Who can say what is wrong-

J. Michael Sharman
Published: March 31, 2008

Who can say it is wrong for Barack Obama to try and legislate full legal equality for homosexual relationships and adoptions-
Who can say it is wrong for Hillary Clinton to lie about the trip she took to Bosnia-

Who can say it was wrong for a Culpeper deputy to have committed adultery with an underage girl in the back seat of his sheriff's cruiser-

Who can say it is wrong for blacks, whites and Latinos to be prejudiced against one another-

Who can say it is wrong for lenders to sell mortgages which the lender knows the borrowers can't possibly afford after the introductory low-rate period ends-

God can, and does, say each of those things is wrong. But God saying something is wrong only matters if His word, the Bible, is actually true.

The core truth of the Bible is the resurrection. If the resurrection isn't true, then none of the rest matters and everyone is free to create his or her own morality for as long as he or she can get away with it.

How can we know, thousands of years afterward, that the resurrection event really happened-

The Roman soldiers were death experts. Jesus had been beaten, whipped and nailed with spikes to a crucifix. At the end of the day, one of the soldiers thrust his spear into Jesus' side to make sure he was dead. When the Roman soldiers declared He was dead, we can be certain they knew He was really dead.
The soldiers then let Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus carry Him away to the tomb, where they wrapped Him in a 100-pound embalming mixture that dried into a shellac-like shell.

Roman soldiers stayed to guard the tomb and put on it the official Roman seal. Jesus' disciples who had run away at His arrest and stayed away during His trial and execution would not have had the courage to steal His body from highly disciplined Roman soldiers.

The Bible's explanation of an angelically induced sleep for the guards is the only logical explanation for why they slept through the noise that would have been created when the huge stone covering the entrance to the tomb was removed.

When Peter saw the empty tomb, he saw the linen wrappings lying undisturbed. If Jesus' dead body had just been removed or stolen, the whole body - linen wrappings and all - would have been taken. If Jesus had somehow escaped alive, the wrappings would have had to have been cut and chiseled off of Him.

If the disciples had simply found an empty tomb, they would have come to the sad but obvious conclusion that His corpse had been stolen or moved by His enemies.

They didn't, though, because the discovery of the empty tomb was soon followed by Jesus' post-resurrection appearances. Those who saw Jesus after the resurrection did not see a beaten, bloodied, bruised crucifixion survivor in a physically weakened and debilitated state; they saw the powerful, resurrected Lord healed of everything but the token remembrances of the nail scars on His hands.

After His crucifixion, His disciples had been timidly hiding out in their upper room, wondering if the next knock on their door would be the soldiers coming to arrest them as co-conspirators.
But just days after the resurrection, they became joyous, courageous and willing to die - a change they would not have come about by a mere collective decision to lie about their executed leader.

Only 50 days after Jesus' resurrection, Peter preached a public, open-air message in which he specifically said that Jesus had indeed been resurrected and had been seen by more than 500 local people since that time.

No one contradicted him. No one claimed that the post-crucifixion Jesus was an imposter. No Sanhedrin priest produced the "real" body.

Jesus was not a captive to death, rather death had become a captive of Jesus. He had proved true the Bible's predictions, which themselves were the evidences that He was then, and now is, God.

When God tells us something is wrong, we really ought to start paying attention to what He says, and to believe His intent is to protect us from the harm that we will cause to ourselves and others if we ignore His warnings.

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