Resurrecting the Truth

J. Michael Sharman
Published: March 24, 2008

On Easter Sunday, our local paper carried a front-page article with the headline, "Scholars say Christians misunderstand resurrection."

Misunderstanding it - let's be honest and call it doubting - just seems to come naturally to us, which is reasonable considering that the evidence of the event begins with supernatural power.

The Gospel of Matthew tells us that earthquakes rolled back the stone blocking Jesus' tomb and then an angel froze the Roman guards with a holy fear. Even to the ones who were closest to Jesus and knew the eyewitnesses, those events seemed to be flat-out unbelievable.

Jesus' own prediction that He would be resurrected was not believed. Everyone had been told by Jesus that He would rise in three days, yet not even His own supporters one really took Him seriously. (Luke 24: 6-7)

The same angel who had appeared to the Roman guards was not believed when he told Mary Magdalene and the other women visiting the tomb: "He is not here, for He is risen, as He said." (Mt. 28:6)

Mary Magdalene had not come to see a resurrected Jesus, she had come to visit the grave of a deceased loved one. Still unbelieving and blinded by her tears, she turned and asked the Man standing next to her, whom she assumed was the cemetery gardener, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away."

When that Man spoke and said her name, only then did she recognize Him as Jesus, whose crucifixion she had just witnessed a few days earlier. (John 20: 15-16)

The other students of Jesus did not believe the women who ran back to the upper room claiming that they had just seen the resurrected Christ. When Mary Magdalene and the other women told Christ's other followers, "Their words seemed to them like idle tales and they did not believe them." (Luke 24:11)

Jesus then came and personally visited those students, His disciples. One, however, Thomas the Twin, wasn't there at the time. Thomas doubted Mary Magdalene's resurrection report. He doubted it when he heard the disciples' account of  Jesus' visit to the upper room to meet with his followers.

Thomas gets a bad rap in most Bible studies, but frankly he just said what most of us would have said had we been in his place: "Unless I see in his hands, the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe." (John 20:25)

For those outside of Jesus' close circle of followers, naysaying the fact of Jesus' bodily resurrection began as soon as those events occurred: "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. When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, 'You are 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 and did as they were instructed." (Mt. 28:11-15b)

Christian writer Josh McDowell says, "After more than 700 hours of studying this subject, I have come to the conclusion that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is either one of the most wicked, vicious, heartless hoaxes ever foisted on the minds of human beings - or it is the most remarkable fact of history."

There are many historical and logical evidences of the truth of His resurrection, which can't be squeezed into the space of a short column, but as McDowell concludes, "The most telling testimony of all must be the lives of those early Christians. We must ask ourselves: What caused them to go everywhere telling the message of the risen Christ- As a reward for their efforts, however, those early Christians were beaten, stoned to death, thrown to the lions, tortured and crucified. Every conceivable method was used to stop them from talking. Yet, they laid down their lives as the ultimate proof of their complete confidence in the truth of their message."

Like the old hymn says, they knew with an absolute certainty that when we just accept the truth of His words, then  "He lives within our hearts."

J. Michael Sharman is an independent columnist who practices law in Culpeper. His column appears Tuesday in the Star-Exponent.