Any rational person’s initial reaction to this claim should be a healthy skepticism. But not indifference, because the truth or falsity of that statement has extremely serious implications for every person who ever lived or will live. And no one ever would, or even should, come to believe it without solid evidence. The fact is that the evidence is overwhelming. And it consists of the eyewitness accounts by those who saw Him on one or more of the eight or nine times He appeared during the forty days that followed.
Christ’s resurrection is totally different from an acrobatic stunt by someone like Evil Kneevil, who promises to make a death-defying leap and if he doesn’t make it he’ll be killed. In fact, it’s exactly the opposite – Christ was dead to begin with but at the end He was alive.
He Really Was Dead
We can be absolutely certain that Christ was dead at the start. The first step leading up to His crucifixion was a Roman scourging; with no limit to the number of stripes many men died from the scourging alone. Then, after nails were driven through His hands and feet He was raised on a cross, where He hung for three hours.
The cause of death of a crucified man is asphyxiation since the lungs fill with fluid and make breathing difficult. So he uses his legs to raise himself to get a better breath, and when he cannot sustain the effort he slumps down again. One can always tell when a crucified man has died because he stops raising himself to breathe.
Two other men were crucified that day along with Christ. And since the following day was Passover, the rulers of the Jews asked the Roman governor to have the legs broken on all three men so they could not raise themselves and would die faster and their bodies could be taken away before the start of the feast. The soldiers broke the legs of the other two but they realized that Christ had already died and did not break His legs. These were Roman soldiers, who would have been killed themselves if they allowed a condemned criminal to avoid death.
Friends of Jesus took His body down, wrapped it in burial cloths, placed it in a nearby tomb and rolled a heavy stone across the entrance. The Jewish leaders, fearful that Christ’s followers would steal the body and claim that He had risen, arranged for a guard of soldiers at the tomb.
Yet on the third day Christ was seen in and around Jerusalem by the apostles and others.
They Positively Verified It was He
Christ gave the Apostles positive means of identifying Him. He showed them the wounds in His hands, feet and side; they spoke with Him, ate with Him, touched Him. (Luke 24:36-43) He worked another miracle similar to one He had worked near the start of His public life – a miraculous catch of a large number of fish on the lake (John 21:3-14)
The Apostles were not at all gullible in accepting Him. Although He had three times predicted His resurrection on the third day, it just had not clicked in their minds. At the time of His arrest they had gone into hiding, fearful
that the same treatment He received would be theirs. When the women brought the first news of having seen Him the Apostles thought the story was nonsense and would not believe the women. (Luke 24:9-11)
Most telling of all was the fact that one of them, Thomas, who was not there at the earliest meeting with Christ, refused to believe until he himself would see the wounds and put his hand into Christ’s side. But a week later, when Thomas did see, he acknowledged Christ as, “My lord and my God.” (John 20:24-29)
Christ appeared at least eight times (it’s difficult to tell whether two reported appearances are different or the same) over the next forty days, to all eleven remaining apostles (Judas had left) and to different subgroups of apostles and other followers. On one occasion He appeared to more than five hundred people. (1 Cor 15:6)
The Same, Yet Different
Yet, although the person they saw was definitely Christ, His body was different from before, with capabilities beyond those of the normal human body. He could appear and disappear at will, come through locked doors (John 20:19) and travel distances with the apparent speed of thought. St. Paul would later refer to this as a “spiritual body”, which is really a contradiction in terms, but the only way Paul could find to express the reality. (1 Cor 15:42-44)
This is consistent with the fact that no one actually saw Christ come forth from the tomb. The evidence we have is the testimony of His followers who saw Him after He rose. It’s quite possible that He either came through the stone at the entrance before it was removed or else walked out invisible afterwards.
And, unlike the case of Lazarus, whom Christ had raised from the dead (John 11:1- 44), Lazarus would have to die again while Christ’s body was now immortal, no longer subject to death.
The Testimony of Prophecy
The prophecies delivered to the Jewish people also attest to the resurrection of Christ. In proving to His disciples that the person who was speaking with them was really He, Christ referred to those prophecies.
The Jewish people had been expecting a Messiah and had expected Him to appear about that time, but they expected Him to be a military and civil leader who would rescue them from the domination of Rome. They did not expect a purely spiritual leader, and not a Son of God. When Christ had been rejected by their leaders and given the death of a common criminal there was danger that even His apostles, who had witnessed His many healing miracles over a space of two and a half years, would lose faith in Him.
