Acts 1:1-11
Jesus Taken Up Into Heaven
1 In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach 2 until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. 3 After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. 4 On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about.5 For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”
6 Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”
7 He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
9 After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.
10 They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. 11 “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”
Acts 4:12
Salvation is Found Only in Jesus
12 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.
Acts 23:1-10
Paul on the Resurrection
1 Paul looked straight at the Sanhedrin and said, “My brothers, I have fulfilled my duty to God in all good conscience to this day.” 2 At this the high priest Ananias ordered those standing near Paul to strike him on the mouth. 3 Then Paul said to him, “God will strike you, you whitewashed wall! You sit there to judge me according to the law, yet you yourself violate the law by commanding that I be struck!”
4 Those who were standing near Paul said, “How dare you insult God’s high priest!”
5 Paul replied, “Brothers, I did not realize that he was the high priest; for it is written: ‘Do not speak evil about the ruler of your people.”
6 Then Paul, knowing that some of them were Sadducees and the others Pharisees, called out in the Sanhedrin, “My brothers, I am a Pharisee, descended from Pharisees. I stand on trial because of the hope of the resurrection of the dead.” 7 When he said this, a dispute broke out between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided. 8 (The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, and that there are neither angels nor spirits, but the Pharisees believe all these things.)
9 There was a great uproar, and some of the teachers of the law who were Pharisees stood up and argued vigorously. “We find nothing wrong with this man,” they said. “What if a spirit or an angel has spoken to him?” 10 The dispute became so violent that the commander was afraid Paul would be torn to pieces by them. He ordered the troops to go down and take him away from them by force and bring him into the barracks.
Acts 9:1-19
Paul Meets Jesus on the Road to Damascus
1 Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest 2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. 3 As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
5 “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.
“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. 6 “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”
7 The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. 8 Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. 9 For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything.
10 In Damascus there was a disciple named Ananias. The Lord called to him in a vision, “Ananias!”
“Yes, Lord,” he answered.
11 The Lord told him, “Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. 12 In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight.”
13 “Lord,” Ananias answered, “I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your holy people in Jerusalem. 14 And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name.”
15 But the Lord said to Ananias, “Go! This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. 16 I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.”
17 Then Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, “Brother Saul, the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here—has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” 18 Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized, 19 and after taking some food, he regained his strength.
Acts 17:24-32
God Resurrected Jesus and Some Believe the Story While Others Do Not
24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed.He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”
32 When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.”
Matthew 27:57-66
The Burial of Jesus
57 As evening approached, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who had himself become a disciple of Jesus. 58 Going to Pilate, he asked for Jesus’ body, and Pilate ordered that it be given to him. 59 Joseph took the body, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, 60 and placed it in his own new tomb that he had cut out of the rock. He rolled a big stone in front of the entrance to the tomb and went away. 61 Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were sitting there opposite the tomb.
The Guard at the Tomb
62 The next day, the one after Preparation Day, the chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate. 63 “Sir,” they said, “we remember that while he was still alive that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise again.’ 64 So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day. Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people that he has been raised from the dead. This last deception will be worse than the first.”
65 “Take a guard,” Pilate answered. “Go, make the tomb as secure as you know how.” 66 So they went and made the tomb secure by putting a seal on the stone and posting the guard.
Matthew 28:11-15
The Guards’ Report Say the Disciples Stole the Body
11 While the women were on their way, some of the guards went into the city and reported to the chief priests everything that had happened. 12 When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, 13 telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ 14 If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” 15 So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.
Matthew 28:16-20
Some Saw Jesus After His Death and Still Doubted
16 Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Mark 12:18-27
Marriage at the Resurrection
18 Then the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. 19 "Teacher," they said, "Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and have children for his brother. 20 Now there were seven brothers. The first one married and died without leaving any children. 21 The second one married the widow, but he also died, leaving no child. It was the same with the third. 22 In fact, none of the seven left any children. Last of all, the woman died too. 23 At the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?"
24 Jesus replied, "Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? 25 When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. 26 Now about the dead rising—have you not read in the book of Moses, in the account of the bush, how God said to him, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? 27 He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken!"
John 11:21-26
Jesus Says "I AM the Resurrection"
21 “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”
23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”
24 Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”
25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; 26 and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
Luke 16:19:31
The Rich Man and Lazarus
19 “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. 20 At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores 21 and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.
22 “The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. 24 So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’
25 “But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. 26 And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’
27 “He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, 28 for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’
29 “Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’
30 “‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’
31 “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”
Psalm 110:1
The LORD says to My LORD
The Lord says to my lord:
1 “Sit at my right hand
until I make your enemies
a footstool for your feet.”
1 Corinthians 15:1-58
The Resurrection of Christ
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.
The Resurrection of the Dead
12 But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15 More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost.19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.
20 But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.21 For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. 22 For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. 23 But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. 24 Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. 25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death.27 For he “has put everything under his feet.” Now when it says that “everything” has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. 28 When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.
29 Now if there is no resurrection, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized for them? 30 And as for us, why do we endanger ourselves every hour? 31 I face death every day—yes, just as surely as I boast about you in Christ Jesus our Lord. 32 If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus with no more than human hopes, what have I gained? If the dead are not raised,
“Let us eat and drink,
for tomorrow we die.”
33 Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character.” 34 Come back to your senses as you ought, and stop sinning; for there are some who are ignorant of God—I say this to your shame.
The Resurrection Body
35 But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” 36 How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37 When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. 38 But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. 39 Not all flesh is the same: People have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. 40 There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. 41 The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor.
42 So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; 43 it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44 it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.
If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. 46 The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 47 The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. 48 As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. 49 And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man.
50 I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51 Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— 52 in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53 For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. 54 When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
55 “Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”
56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
58 Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.
1 Corinthians 1:18-31
Jesus Crucified is God's Power and Wisdom
18 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;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”
20 Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22 Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.
26 Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him. 30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. 31 Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”
1 Peter 1:17-21
Jesus was Raised from the Dead by God
17 Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear. 18 For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. 20 He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. 21 Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.
