Did it Really Happen? Factual Consideration of the Resurrection

Written by Ed Allen
Saturday, 22 April 2000 19:00

1 Corinthians 15:3-7

There are certain areas of our lives in which Diane has had to limit her expectations as a result of being married to me. Any kind of handiwork is the primary example of this. There's simply no getting around the fact that I was born without the genes necessary for accomplishing anything close to a repair job of any kind. I do not have a handy bone in my body. If you ask Diane how she responds to this ineptitude she will tell you something like, "Whenever I see him pick up a hammer I grab the children and run." This has done wonders for her prayer life, but it doesn't help very much when the window needs to be repaired or the washing machine breaks down.

Even when the task is very simple I am surprised if I can accomplish it. A couple of weeks ago the towel rack in our bathroom fell off the wall. Simple enough, you annoyingly handy people are thinking, but not so easy for Mr. two left hands. I had already tried to repair it twice and each time it fell again leaving a bigger hole in the wall. But this week I had a new idea. I grabbed the hammer. Diane and the children ran. Then I executed my plan and to my shock and utter amazement, the towel rack held firm.

As I thought about it later I was amazed at my amazement! It was not a difficult task. I had already tried it twice and had learned quite a bit about what not to do. But still I was amazed that it worked. Why? My amazement, I suspect, is the result of shriveled expectations.

Many of us live lives that are stunted by shriveled expectations. We have responded to hurt by building walls of protection. These walls effectively safeguard us against potential unmitigated hurt, no doubt. But they also prevent us from experiencing unmitigated joy and they limit the depth and breadth of our relationships. This is especially true of our relationship with God. What we wall-builders need, it seems to me, is a good wrecking ball or a stick of cosmic dynamite that will blow holes in our walls and let the full force of hope come streaming in. We need something that wakes up our diminished expectations. We need hope.

Some of you are living in unhappy and ineffective marriages, but you can't let yourself hope for anything else. You can't stand the disappointment, or so you think. Consequently, you mute your expectations. You live your life surrounded by off-white and gray and all the while you work really hard to convince yourself that you don't need or want to experience brilliant yellows and reds. Some of you are living with physical pain, or with long term illness. You cannot pray for healing, because what if God doesn't heal. Worse still, what if God doesn't exist? Better not to try. For some of you, better not to even think about it.

Some of you have not really experienced God in so long, you wonder if the experiences you have had in the past are real. You doubt the experiences you hear about others having. You have long ago given up living in certainty concerning spiritual matters. You have settled for pretty sure - most of the time. You've told yourself that this must be maturity.

But I don't want any of you to leave today unchallenged. Today, Christian churches all over the world are celebrating the most power-packed piece of cosmic dynamite imaginable. If we put all of our imaginations together and stretch out this meeting for the rest of the week, we could not concoct an empyrean postcard more potent than the one offered us in the story of the resurrection. You want a message from God? Well here's one for you!

2000 years ago a remarkable man walked among us. He called God his Father. He claimed to be God's unique son. In fact, he claimed to be one with God. He said that if you saw him, you had seen the Father. He claimed that all of God's activity throughout history was fully manifested in him. He claimed to forgive sins. He was killed in an attempt to silence his outlandish claims. He died. He was buried in a borrowed tomb and lay there three days fully dead. After three days he walked out of the grave. He appeared to a variety of people in a variety of settings. And then he disappeared into heaven. He told his followers that by faith they too could follow where he was going.

If this story is true, then reality is much larger than what we can see, hear, taste, touch and test. If this story is true, then you and I cannot give up hope ? ever. If a dead man can leave the tomb and walk around alive, then anything is possible. We must let our walls of diminished expectation come crashing down. If this story is true, we must let the light of hope, with all of its risks and dangers, come flooding in.

So is it true? Did it really happen?

After a careful consideration of the facts surrounding the case I think you will find that the evidence points conclusively toward belief in the resurrection of Jesus. So let's pick up this stick of dynamite and see just how real it is. If it's real, then let the walls fall down.

The evidence can be organized into three compelling categories.

