What do you believe about Easter?

That may seem like an odd question, but have you ever been talking to someone who believed differently from you - and weren't sure how to answer questions about Jesus' resurrection?

While there is no doubt that we are saved by grace, through faith & faith alone (Eph 2:8-9) - did you also know that there is a lot of external historical evidence for the resurrection?  The following article by Lee Strobel contains a few highlights that I wanted to share with you this Easter season.  So whether you are talking to friends, co-workers or even your own children - hopefully you can be even more confident in knowing what you believe and why. 

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.  ~ Philippians 3:12

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Why I'm Celebrating my 30th Easter

By Lee Strobel

How do we know Jesus rose from the dead? Here's a snapshot of the kind of evidence that led me to abandon atheism and embrace Christ

I had seen plenty of dead bodies as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, but I never saw anyone come back to life. That's why I was a skeptic about Easter - until my agnostic wife's conversion to Christianity prompted me to spend two years investigating the historical evidence for Jesus' resurrection.

What I encountered turned me from atheism to faith - and what I've learned since then has only cemented that decision:

First, there's persuasive evidence Jesus was executed. In addition to multiple early reports in the ancient records that make up the New Testament, we also have confirmation outside the Bible. Atheist historian Gerd Lüdemann called Jesus' death by crucifixion "indisputable."

Second, there are resurrection accounts that date back so early they can't merely be legendary. A.N. Sherwin-White of Oxford said the passage of two generations was not even enough time for legend to grow up in the ancient world and wipe out a solid core of historical truth.

Yet we have a creed of the early church (recorded in 1 Corinthians 15:3ff) that confirms Jesus died for our sins, was buried, rose and appeared to named eyewitnesses, including skeptics. This creed dates back to within a few years of Jesus' death - and therefore its underlying beliefs go back even further. It's like a historical news flash!

Concluded historian James D. G. Dunn: "This tradition, we can be entirely confident, was formulated as tradition within months of Jesus' death." To me, this devastates the claim that the resurrection is simply a legend.

Third, there’s the empty tomb, which is implicit in the early creed and explicit in the earliest Gospel.

Scholar William Lane Craig said that the site of Jesus’ tomb was known to Christians and non-Christians alike. Therefore, if it weren’t empty, it would have been impossible for a movement founded on the resurrection to have exploded into existence in the same city where Jesus had been publicly executed just a few weeks earlier.

Also, the unanimous testimony that the empty tomb was first discovered by women argues for the authenticity of the story, because in that culture a woman’s testimony was considered untrustworthy. If the writers were merely making up the story, they would have claimed men made the discovery, thus boosting the credibility of their tale among their first-century audience.

Moreover, the empty tomb was implicitly admitted in the claim that the disciples had stolen the body. Why would Jesus’ opponents manufacture a cover story like that unless they were trying to explain away the inconvenient truth that the tomb was empty?

Nobody had a motive for stealing the body, especially the disciples. They wouldn’t have been willing to die brutal martyrs deaths if they knew this was all a lie.

Finally, historians Gary Habermas and Michael Licona have summarized multiple sources confirming the apostles’ conviction that the resurrected Jesus appeared to them:

• Scholars agree Paul wrote First Corinthians. There, Paul says he met with the apostles and confirmed they, like him, had encountered the risen Christ.
• The early creed confirms the disciples (and 500 others!) saw the risen Jesus; indeed, many scholars believe two eyewitnesses cited in the creed, Peter and James, were the ones who gave the creed to Paul.
• Most scholars concede that Acts summarizes the teaching of the early church. Acts describes Peter telling a crowd in Jerusalem just weeks after Jesus’ execution that “God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it.” Acts reports that 3,000 people agreed and the church was born.
• The Gospels confirm Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances. (Even if you discount the ending of Mark as being a later addition, Mark still reports a resurrection, features an empty tomb and foreshadows Jesus’ appearances.) New Testament scholar Craig Evans, who has lectured at Oxford and Cambridge, told me: “There’s every reason to conclude the Gospels have fairly and accurately reported the essential elements [of the resurrection].”
• The early church father Clement knew the apostles, having been ordained personally by Peter. In a first-century letter, he said the apostles had “complete certainty” about the resurrection.
• Another early church leader, Polycarp, who studied under the apostles and was appointed by John, repeatedly referred to the resurrection and affirmed “the apostles loved Jesus who was raised.”

So convinced were the disciples that they were willing to die for their conviction that Jesus had risen — not because they had faith in it, but because they were in the unique position to know for sure that it was true.
Even atheist Lüdemann conceded: “It may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus’ death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ.”

He would claim these were hallucinations or visions, yet I don’t find that credible. Hallucinations occur in individual brains, like dreams, yet Jesus appeared to groups three different times – including 500 people at once.

Were these visions prompted by the apostles’ grief over their leader’s execution? This wouldn’t explain the conversion of Saul, an opponent of Christians, or James, the half-brother of Jesus and a skeptic. Neither was primed for a vision, yet each died proclaiming Jesus had appeared to him. Besides, if these were visions, the body would still have been entombed.

My books analyze the various objections that skeptics have raised. None, in my view, overcome the affirmative evidence. So I reached the verdict that the resurrection really happened – and that this event vindicated Jesus’ claim that he is the unique Son of God (John 1:12).

That’s why this year I’m celebrating my 30th Easter as a follower of Jesus.