Evidence 1

This month as we celebrate Easter, we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection and His victory over death. I will spend next few days or so posting evidences for the resurrection of Jesus. The greatest evidence for the resurrection is that the disciples really believed and were willing to die for it, and that the Church persecutor Paul as well as skeptic James came to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Many of the disciples of the Lord Jesus went into hiding when the Lord Jesus was captured because they feared persecution.  Peter, one of the disciples, out of fear even denied knowing the Lord Jesus three times. Another disciple Thomas refused to believe that the Lord Jesus had risen from the dead until he had put his fingers into the very physical wounds of the risen Lord (John 20:25). James, the brother of our Lord Jesus along with other brothers did not believe in the Lord (John 7:5). And lastly Apostle Paul had violently persecuted the Christians and gave approval as a Christian named Stephen was stoned to death (Acts 7:58-8:1, 9:1-2). But what happened on that Easter morning that a few months later those same disciples were found in Jerusalem preaching the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ under the very nose of the Jewish leadership that crucified their Master? There was no fear in their behavior, they did not hide, but right in the courtyard of the temple they preached that the Lord Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah who had risen from the dead. There was something that happened that Easter morning that changed those uneducated poor Galileans who once ran away in fear. Something happened that Easter morning that made doubting Thomas fall on his knees and cry out to the Lord Jesus saying, “My Lord, My God (John 20:28),” and later turned Paul the persecutor of Christians into a Christian (Acts 9:1-19). Something happened that Easter Sunday morning that sometime later James, the brother of our Lord Jesus became a believer and a leader in the Jerusalem Church (Galatians 1:19). Something happened, and that something was the resurrection. As 1Corinthians 15:5-9 tells us, Jesus first appeared to Peter, then to five hundred brothers and sisters, then to James, and lastly to Paul who once persecuted the church.

            The impact of this resurrection event was such that at the end, Peter was crucified upside down by Roman authority. Andrew, the brother of Peter was also crucified, Matthew was beheaded in Ethiopia. James probably was stoned to death.  Doubting Thomas, who became a missionary in India was thrown into the fire in an oven by the natives. And last, but not the least, Apostle Paul, who become a missionary to the Gentiles was beheaded by Emperor Nero. They all suffered and died because of their testimony to the resurrected Lord. These apostles suffered and met horrible ends not because the whole resurrection thing was a lie, but because it was the truth. These disciples did not fear death because they knew that immortality awaited them. They knew that the same God who had resurrected the lord Jesus Christ would also resurrect them one day. Ignatius, the bishop of the church in Antioch in Syria in the early 2^nd century when the many disciples of the apostles were still alive, said that “having seen the risen Jesus the disciples were so encouraged that they also despised death or disregarded death as their Master.” The disciples’ willingness to put their lives in danger proves that the resurrection was not a lie that they made up. They believed that Jesus rose on the third day. Now, a good question to ask is what do we make of the Muslim terrorists who also die for their beliefs? Does that not mean that their beliefs are true also? The difference between the Muslim terrorists and the disciples of Jesus is this; the terrorist die for false beliefs that someone has taught them. The disciples died for a belief that nobody taught them. They died for something they personally experienced, the resurrection of Jesus. Terrorists die for what they believe to be true while the disciples died for what they knew to be true. People do not die for what they know to be a lie.