John 3:16-18
God LOVES the World
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
John 14:1-7
Jesus Comforts His Disciples
14 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. 2 My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4 You know the way to the place where I am going.”
Jesus the Way to the Father
5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
John 20:24-29
Jesus Appears to Thomas
24 Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”
But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
26 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
28 Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
29 Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
Luke 1:1-4
Introduction
1 Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, 2 just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. 3 With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.
Romans 10:9-13
Jesus is LORD
9 If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. 11 As Scripture says, “Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.” 12 For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, 13 for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
Luke 24:1-12
Mary Magdalene and Joanna
1 On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. 2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4 While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. 5 In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? 6 He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 7 ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’ ” 8 Then they remembered his words.
9 When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. 10 It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. 11 But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. 12 Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.
Deuteronomy 13:1-18
Worshiping Other Gods
1 If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams, appears among you and announces to you a sign or wonder, 2 and if the sign or wonder spoken of takes place, and the prophet says, “Let us follow other gods” (gods you have not known) “and let us worship them,” 3 you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. The Lord your God is testing you to find out whether you love him with all your heart and with all your soul. 4 It is the Lord your God you must follow, and him you must revere. Keep his commands and obey him; serve him and hold fast to him. 5 That prophet or dreamer must be put to death for inciting rebellion against the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery. That prophet or dreamer tried to turn you from the way the Lord your God commanded you to follow. You must purge the evil from among you.
6 If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” (gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, 7 gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other), 8 do not yield to them or listen to them. Show them no pity. Do not spare them or shield them. 9 You must certainly put them to death. Your hand must be the first in putting them to death, and then the hands of all the people. 10 Stone them to death, because they tried to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 11 Then all Israel will hear and be afraid, and no one among you will do such an evil thing again.
12 If you hear it said about one of the towns the Lord your God is giving you to live in 13 that troublemakers have arisen among you and have led the people of their town astray, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” (gods you have not known), 14 then you must inquire, probe and investigate it thoroughly. And if it is true and it has been proved that this detestable thing has been done among you, 15 you must certainly put to the sword all who live in that town. You must destroy it completely, both its people and its livestock. 16 You are to gather all the plunder of the town into the middle of the public square and completely burn the town and all its plunder as a whole burnt offering to the Lord your God. That town is to remain a ruin forever, never to be rebuilt, 17 and none of the condemned things are to be found in your hands. Then the Lord will turn from his fierce anger, will show you mercy, and will have compassion on you. He will increase your numbers, as he promised on oath to your ancestors— 18 because you obey the Lord your God by keeping all his commands that I am giving you today and doing what is right in his eyes.
Deuteronomy 18:14-22
The Prophet
14 The nations you will dispossess listen to those who practice sorcery or divination. But as for you, the Lord your God has not permitted you to do so. 15 The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him. 16 For this is what you asked of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, “Let us not hear the voice of the Lord our God nor see this great fire anymore, or we will die.”
17 The Lord said to me: “What they say is good. 18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites, and I will put my words in his mouth. He will tell them everything I command him. 19 I myself will call to account anyone who does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name. 20 But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, is to be put to death.”
21 You may say to yourselves, “How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?” 22 If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously, so do not be alarmed.
Easter is the celebratory day of Jesus' resurrection...This day of Easter is a significant day for Christians...Easter is the Holiday of Hope where Jesus died and then came back to life and the present to teach His Disciples and others that He has overcome the world...Easter help prove that Jesus is LORD and that He is Divine...Easter verified that He is the Resurrection and the Life...It is a very important and a very real and historical day for followers of Jesus...It is one of the holiest days of the year, if not the holiest day, for the followers of Jesus...It is the Greatest of Holidays...
The belief in the resurrection of the Messiah basically makes you a Christian...The resurrection belief stands out in the events of Jesus' life and for those who do believe in the resurrection of Jesus, it puts one squarely in the Christian camp...By believing in the resurrection, you believe in the afterlife and that there is life after death...The other major religions do not believe in the resurrection of Jesus...And there are other people, beyond the other major religions or any religion, who do not believe in Jesus' resurrection...And this disbelief of Jesus not resurrecting is not new...If you do not believe that Jesus resurrected, you are not the first...This non-belief started the very day that the resurrection happened...There was an empty tomb and believers explain it one way, while the non-believers explain it in other and differing ways...Even some of the disciples did not believe at first that their Teacher had risen...After the women who went to Jesus' tomb on the third day, they actually saw the empty tomb...But when the women reported that His tomb was empty, the disciples did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense...
And to make the story of Jesus' resurrection more interesting, Jesus' tomb was being guarded by Roman Soldiers, with a big boulder covering the tomb...The tomb was sealed by the Romans with a Roman Seal...The Roman soldiers were a part of the large Roman Empire -and they were guarding Jesus' tomb...Why was the tomb now empty after these Roman and Jewish officials had taken precautions for no one to take the Body and no one could come near the tomb without the Roman guards knowing about it?...Why did the Romans and the Jewish officials let the story continue about the country, and especially their empire?...They had the power and numbers to stop the story, find Jesus body, and put an end to the resurrection story...For some reason, and for one reason or another (and maybe it is because God involved in this) they let the story continue...Since the Romans were guarding His Dead Body, it should have been easy to prove and know where He was...If His body were stolen as some Jews reported, wouldn't the Roman authorities, like Pilate, and others want to know what had happened to His body and where they took His Body and how they did it and question those who would have taken His Body away from the sealed tomb?...Why didn't they start and continue with an investigation, or did they?...But regardless of all the controversy and questions around the resurrection, Easter remains an historical day...And very much a Great Day...And most importantly Jesus proved He was the Resurrection and Life, as He stated to Martha at Lazarus' tomb...
