How
to Know God Exists Series
The Resurrection - Part One
Over the past several months,
we've been examining various proofs for the existence of God.
(If you've missed an article you may read them at http://www.comereason.org/newsletters
). Now, I'd like to take some time to develop one of the most
compelling arguments on showing God's existence - the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Since this is such
an important topic (Paul declared that if Christ has not been
raised our faith is in vain), we'll be looking at different
proofs over the next five newsletters.
In this issue, we'll discuss how
the reports read as history. In subsequent issues we'll deal
with the eyewitness testimony, the reliability of the reports
because of their proximity to the event, the changed lives of
the disciples, and the problem of the empty tomb.
The resurrection of Christ is the
cornerstone of the Christian faith. If it really happened, then
it affects your entire worldview. If Jesus really rose from the
dead it means He had power that no one else had. And since He
claimed to be God's Son, then it means there really is a God.
And if there really is a God - the type of God Jesus talked
about - then we will really be held accountable for our actions
in this life.
You can see why the resurrection
is such a target to the skeptic. If he cannot dismiss this
event, then all that follows makes him accountable to God. He
must find a way to reject its truth.
The most common way people reject
the resurrection is to say that it was a myth created by
disciples who wanted to give their new religion credence. If
you've ever read any of the Iliad or the Odyssey, you'll be
familiar with myth. The ancient Greeks used myth as a way of
explaining the world around them and getting some type of
understanding.
However, when one reads the New
Testament accounts of the resurrection, a careful reader should
pick up on something else - these accounts aren't written like
myths but like historical reports to an actual event. There are
numerous passing comments and inferences that, unless they
really happened, make no sense for a writer to invent.
Things such as all the disciples
abandoning Jesus when He was arrested, James and John's mother
asking for her sons' favor from the Lord, and the women at the
tomb. This last idea is very compelling, as women were looked
down upon drastically in this society. Women were considered
more property than persons, with any excuse serving as grounds
for divorce and their testimony wasn't considered solely
reliable in a Jewish court of law.
In this light, having women being
the first ones to find the empty tomb and the first ones to
believe that Jesus was resurrected rings as true history rather
than something made-up to justify some created religion. In
fact, Josh McDowell quotes Oxford ancient history scholar Thomas
Arnold who said:
"I have been used for many
years to study the histories of other times, and to examine
and weigh the evidence of those who have written about them,
and I know of no one fact in the history of mankind which is
proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort, to the
understanding of a fair inquirer, than the great sign which
God hath given us that Christ died and rose again from the
dead."[1]
Now, most Biblical scholars,
whether conservative or liberal, agree that Jesus did really
live and He really was crucified. Most liberal scholars,
however, doubt the resurrection as history. But any explanation
that liberal scholarship offers to explain away the resurrection
must be manufactured out of thin air. This is because there is
no evidence of any kind that can be offered to counter the
resurrection story! So, if we are to make judgments about
historical reliability, an honest approach would be to base the
claims on the evidence that exists. To manufacture a counter
story because you want to disprove the evidence is faulty logic.
The resurrection accounts are the
best evidence we have as to what happened to Jesus Christ on
Sunday morning. This is one part of the proof that Jesus rose
from the dead and because of that we know God exists. Next month
we'll look at how the proximity of the recorded accounts to the
events themselves lends even more credence to our argument. God
bless until then.
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