The credibility of Jesus hinges on his resurrection.
If Jesus rose from the dead, his claim to deity is valid, and so are his other pronouncements.
However, if he was never resurrected, everything he said about himself, God, heaven, the Old Testament, and future events was a fabrication.
There is ample evidence for the resurrection of Jesus.
Powerful Enemies
Jesus was popular among ordinary people of his day, but he was despised by the Jewish religious authorities and the Roman government officials who ruled Israel.
The Jewish leaders considered Jesus blasphemous because he claimed to be the Messiah. The Roman officials considered him a threat to Israel’s social order because he publicly spoke of establishing a kingdom on earth.
Both groups wanted him out of the picture for these reasons.
The Jewish leaders were familiar with Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah’s resurrection. They knew Jesus had publicly stated that he would rise from the dead. After his death, they worried that his disciples would steal the body from the grave and claim the resurrection had occurred.
To prevent this possibility, the Jewish leaders persuaded the Roman governor to seal the tomb and station sixteen elite soldiers around it to guard against theft. These soldiers faced the death penalty if they failed in their mission.
Resurrection Proclaimed
Upon finding the tomb empty, the disciples declared that Jesus had indeed risen from the dead, and the religious and social disruption that the Jewish and Roman authorities feared began to unfold.
If they could have, these leaders would have stifled the escalating unrest by publicly displaying the corpse of Jesus, but his body was missing. In fact, he was freely moving about the countryside in the flesh.
Fainting Theory
Some skeptics speculate that Jesus fainted on the cross and staged his own resurrection. However, this scenario seems unlikely.
Jesus was severely beaten the night before his crucifixion, nearly to the point of death. The next day, he was forced to drag his cross through Jerusalem until he collapsed from exhaustion. He then hung on it for several hours in the hot sun before being speared. He was subsequently wrapped in a burial cloth and entombed for three days without food or water.
Even if Jesus had merely fainted on the cross, his prior mistreatment, the spearing, and the subsequent lack of hydration and nourishment would have left him too weak to unravel his burial shroud, break the hardened seal around the massive stone blocking his tomb entrance, roll the stone away from the inside, and then surprise and overpower sixteen guards by himself.
While hanging on the cross, Jesus was declared dead by an experienced executioner. Had he merely fainted, this man would have realized he was still breathing and taken steps to expedite his death.
Several friends of Jesus prepared his body for burial. They would have refused to entomb him if they had discovered he was still breathing.
Stolen Body Theory
Many skeptics claim the disciples stole the body of Jesus from his tomb. However, this scenario also seems unlikely.
If the Jewish leaders and Roman officials knew the grave had been robbed, they would have immediately suspected the disciples. They would then have hunted down these men and tortured them until they disclosed the location of the missing corpse.
This theory would also have required a ragtag group of despondent men to defeat a highly motivated squad of professional soldiers before they robbed the grave. The disciples lacked the determination to do so.
They had mistakenly believed they would be courtiers in an earthly kingdom Jesus was about to establish. His death left them confused, discouraged, and frightened. As a result, their group cohesion began to unravel.
For example, soon after the crucifixion, Peter, perhaps the most passionate of the twelve disciples, abandoned the others, went off by himself, and denied knowing Jesus three times before the next morning.
Stealing the body and promoting the myth that Jesus had risen from the dead would have exposed the disciples to ridicule and possible execution.
Plotting a comeback strategy on behalf of a deceased leader based on an easily refutable lie was the last thing on their minds.
Wrong Tomb Theory
Other skeptics contend that Mary, Mary Magdalene, Salome, Joanna, Peter, and John went to the wrong tomb on the first Easter, or that the Jewish and Roman authorities relocated the body to another tomb before their visit.
If either of these alternatives were true, the religious and government leaders could have easily discredited the resurrection and stifled the early church by producing the missing corpse from the correct tomb. They would have known its exact location.
Public Appearances
After his resurrection, Jesus appeared in bodily form to large and small groups for the next forty days, including one gathering of more than five hundred people. People touched him. He ascended to heaven before a live audience.
The Jewish leaders and Roman officials could neither deny these appearances nor explain them away as hallucinations.
No Contemporary Refutation
After Jesus ascended to heaven, his resurrection became a pivotal doctrine in the burgeoning Christian church, which grew rapidly despite systematic persecution.
The books and letters comprising the New Testament were written during this period, and copies of these documents were widely distributed throughout the region.
None of this would have occurred if the Jewish leaders and Roman authorities had been able to refute the resurrection of Jesus and his subsequent appearances.
Imagine that today a small, obscure clique began espousing that Jimmy Carter, the deceased former president of the United States, had claimed to be God, fulfilled ancient prophecies, healed the sick, rose from the grave three days after his burial, repeatedly appeared to audiences large and small for forty days, and then ascended into heaven.
This story would not gain much traction because the people who lived during his lifetime and are still with us today would testify that these events never occurred.
There would be no archived news accounts documenting his life and death that supported these claims. His body could be exhumed. The prophecies he allegedly fulfilled would be suspect. New books belatedly proclaiming his deity would be universally mocked.
The oldest copies of the first four New Testament books, which recount the life and death of Jesus, date to within a few decades of his resurrection. There are no known contemporary texts that refute this event.
If these rebuttals ever existed, we would have many copies, because the ruling elite at the time would have widely distributed them throughout the region to discredit Jesus and the early church.
High Price For Advocacy
Every disciple, except John, was executed for preaching that Jesus was the Messiah.
Nobody is willing to die for an unpopular myth. Each of these men had ample time and motivation to recant his testimony before dying, yet none did.
Read More About Jesus
Jesus is the second person of the Trinity. His attributes are described throughout the Bible. He is unique among the founders of other major religions. There is a plausible explanation for his virgin birth.