God's people and those who believed in Judaism, would struggle believing that Jesus resurrected...That would point to Him being the Messiah...God had warned His people that there would be false prophets come and go...Could Jesus be a false prophet as many of His people and others believe?...But Jesus was always praying and worshiping the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, which was their God...God was not testing His people that Jesus was a false prophet, but showing them that He was and is the Messiah, that the Old Testament had written about...Being the Messiah, it would have been right in proving by God that He was the Messiah, by raising Him from the dead as Paul told those in Athens, when he went out and preached about Jesus...But many of God's people did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah, nor was He resurrected...They believed that He was a false prophet as stated in Deuteronomy...But how do they really know He is not the Anointed One that the Old Testament talks about?...Could He be a Spiritual, Healing, Miracle Working Messiah, just as Jesus was?...And if Jesus is truly the Actual Messiah, then He is Divine and the One Moses wrote about...And if Jesus is the Messiah, then He is the One that God did raise up for them from the dead, and is The Prophet like His fellow Israelites, and God put the words in His mouth that He spoke...And very importantly He is the One who Moses wrote about...And He is the One who told the Israelites the Absolute Truth, in everything He said and did... And most importantly, then He actually did die for each of our sins on the cross...
And Paul, who was not at the site of Jesus' death or around Jesus at the time of His arrest or death, yet he gives us the most extensive information of the resurrection...Paul researched his information about Jesus...He had talked to Peter, to James, and to Luke...Luke writes much about Paul and the resurrection in the Acts, as well as in the Gospel According to Luke...So Paul and Luke did have information about the resurrection of Jesus...Paul, a Pharisee, believed Jesus was the Messiah...Paul wrote that Jesus was seen by hundreds of different people after His death, and that Jesus was and is alive after His death on the cross...Paul wrote this to the Corinthians in his first epistle to them, "But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?"...The people that Paul is addressing, knew him and knew his knowledge of the Old Testament...They knew or were learning about Jesus and about Jerusalem and the history of Israel and its people...They would be learning more of the testimony in the old Testament about a Messiah...
The people of Israel were God's people...So very early on some of the Corinthians (as well as other people of all different beliefs) could not and did not believe in the resurrection of life...The idea of a completely dead body coming back to life after being in a tomb and being dead and buried for three days, did not make sense to the non-believer...The idea of Someone returning to life after their death, did not make sense to some of the Corinthians...Even though they might have heard of the story of Lazarus, and how he, too, was returned to life and resurrected after four days of death by the One who had recently risen...And the non-believing Corinthians, as well as other non-believers in the resurrection, were not that far removed from Jesus' time frame of His death and this Miracle Resurrection...So these non-believers just could not make sense of a dead Man who had been dead for three days, and how His physically resurrected body had come back to life and that He could live again...Some people in their humanly wisdom and minds could not grasp and believe that a physical resurrection could happen...And there is much struggle and questions and Great Mystery to how this particular resurrection happened, without the Roman soldiers seeing it...But it happened, and is wrote about in the four gospels...And around such a story there would have to be much confusion...There even may have been confusion to the four authors (I have trouble in trying to explain the dead resurrected body of Jesus coming back to life -just as I have trouble with Lazarus coming back to life), in trying to explain it, because they had no knowledge of resurrections...Lazarus was resurrected, but his resurrection, is not given near the writings, or talk, or importance as Jesus...And one might ask why is this?...Resurrections did not happen everyday...So the physical resurrection of Jesus is surrounded by this Great Mystery...So many questions would come up about a resurrected body, such as how did this actually happen and could something like this really happen and maybe even why did it happen?...But one thing we do know is that Jesus had predicted that He would rise again...He called Himself the Resurrection and the Life to Martha, brother of Lazarus (whom He had resurrected back from the dead)...
The earliest of people had Scripture and the Bible and oral Bible stories when they first heard and started to believe in God...But would the Bible and particularly the Old Testament be enough to believe that the Messiah of the Old Testament Scriptures had come to earth and that Jesus really was the Old Testament Messiah and the Anointed One?...Jesus even tells us that the Bible will not help some with their faith and their belief in Him...Jesus told the Parable of a rich man whose name was also Lazarus...When the rich man wanted to save his family and brothers (back on earth) and to get them to believe in hell after he had died, Jesus says it would be very difficult...It is difficult, because they do have the Bible (to believe in)...“But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony...And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’...“He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, for I have five brothers...Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’...“Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’...“‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’...“He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”...So we are told by Jesus i this teaching that even when a physical miraculous resurrection event happens some people will still not believe it, even in Jesus' time, as well as today, in our time...There are people who will not believe in the story of any dead man returning to earth to help others and telling them of heaven, God, and hell...It seems that to believe in the resurrection you have to believe in Moses and the prophets and the Bible...And you also have to believe in Jesus...It takes evidence to believe in the resurrection of Jesus and the Bible is the place we start looking for the evidence of the resurrection...And the most evidence of Jesus' resurrection is in the New Testament in the four gospels and in Paul's epistles...Then one sees the wisdom of God in these things...God has resurrected His Son and proved it by raising Him from His death on the third day...
The wisdom of God is different than the wisdom of man...While man believes in his own wisdom and experiences, Jesus is the wisdom of God, and the power of God...Jesus and God's wisdom is eternal wisdom...It is a Divine Wisdom...Jesus spoke for God and speaks for God, and is God's Truth...Jesus followed God's will which makes Him different from man...And God resurrected this Particular Man and somehow (I think) that makes Him somewhat more controversial...So, to me, His resurrection makes Him a little more controversial...Much more controversial than the resurrected Lazarus, and the others that Jesus resurrected in the four gospels...If Jesus had He just died on the cross and never resurrected, things would not quite be the same for Him...He would not be the Jesus we believe in, I think...It makes it more difficult for the non-believer to believe in the resurrection or life after death without believing in Jesus...It makes it harder for the non-believer to believe in Eternal Life, without believing in Jesus' Resurrection...The four gospels and Paul's epistles, as are the other New Testament books are about Jesus and His life, His teachings, His miracles, His death on the cross and His resurrection...Revelations writes of His coming back in the future and what it will be like...And Jesus being man's Savior, as He died on the cross for our sins...And His miracles and His resurrection make Him different from a regular man...The belief in Jesus' miracles and His resurrection, one must believe in Him and have faith in Him...And by doing this and believing in Him, they have became a Christian...And God knows this and that is in His wisdom...It takes faith to believe in God and His Son...We actually have a Man who has been dead for over two thousand years, that Christians today claim to be alive today...
