1 Corinthians 15:1-11
1 Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.
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 Cephas, and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters 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, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
9 For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. 11 Whether, then, it is I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.
Do you believe the resurrection story?...Paul writes that five hundred people saw Jesus after His death...Actually He says more than five hundred...What did the five hundred people see, when they say they saw Jesus?...People struggled with Jesus’ resurrection at the time it happened and people still struggle with this resurrection story today...Paul, who writes about the five hundred people seeing Him, was a staunch opponent of Jesus and His followers, even though he had not met Jesus while He was living His first life...Paul only met Jesus after His death...Paul met Jesus on the road to Damascus and even though Jesus had died, Paul believed that what he heard was our LORD Jesus on the Damascus road...After this meeting Paul believed wholeheartedly in Jesus...Paul would be one of Jesus' most ardent followers after this meeting...
To believe in life after death is something even Jesus’ Disciples had a hard time believing that Jesus could live again and that they would see Him again after He died on the cross...Life does not work that Way...Death does not work that Way...Life after death is hard to believe, and yet Paul saw Jesus’ life after His death as real...Paul and Jesus’ Disciples and those who believed in Jesus after His death would have to have their minds and their mindset change to believe that Jesus had died and yet He still lived...And His followers were right there as the resurrection happened...As were His opponents...And Paul was one of the opponents...They could not explain life after death, yet they believed what they saw and they saw Jesus...
Five hundred had saw Jesus and the Jesus story did not die when He died...His Story continues even today...So one must ask themselves did these five hundred who saw Jesus after His death, really see Him?...These people who saw Him would keep the Jesus Story alive until their deaths...And having convinced many of their friends and families the story continued into the next generation...
But the story did not end after just one generation...The story has continued on now for two thousand years...The story continues because five hundred people saw Him after His death and continued the story...Why do you think they would continue such a story about life after death?...Was it because they actually saw Him?...Seeing is believing...If you see something, do you believe what you saw?...And the next generation believed that what the original people saw was the Truth and they believed...So two thousand years later we must ask ourselves, is this Jesus’ Resurrection Story True?...If it were True two thousand years ago, it would still be the Truth today...