HONEST INVESTIGATIONS INTO MESSIAH’S RESURRECTION 23 NOV 2014

A message of sincere rational thoughts concerning the concept of his resurrection. People talk and report about natural & supernatural events, but what is the reality behind miracles? When people personally experience supernatural events, whether they were skeptics or not, they are now believers. Must one experience the supernatural to rationally believe in it?? Certain skeptics will not allow any supernatural explanation in their mental set of possible real explanations. If they can’t explain something with a natural explanation, they would rather have no explanation than accept something they have prejudged to not exist. And that is prejudice…not rational thinking. Some rational thinkers, who believe in God’s existence, and who accept Christ’s atonement for their sins, become Christians without accepting the claim of his resurrection.

CHRIST’S RESURRECTION. The reported miracle of Christ’s resurrection polarizes people. Some intelligent people believe that this shows that Christianity is superstition & irrational. Christian defenders of their faith reply that there is no historical way that Yahshua’s disciples, intimidated by the Roman & Jewish leadership, would have turned around & risked their lives for a lie. Not only did they voluntarily risk their lives going worldwide (to the known world incl. India, Africa & Europe, and not long afterwards China) to tell of Christ’s resurrection, they were willing to receive repeated beatings, whippings, & torture, and would not stop. There is no honest denying that Christ’s disciples believed they spent time with the resurrected Christ. Within a few yrs. of Christ’s death, Paul wrote of his burial & resurrection in a letter to a congregation. The much talked about Q (Quelle) document which was written soon after Christ’s death is considered to have been used by Mark as a basis of his gospel. In Mark 15:43, Mark records that Joseph of Arimathea, a historical figure, asked for Yahshua’s body and buried it in a tomb he owned. One of the points that can be made here is that the interval between these written records & the event are too close for one to flippantly claim legends to be responsible for these written accounts. This is not the record of an ancient legend that has been retold countless times, but an attempt to record a significant event that recently happened. Paul & Q are two independent sources that were in the area at the time. And soon Jewish responses are claiming things like the body was stolen. What is the best explanation for these things?

DEAD PEOPLE STAY DEAD. History is full of individuals that people thought were dead being discovered alive. This is why people for centuries were buried in caskets that had strings that could ring external bells…so if they found themselves alive in a casket they were to ring the bell. In fact, sometimes the vital medical signs have proved a person was dead, they were pronounced dead, and yet the person’s vital signs somehow switched back on & the person returned to life. Recently, there was an old grandma who surprised people. All that said, normally dead people don’t come back to life. Christians believe that also. If one wants to argue against the Resurrection of Christ, a person needs to present evidence specifically against the Resurrection itself, not evidence that normally people remain in their graves. Yeah, we all know that. While it is perhaps in the realm of possibility that one could die a gruesome death as Christ died & somehow naturally recover, it is extremely unlikely. The hypothesis is that Christ was divinely brought back to life…the laws of nature did not naturally apply in this case to his resurrection. This was a special display of the Creator’s power to prove to his disciples that Christ could sincerely offer them immortality.

A REAL ACT OF GOD. Now many of the things of modern life seem to be miracles…even I still find a smart cell phone to appear miraculous; and to primitive men our modern technology must appear unexplainable & miraculous. But Christ’s disciples were not claiming that further along we’d figure out the science behind the resurrection…they were heralding it as a real act of God that proved that God cares about humanity. Once we realize the Resurrection of Christ as an historical event, then we realize that the existence & love of God are the best explanations for it. The event happened to provide us a foundation for our faith in the Creator & faith in the atonement of Christ for mankind. The Resurrection of Christ is not an embarrassing story, but an amazing event that radically changed the world within a few years, and has continued changing the world by opening people up to the realization that God does love humanity. While life presents us with many unknowns, the weight of evidence does not defeat the historical evidence of the resurrection of Christ.

MEETING GOD. There are many who predetermine God does not exist & no evidence will change their mind. On the other hand, some of us have the witness of God’s Spirit, and this is similar to meeting a friend. There may be no way to prove to others that we met so & so, but the experience of God in one’s life is all the confirmation a person personally needs. Watching Him change our lives, to see how our perspectives and our deep heart felt attitudes have changed shows us that miracles can happen. Many of us have seen our hopes resurrected, our zeal for life resurrected, & our love for our fellow man resurrected by God’s Spirit. This explains in part why many of us believers in Messiah are more open to accepting the miracle of Christ’s resurrection.