1. The resurrection appearances.

1 Corinthians 15:3-7

(3) For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, (4) that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, (5) and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. (6) After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. (7) Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles

A.Considering all the sources there are 9 different resurrection appearances recorded in the Bible. Four of those are found in 1 Corinthians 15

To Peter, to the 12 all at one time, to 500 people all at one time, and then to James
1 Corinthians written sometime before 60 A. D. That means Paul's account is separated from Jesus by less than 30 years.
Furthermore, most Bible scholars agree that these verses are based on a much older creed.
Joachim Jeremias has suggested most likely time for Paul to have learned this creed was on his first visit to Jerusalem.
According to Galatians 1:18, Paul went up to Jerusalem to meet with Peter and James 3 years after his conversion.
Paul's converted to Christianity around 33 A. D.
If this is when Paul learned this hymn, then it would date back to within 10 years of Jesus' death.
This would explain Paul's note that many of the witnesses were still alive.
Surely such a hymn could not have become popular among the very people who were the supposed witnesses, unless the events it described actually happened. Why would they sing a hymn or recite a creed as a matter of faith, which they knew to be a farce?

B.Five more Resurrection appearances are mentioned in the biographies of Jesus that are not covered by Paul. 3 in John and 2 in Luke.

Bible scholars generally regard these appearances with more skepticism. Among those scholars who do not believe in the Resurrection, they would say that these accounts are corrupted by legend.
The work of A. N. Sherwin White is interesting in this connection. White is a historian who wrote Roman Law and Roman Society. He says that his sources are generally 1 to 2 generations removed from the events they record and sometimes centuries removed. Still historians believe that they can reconstruct reliable history based on these accounts.
The latest research into how long it takes for legend to amass is 2 generations. In other words, history scholars have come to believe that in oral cultures it takes two generations or more for legend to replace fact.
According to Sherwin White "more generations would be needed" for legend to have corrupted the biographies of Jesus. Here's why:
- All NT scholars, regardless of their faith position, agree that the biographies were written within one generation - which means some of the witnesses would still be alive.
- Generally, those scholars least open to the truth of the story itself would date the earliest biography to have been written about 75 A. D. Some would date it as early as 50 A. D. In either case, there does not seem to have been enough time for legend to have adulterated the story.

C.So how do skeptics typically explain the resurrection appearances? When an explanation is given it is generally one of three things:

Legend! We have already dealt with this one. Not enough time. And even among unbelievers who have tackled this question few would suggest that legend is behind what Paul wrote.
Hallucination! Much could be said about this but let's simply note that explaining 9 different Jesus appearances some of which happened among groups, including one where 500 people saw him at once, as hallucination is at least as difficult to believe as the resurrection itself.
Spiritual Resurrection - Some would suggest Jesus' Resurrection was not a physical resurrection but spiritual Res. In other words, nobody actually saw Jesus literally, but they experienced his presence as they remembered him - the same way we sometimes have a sense that someone is with us after they have died. Our next category deals with this objection.

2. The reality of the empty tomb supports the reality of a real, bodily, grave-emptying resurrection.

First of all, let's consider the reality of the empty tomb. Then we will see how it supports the resurrection.

A.Paul's testimony supports the empty tomb.

In the passage we read, his language "he was buried, he was raised" implies an empty tomb. Natural reading of this is that he was physically raised, because he was certainly physically buried.
He also says "he was raised on the third day," which confirms the accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John that on the 3rd day the empty tomb was discovered.

B. The story of the empty tomb as we have it lacks embellishments that would be typical of legend.

The empty tomb accounts are simple and plain.
By contrast - The Gospel of Peter account from the approcrophil

C.The fact that the tomb was discovered by women supports its reliability. Understand the place of women at the time:

Their testimony was considered so unreliable that it was inadmissible in court.
A Rabbi contemporary with Jesus wrote this in a commentary on the law: "Sooner let the words of the law be burnt then delivered by women."
Yet the tomb was discovered by women and the biographies all faithfully record that bit of fact. If the writers were constructing legend they surely would have placed the announcement of the empty tomb in the mouths of some reliable men witnesses.

D.The burial story supports the empty tomb and, therefore, the resurrection.