One commonality in the four gospels about the resurrection is that women were the first to see Jesus after He resurrected...Women back in those days were not credible witnesses...They could not have testimony that was credible about Jesus would not hold up in court...So wouldn't it have been better if the four gospel writers chosen or had written about male credible witnesses seeing Jesus first?...This would have made more sense back in Jesus' time to have written that men had seen Jesus first, since a woman's testimony would not hold up in court?...So why would the gospel writers have written this incredible witness story in their gospel stories?...It might give some or many to not believe in the resurrection story?...Or were the gospel writers, just writing the gospel truth and wrote what really happened the day Jesus rose from His death -and the women were actually there taking care of His burial rituals at His burial site, as Jewish women normally did in the first century?...
And besides these first women, hundreds of other and different people saw Jesus at different times over a period of forty days after His death...This being the first time, a Man who resurrected and stayed alive for forty days after His death and then ascended to heaven, was a time for pause and great reflection and thought...It would be a time to think and reflect on this event of the resurrection...It very well should be studied and studied again and again...Yet, Jesus had already raised people from the dead, including His friend, Lazarus...And Lazarus had been dead for four days...But Jesus was somehow different...This was One Man of God, who called Himself the Son of Man, and the Son of God - who taught somehow differently than all the other Rabbis, that ever existed...This Rabbi had said some most remarkable things ever said about God, and God's Kingdom, and about Himself...He was One who talked about having such a personal relationship with God, that one might believe that He actually was the Son of God, when you take His statements literally...He even told a sister of Lazarus that He is the Resurrection and the Life...He said that He and God are One...He said if you have seen Me, then you have seen God...So these things He said gave credence to His resurrection and that it might happen and many would take notice of this in His time...His death on the cross was an historical event, yet it is His resurrection that makes one take this pause and think and reflect about how and maybe why a resurrection could have happened...His resurrection from death and back to life violated the very laws of nature, and this violation of the natural laws of life makes some not believe in His resurrection...After all mans's wisdom cannot logically reason this event out in his mind and thoughts...It is only by faith that we can believe this...Some believers might believe in a spiritual resurrection versus His physical resurrection...Yet, these laws of nature are really God's Laws and His Laws of Nature...So how is He breaking a Law of Nature, if it His Own Law of Nature and the Law that He actually created in the beginning of time?...God is the One who created the Laws of Nature...
So, if you believe this, one must ask themselves, do you believe in the Divine?...And if you believe in the Divine, then can One Divine Person or His Father-God can break a Law of Nature that They put in place and that They created?...If there is no resurrection then this writing is unimportant...There is no use reading this any further, if there is no resurrection...If you do not believe that there was a resurrection of Jesus, why go any further in your reading...But if there is such a thing as the resurrection of life and your belief is even the size of a small mustard seed, then it is eternally important that you believe in Jesus and in God...There is no middle of the road on this particular subject...This is an all or nothing subject, and belief...As Paul wrote, it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead...How can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?...If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised from the dead...And if Christ has not been raised from His death, our preaching about Him is useless and so is your faith...More than that, we then are found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that He did raise Christ from the dead...But if God did not raise Jesus from His death, then the dead are not raised...For if the dead are not raised from their deaths, then Christ has not been raised either...And if Christ has not been raised from death, your faith is futile; and you are still in your sins...Then we are not saved by Jesus' death on the cross...Then those also who have fallen asleep and died believing in Christ are lost and have no hope...If only for this life we have hope in Christ and that He is still alive, but if He is still dead, then we are of all people the most to be pitied...So our faith is futile without the resurrection of Jesus...But if one believes in Paul's words then they are worth studying today, because in dying, Jesus atoned for our personal sins...And therefore, He is our Savior and we have Eternal Life...Without Jesus' death we are still in our sins and apart from God...
And we know that two thousand years ago something of a Great Mystery did happen on that very first Easter...The event of Jesus' resurrection happened and the Disciples and Jesus' other followers believed that it happened...But even they did not believe at first...And this would be the normal response...The Disciples would become great teachers for Christ...Later many of the Disciples (or most of them, as well as many other Jesus' followers) went to their deaths, because of their belief in the resurrection of Jesus...They believed they saw Him after His death or heard of someone who saw Him in His resurrected form...And after Jesus resurrected He seems to move in and out of time...Their view of their own death would have to change after seeing Jesus alive after His personal death on the cross and talking to Him...Their thoughts of heaven and hell would be so different now after seeing Jesus alive again and learning even more from Him...Jesus saying to trust in God, but trust also in Me, then saying "My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I AM going there to prepare a place for you?...And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with Me that you also may be where I AM...You know the way to the place where I AM going.”...These words would now make sense to His Disciples after His death and resurrection...These words would be personal to His Original Disciples...And death would lose its sting for them...And it is because they saw Him alive and walking and eating after His death...Because His Disciples now knew that He would prepare a place in heaven for them...
