1 Corinthians 15:1-11
The Resurrection of Christ
1Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.
3For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. 6After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
9For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10But 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. 11Whether, then, it was I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.
When Paul talks about five hundred people seeing Jesus at one time, it is His largest appearance after He died on the cross...In Deuteronomy 17:6 we read that on the testimony of two or three witnesses a person is to be put to death, but no one is to be put to death on the testimony of only one witness...So we learn the importance of needing more than one witness...So five hundred witnesses in Jesus' post resurrection is a large number...Paul had told the Roman official Festus about His position on Jesus after He hung and died on the cross...Paul believed that there was this dead Man named Jesus who Paul had told Festus was still alive and living...Paul had seen Him on the road to Damascus after His death...Paul and other follower's belief is what started Christianity and what makes it different from the other world religions...The resurrection is true and Jesus is still alive today...Jesus death tomb was empty after His death...He had Risen...He had left the place of His burial to go and teach for forty more days...
Author Lee Strobel wrote, “I went to a psychologist friend and said if 500 people claimed to see Jesus after He died, it was just a hallucination...He said hallucinations are an individual event...If 500 people have the same hallucination, that's a bigger miracle than the resurrection.”...