No one doubts the reliability of the burial accounts. But the very accuracy of the burial accounts supports the empty tomb.
If the burial story is accurate, then the site would have been well known. It was the disciples themselves who buried him. And the Romans posted a guard so they obviously knew where the grave was. If the Jewish authorities did not know, they could have easily found out.
So all someone had to do to kill the early Christian movement was to produce a body!

E.The fact that the empty tomb is so much a part of the story proves without a doubt that the first disciples did not believe this was a spiritual resurrection. They believed Jesus was physically resurrected from the grave.

In fact, the idea that the resurrection is not a physical but a spiritual reality is nonsense according to those who have studied the culture.
E. E. Ellis said, "It is very unlikely that the earliest Palestinian Christians could conceive of any difference between resurrection and grave-emptying resurrection. To them, resurrection without an empty grave is about as meaningful as a square circle."
There would be no possibility for a Christian movement without an empty tomb. Such a belief would have generated no momentum, especially in Jerusalem where they saw him die. And Jerusalem, by the way, is where the movement first caught hold.
E. L. Bode: "The notion of the occurrence of a spiritual resurrection while the body still lay in the grave is a peculiarity of modern theology."
It is interesting to note that the earliest Jewish response to the claims of the disciples (found in Matthew 28) was that the disciples had stolen the body. They did not deny the empty tomb, but claimed that Jesus' followers had stolen his body.
After 3 days the tomb of Jesus was empty. That much is absolutely clear. So what happened? What alternative explanations are offered to this.
- Perhaps Jesus was not dead, but resuscitated and left the grave himself. After being beaten, stabbed, hanging on a cross for half a day, bleeding, he revives enough to roll away a gigantic grave stone, overwhelm at least 2 Roman guards and walk unnoticed to where the disciples where meeting.
- Or perhaps the disciples did steal the body. Remember these are the ones who were afraid to tell perfect strangers that they even knew Jesus. They had no weapons, no plan, their leader had just been killed. Besides if they had stolen the body, their belief system would have been based on a lie. Which brings us to our next assertion.

3. The origins of Christianity support the truth and reliability of the resurrection of Jesus.

A.The disciples themselves believed that Jesus was physically resurrected from the grave.

We've already talked about this but let me say a couple more things.
The disciples actually believed the story. Nothing else can account for their changed lives.
Besides they could not possibly have perpetuated this story if they had not believed it. (See Chuck Colson Loving God pages 66-67)

B.So where did their belief come from? Even if you believe it was a legend, for which we have suggested not nearly enough time had elapsed, or if you believe it was hallucination, which is completely ridiculous, you still have to answer what would have suggested such a legend or a hallucination.

These men were all Jews, raised in a Jewish culture, predominantly uneducated blue collar Jews. But nothing in Judaism would have suggested the end of the Jesus story.
The OT refers to resurrection (Ezekiel 37, Isaiah 26:19; Daniel 12:2)
The Pharisees of Jesus' day believed firmly in the resurrection.
But this was a belief in the resurrection of the dead, all of the dead at the end of time.
There is no precedent for the resurrection of one individual during history.

C.C. F. D. Moule: "The birth and rapid rise of the Christian church remain an unsolved enigma for any historian who refuses to take seriously the only explanation offered by the church itself."

So how should we respond?

1.Some of you have never allowed the full impact of the Resurrection to register with you.

You've gone to church. You may even consider yourself religious.
Maybe you haven't thought about it in a while. But today you're thinking.
Or maybe you've been looking. You've known something was off, something was missing.
You've wondered if there was a message from God out there for you.
If you've never had the full impact of the Resurrection of Jesus lay claim to your heart, then let it happen today. Pick up that stick of dynamite and have some fun.

1 Peter 1:3

"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his mercy he has given us new birth - through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead."

2.Some of you have experienced the fortification of your heart that I talked about at the beginning. Because of hurt or disappointment or failure your sense of expectation has calcified, and a wall has been erected around your heart and mind.

You can hardly believe that there is hope.
Believe it!

1 Peter 1:3 (we left out a phrase) "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead."

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