If Jesus was in fact resurrected from the dead and made Himself known to His disciples after His crucifixion and burial, would that help you validate everything that He taught about the Kingdom of God and Salvation?
I want to take one of many evidences about Christ’s resurrection and expound to get you to think. Perhaps you don’t even know who Jesus is or what He taught or that He taught people about the kingdom of God, of sin and judgment, and the necessary key for Salvation and eternal life.
I realize many are already willing to accept the fact that aliens are inhabiting Antarctica and that the moon is a hollow because you heard it on TV. I applaud you. That may be proof that humans are designed to worship. What you worship is another question, but you were made to worship – that will be another topic for.a blog post in the future.
However, you may not exactly be willing to stake your eternal destiny and your livelihood from some report you heard on a TV program, and maybe that is a single measure of how true something really is. What are you willing to commit your life to even cast aside your personal comfort for?
For Love?
For Money?
For Power?
For Fame?
But what if you were confronted with a tragedy that was so disheartening that you hid yourself from the public and even feared for your life?
Imagine, the leader of a growing new socio-religious movement was executed and buried. He was very publicly persecuted by the mightiest religious and political powers in the land, and executed in a most humiliating way, suffered a slow agonizing death to the jeers of those who despised him and the silence of those who were indifferent. Every material and physical comfort was taken away from him, he was stripped, mocked and ridiculed.
His closest disciples were only 12 men, and you are one of them.
How much courage would it take for you to get your vanquished soul out of your hiding place to even proclaim his name? For what purpose?
IMAGINE YOU ARE A DISCIPLE
The leader who you were by his side for over 3 years, who treated you like a brother and offered you every bit of wisdom, kindness, trust, and teaching. He performed miracles of healing and fed thousands of people from a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish, converted water into fine wine and even the waves obeyed his command. He spoke of the future. He taught about kingdom of heaven. He spoke with authority. All of this but you did not really understand why He had to suffer and die just when things appeared to be taking off.
Inside yourself, you had other plans for the future filled with ideas of earthly successes and power. You had believed your leader was going to rise to become ruler, cleanup this entire societal mess and you would be his right hand man along with the other 11 disciples.
Then the religious leaders wanted him dead. Their self-righteousness caused them to fail the simple test that God had set before them. He was arrested and handed over to the government and the government and its high court could not stand for the truth either, because truth did not abide with them.
This man, your leader, was not a man of religion, he was God Himself, one man who was fully Man and fully God who spoke directly for God and represented God that we may see what the one true and yet invisible God is like.
And His coming was not without prophecy. Written testimony in the Holy Scriptures had predicted and foretold of this suffering servant of God.
His chosen people did not recognize Him and the social media of the day, the mocking and jeering crowds shouting disparaging remarks fueled by unbelief. They are lost and they are the lost.
And here you are, hiding behind locked doors. You hope no one will see you to avoid shame and embarrassment everywhere you might go. How strong you thought you were. Everyone knows you were a disciple of the man who, from their points of view, despite all his power could not even save himself as he died upon the Cross.
Death marked the end of all hope.
But God’s sovereign plan was in effect, to destroy death.
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1 CORINTHIANS 8-25
8 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written:
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
And bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.”
20 Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. 22 For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; 23 but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
THEN SOMETHING SHOCKING HAPPENED
If this story ended there, with the disciples cowering in the hidden chamber, what do you think would happen? What would you do? Do you think you might sneak out one by one and make a life somewhere and avoid the crowds and not seek attention? You might change your image, drive a different car, join the foreign legion? The last thing you would do is to brazenly take on the banner of a man who just got very publicly, agonizingly humiliated and ridiculed and executed by being nailed to a tree. You had just been spiritually annihilated. The movement that you had hoped for is dead. The enemy declares its victory. At best you might be given the 33 AD equivalent to a recovery group and put the whole mess behind you.
But that is not what happened...
You can read the Book of ACTS to find out what happened after.
Early on the following Sunday after the crucifixion and burial, women who were followers of Jesus discovered the tomb empty and then they informed the disciples. Peter and John ran to the tomb to see for themselves.
From that world changing morning on, the Book of Acts describes the events through which every single disciple was transformed into the leaders of what would be a powerful grassroots evangelistic explosion.
