It is important for christianism whether Jesus resurrected from the dead or not because christianism stands steadfast or falls down due to Jesus’ resurrection. (1 Corinthians 15:12-19). If Jesus did not resurrect from the dead, then the Christian faith may collapse.
Fortunately, one of the most witnessed events of the ancient world is the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. When He was facing the religious leaders of His time, Jesus was asked to give a sign to prove He was the promised Messiah.
He answered: “An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. (Matthew 12:39, 40)
The resurrection sign had the purpose of making the difference among Jesus and any other person that ever lived, and presenting Him as the Son of God. (Romans 1:4).
The recounts of His appearances were written by eye witnesses to whom the resurrected Jesus appeared during 40 days after His public crucifixion. As the Holy Scriptures says, “To whom also He showed Himself alive after His passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God” (Acts1:3).
When Paul, the apostle, wrote about it in the 56 A.C., he mentioned that once, more than five-hundred people saw the resurrected Jesus and most of these people were still alive when he wrote this (1 Corinthians 15:6). This statement is a challenge for those who do not believe, because Paul says that there were still some survivors who could be interviewed to know if Jesus had really resurrected.
Historical evidences are more than enough to satisfy the curiosity of the sincere researcher. This can be seen not only in the positive defense of the resurrection, but also in the lack of evidence to provide a different explanation. The theories that try to give another explanation to resurrection, demand even more faith to believe in them that to believe in the resurrection itself.
Frank Morrison, an agnostic journalist, tried to write a book refusing Jesus’ resurrection. After doing a lot of research, he changed his mind and became a Jesus Christ’s believer. This is the way Morrison described the facts:
“This study is, in some ways so strange and interesting, that the author wants to make a short description on how this book got the current content. Somehow it could not have had a different one because it is essentially a confession, is the private story of a man, who at the beginning, made the decision of writing a specific type of book and he was forced, by the circumstances, to write it in a different way.”
“It is not that the facts have changed, because they are unfadingly registered in the monuments and pages of human history. However, the interpretation that was going to be given to the facts, suffered a dramatic change.” (Who Moved the Stone? Zondervan, 1971Preface).
Morrison discovered that Jesus was laid on the grave on Friday, and many people saw it; but on Sunday morning the body had disappeared. If He did not resurrect from the dead, then someone took the body. There were three groups of people interested in taking the body: The Romans, the Jewish and the disciples.
The Romans would not have had reasons to steal the body because they wanted to keep the peace in Palestine. The idea was to keep the provinces as calm as possible, and the robbery of the body would not have helped to reach that goal.
The Jewish would not have taken the body because the last thing they wanted was a proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection. They were actually the ones who asked guards for the tomb, according to Matthew 27.
Jesus Christ’s disciples had no reason to take the body and if they had done it, then they died for something that was not truth. Moreover, the religion they proclaimed was focused on telling the truth not lies. Their deeds would not be in agreement with what they knew was truth and told others to do.
The other logical explanation is that Jesus Christ resurrected and the eyewitnesses declare that it was what happened. It may be true that Jesus’ disciples were not as advanced in science as modern man is, but they knew how to distinguish between an alive and a dead man.
As Simon Peter said: “For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” (2 Peter 1:16)