Christ immediately referred to those early prophecies to show that the Messiah was to be mistreated and put to death, and also that He would rise again. He did this while speaking with a pair of disciples that first day while walking to the nearby town of Emmaus. (Luke 24:21-27). And He did it again while speaking with His Apostles in Jerusalem. (Luke 24:44-47)
Peter, proclaiming the resurrected Christ on the day of Pentecost, referred to the words of King David in Psalm 16, verse 10:
“For thou dost not give me up to Sheol, or let thy godly one see the Pit.”
The meaning, not recognized originally, was that the body of the Messiah would never corrupt.
Discrepancies in Details Support the Case
All four gospels give an account of the events on the morning of Christ’s resurrection. In comparing the four accounts one finds there are discrepancies – in the number of women who went to the tomb, in the number of angels whom they saw there. But it is not unusual that different witnesses to an event report different details, often leaving out a feature that had not impressed itself on them.
But all agree on the fact that Christ had truly risen from the dead. The differences show the lack of collusion and thereby support the truthfulness of the reporting.
No Alternative Explanation
From the very start adversaries have attempted to provide alternative explanations that would deny Christ’s resurrection. But none of their suggestions can explain away the fact.
The gospels themselves mention the bribery attempt by the Jewish leaders to get the soldiers at the tomb to say that while they were asleep the Apostles stole the body. (Matt 28:11-15). But what soldier will admit he was asleep while on duty? If they were Roman soldiers and not Jewish guards, they could be put to death for allowing such a thing to happen. Besides, how could they testify to what had occurred while they were asleep? The apostles, demoralized by Christ’s arrest and execution, had gone into hiding and were not at all capable of carrying out such a scheme. Most of all, Christ’s enemies never found His body.
Others, even today, try to say that Christ never actually died, that the darkness over the earth that day prevented people from seeing that the Apostles took His body down and substituted someone else, even Judas Iscariot. But this ignores the fact that Christ was already half dead from the
scourging, plus the nailing, the pain of hanging on the cross and struggling to breathe while His lungs filled with fluid. Again, the apostles were just not capable then of doing it.
Others say the apostles simply lied about the resurrection. However, they spent the rest of their lives giving testimony to it in the face of persecution, torture and usually death. Men do not die for a lie and all the apostles were consistent in their story.
Other variations are easy to refute, such as that the women went to the wrong tomb, which could easily have been clarified by Christ’s friends and enemies alike.
There are others who claim that the story of Christ’s resurrection developed over time as a myth. But myths take several generations to develop and Christ’s resurrection was proclaimed after only seven weeks, and proclaimed in the very city where He had died. It was a time and place where many were in a position to offer contradictory evidence, but even those who refused to believe could not prove their point.
Still others claim that it’s merely an application of pagan myths regarding the death and return to life of certain gods. But those myths are never situated in history while the resurrection of Christ is an event involving a specific historical person and taking place on a specific date in a specific place.
Another attempted explanation is the claim that the women, in their love for Christ, simply imagined His resurrection. But the Apostles were not so easily convinced and accepted the report only after verifying His physical identity.
The only adequate explanation for the events of that first Easter morning is that Jesus Christ truly and bodily rose from the dead.
The Significance for Us
During His public life Christ had claimed to be God and had worked miracles on almost three dozen occasions to support His claim. It was that claim to be God that was cited by the Sanhedrin as their reason for condemning Him to death. (John 19:7).
Christ is both divine and human, both God and man. His death on Calvary was death in His human nature only; His divine nature and the fact that He was a divine person were not affected by it.
Christ’s resurrection from the dead is the culminating proof that He is in fact divine, that He is the Son of God.
Since He is God we can accept all His teachings – about Himself, about the reason He accepted death on the cross, about our purpose in life and our relationship with Him.
Since at His very first appearance to His apostles following His resurrection He gave them the power to forgive sins in His name (John 20:19-23), we can have confidence that He will forgive our sins if we are truly sorry for having offended Him and truly resolved not to offend Him again.
His painful death on the cross in order to make salvation possible for those who live by His teachings shows His self-sacrificing love.
His resurrection shows His power over death and is the reason we can have hope in His promise to bring us to eternal life with Him.
CATHOLIC EVIDENCE GUILD P.O. BOX 55 LARCHMONT, NY 10538 Phone or Fax: 1-877-635-8205 E-Mail: ceg@ureach.com Web Site: www.catholicevidence.org Copyright 2007 Catholic Evidence Guild New York
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