The resurrection of Jesus is one of the most repeated stories in human
history, but is it believable? Jesus’ enemies went to great efforts to squelch
this story. They actually paid the guards who had been posted at his tomb to
not share what they knew. They gave them a great sum of money to keep quiet and
even promised additional help if they should ever have problems (Matt
28:12-15).
You can’t help but wonder why Jesus’ enemies didn’t question the guards
more about what they saw. After all they apparently saw the angel and felt the
earthquake and may even have seen the stone rolled away. They knew why the tomb
was empty, but the enemies of Jesus had no interest in tapping this source of
firsthand information. They had no interest in the truth of the story.
What about the story that was concocted? Just how credible was it? Not
very, I think. First of all how could the guards know anything if they were
asleep as they were told to explain. Secondly, how could they sleep through an
earthquake and the rolling of the heavy stone? The reason this story, that was
first introduced to the world by Jesus’ enemies, hasn’t gotten any traction is
that it is not credible. All anyone has had to do was produce a body. Just find
the body, and this resurrection story dies. But no one, not back then, or today
has ever produced any evidence that Jesus’ body has been found. That cannot be
said of any other founder of any religion anywhere. Lastly, what was it that
caused the disciples who were hiding in the shadows behind closed doors to come
out and face a hostile world with a message of Christ? It could have been
nothing but an encounter with the Risen Christ. Men and women have been known
to die for something they believe in deeply, but never for a lie. The disciples
gave their lives for the cause of Christ—because they knew he was alive.
Anyone who truly looks at the evidence with an open mind will see the
truth about the resurrection of Christ. Frank Morrison was so determined to
dispute the resurrection he sat down with pen in hand and paper to make a
serious study of the facts. He began a book entitled “Who Moved the Stone?”
Listen to the preface of his book:
This is essentially a confession. The inner story of a man who originally
set out to write one kind of book and found himself compelled by the sheer
force of circumstances to write quite another. It is not that the facts
themselves altered, for they are recorded imperishably on the monuments and in
the pages of human history, but the interpretation to be put upon those facts
underwent a change within me. Somehow my perspective shifted, not suddenly as
in a flash of insight or inspiration, but slowly, almost imperceptibly, almost
by the very stubbornness of the facts themselves. I studied the facts. I
couldn’t escape them…The book as it was originally planned was left high and
dry like those Thames barges when the great river goes out to meet the incoming
sea. This writer discovered one day that he could no longer write the book as
he once conceived it, but that he would not even if he could.[1]
No comments:
Post a Comment