And somehow God has been able to take this historical fact and make it personal for each one of us...Can you believe that God would send His Son to earth to open the gates to His Kingdom?...Somehow God keeps this Great Mystery in and around His Son's Resurrection, even after two thousand years...Each of us believes what he or she believes about the resurrection of Jesus...The belief of the resurrection is a faith issue, and it is a religious issue...I believe, it had less to do in Jesus' time than ours...Many people were religious and would talk about religion and God regularly...Today that is different, there are many worldviews and religious ideas...The years that have past over these two thousand years has diluted some of today's believers faith, I believe...Two thousand years is a long time...What happened two thousand years ago was an act of faith and it was something that happened to a Special Man...Have we heard this so much that it is a little lesser?...By this I mean if you were there and saw Jesus after His death, it would just be a fact and the Truth that it happened...Your were there..This would be because you saw Him alive again...Jesus had died and then you saw Him somehow alive again after His death on the cross...There would be even a mystery if you were one of the people that talked to Jesus after His death...Those there at the time of His death and saw and knew about His resurrection probably would contact or tell someone about His resurrection...And we are told five hundred people saw Jesus after His resurrection...So this spreading of the word about His resurrection, I believe would happen quickly and be received by many other people...But today, two thousand years later it is different in the sense of the timeline from His death and resurrection mystery, and the people closest to the resurrection have also passed on...Time removes us somewhat from Jesus and we have to believe in the each of the generations, who have passed this resurrection story down and more importantly we must believe in the four gospels of the New Testament and the Bible...One has to believe in the gospels to believe this remarkable story...And some will not believe in the resurrection, even after reading the resurrection from the different authors in the Bible...So Jesus' resurrection is now a personal question that we must get our information from the New Testament or from someone we trust that talks about Jesus and knows Him and has a personal relationship with Him, or has been touched by Him...If you were an actual eyewitness, it would be very different...You could believe that Jesus was alive again, because you saw Him...But time has marched on...And because of the very nature of this event to the original Disciples and others who actually saw Him, with this type of question, God is involved -no matter of the time period...God is involved because we do not see a Man's resurrection as a natural thing or natural law, we see it as something Supernatural, something that is sacred and holy, if you believe that it did happen...And because of this Supernatural event, faith and God being involved, there will be conflict and disagreement...This seems to me to be somewhat affected by this two thousand year timeline, as modern man thinks more in terms of the scientific way and tries to think more on his own without praying and having God help us with our daily current routine and ideas and decisions...Society seems to have become more secular than it was two thousand years ago, when most societies were more religious and thought about God very regularly...And it seems that modern man wants a modern miracle to believe...Today's many men want to see his own personal miracle of today (and not one that happened two thousand years ago) to believe...The two thousand year old miracle of the resurrection has much less of an impact on today because of this long two thousand year timeline...Those of Jesus' time would be talking about this for months and months...Maybe even longer...But let us make no mistake, God's Will was done, and still today God's Will gets done...
So, I must say that, the resurrection of Jesus is one of the most important historical facts for mankind...Jesus rising from the dead is a pivotal point in mankind's history...We now can believe in eternal life, because a Man has overcome death...Jesus' resurrection gives us hope for eternal life...Jesus has shown us that there really is life after death, and life after our own death...He really can prepare a place in heaven for us...The resurrection makes Jesus our Savior...He died on the cross for our sins, which makes Him our Savior...This fact that Jesus was resurrected from death, means He is very much alive today...A fact or truth two thousand years ago, is still a fact today...So we have a Living Savior, much like we have a Living God...Death did not kill Him...His resurrection makes and emphasizes that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life -and the Only Way to God...If the resurrection is true, then salvation is found in no one else...It is as Thomas said after His resurrection...The first time Thomas saw Jesus after His death he was so surprised and shocked-and he would say, "My LORD and my God."...An Original Disciple of Jesus called His now alive again Teacher, not only his LORD, but he calls Jesus, God...And why wouldn't Thomas call Him God, after seeing Him right after His death?...
But some people do not believe in the resurrection as fact or being factual...The disbelief began the same day of Jesus' resurrection, with a fictitious guard's report...Certain people will not believe in Jesus...In the guard's report the chief priests and elders came up with a plan for disbelief in His resurrection...Without knowing any facts about Jesus' empty tomb, the chief priests told the guards (who also did not know what happened) what to report and say about the resurrection...The chief priests told the guards to say, "His Disciples came during the night and stole Him away while we were asleep...If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble."...So the soldiers took the money from the chief priests and did as they were instructed...And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day...The guards knew the body was now gone, so what could the guards do and what would they have believed after this happened?...Where had His Body really gone?...This was just a story the chief priests had made up without a search for Jesus' body...After all the guards were there watching His tomb that night of His death, and the nights after...How could a group of Disciples or men move a large stone in front of His tomb, without awakening the guards, if they all did fall asleep?...Large stones, like the ones that would cover a tomb would be awkward, heavy, and hard to move without making any noise...Why would the Disciples who left Him at His arrest, and while He was still alive, now be willing to steal His deceased dead body, and risk being killed after the fact of His crucifixion, as these Roman guards guarded his tomb?...Wouldn't they get into serious trouble and maybe crucified for doing this?...So why would the Disciples take His body?...And wasn't He arrested for being a criminal...So now Jesus was a criminal, so why would the Disciples steal a criminal's body?...The Roman guards could have killed the Disciples as they tried to take away Jesus' body, with all the commotion it would have caused...So would they risk their own lives, for His dead body?...The very one's who had Jesus crucified could not account for His body leaving the tomb...And neither could the Disciples...It was a revelation...It was a resurrection, in fact...
Even after Jesus resurrected and some people saw Him, they could not believe what they saw and still doubted...The resurrection story is a story very hard to believe...People doubted their own eyes...Other people doubted what other people were telling them about the resurrection...Even after the the Eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go, some saw Him and believed, yet some Disciples still doubted...Thomas doubted, even though the other ten Disciples saw Him and he would not believe what his friends had told him about Jesus being alive, until he got to touch Jesus' glorious wounds...Even the Eleven were very much in disbelief at first, even after the women had told them what happened at the tomb...The resurrection story was something that even His Disciples had to grapple with for a short period of time before actually believing in it and that He was actually alive again...When they saw Him after His death, everything changes about belief and faith and death...So one can understand why some people do not believe in the resurrection...The belief in the resurrection takes faith...
And the Eleven Disciples did believe they had seen Jesus after He died...Because of His appearing to them they now believed...By believing in this resurrection story, the Disciples did not make it easy on their daily lives...The High Priest and Jewish officials did not believe it happened...The Disciples lives would become more challenged because of their belief in the resurrection story of their Resurrected Teacher...They did not seem to question the story of His resurrection after they each saw Him...Seeing is believing...They knew His teachings, His miracles, and all He had done while He taught others...But this type of revelation is still hard to believe...Even as stated earlier, Thomas doubted at first...But once he saw Jesus after His death, Thomas came to realize that Jesus was his LORD and his God...And Jesus still had those wounds that Thomas wanted to touch to see if they might be real...The scars were still there from the flogging and the hanging from the cross for hours...His body still had the nail scars and the spear wound...The scars Thomas wanted to see were the scars of this troubled and suffering world in need of a Savior...And Thomas got to see them...