Over a period of 40 days, Jesus appeared to the disciples and many others in bodily form and helped them transition from a hopeless group, to becoming transcendent in their ability to communication the truth about Jesus and God’s kingdom. Their fervor spread and people’s spirits were lifted and emboldened with the truth.
Each disciple was inspired to spread the Good News of the gospel message that Christ died for our sins and rose from the grave and is now alive in heaven. Each disciple-turned-apostle took it upon themselves to establish and nurture the believers in Christ, boldly speaking the Truth despite encountering the same oppositions that Jesus did.
They traveled near and abroad, up to the point of accepting persecution and death by mob or execution. Some died early on, like big James, the brother of John, while others survived for many years as they performed the work growing, guiding, and nurturing the Church.
They believed without doubt, Jesus had not only rose from the grave, offering Salvation to all those who would believe, but He was alive and with power. The Apostles received the Holy Spirit (can explain more in detail in another article) and their work for the Lord was blessed and empowered.
They believed without doubt, Jesus had not only rose from the grave, offering Salvation to all those who would believe, but He was alive and with power
Only the Apostle John lived to a ripe old age. Decades later, before the turn of the 1st Century he was called to write eyewitness accounts in the Gospel of John and critical letters to the Church. John’s writings embodied his long time observation and contemplations of his friend and Lord Jesus Christ.
I personally resonate with the time frames involved with John’s Gospel because when I look back to my experiences serving in the Navy aboard the USS Bremerton (a submarine), now almost 40 years ago, I know my perspective, self-awareness, and greater knowledge helped me better define what attributed to the greatness of the experience. How much more so would decades of contemplation by an eye-witness to the life and ministry of God walking, teaching and helping those among us on earth make an impact on the Apostle John?
The disciples were regular people who were just like you and me. I have a hard time imagining giving up everything in order to not only follow in the path of who was my deposed leader, one who had apparently failed. Would you? Would you change your life, taking on the mantel of the cause, without extraordinarily compelling reasons?
Yet this is the point of my article, these men experienced something that rang with both truth and reality, to such a high degree, and were endowed with such gifts aiding their evangelism that their conviction and courage were nothing short of miraculous.
They had to have concluded, without doubt, that their leader and friend, the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ was and is exactly who He said He was. He spoke the Truth and the disciples, with their ignorances enlightened, became the great Apostles responsible for the founding and flourishing of the Church.
JOHN 20:29
Jesus said to him, “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
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MORE EVIDENCE…
Not only did Christ help lift his original band of disciples (with the exception of Judas Iscariot), he recruited another man whom the Spirit could perform some the greatest work of spreading the gospel, Saul of Tarsus.
For those of you who do not know Saul of Tarsus, he was an extremely well regarded young Pharisee who absolutely, positively hated the growing movement of Jesus believers. Saul was a religious zealot, who before his conversion, was responsible for the brutal persecution of the Church. In God’s sovereign plan included Saul of Tarsus.
The Lord confronted Saul and his traveling party while enroute to Damascus and blinded him (Read the book of ACTS).
Long story short, The Lord told him who was boss, so to speak, and gave Saul instructions to seek help to get his sight restored. Saul had to wait 3 days to have his blindness healed and he had to trust the hated Jesus followers to save his very life.
A very prideful man, those three days without physical sight were crucial for Saul’s conviction of sin and humility to take root for his spiritual sight.
Saul of Tarsus was given a new name: Paul. He was called by God to become an Apostle.
God’s plan was to use Paul’s depth and reach of language, culture and the Jewish and Roman Law and be a lead evangelist for years to come.
This is a common experience among strong believers: To be taken handily down by the destruction of proud ways and then their energies and influence are redirected for God’s glory and for the strengthening of the Church.
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This short review of the transformation of the believers and the creation of the main apostolic team is only one of the evidences that prove Jesus Christ rose from the grave and was bodily resurrected. Going back to the original question:
What if Jesus is Resurrected?
Who is He?
What does that mean for you?
Go to the source writings. It may be time to pickup a Bible and begin to take a serious look for yourself at what God wants you to understand. The Bible may be the best preserved set of ancient writings in the world, nothing comes close, but don’t let age fool you, it is as relevant now as it was then.
With the Biblical Perspective, highlighting the Narrow Way
CKY
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