The Resurrection (Part 3)

(8) The angels testified to the resurrection.
To the Jews angels always signified a special message from God. In the Old Testament angels were sent by God to announce very important events. In this case the angels announced the most important event of all time which was the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

(9) The graveclothes were still in place.
When John wrote his version of the Sunday morning events, he includes the fascinating note that when he and Peter entered the tomb, they found the graveclothes lying in place with the linen head cloth folded next to it. Evidently the spices and resins had hardened into the shape of Jesus’ body, leaving the appearance of a cocoon after the butterfly has escaped. How do you explain that fact? Grave robbers would have taken the body without unwrapping it or they would have unwrapped it and thrown the winding sheets to the side. No one steals a body and then rewraps the graveclothes.

I believe that when Jesus rose from the dead he literally passed right through the graveclothes leaving behind the linen wrappings just as John and Peter found them.

(10) The tomb was empty.
The disciples, the Jews, and the Romans all knew that the tomb was empty. It’s true that each group viewed that fact differently but no one disputed the basic assertion that on Easter Sunday morning Jesus was no longer in the tomb.

(11) No one ever found his body.
The Jews never produced his body. In fact, they concocted the first Easter conspiracy precisely because they didn’t know what happened to it. The Romans went along with the conspiracy because they didn’t know what happened either. If anyone had produced the dead body of Jesus, the entire Christian movement would have gone the way of so many other short-lived religions across the centuries.

No one has ever found the body of Jesus and no one ever will. The skeptics simply can’t answer the question, “What happened to his body?”

(12) He appeared to many people.
Taking the gospels together with 1 Corinthians, you get a list like this:
-First to the women.
-Then to Peter and John.
-Then the disciples on the road to Emmaus.
-Then to the disciples in the Upper Room.
-Then to the disciples and Thomas one week later.
-Then to the disciples in Galilee.

And somewhere along the way he appeared to 500 people at once. There were other appearances as well that we cannot date precisely. Taken together, the list is impressive enough that it cannot be cavalierly dismissed as wishful thinking. Writing some 30 years later, Paul commented that most of those who saw the risen Christ were still alive and ready to testify to what they had seen.

(13) He showed his wounds to Doubting Thomas.
When Jesus appeared to Thomas a week after the resurrection he offered the ultimate apologetic proof. Spreading forth his hands, he said, “Touch my wounds. See for yourself.” When Thomas saw the wounds, he knew at last that it must be true.

(14) He ate with the disciples
Luke 24:42, 43 tells us that Jesus ate broiled fish in the presence of the disciples. A ghost doesn’t eat fish. Neither does a dead man.

(15) He stayed with them for 40 days
Forty days is a long time. If Jesus had only appeared once or twice, we might be tempted to discount it as a hopeful vision. But Jesus “showed himself alive” according to Acts 1:1-3 by “many infallible proofs.” He stayed long enough to convince all his followers that he had indeed come back from the dead.