By Neil Earle
This bold and colorful statement has been made by those who urge non-Christian and Christian alike to reconsider the evidence for the divinity of Jesus Christ.
Not so long ago Josh MacDowell made a point quite relevant for today: "Go to Hebron and you see the tomb of Abraham and Sarah. Go to Medina in Saudi Arabia and you find the tomb of Mohammed, built when he died on June 8, 632 at the age of 61. Go to Jerusalem and they show you the spot where Mohammed was supposed to have jumped to heaven on a horse. In the Orient the tree where the Buddha taught is supposedly still there. But the exact location of Jesus’ tomb is either disputed, hard to find or lost to us."
There is a reason, of course. The place of Jesus’ burial only mattered to the disciples while his body was there. After the Sunday following Jesus’ resurrection it was pointless to look any more for the master’s body. It was not there. He was not there.
That is exactly what you would expect to find if the Gospels were right. Jesus’ body was no longer there, therefore there was no overwhelmingly sentimental desire to mark out the exact spot and turn it into a religious shrine, for Jesus was not there. He had risen as He said. Herod could not destroy him, the Romans could not find him, the Sanhedrin could not explain him and the grave could not hold him.
What makes Jesus different? For one thing, all the millions and millions of Jews, Buddhists, and Mohammedans are alike in this – none have claimed that their founder have come up out of their grave in a resurrection.
Jesus claimed to have power to lay down his life and take it up again (John 10:18). This is not inconsistent with the fact that He was raised by the power of the Father, because what the Father does the Son does likewise (John 5:19).
Bible teacher Wilbur Smith said: "The burden of the good news of the gospel was not ‘Follow this Teacher and do your best,’ but ‘Jesus and the Resurrection.’" You cannot take that away from Christianity without destroying its very identity. The Scriptures are emphatic about that (1 Corinthians 15:17). That is why Robertson Nicholl stated: "The empty tomb of Christ has been the cradle of the Church."
After Easter, Jesus did not need a tomb!
He gives life through his life but also through his word to us today (John 6:63). It has been well said: No other man’s word’s have the appeal of Jesus’ words because no other man can answer these fundamental human questions as Jesus answered them? They are the kind of words and the kind of answers we would expect God to give."
Concerning Jesus, the great philosopher John Stuart Mill asked a pertinent question, doubly meaningful at Easter season: "But who among his disciples or among their proselytes was capable of inventing the saying ascribed to Jesus or imagining the life and character revealed in the Gospels?"
This is right. If Jesus never existed then who gets credit for such remarks as…
I am the Bread of Life
If you have seen me you have seen the Father
If a man is thirsty, let him come to me and drink
I came that they might have life, and have it more abundantly
Peace I leave with you, My Peace I give to you, not as the world gives
I am the Way the Truth and the Life
Come to me all you who are troubled and carrying a heavy load
I am the Good Shepherd
Or consider this remark of another researcher, W.S Peake: "How was it that a carpenter of no special training, ignorant of the culture and learning of the Greeks, born of a people whose great teachers were [often] narrow, sour, intolerant legalists, was the supreme religious Teacher the world has known?
The Resurrection Event is rooted in real history. We know more about the details of the hours immediately before and the actual death of Jesus in and near Jerusalem, than we know about the death of any other one man in all the ancient world. The place we know, Judaea; the characters we read about were real, listed in plenty of historical documents of the Jews and Romans – Pilate, Anas, Caiaphas, Herod, Pilate’s wife, the elders of the Sanhedrin.
Could it all have been a fabrication? A series of hallucinations? An exercise in wish-fulfillment? Jesus himself faking the whole thing and them living an existence off elsewhere else? Perhaps with Mary Magdalene? All of these ideas have been propagated since the Resurrection Event and some of them started quite early.
Remember that the guards who were scared witless by the angelic visitor went to the priests who bribed them to spread the lie that the disciples stole the body while we slept (Matthew 28:13). But that cover-up breaks down. For one thing the penalty for sleeping on duty was death. For another, if the guards were asleep how could they know the disciples had stolen the body? What judge would listen to you of you offered as evidence the claim that while you were asleep your neighbor came in and stole you television set?
In his vital little book, "Basic Christianity", John Stott answered these charges with sheer common sense: "Are we to believe that after the rigors and pains of flogging and crucifixion he could survive 36 hours in a stone sepulchre with neither warmth nor food nor medical care? That he could then rally to perform the superhuman feat of shifting the boulder without disturbing the Roman guard? That then weak and sickly and hungry he could appear to the disciples in such a way to give them the impression that he had vanquished death? That he could live somewhere in hiding for forty days, making occasional appearances and then finally disappear without any explanation? Such credulity is more incredible than Thomas’ unbelief."
No, the evidence is in. This stuff has been debated by the keenest minds of our world for 1900 years. The result, say some, is that no argument forged against the Resurrection based on historical and logical evidence has ever prevailed.
George Hanson wrote in The Resurrection and the Life: "The simple faith of the Christian who believes in the Resurrection is nothing compared to the credulity of the septic who will accept the wildest and most improbable romances rather than admit the plain witness of historical certainties. The difficulties of belief may be great; the absurdities of unbelief are greater."
Then consider the sources for all this. They are hardly the flimsy fiction of a sci-fi writer or the rantings of a Charles Manson figure. Bernard Ramm in Protestant Christian Evidences writes: "Statistically speaking, the Gospels are the greatest literature ever written. They are read by more people, quoted by more authors, translated into more tongues, represented in more art, set to more music, than any other book or books written by any man I any century in any land. [In fact, the Gospels are such a treasure that if they should disappear tomorrow we would be able to construct all but 8 verses from the writings of those Church Fathers in the 2nd and 3rd centuries who quoted them as if they were words of life – which they are!].
But the words of Christ are not great on the grounds that they have such a statistical edge…They are quoted more, read more because [they deal} clearly and authoritatively with the greatest problems that throb in the human breast: namely, Who is God? Does He love me? What should I do to please him? How does He look at my sin? How can I be forgiven?"
Finally, consider the little essay "One Solitary Life," which puts it all in perspective:
"Here is a man who was born in an obscure Palestinian village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village. He worked in a carpenter shop until he was 30,and then for 31½ years was an itinerant preacher. He never wrote a book, He never held an office, He never had a family. He never went to college. He never traveled 200 miles from the place where He was born. He had no credentials but himself. …
While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied him, another betrayed him. He was turned over to his enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed upon a cross between two thieves. While he was dying his executors gambled for the only piece of property he had. When he was dead he was taken down and laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.
Nineteen long centuries have come and gone and today he is the centerpiece of the human race. Even the Muslims hail him a Prophet and the Jews have gone a long way to coming to grips with his legacy. In infancy He startled a king; in childhood He puzzled doctors; in manhood He ruled the course of nature, walked upon the billows as if they were pavements and hushed the sea to sleep. He healed without medicine and made no charge for his services.
The names of the past statesmen of Greece and Rome have come and gone. The names of the past scientists, philosophers and theologians have come and gone; but the name of this Man abounds more and more. Though time has spread 1900 years between the people of this generation and the scene of his crucifixion, yet He lives.
He stand forth upon the highest pinnacle of human achievement, proclaimed of God, acknowledged by angels, adored by the saints, and feared by devils – the living very much alive and personal Word of God who is the Christian’s Friend and Champion and the Protector of all who trust in him, our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ!"
Amen to that. There’s a lot to celebrate at Easter.