The Disciples especially knew, that Jesus was this Special Man all along, and then after His resurrection, they believed He was Divine, and truly the Messiah...He said "I AM the Resurrection and the Life."...They also did not change the resurrection story, in the sense, that if the Disciples told the story differently, others might have believed them even more...For instance, the Disciples could have said that they saw a Spiritual Resurrected Jesus, and that He now was of Spirit and not a Physical resurrection...A Man you could still touch and feel as Thomas did...That story might have helped other non-believers into believing in Him, instead of sticking with the story that Jesus physically came back from the dead, and could move around, walk, and even eat food with them...And Jesus lived on earth after His resurrection over a period of forty more days...Such an unusual story of a Man coming back from His death three days later would be hard to believe...It would be a story that would be hard for them to explain to others...A less remarkable story from the Disciples, and from Jesus' closest followers might have helped and given them and Jesus more followers immediately after His death...But this most unusual and miraculous story remained with them and the world...The Disciples stayed with the resurrection story, and most of them died for continuing to tell this resurrection story about Him, which gives this hard to believe story more credibility...Even St. John, one of His Disciples who wrote one of the gospels, and supposedly lived the longest of all the Disciples, writes much about the resurrection and some of the things He did after He came back to life...The problem the non-believer has in believing this guard report's story is that Jesus, after His death, also appeared to James, His brother, to Paul, and to five hundred other people -besides His Disciples...Jesus did not just appear to one person and on one single day, and to those He was with regularly (like His Disciples)...Paul writes about Jesus' resurrection and who saw Him...Paul gives us much information about Jesus' resurrection...And Jesus saw these different people over different times...So, if people did not believe and they were torn between either in believing the guard's report or Paul's story, they could probably have found someone who did see Jesus after His death...Five hundred people is quite a large number in this case, because Jesus' resurrection was around the areas of Jerusalem and Galilee...So curious people could talk to someone who had seen Jesus after His death in and around those areas...And to further this credibility (for) Paul, he had been a persecutor of those who followed Jesus...The people could confirm from one or more of the five hundred people that were still living what Paul had written and had talked about...Paul was against Jesus around the time of His death...So it is hard to believe Paul would lie about this written resurrection story and this many people seeing Jesus...Paul only became a believer when he met Jesus on the road to Damascus...Not only did He appear to Paul, James, and to five hundred other people, Jesus did His appearances over a period of forty days...St. Luke even writes about this saying, Jesus appeared to His Disciples over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God...This forty day period is very important...Jesus did not resurrect one day and leave that day or even the next day...On one occasion during the forty days, while He was eating with them, He gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift My Father promised, which you have heard Me speak about...For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”...So Jesus made several appearances to different people totaling more than five hundred, and did this over a forty day period after His death...With so many people seeing Him, they probably were now devoted to Him and the story would spread about Him living after His death...This would make the guard's reports story and other stories trying to stop the resurrection story, a little less believable (if not a lot)...The resurrection story would live on and on...The story lives still today...The question one might ask, "Could and would others now believe this story of the resurrection without seeing Him and keep believing it as thousand of years have now passed?"...
Our own beliefs are a strong component of our minds, and biases us on how we see Truth...Truth is very much connected to our beliefs...Some people can have a belief system that is so strong that when the Truth is read about or heard by them -their beliefs and their convictions and what they believe are still unable to change...There are those who do not believe in the resurrection...They do not believe in Jesus and what He teaches and what He said about Himself...The Sadducees were a whole group of people, who did not believe in the resurrection...Even after they heard about Jesus' resurrection happening, they still did not believe...
We read in the Book of Acts the Sadducees were such a group, who would not believe in the resurrection story...They already had Jesus explain the resurrection to them...Jesus explained the resurrection to them in the story of "Marriage at the Resurrection."...While Jesus was living, the Sadducees came to Him to try to stump Him about a question on the resurrection and life after death...The Sadducees were firmly entrenched and believed firmly in the five books of Moses...These books were what the Sadducees studied and had learned well...They were not much concerned with the other books of the Bible, as they were focused on Moses writings, and those first five books of the Bible...Moses did not go into detail with writings on any resurrections...And since the Sadducees were so entrenched in the doctrine of the Torah, or those first five books of the Bible, Jesus' answer to their question about the seven brothers and the one wife would have to be answered by something or some verse or verses in the Torah, for them to believe Him...Jesus tells the Sadducees that they were in error (and the error is about their non-belief in the resurrection)...He says the Sadducees also do not know the power of God...God has the Great Power to do resurrections (among all things that He can do, like creating a universe)...They also are making another error by not believing in the other books of the Bible...In Jesus teachings, He quotes not only Moses writings in the Torah, but also all the Prophet books as Scripture in His Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus -which is about resurrection...Jesus also quoted the Psalms, when King David writes about God being LORD, and the Messiah being LORD (Psalm 110:1 and quoted by Jesus in Matthew 22:44)...In fact, Jesus often quoted the Psalms in the four gospels...He also often quoted the Book of Isaiah...Jesus believed that Scripture and the Bible were more than its first five books...But some today do not believe in the Bible or any part of it...And there are some today, who put their emphasis on the Old Testament, and give the New Testament little credence...
Jesus told the Sadducees that there is a resurrection, and after the resurrection -we are still alive...Our God is not a God of the dead, but He is a God of the living, and the Sadducees were gravely mistaken for not believing this...By saying this He then makes a direct quote from Exodus 3:6, "I AM the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob"...Jesus quotes Exodus and Moses words when God said I AM, He means God is alive and currently living...This is one of the very books of Moses, that they put so much emphasis...But the Sadducees do not either want to believe His quote from Moses, or they refuse to believe His quote from Moses has anything to do with the resurrection...Or are the Sadducees questioning that God is alive?...The Sadducees do not know the power of God, because He easily has the power to raise one from the dead...And He did...Why couldn't God raise someone from the dead?...And He proves He can do this by raising Jesus from His death...The four gospels and Paul write about Jesus being raised and so does Luke in the Acts of the Apostles...But the Sadducees still refused to believe in the resurrection...
