living God in contemporary life. These and many other wonderful things are true if Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead.

On the other hand, if Christ did not rise from the dead, Christianity is an interesting museum piece – nothing more. It has no objective validity or reality. Though it is a nice wishful thought, it certainly isn’t worth getting steamed up about. The martyrs who went singing to the lions, and contemporary missionaries who have given their lives in Ecuador and Congo while taking this message to others, have been poor deluded fools.”

There is evidence that an historical Jesus existed. There is evidence that the writers of the New Testament were recording the true record of history. There is evidence that the events of the Old Testament actually happened. It is a logical conclusion that Jesus was the promised messiah foretold in the Old Testament. It is logical to believe in the resurrection.

In the comments for my previous article The Old Testament Concealed, The New Testament Revealed, Jamie Mullen offered to bet me fifty bucks (Canadian even, eh?) that Jesus was not the Messiah. I will take that bet, and raise the stakes to our eternal souls. How about you? Are you ready to risk your eternal soul for whatever you believe in?