As a young Christian studying apologetics, I learned I could ignore a lot of the supposed contradictions in the Bible because Jesus rose from the dead.
My thinking went something like this:
- If Jesus rose from the dead, that proves he was God’s son.
- Jesus believed in and quoted the Old Testament scriptures, so we can trust them too.
- The New Testament tells the stories of Jesus’ ministry and his church, so those must be trustworthy too.
Even though I looked at the Bible very much like a big puzzle with many missing pieces, that was all okay because of Jesus and the resurrection.
And the case for the resurrection was air tight in my mind.
Here are the “irrefutable” facts I learned about the resurrection.
- Jesus was a real, historical person who lived in the 1st century AD
- His followers believed him to be a miracle worker and a prophet
- He was crucified under Pontius Pilate, governor of Judea
- He was buried in a tomb
- Soon after his death, his followers started claiming they had seen him risen from the dead, turning them from hiding cowards into courageous evangelists
- The Romans were unable to “produce the body” to squash the rumors or provide any other answer for the empty tomb
- No other contradicting explanation was ever been brought forth for why the tomb was empty
- Paul also believed he saw Jesus risen from the dead and began taking the gospel
- A very early Christian saying was recorded in I Cor 15 by Paul that probably dates to as early as 35 to 45 AD that Jesus died, rose from the dead, and was seen by 500 people
- All 12 disciples took the good news of Christ to the ends of the earth, many of them dying as martyrs (as well as Paul), without ever recanting their faith
- The Christian church exploded throughout the Roman empire with an estimated 1 million believers by the end of the 1st century
- The Christian sabbath changed from Saturday to Sunday by the end of the 1 century
Most of the statements above are not just Bible stories. They are verifiable historical facts that most scholars would agree with.
Lord, Liar or Lunatic – The Only 3 Possibilities
For me, I looked at the facts above and combined them with the Lord, liar, or lunatic argument offered up by the great C.S. Lewis in “Mere Christianity,” and that was all the convincing I needed.
The argument goes like this:
We know Jesus’s disciples believed him and preached that he was the son of God after his death. So Jesus could only have been one of three things.
#1 – He could have been a liar. But why would Jesus lie? That’s what got him persecuted, tortured, and crucified. If that were true, when he died, he would’ve stayed in the tomb, and Christianity would have died right there.
#2 – Maybe he just thought he was God. Maybe he was just crazy. But this is highly unlikely as well for the same reason as above. His followers would never have seen a risen Jesus, and if that’s what happened, we’d have no Christianity today.
#3 – Jesus was the Son of God – Or maybe, just maybe, Jesus was exactly who he said he was. C.S. Lewis said it best:
couple that with the evidence I learned to contradict the popular arguments against
Proof for Jesus is resurrection. It seems odd that there was no counter argument for what happened to Jesus. The only one offered is offered in the Gospels where they say that the disciples stole the body. This is the least likely of them all. And in the Jewish writings it says that Jesus was a sorcerer. You would think that some prevailing argument would come out saying that no he really didn’t do miracles or no, what they’re saying is not true and there’d be some argument that the Jews would consistently use against Jesus that would be better than him being a sorcerer
The Truth About the “Irrefutable” Facts
After the Resurrection – What Do We Know for Sure?