The Sadducees' conviction about their disbelief in the resurrection continued even after Jesus' answer to them...Their unbelief continued even after His death, and even more surprising after His resurrection...St. Luke writes about this...The Sadducees therefore, do not believe that Jesus is our Messiah...In the book the Acts of the Apostles after Jesus' death and resurrection, Paul makes use of the Sadducees beliefs against the Pharisees beliefs, who do believe in the resurrection...Paul would have made his belief and the stories about the resurrection available to the Sadducees, after all he was on trial...I am sure the Sadducees would have talked to others about the subject of the resurrection, if they wanted to hear and learn more about it...But the Sadducees still did not believe in the resurrection of man or that Jesus resurrected from His death...Paul, even after Jesus was resurrected, gets the Sadducees and Pharisees arguing and fighting among themselves, while he is being questioned by the High Priest...The Pharisees and Sadducees get in such an uproar over the discussion of the resurrection that Roman troops have to be brought in to settle things down...It is possible one of the Pharisees believed that Jesus resurrected, that were in this discussion...Paul and Nicodemus were Pharisees who believed both in the resurrection and in Jesus...Some of the Sadducees could have even been right there, or at least close to the resurrection of Jesus, and surely all of them had heard about Jesus resurrecting, but they still could not bring it to themselves to believe in a resurrection, even though the resurrection happened right in Jerusalem and close to them...Jesus was not hiding that He resurrected in the forty days after He came back to life...But the resurrection story is a hard story to believe...Paul and the Disciples and many others believed in it, while the Sadducees struggled to believe in Jesus...
Some people today do not believe in the resurrection...Jesus actually told Martha on His way to resurrect her brother Lazarus that He is the Resurrection and the Life (I wonder what the Sadducees thought of Him making this statement, at this time)...So, if you believe in Jesus, and believe He does not and cannot lie, then not only do you believe that He is the Resurrection and the Life, but there is also a resurrection...The Sadducees must not have believed any of the five hundred people (who saw) Jesus after His death and resurrection (and His resurrection is written about in each of the four gospels)...So with all these things going on after Jesus' death, they would have to have heard about the resurrection story...And still they did not believe...
Today, we have some disbelievers saying that we cannot believe the gospels...Some claim that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John may not be the four authors of the gospels...Some believe the resurrection was a legend that grew out of the Disciples stories and other strong believers minds and only years and years later after His death did the resurrection story really come to life...The gospels were not written immediately after the death of Jesus and His resurrection...The story is so extraordinary and is written about by a group of believers...The story is not written by doubters and non-believers of Jesus...We have no unbiased authors, coroners, internet news, reporters, journalists, paparazzi, cameramen to check out their story and writings...But Luke did check out and write about these stories and His resurrection, and so did Paul...They researched the story of Jesus and His resurrection to see if the story was a true one...Since the resurrection stories were written just a few years after Jesus' death, the doubters did not have ample time to examine the current evidence...Many doubters, as well as believers, were still living...The earliest of people seeing Jesus were the women at His tomb and His Disciples...The time element or a lag in time was not a factor for those seeing Jesus after His death...Because Jesus was seen by five hundred people during these forty days after His resurrection...Mark's gospel, regardless of who wrote it, may have been the first gospel written, and Mark writes very little of the resurrection...And then each of the other gospels attach more and more legendary detail about the resurrection, according to some non-believers...I agree with the premise of this...If one cannot believe in one or more of the authors of the gospels, then you cannot believe in the resurrection...And then you cannot believe in Jesus or His resurrection, if you do not believe in the gospels...
The resurrection is also written about later and in length by St. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians...Even though Paul was very close in time to Jesus and he would meet with Peter, an original Disciple of Jesus, and also with Jesus' brother James -some would not believe Paul about the resurrection of Jesus...Others also would not believe that Jesus was resurrected, even though there would have been much talk all around about His resurrection throughout Jerusalem and the area in and after His death...What a story this would be...(Can you imagine today's news media having a story like this one?)...Even years later Jesus would continue to have followers, many, many followers...After His death and resurrection, He spent the next forty days on the earth, teaching His Disciples...He ascended to heaven in front of His Disciples...And the original Disciples taught other disciples...And each generation of disciples taught the next...So Paul in his epistle to the Corinthians writes about Jesus resurrecting...Paul had to have learned detailed information about this from someone who knew about the resurrection...He most likely learned about the resurrection from Peter and James...The non-belief, in Paul's time, may have been by a group of Corinthians, or the story of the disbelief about the resurrection was out there and they were hearing about this disbelief -and Paul was writing to the Corinthians to explain the resurrection miracle...For those who believe in God, believe that Paul was the disciple to the Gentiles, that Jesus appointed him on the road to Damascus to teach the gospel to the Gentiles...Paul was hand chosen by Jesus to be the man and the chosen instrument to proclaim His name and message to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel...He was handpicked, just as His disciples were handpicked...Paul would suffer and be persecuted as he taught about Jesus...Throughout most of St. Paul's epistles he writes about the resurrection of the Messiah...Paul would write this to the Romans... If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is LORD,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved...For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved...For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same LORD is LORD of all and richly blesses all who call on Him, for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be saved.”...And Peter agreed with this and said that salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved...We are saved by Jesus...The message of Paul, throughout his epistles, is that there was a factual resurrection of Jesus and it was not a mythical one or one of legend...His death on the cross saved us from our sins, and then He rose from the dead three days later...
So we can believe the gospel writings and the eyewitnesses who said that Jesus did, in fact, resurrect from the dead, as each of the four gospels write about...And also Paul, and Peter (in their epistles) write about the resurrection...Or we can believe the guard's report or something similar like that...You have only two choices in believing in the resurrection...You can believe that it did, in fact, happen...Or you believe it did not happen...Some might not believe in the resurrection because it is a miracle, and miracles are not supposed to happen...Then those people do not believe in any of Jesus' miracles...
Paul writes about two men in the Bible that connect us to God...It is written in Genesis that the first man Adam became a living being created by God and lived in the Garden of Eden...The last Adam and Man became a life-giving spirit and servant for us...He would sacrifice His life for us on the cross...He would die on the cross for our sins...A physical death happened...However, the Spiritual Man was not first man, but the natural man, the one of dust came first...The first man was of the earth...The first man was made of dust; the second Man is the LORD from heaven...The Second Man was always talking about God and the eternities...Jesus often spoke of he Kingdom of God...As Adam was of dust, so we also are made of dust; as is the heavenly Man, so also are those who are heavenly...And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the Heavenly Man...The One who is focused on God and the Spiritual...So there is a natural earthly body and a spiritual body...Jesus had both...This natural body and spiritual body gives us hope...Hope in Jesus, and hope in the eternal life after death...And both the natural and Spiritual body of Jesus were seen by His Disciples, after His death -after His resurrection...
Jesus did resurrect...It is, as stated earlier, one of the greatest and most important facts of all humanity...We must believe in the resurrection, because Jesus tells us to...He says not only are we are in error, if we do not believe in the resurrection, we are also badly mistaken (to use His words), if we do not...It is also great to know that He brings eternal life to us after our death...Those who believe in Him -we will live, even though we die; and whoever lives by believing in Him will never die...Those who believe in God and Him shall not perish and but will have eternal life...Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life...
St. Paul tells the Corinthians and the Athenians that there has been a resurrection from the dead...God can and has done such a thing of bringing back Someone from the dead...So now we can believe that there is life after death, and God has proven it by raising His Son from the dead...Where old death is your sting, if we are resurrected after our deaths?...
If there is no resurrection, why would Jesus have lied to His Disciples about preparing a place for them after He died?...How could He prepare a place for them after His death, if there is no resurrection and no heaven?...If He did not resurrect, then He would be gone forever, never to return...No, He comforted His Disciples when He said: “Do not let your hearts be troubled...You should believe in God; and believe also in Me...My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I AM going there to prepare a place for you?...And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with Me that you also may be where I AM...You know the way to the place where I AM going.”...Let us take comfort in His Words of Truth...He is the Man of Truth...We can read and see when He was comforting His Disciples, He was also talking about His resurrection...And a heaven which is very large and has a place for each one of us...His Father's house has many rooms...
The resurrection is a central tenet in those who follow and believe in Jesus...His death and physical resurrection give us hope for eternal life...The suffering and death on the cross made Jesus leave us for three days...He was buried by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus in a tomb...Then somehow He came back to us...If we confess with our mouths that our LORD Jesus is alive and believe in our hearts that God has raised Him from the dead, then we will be saved...He has risen...Death is not the last word...Jesus is alive and has disarmed and disabled the fear of death...Jesus' resurrection showed us that death does not have the final word, He does...Jesus shows us that death does not just make us leave and be gone...Jesus returned from His death...Death has lost its sting...He overcame this earthly life, and we can overcome death by believing in Him and His Father...Jesus is the Way to His Father, and the resurrection is the Way to eternal life...God holds on to the departed ones...God leaves no believing soul alone...
The Early Apostles would be the main ones starting to spread these seeds of Christianity...The apostles were taught the Truth from Jesus (or someone very near to Him) about Himself and His Father...They would not lie about Him and His resurrection...That would break the fundamental teaching of Jesus, lying and not speaking the Truth...The word of Jesus' resurrection spread throughout the towns and villages He taught...The word of the resurrection spread quickly...The Jewish believers in Judaism would have done what they could to have prevented this rapid pace of this new spreading religion...
Theologian and author William Lane Craig says we have gained three established facts from the resurrection, "Three great, independently established facts—the empty tomb, the resurrection appearances, and the origin of the Christian faith—all point to the same marvelous conclusion: that God raised Jesus from the dead."...Pastor and author Tim Keller writes, “If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that He said; if He didn't rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what He said?...The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like His teaching but whether or not He rose from the dead.”...
So belief in the Resurrection Story comes down to you and really only you...Do you believe that Jesus rose from the dead?...Some will say that the Disciples and His Apostles advanced the story just to keep His Story Alive...But many of His Disciples and Apostles and followers would have to die and did die for this story to continue, which makes it harder to deny the Story of the Resurrection...And the men that advanced His Story were not wicked or evil men...They were Disciples of Jesus, who spoke the Truth about God (and was always speaking about God)...So in this story their is this Great Mystery with this Great Miracle...You as a believer or non-believer now must make a choice on what do you believe?...The story is either true or not true, it cannot be both...The Great Resurrection Story comes down to a matter of faith and a matter of belief...
So the Resurrection Story remains with us today...Every year we have Easter, because He has risen...God very much wants this Great Mystery to remain with us today...You see this is part of God's Plan...And so this story will remain relevant...God keeps it relevant...Jesus' resurrection shows us that He is Divine and is special to God...He is the Messiah, the Anointed One...Jesus and the Father are Truly One...God gave us the Resurrection Story and Jesus, which brings millions, if not billions, to believe in the One True God, who raised His Son...The Resurrection Story remains with us today, because of hope...But much more importantly than hope, the Resurrection Story remains with us today because it is true, and is about the One who said He is Truth...The Holy Spirit is continually guiding us to the Truth...The Holy Spirit helps the story continue...Jesus' Resurrection and His story tells us that even death cannot keep us from God or His Son...He did overcome this world...His death was is much more than a one time single event...Jesus' death shows us that death on earth is not something final, but is a Gate to heaven...He is the Resurrection and the Life...And Jesus is the Gate to God...So His resurrection is also much, much more than a one time historical event...Because of Jesus' resurrection He still lives and gets us to God...So He still lives today...His resurrection so much touched His Disciples, but His resurrection so much touches us, too -because He still lives even today...God has made this story of the resurrection play out this Way, which is His Way...A fact and Truth, yet one of great mysteries that is believable yet unbelievable, and old, yet still very new...